It is good to hear from Mr. Frankel again. A reader of the Times for more than 50 years, I remember his reporting well, especially for an article he wrote in 2001 on the Times abysmal failure to properly cover the Holocaust throughout the World War II era.
It's the kind of an article that needs to be read over again from time to time to serve as a reminder of the critical need for a free and brave press during times of national emergency such as the one we are currently living in. Here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-1851-2001-turning-away-from-the-holocaust.html
22
I recall Trump's comments on the debate stage when Clinton called him Putin's poodle, a lap dog. Trump retorted, " Believe me I'm the last guy Putin and the Russians want as president"
21
Benedict Arnold had nothing on this president.
49
"The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy."
Well knock me over with a feather. In other startling news, the pope is catholic. Water is wet!!
And you STILL start out with "collusion" and not CONSPIRACY.
Boggles the mind. It's just sad. We really are not up to this challenge. No wonder "trump" is still winning.
21
Oh and that Trump Tower Moscow too.
17
Obama also promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem when he was campaigning.
4
It's not over Trump got off easy no crime beyond a reasonable doubt besides he did not testify and he can't be indicted per justice dept policy. More details on Trump's sleazy financial history will come forth and New York state will further tarnish the Trump name . Trump's malignant narcissism will eventually destroy as his vile gut and frantic thumbs will dig his political grave by 2020 and return America to admirable status we had prior to our crime boss thug president.
19
Too bad that Obama was so sure of a Clinton victory that he decided to take a hands off position in the election He never liked Mrs Clinton with whom he had been forced to come to an agreement with in 2008 and '12, so he could be President and then let the first Woman run. Insrtead of supporting her with all the power of incumbency, Obie let her struggle and run an uphill race, all (including Trump), assured of her ultimate victory because "the NYTimes said she would win", and thus, Democrats didn't even need to vote for her!
If Obama had run as hard for Clinton as she ran for him-placing her ambitions to one side-she probably would have been elected in '16. Obama's blase attitude caused millions of his passionate black voter base feel slighted, and sure she had "mugged " Obama for a third term they were positive he might have had did he want it.(Millions of US Democrats do not know that there are no more third terms. They blamed Mrs Clinton for this and refused to vote for her.
Russians didn't pull any levers-it was Democrats who were furious at HRC for personal and political reasons who witheld their support-not sneaky Russki spymasters .
If you read or listen to foreign propaganda-you will be made a fool of and be badly used. Americans have to relearn this pre WWII lesson all over, again.
2
Once again, led by an illegitimate POTUS, America has been sold to the lowest bidder that just happens to be its most formidable sworn enemy and for the personal financial gain of one corrupt man's family.
23
Max
You came out of retirement for this? You lost. Get over it. Take some Xanax, have glass of Pinot and put your feet up. Time to move on
5
There was that old thing about needing more Truth in Pravda...
One thinks back to how our "pravdas", though not "government" controlled, fall in line for war and overthrow adventures through time, like from Nam and Iraq 03 to Ukraine and Syria and now Venezuela...
What we need is the truth, not weasel word conspiracy theories based on "maybe", "perhaps", "obviously"...
theories that morph our syntax to the point that any contact with a RUSSIAN is (maybeperhapsobviously) incipient treason, what things were in the HUAC era from 1947 to 196-; and where Podesta's and DNC emails become "Hillary's" by verbal slight-of-hands.
The opinionater here obviously focuses on the Ukraine situation... one in which we need to hear some truth in our MSM, that the coup, "obviously" not Constitutional, threatened one of the top 3 military bases Russia has. A poke at the Bear that, oddly, drew a less than Hungary 56 reaction...
As to Moscow's "thing" in 16 let's go full tin hat- they were prepping fall out for Turmp's inevitable loss, that HRC would be left then Prez of a "Ukraine", with firebomb mobs in the streets and barricades blocking RRs and freeways in flyover country...
(oh, and doesn't "poking the bear" endlessly eventual lead to WW III? All we want is some truth, Just give us some truth, to paraphrase Lennon.)
Scary? Have our underlying fractures in "weltanschauung" been fixed (CAN they be...)?
2
This is a pathetic effort to find a conspiracy where there was none. Get over it.
10
After peddling a farcical conspiracy theory that the Mueller report should have debunked for everyone now some journalists are inventing another one to try to rescue the dead one. The charade has gone on for too long and it is now reinforcing the narcissistic buffoon in the WH. Please read Chris Hedges a former Times journalist on this.
Anyone with a functioning mind sees that in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, the foreign policy of the Trump administration is against Russia--not to talk about the dangerous and crazy withdrawal from the INF treaty.
The Times should really go back to ethics before publishing additional conspiracy theories.
Flynn lied to the FBI but on December 22, 2016 he was acting at the request of Israel to try to get Russia to veto a UN resolution that Obama wanted to abstain on. Not exactly Russian meddling or agreement with Putin (Russia did not veto).
When told the abominable snowman does not exist true believers find reasons to still believe he is alive and well. Woodward had already said he had not heard of collusion and Mueller (who is not a saint) confirmed but for the Times, or at least some high level journalists, the abominable snowman still exists. What a waste when so many issues are pressing, like the voter purges African Americans are victims of, insane defense budgets and tax gifts to the 0.1%.
Please find your code of conduct and journalistic ethics again. Don't do a WMD again.
6
Trump has saved the United States
5
Oh for heaven's sake: You're embarrassing yourself.
The "collusion" fantasy has been demolished. Give it up and move on.
6
Would you stop already with such nonsense? If it was a Quid pro Quo, then where is the "Quo"? Anti-Russian sanctions only multiplied and got harsher under Trump. If only it was true. Even if there was such a deal, I fail to see a bad side of it. USA is saved from Hillary Clinton presidency and US-Russia relations are improved - it is a win-win by any measure, no? Only Hillary Clinton supporters and nuclear war enthusiasts would not be entirely happy with such an outcome. Maybe Hillary Clinton shouldn't have called Putin "Hitler" if she wanted his support in presidential elections. Otherwise, it is hard to see how Putin had any choice here. One candidate promised friendly respectful bilateral relationships with your country, and another one calls you "Hitler" and itches to bomb it. Well, as it turned out from Russia's perspective they were both worse. But at least Putin don't have to deal with someone who openly hates him and calls him names. So it is a small benefit to Russia, I guess.
