Russiagate: Why things are getting much worse for Trump – and many others
Hurricane Irma, the growing DACA debacle, and the ongoing North Korea crisis are dominating the post-Labor-Day headlines. None of them are particularly good for Trump – but what is about to transpire in the Russiagate scandal will prove even worse.
Trump is facing investigations from all sides – some of which are poised to kick back into gear today. His Tweets have been increasingly erratic and impulsive in the last several weeks. And now a key Russian politician has thrown a Molotov cocktail and several pounds of C-4 on the fire.
So let’s sort through the mess.
The congressional Russia investigations are entering a new and more serious phase as lawmakers return from the August recess amid fresh revelations about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In the coming weeks, both intelligence committees are expected to conduct closed-door interviews with high-ranking members of the Trump campaign, and potential witnesses could include Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr.
The two panels are also looking at possibly holding public hearings this fall.
The three committees to watch:
- Senate Judiciary Committee (chaired by Chuck Grassley, with Ranking Minority Member Dianne Feinstein)
- Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by Richard Burr, with RMM Mark Warner)
- House Intelligence Committee (chaired by Devin Nunes, with RMM Adam Schiff)
Ironically, that last committee’s chairman hasn’t shown a whole lot of intelligence himself:
House Intelligence Committee investigators traveled to London in July to attempt to find and interview former MI6 operative and Trump dossier author Christopher Steele, either not knowing or not caring that Steele’s lawyers were already engaging with the Senate Intelligence panel.
More about that niggling dossier below, but first, let’s take a look at Nunes. His notorious visit to the White House on March 21 (after sneaking away from his entourage) to look at selective evidence about “incidental collection” of intelligence gathered pertaining to Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016 misfired. It became a political debacle for Nunes and strongly implicated him in a clumsy attempt to cover up alleged wrongdoing (read much more on that here). And now Nunes is facing a strong challenge in next year’s congressional election:
Fresno County Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Janz put the Russia investigation front and center at a backyard barbecue Sunday as he made his case for running against Rep. Devin Nunes.
Janz took Nunes to task for his role in the investigation, spending a good portion of his remarks giving a play-by-play of the complex story of Nunes’ involvement.
Nunes, a Republican from Tulare, has over $3 million in the bank and was reelected last year with nearly 68% of the vote. Nonetheless, the reliably Republican seat has drawn the attention of national Democrats, who are hoping voters will be put off by a House ethics investigation into whether Nunes mishandled classified information as part of the Russia election meddling investigation.
Nunes has been sticking his head in the sand and not speaking to constituents since he stepped aside from the investigation in April, Janz said.
Nuses’s missteps have turned RMM Schiff into the most visible Russiagate investigator in the House, and he has remained like a pit-bull on Trump’s pantleg:
Rep. Adam Schiff said [Sunday] that President Trump was “dishonest” in his characterization of his ties with Russia. He also suggested that Trump has shaped his foreign policy based on a business opportunity in Russia.
Dana Bash asked Schiff about reports that Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, reached out to the Kremlin about a potential real estate project in Moscow.
“It means, among other things, the president was dishonest when he said during the campaign that he had no business in Russia, wasn’t pursuing no business in Russia,” Schiff said.”So, yet another, I think, misleading statement by the administration about their relationship with Russia.”
Schiff said the prospective business deal is significant because Trump may have allowed the opportunity to shape his foreign policy.
“It’s also significant because if they were pursuing business in Russia during the campaign, that might’ve influenced the positions that the candidate took in a more pro-Russian direction,” he said. “After all, if they were going to be criticizing Putin, criticizing Russia, that would diminish the chances that this deal would go through.”
Lest we forget, Schiff has also called out one of the slimiest partisan apparatchiks in the House for conduct that in a truly just world would get him disnbarred:
[In late July, Schiff] accused Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina and panel member, of acting like a defense lawyer for Kushner when he spoke to the committee in a closed-door session.
The three committees cranking up to revive their inquiries into the allegations are riven by the same partisan battles that prevent congressional action on many other fronts. In some cases, the clashes are intra-party as the panels jockey for witnesses.
Lawmakers also face a crowded, demanding legislative agenda that has little to do with the investigations: raising the debt ceiling, passing a budget, overhauling the tax code and helping the victims of Hurricane Harvey.
