Putin It There

Now it can be told.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his rubles on Donald Trump to win the American presidential election of 2016, then he had his toadies ensure Trump's victory. Russian hackers, under orders from Putin, deliberately spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election to, if not defeat her (because who knew that was going to happen?) damage her upon her entry in to the White House. This apparently included the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails.  President Obama knew all about it, and it was so sensitive to national security that he even communicated with only four people in the government about the issue to keep it top secret, but he was reluctant to do much about it out of fear that he would be seen as politicizing a security issue to persuade voters to support Hillary.  In other words, he didn't want to be seen as "tipping the scales."

Gee, where would we ever get an idea that a Democrat would do something dirty like that?

Oh, right . . .

Be that as it may, there's a huge difference between a primary election and a general election, so if Obama had come flat out and said that the Russians were deliberately trying to elevate Trump at Hillary's expense, I think we would have understood.  Some of us would still have voted for Jill Stein, but we would have understood.  Instead, the Obama administration failed to take tougher action against Russia, and now here we are.  If Obama had taken tougher action and if Hillary had still been defeated, at least Obama could have said he tried.  At least one Republican was outraged by this news.  "The Obama Administration," this Republican said in a tweet, "knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia.  [They] did nothing about it. WHY?"

The Republican's name?  Donald J. Trump.

Ouch!

And yes, I'm still mad at the Democrats for promoting Hillary, especially after Hillary promoted Trump in the primary season because she thought she could beat him.  And I'm still mad that the Democrats discouraged prospective Democratic presidential candidates from running for the party's nomination in 2016 and punished those who did, leaving Hillary with a left-leaning independent with no chance of winning the nomination of a political party he does not in fact belong to as her only viable opponent in the primaries.                      

(Pointless aside I couldn't resist including here: The other day, I was cycling through traffic when I came alongside at a stoplight an SUV with a Hillary Clinton sticker and a Bernie Sanders sticker on the back bumper.  I spat in front of the SUV.  Not on the SUV, just on the street in front of the SUV.  Why?  Because the back bumper didn't have a Martin O'Malley sticker on it.)   

Comey-Hither

My, how Trump's opinion of James Comey has changed!

Trump fired the now-former FBI director because he had lost his faith in Comey's ability to run the investigative bureau.  Or so he said.  He had no problem with Comey investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mails and going over the top with how he disclosed information about the investigation, and only now Trump thinks that was a violation of protocol?  Comey's real violation of protocol was having the audacity to . . . investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In fact, he seems to have said as much to NBC's Lester Holt. :-O

Who recommended Comey's dismissal?  That depends on who you ask.  The White House press office and Vice President Pence said that the President acted on the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - a man so obscure that people have trouble getting the pronunciation of his surname straight (it's "Rosenstine," not "Rosensteen") - but the brief memo Rosenstein wrote on Comey's recklessness gave no indication of such a recommendation.  Besides, Trump himself says he decided to fire Comey and had decided to do so on January 21 but was waiting for a good day to do it . . . before deciding that May 9 was as good a day as any.

When the FBI director is investigating your presidential campaign,  the best day to fire him is the twelfth of never.

Rosenstein - who was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General by a Senate vote of 94-6 just a few weeks before, is overseeing the Russia investigation after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself for having talked to a Russian government official.  It turns out the dismissal of Comey was endorsed by . . . Jeff Sessions.

Sessions won't comment on that.  He's too busy for pushing for punitive action against drug dealers that are out of proportion with their offenses.  Trump, meanwhile, has tried to get information on the investigation from Comey himself and has threatened him not to talk to anyone. "James Comey," Trump tweeted, "[had] better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

"Tapes?"

But so what, Trump himself isn't under investigation, right?  At least that's what he asked Comey, thus compromising the Russia investigation . . . just like when Bill Clinton conferred with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch over Hillary's e-mails on that plane, forcing Lynch to refer to Hillary investigation to . . . James Comey.

