“We’re now beyond obstruction of justice… this is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), quoted by NBC News, on the federal investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
“We’re now beyond obstruction of justice… this is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), quoted by NBC News, on the federal investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
Ezra Klein: “The best defense of Trump’s associates, at this point, is they were too dumb to know what they’re doing — a defense that doesn’t work when it includes experienced international operators like campaign manager Paul Manafort and ex-Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn. Donald Trump Jr.’s own defense of himself is that he attempted to collude with Russian agents but they didn’t have any useful information and so he didn’t. This is, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp notes, no defense at all — even if it is true, Trump Jr. may well have committed a crime.”
“What’s more, we know for a fact that the Russian hacking of Democratic files happened, that it was successful, and that Trump has stubbornly resisted efforts to admit or investigate Russia’s intervention into the campaign while repeatedly praising Putin. We also know Trump has, since taking office, undermined the NATO alliance while cozying up to Vladimir Putin — the two of them joked about their shared dislike for the American media at the G20 last week and pledged to work together on cybersecurity.”
“This isn’t just smoke. We can see the damage done by the fire. We are watching our president pal around with the suspected arsonists. And so we are past the point where innocent explanations on Trump and Russia remain credible.”
Weekly Standard: “The bill, now before the House, would force the president to seek congressional approval before easing the sanctions. The administration has been lobbying lawmakers to remove this provision. That’s understandable, inasmuch as the president’s power unilaterally to ease or lift sanctions can be a useful tool by which to encourage favorable conduct from a global miscreant. In more ordinary circumstances, the administration’s objection would have some merit.”
“But these are not more ordinary circumstances. These are circumstances in which the president has no capacity to set policy toward Russia. Whether the media has unfairly targeted the president and his advisers over their dealings with Russian officials is now beside the point. By a series of unforced errors—omissions of financial dealings with Russian companies, unaccountably faulty memories on meetings with Kremlin-connected operatives—the Trump team has lost all credibility on the question of Russia. Second-guessing by the media and politicians of both parties will be the inevitable accompaniment to every White House announcement about Vladimir Putin or Russia.”
Matthew Yglesias: “Trump has been willing to reverse himself on other policy issues, gets no political benefit from pursuing such a pro-Russian course in the face of bipartisan opposition, and could score easy points by doing a little formulaic Putin-bashing. The fact that he refuses to tells you a lot about why Trump’s presidency remains mired in scandal — and why the worst may still be to come.”
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Two weeks after Donald Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to the New York Times.
“The previously undisclosed meeting was also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them.”
“While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and Russians, this episode at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, is the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. It is also the first time that his son Donald J. Trump Jr. is known to have been involved in such a meeting.”
Politico: “In very concrete terms, through speech and action, the president signaled a willingness to align the United States with Vladimir Putin’s worldview, and took steps to advance this realignment. He endorsed, nearly in its totality, the narrative the Russian leader has worked so meticulously to construct.”
Spencer Ackerman: Trump just set the table for Vladimir Putin’s next election hack.
Earlier this year, the Washington Post looked at President Trump’s previous claims that he and Russian president Vladimir Putin “have a relationship” and know each other “very well.”
“It’s an honor to be with you.”
— President Trump, quoted by the New York Times, while meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin.
New York Times: “Only six people attended the meeting itself: Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson; Mr. Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov; and two interpreters.”
“The Russians had agitated to include several more staff members in the meeting, but Mr. Trump’s team had insisted that the meeting be kept small to avoid leaks and competing accounts later, according to an administration official with direct knowledge of the carefully choreographed meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around the matter.”
Wall Street Journal: “In a few weeks on the job, special counsel Robert Mueller has assembled an elite team of lawyers with expertise in national security, public corruption and financial crimes, suggesting he is taking a broad view of his mandate to probe Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.”
“Highlighting the sensitive nature of his work, Mr. Mueller’s office moved a few weeks ago from a nondescript Washington office building to a nearby ‘secure facility.'”
NBC News: “For President Trump, meeting President Putin may be a way to thumb his nose at critics — to show he’s NOT scared of the multiple investigations into his inner circle’s ties to the Kremlin. But for Russians who’ve tried to stand up to Putin, Trump is being played — has been from the start.”