6
Congressperson Maxine Waters has been shouting this for over two years now....through racist personal attacks on her.
She is heroic.
14
Proof? None.
5
Remember this stunt?
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/313907-trump-didnt-allow-reporters-to-see-documents-detailing-split
Please don't let the Mueller Report slide.
7
It should be a crime for what the Trump campaign and Russia did in the 2016 election. AND, this DOJ policy that a sitting president can't be indicted is the most stupid policy ever devised. Dictators are above the law but not sitting presidents of the United States of America.
20
So 2020’s been decided then already. Trump wins with Russia’s help. Again.
Ok.
I’ll stay home. Thanks for the heads up in the interest of sparing my time, NYT!
3
How ‘bout calling it: ‘’The Art of the Steal.’
7
See which of Trump's fingers is most prominent in the photo? That's what he's giving America. MAGA.
Given that war with Russia is the goal, a causus belli will be found, or manufactured. Ten minutes after the Democrats regain power, they will be defending America's freedom in the Baltics. The mayhem & slaughter will be deemed necessary to meet the "Russian threat." It is the sane, responsible,
distinguished policy makers who will blow up the planet in World War Three.
Trump operates by innuendo. Your loyalty is solicited through innuendo and overture. Then once a loyal sycophant you listen to his campaign rallies and if you're in a position to make it happen, you do the work without involving the head of the beast, Trump. It works for mob bosses and Trump operates as a mob boss. To stay in office he has to deliver his nationalist agenda to his cult followers. In order to keep the corrupt money flowing into the Trump corporate coffers he has to satisfy other kleptocrats who, like Trump, are fabulously wealthy by robbing the tax payers and citizens of their country.
13
“...The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy...
Close – but a swing and a miss...
More like:
“...Any campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for her old anti-Putin Russian foreign policy...
As far as:
“...Perhaps, also, they articulated their resentment of Mrs. Clinton for her challenge as secretary of state to the legitimacy of Mr. Putin’s own election...
And perhaps the Pope is Catholic, too...
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/world/europe/putin-accuses-clinton-of-instigating-russian-protests.html
“...Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday of inciting unrest in Russia, as he grappled with the prospect of large-scale political protest for the first time in his more than decade-long rule...
“...In a rare personal accusation, Mr. Putin said Mrs. Clinton had sent “a signal” to “some actors in our country” after Sunday’s parliamentary elections, which were condemned as fraudulent by both international and Russian observers...
Where was the Comey connection then?
So in other words, the Trump campaign did not do anything illegal and in fact did things that most incoming admi istrations do. Right?
1
2020 - a monkey at the top of the Democratic ticket, you say? He/she/it has my vote. I’m beggin’ all the rest of you - just get “him” the heck outta’ there so we can all go back to being bored by politics. Enough! Although, I must admit, he has single-handedly done significant damage to the concept of patriarchy. If he’s your idea of a “macho man/savior”, I’ve got a wall I’d like to sell you.
7
If the headline of this article is true, Russia got an awfully bad deal. Trump’s foreign policy has been substantially more aggressive towards Russia than Obama’s was. Military strikes on Syria, ripping up the Iran Nuclear Deal, we are on the brink of invading Venezuela...need I go on? False articles like this one continue to stoke the flames and increase fear and apprehension between the world’s two most dangerous powers. Time to give up this false narrative before it kills us all.
2
So we all hung our hats on a technicality that was easy to dilute and disguise. And now we are all dangling from the thin thread of hope that the Democrats can bring the truth to light.
Talk about excruciating pain....
3
Will he get Trump Tower Moscow while still in office? Or out?
Thus more quid (for Trump) and no doubt upped demands for quo (for Putin)--not only diminished sanctions, the end of the nuclear ban, the weakening of NATO, an offer of a lux apt in Trump Tower NYC--perhaps Russian military bases in Mar a Lago and Venezuela-- All paid for by his--godblessem--Trumpies.
4
Now I get it: promises to Israel are ok. Promises to any other country constitute "collusion." Nonsense, Mr. Frankel.
1
The deep question for Mueller had to be is Trump just ignorant, a compulsive liar, a craven and immoral man, mentally disturbed, or did he commit treason (or any combination of the above)? His brief was narrow but Trump's behavior and mouth can't be contained in such a narrow brief.
5
Time for American voters to kick all anti-American traitors out of office.
How can you identify the real traitors? They're the ones violating their oaths of office, "to preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, from all enemies foreign and domestic."
Now do you get who the real "enemies of the people" are?
6
A voice from the past, Mr Frankel can't resist returning to the glory days of the Cold War where no dissent was allowed from rants like this one.
Today, we can respond as Alyosha's recent comment demonstrates.
1
When are you going to give this a REST?!
2
Thank you so much mr frankel - this has beenbmy feeling all along - why was the special counsel chasing collusion when the real problem was compromat.
4
I thought it was Obama who said he would be flexible. And we know it was Hillary who sold our uranium to the Russians in exchange for a $145 million “donation” to the Clinton Foundation.
2
According to Fox News Hillary and Putin were in cahoots to fix the election so Trump lost.
Nice try Max.
According to Hannity and Limbaugh we have been investigating the wrong person.
Come join the alternate universe and free the inner logic that has ruled you life.
5
The Times just can’t stop selling tinfoil hats.
It would have been so much more convenient for the Times had 2020 been about Russian collusion than about the vast inequality of wealth and income that is destroying this country.
1
You're a respected journalist. I don't understand how you can twist the findings. Remember when Obama whispered in the ear of he Russian..."tell Putin we can work together after the election". Remember Hillary pressing the reset button.
2
What a sad stage of American journalism; nothing matters except your preconceived and well planned and well directed course to prove your point or bent of mind. Openness of mind is an element of days gone by! Our reaction --read it diagonically, or skip it--you already know as to what is being directed at. Sad, sad, sad!
Here’s a suggested exercise for all the liberals who can’t wrap their heads around Mueller’s conclusion.
