Trump And The Russians

There's been a lot of news coming out over the past 36 hours on Russian meddling in our election, specifically the relationship between neo- fascist useful idiot Donald "Rump" Trump and Russian interests.  Here's a quick summary of a portion of that news, via excerpts from some outstanding reporting.

-- David Corn in Mother Jones, on a long- term effort by the Russian government to cultivate Rump, based on a report from a veteran Western former spy that was transmitted to the FBI:

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him."* It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."  (our emphasis)

-- Franklin Foer in Slate, on the work of some computer scientists that led to the discovery of an unexplained link:

In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS [domain name system] lookups on his screen. “I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue. [snip] 

The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.  (our emphasis)

-- Norman Eisen and Richard W. Painter in Politico, on Rump's tax returns potentially containing smoking guns on his Russian connections:

If the public saw Trump's taxes, we could check his Russia connections for ourselves. That should start with the troubling discrepancies in how he and his closest associates talk about his Russia ties. Trump has claimed, for example, that “the reason they blame Russia [for hacking into Democratic emails] is they are trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know about Russia, but not about the inner workings. I have no business there and no loans from Russia. I have a great balance sheet.” But that’s very different from the claims that the Trump Organization was making before he decided to run for president. Trump's son said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets” and “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” 

Trump’s tax returns could reconcile the tension between these statements. Even if Trump really does have no loans from Russia and no business in that jurisdiction, what about other financial connections with Russians outside of their land? His statement does not rule out such ties, including shared partnership interests, equity interests, joint ventures or licensing agreements with Russia or Russians—both by Trump and his affiliated companies.

Any or all of these unanswered questions about the Trump - Putin connection were likely what prompted Sen. Harry Reid's statement in his letter to FBI Director Comey that the FBI possessed "explosive information about the close ties and coordination" between our neo- fascist candidate and the Russian government, that the public has a right to know.  But apparently Director Comey's exquisite sense of propriety and transparency only extends to emails on Anthony Weiner's computer, not to disclosing what the FBI is doing (or not) to investigate this unprecedented set of circumstances.

Something else we know:  the FBI has "rogue" agents (concentrated in the New York field office) that are engaging in political hackery, with an assist from Clinton- hating "journalists" at the New York Effing Times.  Both establishments need to get their rat problem under control.

* The internet is abuzz with the notion of a =gurg= Rump Russian sex orgy tape =spew= that might be dropped at any moment. As we've said, "Bombs away!"

(Image:  Along for the ride.)