What The Fuck Is Going On: Trump-Russia

You can hardly go a single day without hearing about the Trump-Russia allegations, but very few stories break it down as to what exactly is being charged as criminal.

Last summer at the height of a bitterly contested and hugely consequential presidential campaign, a foreign adversarial power intervened in an effort to weaken our democracy and to influence the outcome for one candidate and against the other. That foreign adversary was of course Russia and it activated through its intelligence agencies and upon the direct instructions of its autocratic ruler Vladimir Putin, in order to help Donald J. Trump become the 45th president of the United States.

The Russian active measures campaign may have begun as early as 2015, when Russian intelligence services launched a series of spear fishing attacks designed to penetrate the computers of a broad array of Washington based Democratic and Republican party organizations, think tanks and other entities. This continued at least through the winter of 2016.

While at first the hacking may have been intended solely for the collection of foreign intelligence. In mid-2016 the Russians weapon eyes the stolen data and used platforms established by the Intel services, such as D.C. leaks in existing third-party channels like WikiLeaks to dump the documents. The stolen documents were almost uniformly damaging to the candidate Putin despised, Hillary Clinton. And by forcing her campaign to constantly respond to the daily drip of disclosures, the releases greatly benefited Donald Trump’s campaign.

None of these facts is seriously in question. And they’re reflected in the consensus conclusion of our intelligence agencies. We will never know whether the Russian intervention was determinative in such a close election. Indeed, it is unknowable in a campaign to which so many small changes could have dictated a different result. More importantly, and for the purposes of our investigation, it simply does not matter.

What does matter is this, the Russians successfully meddled in our democracy and our intelligence agencies have concluded they will do so again. Ours is not the first democracy to be attacked by the Russians in this way. Russian intelligence has been simile interfering in the internal and political affairs of our European and other allies for decades.

In unequivocal language, the report pins responsibility for the election attack directly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, ruling out the possibility that it was ordered by intelligence officials or simply carried out by Kremlin supporters.

United States officials believe Mr. Putin wants to damage the image of American democracy to make it less attractive to Russians and their neighbors.

The Narrative

Having laid out the facts as a framework for discussion, many circumstantial accusations remain.

The big accusations revolve around the contact and degree of interaction that members of the Trump campaign have shared with Russia. Having business ties in Russia is, of course, no crime. However, if those ties lead to collusion in the manipulation of our democracy–those acts of treason are not only illegal, but possibly the biggest blight on democracy and the most extreme American scandal in our history.

Much of the information that we have was set forth by Representative Schiff during the House Intelligence Committee on March 20th; before we delve into the details, let’s examine a quick overview of the speculative offenses thus far:

• Carter Page, one of the Trump Campaign national security advisors, was reportedly offered brokerage fees on a deal involving 19% share of the Russian gas giant, Rosneft, by CEO Igor Sechin. According to Reuters, a 19.5% share of Rosneft later takes place with unknown purchasers and unknown  brokerage fees.

• As part of the brokerage deal with Rosneft, Carter Page was allegedly offered documents damaging to Hillary Clinton that the Russians would later publish through an outlet that gives them deniability–such as WikiLeaks. These documents would be in exchange for a Trump administration policy that de-emphasizes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead focuses on criticizing NATO countries for not paying their fair share. These policies have since come to pass, and the information damaging to Hillary Clinton was later leaked daily up until the day of the election.

• Just prior to the convention, the Republican Party platform is changed, removing a section that supports the provision of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, an action that would be contrary to Russian interests.
  • During the Republican Party Convention, Paul Manafort, Trump campaign manager and longtime recipient of Pro Russian- Ukrainian interests, meets with Carter Page and, according to Steele, denotes him as the go-between for the Trump Campaign and Russian interests.
  • Ambassador Kislyak, who presides over a Russian Embassy in which diplomatic personnel would later be expelled as likely spies, also attends the Republican Party Convention and meets with Carter Page, and additional Trump advisors J.D. Gordon and Walid Phares. Ambassador Kislyac also meets with Trump national campaign chair, National Security Campaign Chair and now attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Sessions would later deny meeting with Russian officials during his Senate confirmation hearing.
  • Manafort categorically denies involvement by the Trump campaign and altering the platform, but the Republican Party delegate who offered the language in support of providing defensive weapons to Ukraine states it was removed at the insistence of the Trump campaign. Later, J.D. Gordon admits opposing the inclusion of the provision of the time it was being debated and prior to its being removed.