1. Think about how confident you were that Hillary did nothing criminal with her emails.
2. Remember that a nonpartisan investigation (by Comey) concluded that she had been extremely reckless but still didn’t file criminal charges against her
3. Realize that a much longer, more robust nonpartisan investigation (mueller) concluded that there was no collusion whatsoever.
4. Reconcile the logical and ethical contradiction between your confidence in Hillary’s innocence and your confidence in trumps guilt
2
Indeed.
And We The People are supposed to believe this was just a BIG COINKY-DINK, with no "collusion."
Baloney.
5
I think it is time to "reset" this conversation after the election
1
The way out of this ongoing mess might be Eric Trump.
He seems to be the black sheep in this family.
Maybe I'm dreaming, but he could flip on his crime family and emerge as an American hero.
1
“ We know that Michael Flynn lied to the F.B.I. when he denied discussing sanction relief with the Russian ambassador.”
In fact, if facts matter and they don’t seem to on this topic, what we really know is that Flynn discussed with the Russians the hope that they would vote against the anti Israel resolution in the UN Security Council from which the Obama administration was going to, and did, abstain.
1
Give it up, Max, you lost. All these supposes and deductions and etceteras add up to nothing.
2
Good lord. First we had the Birther nonsense, courtesy of the GOP.
Now we have the Dems' own version Birther nonsense. 33 months - and continuing! - of foolishness, hysteria, ridiculous conspiracy theories, disinformation, nonsense on stilts.
And still, the Times persists in peddling a bogus narrative.
What will it take to get these neo-Birthers to recognize the facts?
FACT: Trump's administration is by far the most ANTI-Russian, the most confrontational toward Russia, of any US administration since Reagan's.
FACTS: Trump has ...
Scuttled the INF Treaty - this is a strategic nightmare for Putin and a massive defeat for Russian foreign policy.
Sold our most potent missile defense system to both Poland and Sweden. Putin fears this military weapon system more than any other.
Reversed Obama's policy of refusing lethal military aid to Ukraine.
Reversed Obama's Syria policy and directly confronted Russia on the ground, killing scores of Russian mercenaries and soldiers in Syria.
Tripled defense initiatives to deter Russian aggression in Europe, staged maneuvers on Russia's borders, increased the anti-Russian defense budget by ~50%.
Sanctioned ~40 oligarchs and Russian officials, expanded the Magnitsky sanctions list, closed consulates & diplomatic annexes, expelled 60 diplomats.
The facts are overwhelming.
Please, please climb down from this moronic collusion delusion.
Trump is not Putin's puppet. He is Putin's nightmare.
Wake up. Educate yourselves.
Let's see, we have Trump, Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey and now Barr - all republicans. The democrats waited patiently for 2 years to get word on any progress while trusting and showing faith in the process. Did we just get gaslighted?
2
I could be referred to as one of Trump’s "pursuers" but not solely because of treason. There are a myriad of reasons to wish Trump were out of the WH. The NYT does not provide enough space to list them all so, yes, I hoped Mueller would rid America of this pariah. Obviously, I was disappointed but the fight for our democracy is far from over. With 17 investigations running concurrently, one or more will surely provide the evidence necessary to remove Trump.
What embittered me the most was when I learned Trump's non profit for kids with cancer was being abused financially. It takes a special kind of deviate to pilfer funds designated for kids with cancer. Sadly, we get to call him president.
6
“And when you’re a star, they let you do anything.”
Donald Trump has thought this his entire life.
He will get caught breaking the law.
I’m just disappointed they didn’t indict little Donnie Jr.
5
The article speaks to what a majority of Americans believe and suspect the Trump-Russia connection went further. Why? Because Donald, Junior, Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Papadopolous, Eric Prince, Roger Stone etc., etc., lied about meetings and communications with Russia! Even after the FBI cautioned then candidate, Trump, the Russians continued their connection to Trump!
We know from Allies who sounded the alarm, and our own intelligence services that Russia was involved in attacking our democracy. We, the People smelled a rat and stench continues.
Attorney General Barr, a man who wrote an opinion on the Special Counsel in order to be nominated by Trump, has interjected himself into the process. During Watergate the Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski sent his report directly to Congress! Congress kept ALL the information and details secret! Jaworski didn’t .....indict....Nixon, he simply handed the evidence to Congress. Mr. Mueller should have done the same!
Finally, I keep saying this over and over: IF Mueller’s Report.....exonerates Donald J Trump....then ALLOW ALL of us to have access to the PROOF of innocence! Until then, AG Barr, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans seems to be engaged in a massive cover-up!
7
This article is absolutely deranged. It pathetically unhinged. Pro Russia policy in return for helping to defeat Hillary? And just where is THAT policy? Is it the massive NATO troop buildup on the Russian border put there by Trump? Is it U.S. war ships in the Black Sea? Is it trying to overthrow Russia's client state Venezuela? Is it bombing Russia's other client state Syria? Is it Trump arming Ukrainian rebels, so provocative to Russia that even Obama didn't go there. Is it try to nix a natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany and threatening sanctions to do that? Give us a break. There was no collusion and there certainly isn't any quid pro quo. I would think that after pushing a bogus collusion conspiracy theory for over two years and igniting a dangerous cold war between two of the world biggest nuclear powers these people like this author would find a hole to crawl into and hide for the next ten years, embarrassed to be seen in polite society. Good grief, quid pro quo? Really? That's the best you can come up with?
2
My own hunch is that maybe Mr. Trump had no intention of colluding with the Russians; he simply wanted to do business with them, and he was confident that he could outdeal them. He is famous for tricking and deceiving, reneging and defrauding. It may have never crossed his mind that Putin has his own skills in that arena, or maybe it did and he was just eager to try.
In any event, collusion or not, his lies alone constitute betrayal. And, he's a lousy president.
2
“Hey Russia, if you’re listening..”
Apparently if you steal, lie and cheat in the open, it can’t be a crime. And if it’s not a crime, well, you cannot obstruct an investigation into it. That’s basically where we’re at today.
Thank you for this column.
