Ok so back during the campaign then Candidate Trump made waves with a generally more sympathetic Russian policy than Americans were used to. So far no problem.
Then he suggested that the Russian Government should hack into his opponents emails and release them in an attempt to help him win the election. Which for what I assume are self explanatory reasons was a bit of problem for him when he said it. Now while Trump claimed "it was joke" [ed note read fake quote with Russian accent] it is still the thing that kicked off the idea that the Russian were trying to throw the election to Donald Trump, and that Trump might actually know and be ok with it.
Then he lost his campaign manager Paul Manafort, as Manafort was revealed to have had some shady dealings with a Ukrainian group backed by the Russians that might have made him into a blackmail risk by the Russian government.
Then Candidate Trump won the election and became president....and most people expected the story was over. Most people were wrong.
Not long after winning office, but before actually taking it every American intelligence agency concluded that Russia HAD in fact attempted to influence the election for Donald Trump.
Now it should be noted, in fairness, 2 things:
1) the claim was only that the Russians had attempted to influence the election.....there was no evidence to suggest they had actually seceded nor that they changed a single vote directly. The claim was more about helping funnel money to Trump's super-pac's or advertising
2) there was also a report suggesting Ukraine was doing similar things on a much smaller scale for Hillary Clinton.....so its possible this whole concept of foreign governments trying to influence our election via fundraising ect is much more common than we think.
Now, given the conscientious of American Intelligence on this issue, the smart thing for Trump to do would have been to acknowledge the results, stress the part where there was no proof the attempts worked, claim ignorance and pledged to call for an investigation to figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.
But this is Donald Trump, and unless he's trying to blow hot-air up his own ass, the words "Trump" and "smart" dont usually appear in the same sentence.
So Trump instead decided to go to war with the intelligence agencies stating "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?" among other issues.
Though to be fair, for a thin skinned ego maniac who's questioned the legitimacy of his own election because he cant accept the fact that he won despite not winning the popular vote (after all, per Trump everyone loves Trump), I suppose another thing that could be seen as suggesting he wasnt as liked as he thought (cause the Russians had to try to get people to like him...and still couldnt get him the popular vote) would piss him off.
But again, since we cant redo the election, most people assumed Trump was at least right about the "last shot" part...this story is totally over.
And then weeks later Mike Flynn was forced to resign. So much for the end of the story,
So, Mike Flynn had been Trump's National Security Adviser, so it was kinda a big deal when a story broke that, before Trump had taken office, Flynn had had some off the record (IE not handled, known about or approved by the state department) conversations with the Russian government.
Specifically that he'd contacted the Russian ambassador the very day then President Obama had announced sanctions and expelled Russian diplomats in response to the intelligence reports of Russia's attempted influence of our election.
Now Russia's original reactions per their diplomatic twitter account was:
#Peskov: There is no doubt that Russia's adequate and mirror response will make Washington officials feel very uncomfortable as well
#Zakharova: Tomorrow there will be official statements, countermeasures@MFA_Russia
Announced on December 29 sanctions are aimed directly at undermining #Russia #US bilateral relations. They won't be left unanswered
After those were posted is when Flynn allegedly contacted the Russian Ambassador.
And it turned out Russia's answer to the sactions was to do absolutely nothing....no promises of retaliation, no protests, nothing.
Which, lets be honest, seems extremely weird.
Well unless Mike Flynn promised them something on behalf of the incoming administration.
A conclusion backed up seemingly by the Russian government as President Putin issued the following statement:
“As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind, Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.”
Flynn of course denied he had discussed the sanctions in the one phone call. then incoming Press Sec Sean Spicier, incoming VP Mike Pence and incoming Chief of Staff Reince Preibus would also go on TV and defend Flynn saying all 3 of them had seperately questioned him about it and gotten the same response....he hadnt said anything.
Donald Trump then takes the oath of office (Jan 23rd), and has Sean Spicier give an offical denial of wrongdoing on behalf of the White House.
3 days later (Jan 26th), Donald Trump was informed by acting attorney general Sally Yates (who Trump fired days later over the backlash of his immigration law) that per an FBI investigation what Flynn had said wasnt true and he was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government.
Though at the time, and for weeks later nobody knew anything about this conversation, since Trump decided not to do anything about.
Then parts of the FBI investigation, included that Flynn had lied to the VP and to the FBI about the phone calls (of which there were 5, not the previously claimed 1) went public on February 9th. At which point Flynn changed his story to "he couldn't remember what they had discussed so its possible sanctions came up....its also possible they didnt"
However, before finally being forced to admit all of the last paragraph was true, Donald Trump on February 10th said the following when asked about the report on Flynn said "I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen it. What report is that? I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into that.” which, at the time, seemed like it might be true.
And then on February 13th it came out that Trump had been informed of the Flynn issue on Jan 26th, and hadnt done anything about it......including not bothering to inform the Vice President that his defense of Flynn wasnt true (Pence only discovered he'd been lied too when the media reported it) and that Trump's statement on February 10th was a lie.....or a cover-up which ever you prefer.
