What Do We Know So Far About Trump and Russia?

At least we got tax cuts

So, granting that so far no proof has emerged of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, what do we know?  

We know that Paul Manfort, who was Trump’s campaign manager from June to August, was an incredibly sleazy character who acted as a public relations consultant to dictators the world over, most recently to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, who he also served as an adviser.  We know that Michael Flynn, who one of Trump’s top foreign policy consultants and who he briefly considered as Vice President, was strongly pro-Russian and appeared on Russia Today (RT) and did a photo op with Vladimir Putin.  We know that Trump, who generally appears to have no concept of a mutually beneficial relationship or alliance, constantly made an exception for Russia.

We know that Trump’s campaign speeches often closely matched Russian publications such as RT and Sputnik, even to the point of repeating the same errors.  We know that these were open sources that anyone could cite, but most politicians do not.  

We know that the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee e-mails and Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager’s e-mails and turned them over to Wikileaks.  We know that Wikileaks published the e-mails in a manner calculated to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton.  We also know that Trump regularly and enthusiastically quoted material published on Wikileaks and made them central to his campaign, even after the intelligence community warned that they were stolen by the Russian government.

We know that numerous members of Trump’s campaign had unreported meetings with Russian officials, both before and after the election.  We know that meetings of this type are not normal.

We know that Trump made a major campaign issue of some 30,000 Clinton e-mails that she had deleted and constantly taunted her about them, urging her to release them.  We know that in a public speech he called on Russia to hack these e-mails and release them.  Trump claimed he was joking at the time, and the claim was not completely implausible, but since then we have learned that members of the campaign have sought those e-mails from the Russians in all seriousness.   We first learned of such a conversation by a low-level Florida staffer who Trump’s inner circle presumably knew nothing about.  We next learned about similar attempts by Peter Smith, a mid-level operative with contacts in the inner circle, but not a member, also attempted to obtain the missing e-mails from an unknown source, knowing that it might be Russian.  We also know that those missing e-mails never saw the light of day.

We know that Donald Trump’s son, Donald, Jr. received an e-mail from an associate with Russian ties, saying that a Russian official from the “Crown Prosecutor’s office” had some dirt on Hillary Clinton that was "obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump," and that Junior responded with enthusiasm.  We know that e-mails circulated among the very inner circle of the campaign all bearing the caption "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential."  We know both these inflammatory remarks were initiated from the other side, but that Junior never protested.  We know that such a meeting took place with Trump’s son, his son-in-law (Jared Kushner) and his campaign manager (Paul Manafort) attending.  We know that they were disappointed in the dirt offered, and that the Russians were more interested in lifting sanctions than anything else.  

We now know that the "dirt" being offered dealt with accusations that one of Hillary's donors invested in funds in Russia managed by a Kremlin foe and evaded taxes on the profits, and that the Russian Prosecutor General (the "Crown Prosecutor") had made the same pitch, much of it verbatim, to pro-Russian members of the U.S. Congress.  Needless to say, Junior found this to be very weak tea.  No American is going to care if a candidate accepts money from a donor who evaded taxes in Russia.  We don't know what Junior expected to get out of the meeting, but it does not seem too far-fetched to guess that he was expecting the missing e-mails.

We now also know that the Russian government circulated anti-Clinton stories, many of them fabricated, on social media.  And we know that that they carefully targeted their audience with a degree of skill one would not expect from Russians.  And we are now learning some very interesting things about Cambridge Analytica, the tech firm that the Trump campaign and Trump PAC's hired to do their data analysis, though not to provide the raw data.  We now know that Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, asked Wikileaks for Hillary's missing e-mails, intending to release them.  We know that this happened in  late July, 2016, around the time Trump became the official Republican nominee, Cambridge Analytica began working for him, and Wikileaks began releasing Democratic e-mails.  We know that in August, Cambridge Analytica offered to help Wikileaks make the missing e-mails more accessible.  We know that no such exchange took place.  Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks, says that he refused.  More likely, he did not have them.

Reportedly an intern and Cambridge Analytica left some sensitive information of voter targeting on line from March, 2016 to February, 2017, along with their Twitter user name and password.  That would provide a plausible and innocent explanation of how the Russians were able to target Americans so effectively.  I suppose it is possible.  It is also possible that somewhere there is a dog that loves to feast on homework.  Or this just might be the link that shows not only hard evidence of furtive collusion, but evidence that it was systemic and sustained as well.

I can't wait to see what the indictments have to offer.