7
Or Trump, in his big mouthed way, relentlessly promotes the existence of a distorted reality to conform to the corrupt one he inhabits and cons enough people to keep his sorry self out of jail. Trump and Putin collude? With soul mates there's never any need.
3
Which must be why relations between the US and Russia are as bad as they've been in years. Must be why Trump ordered heavy weapons to Ukraine while the most Ukraine got from Obama after the Crimea takeover were blankets and canned food. Must be why Trump ordered the US to finally leave an arms treaty the Russians have been cheating on for years. Must be why Trump has been pressuring Germany and other EU states to stop buying Russian natural gas and end their increasing dependency on it,which is the lifeblood of Russia's economy and start buying American natural gas instead. That must be why it was Trump who finally bombed Assad's chemical weapons depot, which Obama punted on. You remember Obama: the guy caught on open mike assuring Russian president Medvedev he'd be more accommodating over Russian sanctions after he wins the 2012 election?
Will Dem's ever finally face up to being wrong? That you've been played by a DNC/Hillary political hit gone ballistic? It's over. Start actually making real policy proposals, proving anyone should consider voting for you again. It makes you look like you're actually in deep psychological need and hallucinogenic denial. Why would anyone want you in power if you can't admit you've been had, learn from your mistakes and make an effort to improve and do better next time? It's called ... get ready for it ... adulthood.
2
T is for Trump Tower, where the Trump team conspired with our adversaries to subvert the 2016 election.
R is for Russia, the adversaries mentioned above.
E is for Election interference and Trump’s decision to not stand up for America at the Helsinki conference.
A is for Adhering to our enemies, giving them aid and comfort (Article III, Section 3, of the United States constitution)
S is for the Son of Trump, Don Jr., who arranged the conspiratorial meeting with our adversary.
O is for Ongoing attacks by the Russians on our electoral system.
N is for Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya, the Russian operative who attended the Trump Tower meeting, along with Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Don Jr., Rob Goldstone (a representative of the Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov) and others.
3
OMG. Mr. Frankel, you have embarrassed yourself.
Glen Greenwald, no conservative he, said it much better than I ever could have: "I'm genuinely sorry if you spent the last 3 years believing a blatantly stupid partisan fairy tale ripped out of the pages of a primitive Tom Clancy novel & made it central to your worldview. I get that it's upsetting & disorienting when it got revealed as a hoax. Look inward."
Democrats, get a grip, or the Orange One will win again.
2
The smell of this influence peddling is drifting in from the White House.
Let it go. For the love of God let it go.
1
Too many questions remain unanswered, too much caving in to Team Trump for any clarity. The search for truth is always difficult. Who actually shot Bobby Kennedy? Ask his distinguished lawyer-son and namesake.
To swallow as conclusive what is tantamount to Cliff Notes from a career Republican Trump appointee may be good enough for Washington news professionals, but it is wholly inadequate to those who have a brain and don't suffer fools gladly.
Gimme that full report!
2
The reason trump colluded with the Russians is simple.
And anyone who understands trump's one-track mind will see it. He's all about "winning" for himself (not for the U.S., not for U.S. foreign policy, not for his "campaign" or his "voters").
trump has never been for anyone but himself. EVER! So the collusion and deals he began making in 2016, through his intermediaries (including his son, daughter, son-in-law, flynn, manafort, stone, et. al.) was all for himself.
trump wants money. He loves telling people he has ten billion dollars (no sane person in the world agrees, and there is plenty of evidence that he's much "poorer").
trump colluded with Russian politicians and oligarchs first, during his campaign -- for help to defeat Hillary. After that was in the bag, trump has been colluding with putin directly, for cash and illegal monies. putin has many Russian oligarchs with billions in illegal rubles (that they want to turn into "Hard" U.S. Dollars). And trump is their intermediary.
trump and putin now make deals, directly face-to-face -- with no one else permitted in the room (even the U.S. translator has been removed from some meetings).
It's disgustingly sickening how blatantly this fake president is acting, for self gain.
2
The Trump -Putin collusion did not make any sense to start with. THAT is the problem with our news media, that their hate makes them unable to think, which is worse than the hate itself.
The things that hurt Putin most were the US increase in gas and oil production, which damaged Putin's vise grip on Western Europe with natural gas supply, and a strengthening of the US military. Both were promised by Trump during the campaign, and happened after.
Trump wanted to build a tower in Moscow, but Putin did not want to sell the land for it, so it never happened. The opposite of collusion here as well.
In a sign of how pathetic they are now, House Democrats decided to concentrate on the tower made impossible by Putin. To say that it will all blow in their face is an understatement.
1
this is a ludicrous attempt to cover for the substantial false reporting in the nytimes concerning the collusion story. However, my guess most democrats will believe this, as the Mueller report, even after it becomes public, likely does not change their imprinted beliefs about "collusion"
1
The quid pro quo makes a lot of sense. I have no doubt whatsoever that Trump is a seasoned and slippery crook and this country will eventually regret the day he was elected President, such is the damage he has done and will continue to do to our democracy.
Trump never had to say directly that he would collude with the Russians, but as the article points out, that definitely occurred.
... if you' re listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails ...
Trump learned from the mob, which was under constant FBI surveillance. Trump ran the business, “much like a mobster would do,” Cohen said at one point. “He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders,” Cohen said. “He speaks in a code, and I understand the code because I’ve been around him for a decade.”
3
Mafia Don sent a terrifying signal yesterday when he vowed to abolish Obamacare (it's not the "ACA" in his mind). After taking his brief "victory lap," Trump adopted an absolute loser of a campaign issue. Why would he do this? 1st, he is on a mission to destroy anything associated with Obama, just because he can. 2nd, he doesn't care if he loses the next election, because he has no intention of ever leaving the White House and going to jail. Be prepared for ugliness to ensue.
1
..and this is not collusion? What was Mueller smoking?
Maybe a better word for the maniac's actions is "treason."
Treason used to be - and perhaps still is - punishable by death.
2
Tell Vlad I will have more flexibility after the election. Obama.
1
I wonder if this opinion piece was a planned response to a mueller report that did not find anything substantive.
Just have to keep that narrative alive.
