Post by the Scribe on Sept 23, 2020 10:12:25 GMT
Senate panel: Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 election
www.bostonherald.com/2020/08/24/senate-panel-trump-colluded-with-russia-in-2016-election/
FILE – In this July 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. Trump had a second, previously undisclosed conversation with Putin at the summit in Germany. White House spokesman Sean Spicer says that Trump and Putin spoke during a world leaders’ dinner at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month.(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
By JEFF ROBBINS |
August 24, 2020 at 6:59 p.m.
“Dear President Putin,” wrote Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 19, 2007, congratulating the former KGB officer on being named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. “You definitely deserve it. As you have probably heard, I am a big fan of yours.”
And as the Republican-led U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed last week after a bipartisan investigation, the feeling is assuredly mutual. Putin wanted Donald Trump elected president, not Hillary Clinton, because Putin believed that Trump would serve Putin’s interests and that Clinton wouldn’t. Putin therefore interfered with America’s election to help Trump win it and to ensure that Clinton did not.
Not only did Trump welcome that help, but he solicited it, and he and his closest aides actively colluded with the Russians and their intermediaries to secure it and capitalize on it. And then, as the Senate committee found, Trump made false statements under oath about that collusion to special counsel Robert Mueller, in order to hide it.
Other than that, the Senate committee, chaired first by Republican Richard Burr and then by Republican Marco Rubio, “exonerated” the president of collusion. Generally, once you hear this president deny that X is true, you can rest easy knowing that X is absolutely true, and the Senate report demonstrates that all the while Trump proclaimed “No Collusion,” the truth was “Yes, Collusion.”
For starters, the committee established that the notorious June 2016 meeting hosted at Trump Towers by Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. for the purpose of receiving Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton wasn’t just with any old Russians. It included Russians who had “significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.” The links between one of them and the Kremlin were, it stated, “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.” This, of course, was the meeting set up by Trump Jr., who responded to a Russian intermediary’s promise that it would yield information damaging to Clinton with this inspirational, high-minded message: “If it’s what you say it is, I love it.”
Then there are the detailed findings about the close, longtime relationships between Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, and between Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Putin intimate who, according to the Senate, has acted as “a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” dating back to 2004, when Manafort met him. Manafort, convicted by a federal jury of tax and bank fraud, shared confidential Trump campaign information, including polling data and campaign strategies, with Kilimnik. Perhaps Kilimnik simply has a fascination with American political campaigns, and put this information on his night stand next to Theodore White’s classic “The Making of the President 1960,” but one may be forgiven for inferring that there are alternative explanations.
The committee found evidence that Kilimnik was personally tied to Russia’s operation, carried out by Russian intelligence, to interfere in our presidential election. And it concluded that Manafort’s relationship with Kilimnik “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” to the United States.
And the committee established that — surprise! — Trump’s sworn denials to the special counsel that he recalled any Trump campaign contacts with Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was a liaison with Russian intelligence operatives about the Democratic emails they had hacked and then released through Wikileaks, were false. “The committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about Wikileaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to Wikileaks on multiple occasions,” the committee found.
But Trump is ever-ready with a most persuasive response, certain to keep his loyalists loyal for its sheer gravitas. Like everything else — the Mueller report, Trump’s attempt to extort the Ukrainian president to obtain fabricated dirt on Joe Biden, the COVID-19 pandemic and much, much more — the Senate committee findings were — you guessed it! — “a hoax.” Hooked on the Kool-Aid, incapable of seeing what is in front of their noses, the president’s adherents continue to believe him.
Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
www.bostonherald.com/2020/08/24/senate-panel-trump-colluded-with-russia-in-2016-election/
FILE – In this July 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. Trump had a second, previously undisclosed conversation with Putin at the summit in Germany. White House spokesman Sean Spicer says that Trump and Putin spoke during a world leaders’ dinner at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month.(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
By JEFF ROBBINS |
August 24, 2020 at 6:59 p.m.
“Dear President Putin,” wrote Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 19, 2007, congratulating the former KGB officer on being named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. “You definitely deserve it. As you have probably heard, I am a big fan of yours.”
And as the Republican-led U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed last week after a bipartisan investigation, the feeling is assuredly mutual. Putin wanted Donald Trump elected president, not Hillary Clinton, because Putin believed that Trump would serve Putin’s interests and that Clinton wouldn’t. Putin therefore interfered with America’s election to help Trump win it and to ensure that Clinton did not.
Not only did Trump welcome that help, but he solicited it, and he and his closest aides actively colluded with the Russians and their intermediaries to secure it and capitalize on it. And then, as the Senate committee found, Trump made false statements under oath about that collusion to special counsel Robert Mueller, in order to hide it.
Other than that, the Senate committee, chaired first by Republican Richard Burr and then by Republican Marco Rubio, “exonerated” the president of collusion. Generally, once you hear this president deny that X is true, you can rest easy knowing that X is absolutely true, and the Senate report demonstrates that all the while Trump proclaimed “No Collusion,” the truth was “Yes, Collusion.”
For starters, the committee established that the notorious June 2016 meeting hosted at Trump Towers by Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. for the purpose of receiving Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton wasn’t just with any old Russians. It included Russians who had “significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.” The links between one of them and the Kremlin were, it stated, “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.” This, of course, was the meeting set up by Trump Jr., who responded to a Russian intermediary’s promise that it would yield information damaging to Clinton with this inspirational, high-minded message: “If it’s what you say it is, I love it.”
Then there are the detailed findings about the close, longtime relationships between Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, and between Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Putin intimate who, according to the Senate, has acted as “a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” dating back to 2004, when Manafort met him. Manafort, convicted by a federal jury of tax and bank fraud, shared confidential Trump campaign information, including polling data and campaign strategies, with Kilimnik. Perhaps Kilimnik simply has a fascination with American political campaigns, and put this information on his night stand next to Theodore White’s classic “The Making of the President 1960,” but one may be forgiven for inferring that there are alternative explanations.
The committee found evidence that Kilimnik was personally tied to Russia’s operation, carried out by Russian intelligence, to interfere in our presidential election. And it concluded that Manafort’s relationship with Kilimnik “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” to the United States.
And the committee established that — surprise! — Trump’s sworn denials to the special counsel that he recalled any Trump campaign contacts with Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was a liaison with Russian intelligence operatives about the Democratic emails they had hacked and then released through Wikileaks, were false. “The committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about Wikileaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to Wikileaks on multiple occasions,” the committee found.
But Trump is ever-ready with a most persuasive response, certain to keep his loyalists loyal for its sheer gravitas. Like everything else — the Mueller report, Trump’s attempt to extort the Ukrainian president to obtain fabricated dirt on Joe Biden, the COVID-19 pandemic and much, much more — the Senate committee findings were — you guessed it! — “a hoax.” Hooked on the Kool-Aid, incapable of seeing what is in front of their noses, the president’s adherents continue to believe him.
Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.