Every time you think that the Trump-Russia saga can’t get more twisted, more bizarre, and more just flat out batshit crazy than it already is, something new comes along that can still make your jaw drop to the floor. This is one of those moments, right here and now.
The more that becomes known, the more it seems trickles out to fill in the edges of what is already known, but this is something completely different and unexpected. The official story is that US intelligence services and specifically the FBI started looking for a connection between the Trump campaign and Russia late in the summer of 2016. That may well be true, but that doesn’t mean that everybody was waiting that long. According to a STORY yesterday in Salon;
In late 2015, GCHQ learned about “interactions” between individuals connected to the Trump campaign and individuals who are known or suspected Russian agents, according to a report by The Guardian. The information was shared with the United States, and GCHQ’s reporting was corroborated by information shared by other Western intelligence agencies through the summer of 2016.
The report originally broke in The Guardian, which is becoming quite adept at sniffing out dirt on Trump from Merry Old, and went on to state that several other European ally countries including Australia, Estonia, Poland and Germany forwarded corroborating signal intelligence on to the US at around the same time.
Take a moment to let that sink in, because the devil is in the details, and this detail is critical. If it proves to be true, Ally intelligence services were sweeping up Trump associates as far back as late in 2015. This can literally be a fatal blow, not only for Trump, but for a large portion of his family as well.
Try to cast your mind back that far. Donald Trump ran one of the smallest, cheapest, shoestring campaigns in the history of American politics. He was ridiculed at the time for his lack of organization and personnel by both the media and opponents. And Trump the micro-manager goes all the way back to his business days if you believe him. God knows reports from Trump tower indicated that staff was constantly monitored all throughout the campaign by “Da Boss”.
So, what’s missing here? How about Paul Manafort? Unless he was a deep cover, phantom advisor, he didn’t come on until March of 2016. Nobody named, or even appeared to have heard of Carter Page until March 2016 when Trump rattled him off as a foreign policy advisor in an interview with the WaPo editorial board. and Lewandowski gave him permission to travel to Moscow. Ditto for Mike Flynn, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. KellyAnne Conway was nothing more than first an unpaid “supporter”, and then a “paid shill on network panel shows.
So, who the hell was there? Corey Lewandowski. Hope Hicks. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Donnie Jr. Quite possibly Jeff “The Elf” Sessions. Oh yeah, and the Cheeto Prophet himself, let’s not forget about him. This group is smaller than the core cast of “The Usual Suspects”, and nowhere near as intelligent or suspenseful.
If this information pans out, Now you can see why it is such crushing information. None of the people that Trump and his campaign are minimizing and hinting blame at were around at the time that the foreign intel services became aware of the connection between Team Trump and Russian intelligence agents. And the people who were in the campaign then are mostly members of Trump’s immediate family. Who eventually goes down, and who do they take down with them?