2
Not a word of this is true. It’s simply more of the same conspiracy peddling this publication and slews of others fed the American public for more than two years. Enough is enough.
1
Like a dog with a bone the Progressives can't let go of the Collusion narrative. Instead the Times trots out long-retired Max Frankel to spin another web of deceit, lies and conjecture. Forgotten is the ridiculous Hillary Reset Button, Obama leaning over to Medvedev with the "you'll get a better deal after the election, and the fact that Russia, as weak as it's economy is, is a nuclear power and we do have some joint interests. Also forgotten are the strict sanctions and other punishments Trump has inflicted on the Russians as well as the hundreds of Russian mercenaries killed in Syria by our special forces and allies. No, let's go back to the Obama days when Russia invaded the Eastern Ukraine.
2
Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin is one of complete servitude. Mr. Frankel is completely correct: A wink and a nod between them leaves no fingerprints.
The Russians bailed Trump out when US banks would not lend him another nickel. For years Trump has been receiving hundreds and hundreds of millions in laundered Russian money from investor friends of Putin via the Bank of Cyprus (where Wilbur Ross was a major shareholder and officer) and transferred with the help of Deutsche Bank. Putin bought Trump years ago.
It is no coincidence that Putin ordered his digital agents to hack the DNC to get “dirt” on Hillary. It is no coincidence that the Russians spent tens of millions Facebook and other social media targeting Democratics with filth about Hillary in order to help elect Trump. It is no coincidence that Manafort shared Republican polling data to help Putin in this intense effort. It is no coincidence that there are such strong links between Russia and Trump's current and former cabinet members and associates including George Papadopoulos, Wilbur Ross, Felix Sater, Roy Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Mike Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone etc., etc..
We must cleanse the White House of Trump and Congress of the grovelling Republicans that have supported Trump for their own power-grabbing, anti-democratic purposes. Democrats are mandated to thoroughly investigate every criminal aspect of Trump's behavior and expose him as the criminal he has always been
2
Compared to Obama:
Arms sales to Ukraine after BHO rejected sales
Further eastward NATO expansion
More troops to Poland and Estonia
More sanctions
Trump has been unnecessarily provocative to Russia. Certainly more so than Obama was.
2
Unbelievable.
This is beyond stupid.
Does the author know - is he even paying attention - that Trump's administration is the most ianti-Russian and confrontational president we've ever seen?
Is he on drugs?
Back in reality, on earth, Trump has now:
Pulled out from the INF Treaty - a nightmare for Putin and a massive strategic defeat for Russia.
Sold our most potent missile defense system to both Poland and Sweden. Putin fears this military weapon more than any other in our arsenal.
Reversed Obama's policy of refusing lethal military aid to Ukraine.
Reversed Obama's Syria policy and directly confronted Russia on the ground, killing scores of Russian mercenaries and soldiers in Syria.
Tripled defense initiatives to deter Russian aggression in Europe, staged maneuvers on Russia's borders, increased the anti-Russian defense budget by ~50%.
Sanctioned ~40 oligarchs and Russian officials, expanded the Magnitsky sanctions list, closed consulates & diplomatic annexes, expelled 60 diplomats.
Ah, but never mind: Trump just HAS to be Putin's puppet.
Are you people TRYING to convince the country that you have lost your marbles?
Do you actually desire Trump's re-election?
Unbelievable.
1
Don't forget Trump's receptivity to the idea of turning over Americans to the Russians for interrogation. I hope someone in Congress will read this piece out loud to Bill Barr when he appears before them and asks him to explain the DOJ's attitude.
Knowingly or not, Trump is an asset for the Russians, the proverbial "useful idiot." This has been so obvious for so long (look at Trump and NATO, the lifting of Obama's sanctions on Russia, siding with Putin over American intelligence) that I'm astounded most news organizations haven't seemed to notice what's right in front of our faces. Even in Barr's "summary," he says the investigation found that Russian's interfered in the election on behalf of Trump, approached the campaign offering to share with them the material they'd illegally stolen, and the campaign did nothing to stop the interference. They did not report to law enforcement that they knew these crimes were happening.
We can only hope the DOJ and other prosecutors are holding off on prosecution so that they can catch the perpetrators in the act during the 2020 campaign.
1
Be done. There isn't an administration over the last 20 years that hasn't attempted "better relations" with the Russians. Trump's transition attempted to get a head start.
With all the punitive action the Trump administration has leveled at Putin's Russia since Trump took office, it is ludicrous to maintain the fiction that Trump and Putin/Russia and in cahoots. He's sold arms to Ukraine, kicked Russian diplomats out of the US, bombed Russia's buddy Syria over chemical weapons use, maintained sanctions, and so on.
Meanwhile, we had a foreign agent (Steele) make up a salacious fake list of accusations purportedly aided by his Russian contacts, bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign, used in duplicitous fashion by the FBI to set off one of the biggest scam investigations, by Trump haters, from the Democratic party to the MSM, in modern history.
BOOM! IT'S FARCE.
Stop already.
1
The only objective Putin had was to settle his score with Hillary Clinton. She had publicly questioned his election win, and he intended to get even.
Trump's relationship was quite irrelevant but conveniently morphed into fodder for a sick partisan vendetta. Just because he had relationships doesn't make him a traitor. Turning him into one is all just part of that vendetta.
If the actions of Trump and his circle of enablers and sycophants happened within a company (not his own), he would have been tossed on his ample bottom years ago.
Or if Obama had done any of these actions, impeachment would have been complete two years ago.
Why do we tolerate him at all ?
3
It would appear that the premise of it being about money laundering is still alive and well. He is still dodging tax returns being made public and continues the charade about his ability to "deal". The GOP buys into all of it with seeming eagerness.
His ability to keep throwing shiny things up in the air appears to endlessly entertain "his base" while present and future danger are blown to the winds.
Now even the disabled are cut from the national budget so he can scare his supporters one more time. Il Duce must be belly laughing in his grave.
1
In the real world, Mueller indicted zero Americans for conspiring or coordinating with Russians to interfere in the election.
Also in the real world -- and to directly quote Robert Mueller -- “The investigation did not establish that members of the campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted, it would have been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.