Said Putin critic Garry Kasparov: “He’s definitely playing into Putin’s hands. Putin’s a dictator, and dictators by definition don’t play chess, so that’s why I believe I have to defend the integrity of my game… I would rather say he’s playing a poker game… He’s a, he’s a poker player, he’s a card player, he’s a gambler.”
“Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election,” CNN reports.
“The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations.”
Jonathan Swan: “There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany…. it will be Trump, Putin, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and translators.”
The meeting is scheduled to last only half an hour.
Rick Klein: “In the run-up to the most anticipated meeting of Donald Trump’s presidency, the give-and-take that matters is inside the president’s head. Specifically, how much does the part of Trump that craves being liked decide to give? And how much does the part of Trump that wants to be feared and respected try to take? One can imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s watching the president’s news conference this morning with a kind of anticipation he hasn’t had since … Barack Obama was the new president.”
“The fact that even now – nearly six months into office – Trump still won’t accept as fact that the Russians attempted to influence the election? That gives Putin an out as big as a Red Army tank, plus a giant hint that hacking allegations are not on the U.S. president’s agenda… For now, Trump seems more inclined to slam Obama and CNN, as he did at the news conference today, than Putin.”
New York Times: “Even his top aides do not know precisely what Mr. Trump will decide to say or do when he and Mr. Putin meet face to face on Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit gathering in Hamburg, Germany. And that is what most worries those advisers as well as officials across his administration as Mr. Trump begins his second foreign trip as president, stopping first in Warsaw to give an address on Thursday and then heading to Hamburg.
“The highly anticipated conversation with Mr. Putin is in many ways a necessity, given the critical disputes separating the United States and Russia. But it also poses risks for Mr. Trump, who faces a web of investigations into his campaign’s possible links to Russia, as well as questions about his willingness to take on Moscow for its military aggression and election meddling on his behalf. The air of uncertainty about the meeting is only heightened by the president’s propensity for unpredictable utterances and awkward optics.”
President Trump suggested that he “still was not convinced that Russia was solely responsible for interference in the 2016 election, breaking with American intelligence agencies who have agreed that the effort emanated from Moscow and was directed by Mr. Putin,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “I think it was Russia, and it could have been other people in other countries.”
He added: “Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”
“The spread of Russian-made fake news stories aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton on social media is emerging as an important line of inquiry in multiple investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow,” the Guardian reports.
“Investigators are looking into whether Trump supporters and far-right websites coordinated with Moscow over the release of fake news, including stories implicating Clinton in murder or pedophilia, or paid to boost those stories on Facebook.”
“President Trump promised voters that he would strike ‘a great deal’ with Russia and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. He has repeatedly labeled an investigation of Russian meddling in the U.S. election as ‘a hoax,’ and he even bragged to Russian officials about firing the FBI director leading the probe,” the Washington Post reports.
“Now nearly six months into his presidency, Trump is set to finally meet Putin at a summit this week in Hamburg after a stop here in Warsaw — severely constrained and facing few good options that would leave him politically unscathed.”
“If Trump attempts to loosen sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine or its interference in the 2016 U.S. election, Congress could defy him by pursuing even stronger penalties. And if he offers platitudes for Putin without addressing Russia’s election meddling, it will renew questions about whether Trump accepts the findings of his own intelligence officials that Russia intended to disrupt the democratic process on his behalf.”
New York Times: “Since Mr. Trump became president, his need for loyal foot soldiers like Mr. Cohen has never been greater. But instead of helping his longtime employer navigate F.B.I. and congressional investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, Mr. Cohen now appears to be outside the Trump inner circle, a man on the defensive.”
“The House Intelligence Committee has summoned him for questioning in its inquiry…. He is under scrutiny by the F.B.I., along with other Trump associates, in the Russia investigation. An unverified dossier prepared by a retired British spy and published this year said that Mr. Cohen had met overseas with Kremlin officials and other Russian operatives, which he has denied.”
“After years of loyal service to Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen, 50, expected to be offered a senior administration post, according to four people who know him, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared angering Mr. Cohen. He was given no such job.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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