Let the GOP sell Trump the White House, he’ll perhaps care more about living in it… also makes “going to the mattresses” easier
BTW, in the NYS RICO investigation let’s all take a breath until it’s ready to go and all comes out … Trump might use a Gigante Orangina defense.
And there are red flags galore… including the one that as always, indicates that the Russians wanted to get sanctions lifted and the GOP, specifically Trump, wanted to get paid.
In the Kremlin-gate scandal, we -- meaning the public in general -- remain mostly in the realm of unknown unknowns. We're probably going to have to wait for the FBI's investigation to be completed -- or the emergence of a Deep Throat for a 21st century Woodward and Bernstein -- before we move into known knowns that allow us to determine whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign last year colluded with Russian spies and hackers to tilt the election.
But some people are further down the Rumsfeldian road than others. Conservative national-security specialists -- who tend to be Trump critics -- have been cultivating their sources in the U.S. intelligence community for months. And they are increasingly convinced that the Trump campaign did indeed collude with the Russians -- and that Trump himself knew about it and inevitably is going to face impeachment and maybe even worse…
Then there's former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who says Trump was in Russia's debt even before Vladimir Putin's government started messing with the U.S.' democratic process. "What lingers for Trump may be what deals -- on what terms -- he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the West apparently would not lend to him," he told Prospect magazine.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was looking for a direct line to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — a search that in mid-December found him in a room with a Russian banker whose financial institution was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence, and remains under sanction by the United States.
Federal and congressional investigators are now examining what exactly Mr. Kushner and the Russian banker, Sergey N. Gorkov, wanted from each other. The banker is a close associate of Mr. Putin, but he has not been known to play a diplomatic role for the Russian leader. That has raised questions about why he was meeting with Mr. Kushner at a crucial moment in the presidential transition, according to current and former officials familiar with the investigations.
The F.B.I.’s interest in Kushner appears to be related to the two known meetings that he had with Russian officials.
The first, which was originally reported by The New Yorker, occurred in early December, at Trump Tower, when Kushner and Michael Flynn, then the incoming national-security adviser, met with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the United States. On Friday evening, the Washington Post added dramatic new details about what occurred at this meeting, which it said took place on December 1st or 2nd. Kushner and Kislyak, according to the Post’s sources, “discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring.”…
For Kushner, there are other causes for concern. Reuters reported Friday evening that Kushner had two previously undisclosed phone calls with Kislyak during the presidential campaign. (Gorelick said in a statement that Kushner has “no recollection of the calls as described.”) Meanwhile, President Trump’s treatment of Comey has raised serious questions about whether the President may have obstructed justice. He reportedly asked Comey to pledge loyalty to him and to drop the Flynn investigation, and then he fired him and publicly admitted it was over Comey’s handling of the Russia probe.
What was Kushner’s role in these decisions? The Times reported that Kushner, along with Vice-President Mike Pence and the White House counsel, Don McGahn, “generally backed dismissing Mr. Comey.” In another report, the paper noted that Kushner specifically “had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey.” After Comey’s dismissal, when Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, appointed a special counsel to take over the case, the Times reported that Trump met with more than half a dozen senior aides to discuss how to respond….
“Anytime someone on the Trump campaign conceals or misleads about a contact they had with Russia at the time of Russia’s interference campaign, that’s a big red flag,” Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said.
We still don’t have a crime in this case, but there is an awful lot of coverup.
As if one cares whether the Russians laugh at an (unidentified) lame(?) excuse taking over fake news (whatever that is)