Right before the species-ending war with Russia.
It never fails to astonish and infuriate me how convoluted the white-collar legal crime world is. Our jails are overflowing...and virtually the only crimes we seem able to "see" are street crimes, day-to-day living crimes, poor-people crimes while corruption flows in the streets and over the side-walks and into our homes in plain view and with noticeable stench.
The power structures have set legal escape hatches at every turn in business and political worlds...its all hatches all the way down (unless you are the mayor of Detroit apparently).
The scandal is that we have so blurred the simple lines of truth and decency with fat-cat self-sympathies and grease-money we can't see and act on a colossal con, on an existential risk to our political sovereignty, on rampant corporate piracy, on the political murder of our separation of powers governmental architecture by hacks and ideologues who value winning above all.
2
What pro-Russian policy? The assertion that there is one is entirely at odds with the facts.
Russophobia and demonization of Russia and Russian leaders has been official US policy at least since the 1917 October Revolution, with pauses for WWII and a brief period after the collapse of the USSR (while the drunken Western puppet, Yeltsin, was nominally in charge). Nothing significant has changed during Trump's time on office, which makes perfect sense, since US foreign policy seldom changes much as administrations come and go.
The stubborn, defiant ignorance of vast swathes of the American public, ignorance that is encouraged by large segments of our political and media leadership, is simply pathetic.
Just release the report.
1
You are playing games:
You say there was "an overarching deal". The Editor has placed a picture of a handshake to illustrate the essay and the headline writer says there was a "real ... quid pro quo".
But what does all that mean since we also know from Muller that there was no collusion.
Apparently you think that if any two organizations have the same goal, they must have a "deal", a handshake, and a "quid pro quo". I have a very nice bridge, I'd like to sell you.
Chinese election interference is worse than Russian interference. On every college campus today you see CGTN Chinese Global TV Network feeding propaganda to young minds on campus TV screens. Chinese are experts at propaganda and know how to get inside the minds of tomorrow’s leaders .... 20 years ahead of time. And China provides free satellite dishes and CGTN programming to Chinese in the US. That way, Chinese minds always stay behind the Great Wall, long after their body has moved to US. And Chinese required Chinese companies to distribute any European goods in 1840, so the opium China smoked then was 100 percent dependent on Chinese distribution. The forced partnership with a Chinese company is one of China’s oldest tricks.
2
Is anyone mystified about this quid pro quo?
The problem is that Americans are were wearing t-shirts proclaiming that they would rather have KGB than Hillary in charge. I do not doubt them. It is a small price to pay to reach their common objective of an ethno-religious nationlist medieval state. It will finally redress the harm done to them by the ERA, working women, immigrants, and a black president.
This is the second Talibanic administration after Bush II that has declared total war on science, truth, objectivity, decency, morality, justice, education and the environment.
I suspect Trump is going to bomb some country to get re-elected. Why not, his fans (45% of Americans, and all republicans) would be giddy with joy.
At this point, I know I am licked. Smoke em if you got em on the way to the book burning my fellows. And don't forget to pick up your torches, uniforms, and big weapons. I would have said danka, but I'll stop with specibo.
2
The Trump-Barr whitewash and cover up of the Mueller Report has all the validity of an eight grader saying; "No mom you can't look for cigarettes in my back pack, because there's no cigarettes in my back pack"!
1
What this is called is an insistence to keep this meme going into the next two years, so as to keep their voters, the hangers-on who want to still believe there is collusion, in a state of anger and hate.
There is something else that will happen, if not sooner than later. Fatigue. The American voter has been assaulted for the last two years by threats (Antifa), attempted murder (Scalise shot), constant denigration of the American Trump voter, putting them in a category that reeks with contempt and outright hate.
And still...they go on and on and on. Because now the boogeyman is Barr. He must be lying! He must be keeping facts from us! There must something nefarious on Trump that we need to come out so we can impeach him!
Fatigue. Voters are exhausted and it is going to show in the ballet box in 2020, and it won't be good for the Democrats.
Mr. Frankel, your evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin's Russia is public knowledge. One wonders what other evidence Muller found in his two year investigation of the same attack on our democracy.
The real crime on America is by his enablers, the GOP who will allow treason or even alleged treason with our enemy by their leader, something that hasn't happened in our history, so to fester their plutocracy. Unless this type of political mindset is cleansed from our political system, this country is in great danger of losing our over three century old Jeffersonian democracy. May God save us from the GOP, they are pure evil.
2
I had it figured like this some time ago. No, Trump isn’t a Russian agent, but he is a willing and eager Russian stooge. He has sworn fidelity to Russian goals under the delusion that they are HIS goals. He feels like a Boss again, like Putin and the other autocrats. He can order, he can reward whomever he chooses, and he can punish anyone who annoys him.
And it all happened because he succumbs easily to flattery and the promise of riches.
Americans once disdained such a president.
2
Congratulations NYT for such a clever choice for the photo at article top!
1
OMG, why do people still cling to this?
2
People should keep in mind that more than two-thirds of the people indicted in the Mueller probe were Russian agents who, if interviewed, could provide the answers we seek and the conclusive evidence conspiracy. I never put too much faith in the collusion angle being provable in court because of how nefarious our foreign enemy is and how stupid Donald Trump has been his whole life. I would bet on Kompromat or money being the motivating factors behind Trump's fan-boy crush on Vlad. Vlad, on the other hand, has a useful idiot who will bow down and do tricks for him on international TV. Sort of a Quid Pro Dope.
10
China, I hope you're listening. Because the Democratic voting public will reward you mightily should you choose to hack into the Republican emails illustrating conspiracy with Russia.
...
Coming to a Reality TV show near you in 2020.
4
POTUS should go “full animal” (Steve Bannon quote on AC360 Rome time 3/28/19) against our real enemies- Russia not American’s. Russian military now in our backyard in Valenzuela and not a WORD from the commander in chief to protest this. Russian puppet! How’s all that winning doing for you all!
4
Who said we don't have a third party.
All hail the king of USUSSA.
United States Union Soviet Socialist of America.
