Despite Trump’s endless all-caps tweets that scream “NO COLLUSION!” there has already been groundwork laid for the upcoming excuses and shifts in rhetoric his administration will have to do once Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government operatives.
One of those excuses, quite laughably, is that everyone in the Trump family who was involved in the campaign were inexperienced and didn’t realize they were speaking to people from the Russian government or that agreeing to meetings in order to get dirt on their political opponent might not be legal. That excuse became even more dubious when it was reported that along with Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushern, who were exposed for having met with Russians with ties to the Kremlin in June 2016, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort also attended that meeting.
“Trump and his kids knew what they were doing, and who they were doing it with,” https://t.co/svF5gAPMec
— Tamer Ibrahim (@ibrahimtamerm) May 28, 2018
Paul Manafort has been working in politics since 1976, where he built a reputation for working as a political consultant to some of the most abhorrent and corrupt foreign leaders in the world.
Former NSA Analyst and military officer wrote in an op-ed to The Observer that the investigation into the Trump campaign is not “fake news” and that assuming Trump and his children were too naive to know that they were quite possibly colluded with the Russian government is absurd.
“Trump and his kids knew what they were doing, and who they were doing it with,” https://t.co/svF5gAPMec
— Tamer Ibrahim (@ibrahimtamerm) May 28, 2018
Schindler says that at the time Trump was accepting his nomination as the GOP candidate for president, the NSA had already heard in phone calls by Kremlin operatives that they were involved with Trump and his companies. By the time Trump became the Republican nominee, the NSA believed he was “a Russian agent.”
‘In truth, NSA understood quite a bit about Trump’s connections to Moscow, and by mid-2016 it had increased its efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery regarding the candidate’s Russian ties. In response to urgent FBI requests for more information, NSA rose to the occasion, and by the time that Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination in mid-July 2016, “We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,” as a senior NSA official put it to me recently.’
“We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands.” Top NSA official said recently – about Trump. Another massive bombshell by @20committee https://t.co/rXFTgN42M0
— Andrew C Laufer, Esq (@lauferlaw) May 28, 2018
Those intercepted communications were later made credible reports that Trump campaign officials like George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page had been working with Russia to get Trump elected.
The NSA official whom Schindler spoke to confirmed the tone of these communications, as well.
‘”The Kremlin talked about Trump like he was their boy, and their comments weren’t always flattering.” The NSA official stated that those above-top-secret reports left no doubt that the Russians were subverting our democracy in 2016—and that Team Trump was a witting participant in the Kremlin’s criminal conspiracy: “Trump and his kids knew what they were doing, and who they were doing it with,” the official explained.’
Although Trump has worked diligently to muddy the waters around this investigation, it seems obvious at this point where it will lead.
Featured image via Getty/Pool
