From Russia With Love

It feels these days like the Russia question was a pebble kicked from the top of a mountain that has now turned into a landslide or epic proportions. The question now is just how much of our political landscape will be effected by it's path.

This all started on the campaign trail when then presidential hopeful Trump made comments about Russia and Putin that were oddly complimentary. Russia is an ally of sorts but, even with the end of the Cold War, a deep rivalry still exists between our two superpowers. His comments drew ire from many as it seemed a faux pas to be praising a nation so highly that is often ideologically at odds with our own. Still, his comments were overlooked or excused for a variety of reasons and the nation moved on.

In the post election aftermath Russia floated to the surface once again, this time with information that seemed to suggest that Russia interfered in the elections in favor of Trump. This was where the whispering really began that Trump allied himself with Russia in order to win the election, an accusation he vehemently denied and continues to deny. US intelligence found conclusively (as shown in the referenced article) that Russia did interfere in the election and two out of three intelligence agencies had high confidence that it was done in favor of Trump. However, making the leap from working in favor of Trump and working with Trump requires a lot more evidence.

As early as the inauguration investigation into Trump associates colluding with Russia had begun. This investigation was officially confirmed by James Comey in March while he still headed the FBI. This initial investigation included Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, who previously resigned due to questions about his connections with Russia and is now being investigated on both the Federal and State level for various reasons.

Things really heated up after Michael Flynn resigned from his position as national security adviser less than a month into the Trump presidency. True to the theme for today his resignation took place after he provided inaccurate information to White House staff about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Essentially he lied in an attempt to cover up information he had talked about which was inappropriate for him to be discussing with a foreign official in the first place. This was the first definitive evidence of a member of the Trump collective having inappropriate relations with Russia and has only served to intensify scrutiny.

Next on our downhill slide comes the firing of FBI director James Comey on May 9th. This move was well within the President's power, but the timing and reasoning have been drawn into serious question. That lack of consistent reasoning behind the move added to the fact that Comey was leading the investigation into the Russian probe has made a lot of people wonder if Trump wanted to remove some of the pressure being applied to him over his and his associate's ties to Russia. This theory seemed to be confirmed days later when news broke about a possible conversation, and supporting memo documentation, between Trump and Comey in which the President asked the then director to end his investigation into Michael Flynn, which was mentioned earlier. If true this action dips into the realm of hindrance of prosecution, a serious crime.

All of the above has culminated in the appointing of Bob Mueller, a former FBI director, to serve as special counsel on the Russian investigation. While not the independent commission demanded by Democrats the special counsel does have a greater amount of autonomy in his investigation than the investigation previously held. Even the choice of investigator is encouraging as Congress members on both sides of the table have lauded him as being fair and justice minded.

Most recently the Russian probe has penetrated Trump's inner circle with the investigation now looking into Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers. Like Flynn and Manafort before him, Kushner is under scrutiny for meetings he had with the Russian ambassador in December as well as a Russian banker.

While no charges have been filed we have come a long way in the last year from the grumbling about Trump's apparent pro-Russia stance. If you believe there's no such thing as coincidence then it seems almost impossible at this point that there wasn't some level of collusion between Trump's team and Russia during the 2016 election. As the saying goes, "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..." It adds fuel to the fire when Trump makes claims, such as the Obama wire-tapping allegation which was proved conclusively to be false, that appear to be almost diversion tactics to draw attention away from the conversation about Russia. The question now becomes more of a matter of how far does the collusion go and was it willfully done or just a gaff on the part of a political novice. If Trump himself was knowledgeable about what went on will we ever know the truth or will one of his devoted cronies fall on his sword to spare the President the embarrassment? Americans have a right to know the truth. We don't live in Oz where we're charged with the directive to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."