Awk-ward!

Democrats ought not to get cocky about this.  They were calling for action against Comey for how he handled the Hillary Clinton investigation, now all of a sudden he's a great guy?  Best to let the FBI speak up for Comey; he was well liked in the bureau despite reports to the contrary.  Look, although I'm no fan of Hillary, I don't approve of how Comey handled his investigation of her.  But even though he's made a few mistakes, he's been persistent in pursuing justice, and he's helped the FBI come a long way from its more embarrassing moments of the past twenty years.  Like this one.  

I don't hold out much optimism for this affair - which could be bigger than Watergate - getting investigated satisfactorily, given the partisanship involved.  Democrats are calling for a special prosecutor.  Republicans, including the insufferable Mitch McConnell, are insisting that the congressional investigations - the House investigation compromised to some degree by the behavior of Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) - continue until they run their course.  Senators from one party making appeals to the other over the matter on the Senate floor might as well be reading excerpts from "Trout Fishing In America" to each other.  But it's becoming more likely that Trump's administration will soon be dead in the water. 

Status Rex

Donald Trump made his choice for Secretary of State official by naming Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, for the post.  Tillerson has no diplomatic experience but has done business in various countries and thus has had to practice corporate diplomacy, which I assume his is biggest qualification for the job. He interestingly accepts, despite heading an oil company, that climate change is a reality, in contrast to the man who appointed him.  That would be a good thing when you remember that the Paris Agreement on climate change is a diplomatic pact, so that would be one of two good reasons to hope he gets confirmed.  That and he's not John Bolton.

The only problem is that he has close ties to Vladimir Putin, and that has caused concern among Senate Democrats and even some Senate Republicans who would have to vote to confirm him.  The fear is that he'd be happy to give Putin a pass on bilateral disagreements that the U.S. ought to stand firm on.  In light of revelations that the Russians may have been responsible for  hacking in to the Democratic National Committee's e-mails and given them to WikiLeaks, that's a legitimate concern.   On the other hand . . . the CIA charge into Russian hacking in to the DNC's computer has produced skepticism among those who note that the CIA has produced no hard evidence that it was indeed the Russians who hacked the DNC e-mails, and there is also the FBI's disagreement on the motive behind the hacking.  (The FBI doesn't think it was done to help Trump, apparently.)  One of my friends, an online columnist, says that the charges against the Russians are just another effort to stoke anti-Russian paranoia among Americans and start a new cold war to keep Americans too afraid to reject this country's political status quo.  My friend is not a Trump supporter, by the way.

Things are going to get more interesting than I thought . . ..    

From Russia With Love

Okay, all of those Hillary fans blaming Russian hackers for their candidate's loss to Donald Trump may have a case . . . 

The Washington Post just reported that the CIA suspects that agents in the Russian government may have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee computer and, for the purpose of getting Vladimir Putin's man Trump in the White House, providing WikiLeaks all those embarrassing e-mails showing a cynical, jaded Democratic establishment trying, ironically, to manipulate the campaign.  I haven't heard anything about voting machines being hacked, but this story of possible manipulation of information designed to implicitly help is a disturbingly new spin on an old story.

Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee computer, according to the CIA, but withheld its embarrassing e-mails so as not to help Hillary.  Julian Assange, meanwhile, says WikiLeaks did not act in concert with the Russians to produce those e-mails.    

Although Trump - now famous for not receiving most intelligence briefings as President-elect - doesn't buy the CIA's charges, two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have called for an investigation into the charges.  McCain has cited past attempts by the Russians to manipulate elections in other Western countries and says that the integrity of our own elections is at stake.  President Obama has launched an investigation as well, which may or may not be completed by January 20.

I only hope that once they do that, someone starts investigation the rigging of the Democratic primaries.    

Some people are already calling for a do-over of the election.  Can we have a do-over of the nominations while we're at it?