At which point, not 1, not 2, not 3, not even 4, but 5 congressional committees, in the Republican controlled congress started an investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
That's when it became obvious that this story was not going away.
Even after Flynn either chose to resign, was forced to resign, or was fired (Officials in the Trump administration gave conflicting accounts that support all 3 of these possibilities) this pretty much ensured this aint over yet.
(And for what its worth, it should be noted the FBI, in the report Trump got on Jan 26th, cleared Flynn of any legal wrongdoing...he did not break any laws in his conversations with the Russian's, nor did he intentionally lie to the FBI (as opposed to having a faulty memory) however they did confirm he was a national security risk due to something (still unknown to the public) that he said that made him a blackmail target...meaning Trump needed to get rid of him even if not for legal reasons, and chose not to and to cover it up until he had no choice. It should also be noting that in the conflicting rationales given as to how Flynn departed the White House mentioned other times Flynn had mislead them without going into specifics, so its possible those other events might resurface and create more problems for the Administration)
At which point we enter the current phase of the ever growing scandal:
A news story came out not long after Flynn's ouster saying the Trump campaign had been in near constant contact and coordination with the Russian government...which is well, flagrantly illegal. Not only that, but the FBI was investigating said coordination.
Trump for his part seemingly confirmed this story when he tweeted: "The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW.”
Consider, the only way Trump's tweet makes logical sense, is if the news story is accurate. If it wasnt, there was nothing for the FBI to have leaked, and the story would have been "fake news" instead. Oops.
Then the other shoe dropped, as a story came out that Reince Preibus, Trump's chief of staff can contacted the FBI to get them to issue an statement pushing back on the media reports that the FBI was investigating the Trump Campaign.
The FBI refused for 2 reasons
1) The report was accurate...in fact the FBI is running 3 separate investigations into the Trump campaigns potential coordination with Russia.
2) That kind of coordination between the FBI and the White House, especially about an ongoing investigation is unethical, and possible illegal.
That's not a good sign if your name happens to be Reince Prebus. His longevity in the white house now seems a little questionable.
Of course, the White House did their best to defend him.....sorta. The first reaction from the White House was to claim the FBI called Preibus (not the other way around) to let him know the news reports were wrong.
Which they then later changed to Preibus had in fact called the FBI, but not to influence the investigation.
So yea.....changing story, possible illegal contacts that at the end of the day are all about Russia....its like Mike Flynn all over again.
And should Priebus fall (which I think he will), I doubt the story will end with him either.
We now have at least one member of congress, Darrell Issa (the man who kicked off the whole Bengahzi investigations into Clinton) calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump's ties to Russia, and a Republican Senator calling for Trump's tax returns to subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigations to address the rumors floating around Trump for years that after his 6 bankruptcies american banks basically blacklisted him and most of his money these day tied up in foreign governments banks....including Russia.
So more things are going to keep turning up.
Furthermore, there are a few other elements at play that seem to confirm this story will keep growing even more and wont be going away anytime soon if at all.
1) Rex Tillerson, Sec of State, was formerly the head of Exxon. And as head of Exxon negotiated several deals worth 500 billion dollars with the Russian Government. Except none of those deals could go through thanks to the US Sanctions with Russia. However those deals could still go through, if an exception was given by the appropriate US official....like the Sec of State.
2) A few weeks back, Buzzfeed released a dossier on Trump, that to be fair was filled with some outrageous (and almost certainly untrue) allegations against Trump....including the existence of sex tapes, orgies ect. But also contained some much more reasonable claims as well (mostly conversations between Russian officals about Trump and influence over Trump)...those more reasonable claims have now seemingly been collaborated by the FBI (though we still dont have specifics or context to know exactly what that means).
3) Yesterday, Trump's administration banned several news organizations from the press pool, and as it happened those were the very same organizations who broke every single thing referenced in this blog.
So its hard to interpret that as anything other than a threat, reporting the administration doesnt like = loss of access....so only report stories the Administration wants or else.
Except the banned media organizations seem to have taken this as confirmation they are on to something (otherwise why would Trump care) and therefore should totally keep digging....which would seem to increase the odds even more Trump/Russia connections come out.
4) Just to end on a light note:
Yesterday Trump gave a speech at CPAC. During the speech many of his supporters starting waving a rather peculiar flag:
For the uninitiated, thats the Russian flag. OOPS.
now to be fair, this appears to be work of a pair of liberal pranksters who were giving the flags away for free, and is more an indictment of the intelligence of the Trump supporters who took it and didnt realize what it was, than any actual wrongdoing or scandal by the Trump administration.
But it is symbolic of the fact that no matter where he goes, Trump cant seem to get away from Russia.
now to be fair, this appears to be work of a pair of liberal pranksters who were giving the flags away for free, and is more an indictment of the intelligence of the Trump supporters who took it and didnt realize what it was, than any actual wrongdoing or scandal by the Trump administration.
But it is symbolic of the fact that no matter where he goes, Trump cant seem to get away from Russia.
