Confirming 18 contacts [phone calls, emails and texts] between the Trump campaign and Russian officials in the seven months before the election, the FBI and Congressional investigators turned up the screws on the White House during President Donald Trump’s first foreign trip. Six of the undisclosed contacts were calls with Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak and other Trump advisers, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. While there nothing illegal about contacts with Russian officials, it raises more suspicions in the government’s ongoing probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen Micheal Flynn resigned Feb. 13 for allegedly lying to Vice President Mike Pence about the content of the conversations. Flynn told Pence he spoke to Kislyak about logistical issues related to future meetings between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Turns out Flynn’s conversations were carefully monitored by the FBI and National Security Agency, revealing that Flynn talked to Kislyak about former President Barack Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats for alleged meddling in the 2016 campaign. Trump officials denied past contacts with Russia and are now scrambling to explain what they talked about. Before Trump took off from Washington, the press had accused him of firing FBI Director James Comey May 9 to obstruct the investigation into Flynn, leaking classified material to the Russians, telling Comey to end the Flynn investigation, and the latest telling Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Amb. Kislyak that Comey was a “nut-job.” According to intel officals with knowledge of the conversation between Trump’s team and the Russians, they had to do with mending U.S.-Russian relations.
Since accused by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Oct. 19, 2016 in the last presidential debate in Las Vegas of being a “Putin puppet,” Trump’s White House has been under siege by the press, finding any way possible to prove Trump colluded with the Kremlin to win the election. Whether accepted or not, current or former Trump campaign officials have every right to do business in Russia or any other country unless strictly prohibited by the State Department. No none complained when Hillary’s State Department had untold number of calls with the Kremlin to pull off the sale of 20% of the U.S.-based uranium rights. Former House Speaker and current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) didn’t accuse former President Barack Obama of colluding with the Russians. Now the media only talk about the FBI’s latest person of interest: Jared Kushner.
Trump and many of his campaign advisers are international businessman, doing business in many different countries, including Russia. Voters put Trump in office knowing that he had business holdings in many countries around the world. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) questions whether Trump violates the Constitution’s Emolument Clause, forbidding any president from taking cash payments from foreign governments, including paying for hotel rooms or green fees at any Trump golf resort. Schumer and Pelosi are giddy talking about Trump’s impeachment but can’t say what law has been broken. Appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head up the Russian investigation. FBI officials reportedly tapped conversation between Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk and yet-known Trump campaign official, perhaps Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Whatever contacts with Russian officials, there’s no information that Trump officials coordinated with the hack of the Democratic National Committee or Hillary’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta. If you listen to Schumer and Pelosi, you’d think that Trump ordered the Russian hack of the DNC and Podesta. Pelosi keeps talking about Trump’s impeachment but can’t identify any “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.” Of all the surveillance on Trump officials, only Flynn remains vulnerable because he didn’t disclose payments taken for Russia’s RTV or Turkey’s government. No one accuses Flynn of having anything to do with Russian meddling in the 2016 election, let alone Trump campaign collusion. Democrats won’t be happy with Mueller when he tosses cold water on Podesta’s campaign theory that Trump’s a “Putin puppet” or somehow colluding with Russian hackers.
Creating scandal-after-scandal, the anti-Trump media relies on unnamed sources to promote many of their stories about Trump’s alleged high-crimes-and-misdemeanors. Schumer and Pelsosi think Trump deserves to be impeached for calling Comey a “nut- job.” When you read Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein’s reason for firing Comey it becomes clear the FBI director had gone rogue. What Democrats and the anti-Trump media choose to ignore doesn’t change the fact that Comey usurped the Department of Justice. Comey testified May 3 under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he couldn’t trust former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch. Instead of sharing his concerns with appropriate members of Congress, Comey took the law into his own hands, bypassing the DOJ. When Trump calls Comey a “nut-job,” it’s because he went rogue, playing judge, jury and executioner.
