Tangled Web

Hillary Clinton celebrated her seventieth birthday last week and got a present from Senate Republicans - an investigation.  She learned, as did the rest of us, that the Senate was planning to investigate her for approving a sale of a uranium mine to a Russian company while Secretary of State and receiving a donation for the Clinton Foundation from the company that sold the mine to the Russians . . . and for colluding with the Democratic National Committee into paying for the compilation of a dossier of records showing a relationship between Donald Trump and Russia that was assembled and written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, between June and December of 2016.  This was more of a gift for Trump than for Hillary; he pounced on both reports hoping that they would be bigger news than the indictment coming from Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump, which everyone knew would be against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  So who cares about Paul Manafort, who left the Trump campaign early?  Especially with Hillary conspiring with Russia! 

As expected, it was Manafort who, along with a guy named Rick Gates, got indicted for, of all things, money laundering.  But also caught with his pants down was ex-Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, who was found to have been in contact with foreign nationals tied to the Russians offering dirt on Hillary and seeking a connection with the Trump campaign.  Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about it in early October 2017.

The Papadopoulos case is more serious for the Trump White House.  Manafort's charges pre-date his association with Trump.  But Papadopoulos's role in the campaign may reveal something about the Russia connections Trump has that he doesn't want anyone to know about.

Oh, and about the charges against Hillary . . . Uranium One, the Canadian company that sold the mine to a Russian company - the uranium for which must be used for energy purposes and can't be exported out of the United States - was approved by a board independent of the State Department, and that dossier had been started for one of Trump's Republican presidential primary opponents.

Trump should just admit that he's trying to deflect attention from charges against his cronies.  But investigations against Hillary are likely going to proceed anyway.  I don't know why.  She's irrelevant.  The way Trump and the GOP are still going after her, you'd think the entire Democratic Party didn't matter!

Ha ha, perish the thought!

A tangled web indeed . . .