… but one particular character practically guarantees fireworks in the coming weeks:
[Longtime Trump attorney and media surrogate Michael] Cohen, meanwhile, is set to appear for a closed-door interview with the House panel. The Senate committee is also expected to seek testimony from Cohen, a longtime Trump confidant and lawyer for the Trump Organization who is under scrutiny because of his outreach to Russian officials about a since-abandoned proposal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
It is also significant that one of the committees is taking the Russiagate probe very seriously.
Of the three congressional panels, the one with the best record for bipartisan cooperation is the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia have forged a close relationship, often holding joint press conferences and issuing joint statements about their efforts. The Senate panel also includes several Republicans who’ve been highly critical of Trump and expressed a willingness to get to the bottom of his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, regardless of the political consequences. They include Marco Rubio of Florida, Susan Collins and Maine and James Lankford of Oklahoma. Arizona Sen. John McCain, one of Trump’s chief GOP critics, is an ex-officio member of the committee.
We’ve been holding our tongue about the biggest Russiagate probe factor at this juncture: the Special Counsel. The stories surrounding Robert Mueller’s probe in the last few weeks have gone from drip, drip, drip into a big hole in the dam:
Mueller’s investigation has widened and become more aggressive over the summer. He has a grand jury. He’s enlisted the help of the Internal Revenue Service’s elite criminal investigations unit, whose specialty is tax evasion and money laundering. He appears to have linked his probe with the work of New York’s attorney general. In July, his agents conducted a predawn raid on the home of Paul Manafort, a former top Trump campaign official, to seize documents.
“In the last few weeks, there seems to be fairly large amount of energy in Mr. Mueller’s investigation,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a deputy to special counsel Kenneth Starr, who oversaw the investigation that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. “He’s pushing forward certainly aggressively on many fronts.” :
“Of all the investigations, the one that’s obviously central is the Mueller one,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster. “But Mueller’s got the same dynamic: how do we manage this in such a way so it’s not being seen as a partisan issue?”
There has been friction between Team Mueller and the various committees on The Hill – along with recent signs that some of it may be dissipating.
After Paul Manafort met privately with the Senate intelligence committee in July, Mueller struggled to see the transcript because Manafort’s attorneys said that he was not authorized to obtain them. According to CNN, Mueller’s team pulled a roundabout by telling a committee staffer that they were allowed to see the transcript, which later enraged Manafort’s attorneys and resulted in a standoff between the special council and the committee that has temporarily frozen any transfer of information and documents.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps acting like a guilty mob boss:
[H]is recent pardon of controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a strong ally convicted of violating a court order related to his harsh treatment of suspected illegal immigrants, has been viewed as a signal that he might use that power to protect people from his inner circle, including family members, who could be caught in Mueller’s net. Manafort, whom Mueller appears to be pressuring to flip and provide evidence against Trump and others, could be a strong candidate for a Trump pardon.
The president has also reportedly had several heated phone calls with leading Republican senators over his displeasure with the continuing investigations, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Trump has labeled the focus on his campaign’s connection to Russia a “made-up story,” as well as a “witch hunt” and “fake news.”
In addition, Trump out of the blue last week phoned Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa to pledge his support for ethanol, a key product in the state and a political touchstone. Grassley is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is looking into obstruction of justice allegations related to the Russia probe, and will take testimony from Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son.
Trump has been tetchier than usual: could this be the reason he seems so triggered lately? Say, an X-rated “Caught on Camera” moment?
A Russian politician has threatened to “hit Donald Trump with our Kompromat” on state TV.
Speaking on Russia-24, Nikita Isaev, leader of the far-right New Russia Movement, said the compromising material should be released in retaliation over the closure of several Russian diplomatic compounds across the US.
When asked whether Russia has such material, Mr Isaev, who is also director of the Russian Institute of Contemporary Economics, replied: “Of course we have it!”
The exchanges were first translated and reported by Russian media analyst Julia Davis.
Bottom line? Expect a tsunami of stories and revelations through, and probably beyond, Thanksgiving. Expect the emerging stories to further damage and disempower Trump – and enrage him even further, perhaps to the point of a need for intervention. And expect Russiagate to have a significant effect on midterm primaries and elections – though how significant is anyone’s guess at this point.