• On August 8th, Roger Stone, a long time Trump political advisor and self-proclaimed political dirty trickster, boasts in his speech that he has communicated with Assange and that more documents would be coming, including an October surprise. In the middle of August, he also communicates with the Russian cut out Guccifer 2.0 and authors a Breitbart piece denying Guccifer’s links to Russian intelligence.
  • Then later, in August, Stone does something truly remarkable. When he predicts that John Podesta’s personal emails will soon be published, “Trust me,” he says, “it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel, #crookedHillary.”
  • In the weeks that follow, Stone shows remarkable prescience. “I have total confidence that WikiLeaks and my hero, Julian Assange will educate the American people soon,” he says, “#LockHerUp. Payload coming,” he predicts and two days later it does.
• WikiLeaks releases its first batch of Podesta emails. The release of John Podesta’s emails would then continue on a daily basis, up until the election. On Election Day in November, Donald Trump wins.

• Donald Trump appoints one of his high-profile surrogates, Michael Flynn, to be his national security advisor. Michael Flynn has been paid by the Kremlin’s propaganda outfit RT in the past, as well as another Russian entity.
  • In December, Michael Flynn has a secret conversation with Ambassador Kislyak, about sanctions imposed by President Obama on Russia over attacking designed to help the Trump campaign. Michael Flynn lies about the secret conversation. The vice president unknowingly then assures the country that no — no such conversation ever happened. The president is informed that Flynn has lied and Pence has misled the country. The president does nothing.
  • Two weeks later, the press reveals that Flynn has lied and the president is forced to fire Mr. Flynn. The president then praises the man who lied, Mr. Flynn, and castigates the press for exposing the lie.
  • Michael Flynn, through his lawyer, has offered to testify in exchange for immunity. 

Now, is it possible that the removal of the Ukraine provision from the GOP platform was a coincidence? Is it a coincidence that Jeff Sessions failed to tell the Senate about his meetings with a Russian ambassador, not only at the convention, but a more private meeting in his office and at a time when the U.S. election was under attack by the Russians?

Is it a coincidence that Michael Flynn would lie about a conversation he had with the same Russian Ambassador Kislyak, about the most pressing issue facing both countries at the time they spoke, the U.S. imposition of sanctions over Russian hacking of our election designed to help Donald Trump? Is it a coincidence that the Russian gas company, Rosneft, sold a 19 percent share after former British intelligence officer Steele was told by Russian sources that Carter Page was offered fees on a deal of just that size?

Is it a coincidence that Steele’s Russian sources also affirmed that Russians had stolen documents hurtful to Secretary Clinton that it would utilize in exchange for Pro Russian policies that would later come to pass? Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself, was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed?

Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated and that the Russians use the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet. And we owe it to the country to find out. 1

In any case, it is important to investigate these matters to fully understand what role, if any, was played in the hacking of our democracy so that we are not infiltrated again.

Sources

¹ House Intelligence Committee Hearing – March 20, 2017
http://bit.ly/2noIRQX

² Andrew Roth, Washington Post
Trump’s Russia adviser criticizes U.S. for ‘hypocritical focus on democratization’
http://wapo.st/2nl6zNk

³ Scott Shane, New York Times
What Intelligence Agencies Concluded About the Russian Attack on the U.S. Election
http://nyti.ms/2mYWHxs

⁴ Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3254237/Russia-Hack-Report.pdf

⁵ Bonnie Berkowitz and Denise Lu, Washington Post
Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests
http://wapo.st/2oL4ag2

⁶ Zack Beauchamp, Vox
Forget conspiracy theories. This is why Trump’s Russian connection is actually a problem.
http://www.vox.com/world/2016/11/1/13487322/donald-trump-russia-agent-hack