Mother Jones: One Simple Question That Could Break the Trump-Russia Scandal Wide Open

[kpete]

The answer might not be too hard to find.

DAVID CORN
MAR. 7, 2017 7:31 AM


The Trump-Russia scandal keeps widening. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned after revelations that he had privately talked to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions imposed on Russia as punishment for its hacking of political targets during the 2016 election to aid Donald Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from Justice Department or FBI investigations involving Russia and the Trump campaign after he was caught falsely claiming he had not interacted with Russian officials during the campaign, when he was a top Trump adviser. (He, too, had met with Kislyak.) News reports keep yielding more information indicating Trump associates were in contact with Russian officials and possibly Russian intelligence. Reportedly there is at least one FBI investigation on this front; the House and Senate intelligence committees have each launched their own probes. And this past weekend, Trump had a Twitter meltdown and hurled the unsubstantiated Breitbart-born accusation that Obama had illegally spied on him in Trump Tower. It is becoming tough to track all the developments, as the story becomes more complicated and the prospects for a long and complex investigation increase. But there is a simple question that might be easy to answer and that could cut to the chase.

What happened during Flynn's conversations with Kislyak before the election?

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When the Washington Post broke the news that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak during the transition, the newspaper's reporters spoke to the Russian ambassador who revealed a fact that has not received sufficient public attention: Flynn and Kislyak were in communication prior to Election Day. This statement belied all the Trump camp claims that there had been no hobnobbing with the Russians during the campaign. But the implications run deeper.

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So from the start of June until Election Day, it was widely noted that the Russians were either the likely perps or the guilty party—that is, Putin's government had conducted a secret operation to influence an American election. Though it would take the intelligence community until after the election to reach the conclusion that this scheme was mounted to benefit Trump, it did seem obvious throughout the campaign season that Clinton was being harmed by the operation and Trump was being helped.

All this means that when Flynn was talking to Kislyak—or any other Russian government officials—during the campaign, he was in contact with a foreign power waging political warfare against the United States and had reason to suspect or know this. And throughout the summer and fall campaign, Flynn, who was already cozy with Moscow (having accepted a speaking fee to hang out with Putin at a Moscow gala for RT in December 2015), was Trump's most senior foreign policy aide. (He was given a prime speaking spot at the Republican national convention.)



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the rest:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/one-simple-question-could-break-trump-russia-scandal-wide-open