2
Just as there are still those who claim that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, in spite of no evidence, and there are some Republicans who still claim that Obama was not born in the US, also also unsupported by facts, it appears that the NYT is doomed to keep spouting the false claim of Russian conspiracy. Perhaps instead of putting them on their website, they could “bury” them in the obituary section.
2
"As the Trump family openly acknowledged, the Russians spoke at that meeting of a desire to again allow Americans to adopt Russian children."
Wow, how dare of those dastardly Ruskies!
2
You people simply do not know when to stop digging, do you? Your credibility is shot with more holes than swiss cheese.
2
I spent months reading the NY Times, happy and reassured daily that Trump was a fluke who could not win. Now I've spent two years reassured that deep, deep corruption would be exposed by Mueller--Don Jr., the NRA, David Pecker etc. Editors, care to explain?
6
Nice try. President Trump still serves as Putin's useful idiot for all the world to see. Watch the two of them when they next meet. Tell me who looks like the puppy and who looks like the master.
9
Donald J Trump and his children have been dirty and corrupt since they were born — do what grandpa Fred did to American people, rob them. In the open. Comrade Donald J Trump has been carrying water for the Kremlin especially since he received $$$ from Russian nationals and companies after he rob creditors in America of tens of millions of dollars and then declaring multiple bankruptcies (and hiding monies his daddy Fred shielded from IRS). God Save America, especially if the democrats have no substantive answers for America, which comrade trump has destroyed for himself and his Kremlin friends and Master Vladimir V. Putin.
3
if this hysterical nonsense, and it is all hysterical nonsense, about Russian interference, collusion and monsters under the bed and in the closet doesn’t stop, there will be no Trump, no Putin, no America, no Russia and no human species on this planet to write deluded columns about.
“Whom the gods wish to destroy...” Euripides said, “...they first make mad.”
2
Are you really still going for collusion? I understand how hard it is to admit that this newspaper has been an embarrassment for the past 2 years, but it’s time to move on. Get back to reporting, not fantasy.
2
Are you out of your mind? Hillary and Bill, or Bill and Hillary extorted $150 Million out of the Russians for the 25% of US uranium.
How much do you hate Trump? It could be obscuring your vision.
2
The NYT’s and it’s reporters and columnists need to stop digging the very deep hole that they created. Mueller was your incorruptible Messiah and now that he has issued his report, you’re still not satisfied.
Just stop. You’re only embarrassing yourselves.
3
Now investigate Putin's vendetta against Hillary Clinton.
3
So much of this was either in the open or known before the election of 2016 that it is bizarre to see the ready acceptance of no “collusion” as many mouthe Trump’s own terms. This is a very honest piece in a media landscape where many pundits and reporters like to forget how their own publications or sites readily passed along weaponized Russian hacks.
4
You have to wonder why Mr. Frankel did not publish this new theory of Trump-Russia collusion long ago. Why is he just now articulating it? The liberal media writ large has been assuring us for two years that "contacts" between people in the Trump orbit and RUSSIANS were evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate the 2016 election. However, now Robert Mueller, once hailed by the same usual suspects, as above reproach, possessing the wisdom of Solomon and the integrity of Abraham Lincoln, has now declared that no evidence of any such collusion exists. And he did so after an exhaustive and aggressive investigation. So what is the response. Media introspection? Apology? No, what we get is a new conspiracy theory. Once you descend into the fever swamps inhabitanted by the tin-foil-hat crowd, there is no leaving. The addiction of conspiracy-mongering is just too strong.
4
Some in the Democratic party can't accept the fact that Clinton lost the election because of Clinton, not because of Putin.
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether they are deluding themselves or trying to convince the public that Democrats can serve the working class and ruling class equally.
Putin didn't tell Clinton that she could campaign briefly in Michigan but never set foot in a UAW hall.
Russian's didn't prevent her from making any stops in Wisconsin. Her number crunching staff did that.
She knew that African American wealth virtually disappeared when Obama bailed out Wall Street but did little to address the racism and fraud they suffered during the 2008 financial crisis?
Could that, not Russia have been the reason for the lower black turnout in 2016?
And why would you expect everyone to believe you when you spent your entire political career as a center right neocon, but suddenly morphed into a better version of Bernie Sanders, who was cheated out of an honest primary?
Despite all that Democrats voted for you. There just weren't quite enough of them to tip the balance.
Frankel would have us believe that Russian bots and FB ads tipped the balance. And that Trump was the mastermind.
If Democrats continue to cling to this fantasy they will once again lose an election that is theirs to win.
America needs that New Deal, green or otherwise. So where are the Democrats? On board or still star gazing at Russian sky's?
4
Or maybe the quid pro quo was even simpler: for helping Trump to become President, Putin would be given an incompetent megalomaniac heading his biggest adversary, an American President all but guaranteed to render his foe economically and geopolitically weakened, if not impotent. How could Putin pass up such an opportunity?
5
This is some desperate stuff. Trump was elected because there are enough racists, and misogynists, and just plain hateful people in America to elect him over a not very good candidate whose campaign made some crucial mistakes. Trump's foreign policy - to the small extent he can be said to have any - is not noticeably more "pro-Russian" than that of Obama. Can we please get off this runaway train to Conspiracyville and focus on beating Trump and Trumpism the right way - politically.
2
Trump publicly said Russia should hack Hillary's emails, Russia then immediately did, and Roger Stone told Trump ahead of time that WikiLeaks was going to leak them. This does not sound legal.
5
Cui bono? If the Russians were expecting sanctions relief from Trump, they must be very disappointed. Not only have sanctions increased, Trump has broken the INF and US-Russian relations are worse than they were during the Obama years. Unlike the Israelis and the Saudis who have profited handsomely, policy-wise, from their dislike of Hilary and their support for Trump in the 2016 election.
2
The first thing the Don learned was plausible deniability.
5
Please, somebody explain to me why the GOP is so complicit in all this. Why didn't they drill down on Trump's aberrant behavior? They blew-off our intell people when told that Russia was monkeying in our 2016 election? Where are they now, when Trump makes it obvious that he prefers Russian oligarchs to Western democratic values?
