What We Already Know About Trump’s Ties to Russia Amounts to Treachery to the Republic
Jonathan Chait
Daily Intelligencer
The
high point of Donald Trump’s presidency to date — the moment when those
who desperately wanted to close their eyes and imagine a normal
president standing before the country got something resembling their
wish — came during his late-February speech to a joint session of Congress.
Trump managed to read his address without narcissistic digressions, and
the message he delivered (“Nationalism with an indoor voice,” as one
White House official put it) would have been obvious to any casual
listener. Over and over, Trump blamed America’s problems on foreigners
or the willingness of past leaders to accommodate them: “We’ve watched
our middle class shrink as we’ve exported our jobs and wealth to foreign
countries”; “We’ve defended the borders of other nations while leaving
our own borders wide open for anyone to cross”; “America must put its
own citizens first”; “Our obligation is to serve, protect, and defend
the citizens of the United States”; “My job is to represent the United
States of America.”
The display of overt, bellicose nationalism presents a morbid contrast with the unfolding Russia scandal, which exposes the president’s boasts of domestic loyalty as containing all the irony of the title of the television show The Americans.
The scandal is spinning off in multiple directions, but at bottom it
suggests a betrayal of American sovereignty by Trump that is
unprecedented in the history of the republic.
For a still-unclear
combination of reasons — greed for power, greed for money, vulnerability
to blackmail, or motivations unknown — the incoming administration
cooperated with the undermining of American democracy by a hostile
foreign power.
This is already known. On July 4, Franklin Foer wrote in Slate
the first major story in the American media identifying a Russian plan
to influence the presidential election.He pieced together such evidence
as Trump’s extensive financial ties to Russia; Vladimir Putin’s pattern
of intervening in elections in the West in order to support his
preferred candidates; Russia’s hacking of Democrats’ emails; and the
fact that a number of Trump advisers had been paid by sources loyal to
the Kremlin, including Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who
had carried out a similar strategy on behalf of a pro-Russian candidate
in Ukraine that he seemed to be doing in the United States.In
the months that have followed, more reporting on this strange and
sinister axis has emerged, mostly in the form of reports that have burst
onto the scene as bombshells, only to be quickly displaced by other
stories in the disorienting, surreal news environment that is Trump’s
Washington. The New York Times has found that
“phone records and intercepted calls” reveal that Trump associates had
“repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials” and that
U.S. allies had uncovered meetings in European cities between Russian
officials and Trump associates.It
is not illegal to meet with Russian agents or spies. However, Trump and
his advisers have repeatedly lied or contradicted themselves about
these meetings.Former national-security adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI
about his discussions with Russia following the election. Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, who told a Senate committee during his
confirmation hearings “I did not have communications with the Russians,”
in fact met twice during the campaign with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Only after the Washington Postreported on the meetings did Sessions agree to recuse himself from his own department’s investigation into the matter.Trump’s
statements on his relations with Russia have oscillated wildly. Asked
in 2013 if he had a relationship with Putin, Trump said, “I do have a relationship, and I can tell you he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today.” In 2014, he recounted,
“Putin even sent me a present, beautiful present with a beautiful note,
I spoke to all of his people,” and that he “spoke indirectly and
directly” with Putin. In 2015, he boasted, “I got to know [Putin] very well.” Last year, he insisted, “I have no relationship with Putin” and that “I don’t know Putin … I never met Putin.”One well-known explanation for this relationship was supplied by a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele,
a British intelligence officer turned private investigator.Steele’s
report alleged a deep web of financial and personal ties between Trump
and Russia, including, spectacularly, a videotape of the now-president
engaging in sexual fetishes with prostitutes in Moscow that was being
used to blackmail him. The accusations in the dossier remain largely
unverified. But since it was made public in January, its credibility has
grown. Last month, CNN reported that American investigators corroborated some of the claims in the dossier, and the Washington Postreported that the FBI believed Steele credible enough to considered hiring him to continue his investigation.While Trump has kept hidden his
own financial ties to Russia, enough public evidence has emerged to
suggest they are extensive. After his bankruptcies made him untouchable
by American banks, Trump grew increasingly dependent on foreign sources
of capital. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of
a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. told a real-estate conference in
2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump hired a
Russian gangster named Felix Sater, who even worked out of Trump Tower
and used Trump Organization business cards.Trump has tweeted,
“For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia,” a defense that
evades the question of whether Russia has any investments in his
properties. Asked last summer if Trump had “no financial relationships
with any Russian oligarchs,” Manafort delivered a comically unconvincing
denial, averting his eyes from the camera, shrugging his shoulders, and
stammering, “That’s what he said — I’d — that’s what I said —
obviously, that’s what our position is.”The
most obvious untapped source of information on Trump’s contacts with
Russia would be his tax returns, which Congress could require him to
release. But Congress has refused to do so. Instead, with the exception
of a handful of critics, the Republican Party has sheltered its
president in a protective envelope. At the behest of the White House,
the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees contacted
reporters to dispute news of Trump contacts with Russian officials.“They’ve looked, and it’s all a dead trail that leads me to believe no
contact, not even pizza-delivery-guy contact,” said House chairman
Devin Nunes.On March 2, House
Speaker Paul Ryan asserted that he had seen “no evidence that anybody
on the Trump campaign or an American was involved in colluding with the
Russians.” What evidence would he like? A Trump adviser coyly revealing
his advance knowledge of stolen email dumps, then admitting he has a
“back-channel communication with Assange”? Because that exists. Maybe
video of Trump asking Putin to hack his opponents’ email? Because that
exists, too. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find
the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump announced at a press
conference last summer. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily
by our press.” (Trump later claimed he was joking.) Even if Trump had
nothing to do with encouraging the Russian hacking, aggressively
exploiting it was a conscious choice. Other Republicans, like Marco
Rubio — in one of his periodic outbreaks of conscience — asserted that
the GOP should renounce the use of information from WikiLeaks rather
than reward foreign interference in American elections. Trump made the
opposite decision.And Trump’s
party has mostly decided likewise. All of it is fine — the
nondisclosure of tax returns, the unprecedented self-enrichment, the
fantastic lies and authoritarian lingo. Republicans in Washington see
Trump as a useful vehicle for their policy objectives. Indeed, at least
for the time being, Trump’s nationalist ravings have utility for special
interests from the Kremlin to Wall Street, all of whom look upon the
American president with smugness and satisfaction at a deal well struck.
In Trump’s short tenure as president, his demagogic claim that elites
have betrayed the American people out of solicitousness to foreign
powers has finally become true.This article appears in the March 6, 2017 issue of New York Magazine.
2 comments:
So what if people in the U.S. talk to people in Russia. What's the big deal anyway? Isn't communication part of diplomacy? Grow up and get over it. Time for humanity to move on from all the petty finger pointing and bickering and fear mongering. How 'bout we all learn to get along for a change? The Dems lost. Big deal. Reps lost before them. Big deal. Get over it and move on with your lives. All the bitching is really really really old, and has become repulsive. Seriously. Dems aren't winning any points by being so small.
You left 5 comments. I have chosen to post the least offensive. First, you are not qualified to challenge me on grammar. I have a Master's degree in English and I know what I'm doing. Second, if you don't see the threat in Russia tampering with our elections, you might as well go back to getting your news from Breitbart and Fox. There is no hope for you. I am amazed at how stupid and bigoted our country is becoming, and your posts dramatically that truth home.
Jim Keyworth
Editor
Post a Comment