Don't tell me they fear being primaried; they, the previously strident party of "Freedom, justice and the American (Western-World) way" I cannot believe that if they'd, now or previously, make a case for how antithetical to the Western World's ideals Trump is acting, that true conservatives would go against them in primaries.
if I'm wrong in my estimation of the American people, we are in a world of hurt!
5
A pro-Russian foreign policy, complete with secret one-on-one communications and sanctions relief.
4
The article is based on absurd propositions. That the Russians thought Trump would win. Or that they wanted Trump to win, since he was campaigning on the platform of lowering the price of crude oil, which would defund the Russian government.
Trump, after over two years in office, has not lifted sanctions on Russia, and has expanded the list of parties subject to sanctions. He sold weapons to the Ukraine, something Obama refused to do to help the Ukraine resist the Russian invasion. Trump organized a coalition to bomb Syrian WMD chemical weapons that killed Russian advisers of their client state. He reinstituted sanctions on Iran, another Russian client state.
The Russians interfered with the election to make it more difficult for Hillary to govern, not to cost her the election. They had no reason to even desire an American administration other than the extension of the Obama policy of appeasement toward Russian aggression, Obama's flexibility, and Obama's desire to maximize Russian oil revenue by discouraging American oil and gas production.
Meanwhile, Hillary was not even just colluding with the Russians, she illegally paid them to provide dirt on Trump, all of which was fabricated. She and Obama used that fake intelligence, provided by foreign agents to spy, not on the Russians, but on the opposition campaign. Putin did not personally like Hillary, but he knew she could be bought, and what the price was. Income to Bill and donations to their "charity."
1
trump has bent over forwards for Putin's agenda. This is patently obvious. No collusion or conspiracy existed as Trump was too new to politics to have sly strategies. The FSB did.
Blackmail or quid pro quo ?
3
Trump has been awful for Russia. He has bolstered U. S. defense spending and has pushed for and gotten increases to NATA defense spending. Russia exports Fossil fuels and high fossil fuel prices are critical to their economy. Trump is fossil fuel friendly and has made America essentially independent. We increase the world supply of natural gas reducing the price. Natural gas is a key Russian export giving them political leverage. Remember the Trump administration's opposition to Germany receiving Russian natural gas.
Trump stood up th Russia's allie Syria when they used chemical weapons and got militarily involved although Russia has strong interests in it. Our military killed about 200 Russian Mercenaries in Syria.
Trump is no friend of Russia. He is more their worst nightmare more than any kind of a friend. Trump may use kind word with Tyrants, but his policies are strong and firm.
I can't think of a worst instance of brazen sell-your-soul to the devil straight-faced lying than Trump crowing about his fictitious redemption and swearing blood revenge against those with the temerity to challenge the king.
Maybe he thinks yelling really loud and making gang signs will deflect people from thinking that an investigation that led to successful indictments of dozens of Trump agents but left Trump unscathed smells way past its sell-by date (or so proclaimed notorious speed-reader AG Burr who's such a brilliant lawyer he wrote his opinion about the Mueller Report months ago).
This is a prime example of Trump's claim of shooting someone on 5th Avenue and getting away with it.
Notwithstanding Trump's shrill and frequent denunciation of Sessions and Comey for not blocking the investigation, Barr's rush to judgment isn't very reassuring.
The appearance of the GOP SWAT team before Mueller even cleaned out his desk suggests Trump's sense of urgency to escape further investigation based on a plethora of evidence outside the microscopic focus of Mueller's brief.
Trump tried to sack Mueller and excoriated him when he couldn't. He finally got rid of Sessions and replaced him with someone who would do what Sessions couldn't.
Then Barr follows the script with a near instant declaration of Trump's total innocence.
Corruption in plain sight or are we just blind?
6
A good theory, Mr. Frankel.
Allow me to expand on it a little.
Giving Barr and Mueller the benefit of the doubt--something I an aware that, especially in the case of the former, may not be justified--one speculates that either Le Grand Orange is much smarter than we thought, and has covered his tracks expertly enough that no direct evidence of his involvement was discoverable (acting like those Mafia dons who made policy "with a wink and a nod"), or, conversely, that he is so clueless and incompetent that he had little idea what compatriots around him were doing, and said compatriots, realizing said cluelessness and incompetence, took great pains to keep him out of the loop as much as possible, and he blithely wound up with plausible deniability.
The fact remains, though, that there is plenty of other malfeasance that doesn't involve conspiring with a foreign adversary to rig an election for Trump to be bounced on--emoluments, payoffs to paramours, etc. The question remains whether the highly distractable average American (not the pundits who type commentary) is going to be able to make such distinctions and not just say Trump is completely exonerated.
Of course, just when Republicans were dancing in the streets singing the "No Collusion" song, Trump decided to go after the ACA again, handing his opposition a windfall opportunity. So that's a little bit more of a thumb on the "incompetent" side of the scale.
5
The left is desperate. Mueller says there is no evidence of collusion. There never was. And the speculations of an ex executive editor from years ago won't change that.
In order for there to be collusion -- you'd need evidence that during the campaign -- not after -- Trump promised the Russians sanction relief or other goodies in return for the Russians doing significant damage to HRC's campaign.
NONE of that happened. Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador AFTER the election, telling him the Russians shouldn't overreact to sanctions isn't a quo. As for the quid, where is there any evidence of Trump asking for Russias's help? Mueller didn't find any evidence for that. And there's a good reason. It didn't happen. And by the way, whatever Russia have done had no influence on the vote.
Please lefties. Go get a drink, a breath of fresh error. But stop with the fables and what could have happened. Stop with the hallucinogens.
And I believe if you check into it, under Trump we've added sanctions, we've challenged their intervention in the middle east, we've given arms to the Ukrainians, we're strengthening our military -- and are pushing out European allies to up their military capabilities.
Oh yes. The Mueller Report needs to be released and Trump's finances need to be made public. Those two would really clear up just what's "fake news" from what's real.
6
Putin and Trump transparently see each other as useful to their respective ends and don’t need much more than winks and nods and private chats without witnesses to communicate they have each other’s backs.
Therefore, I’ll bet Trump will soon lift more sanctions on Russia/Russians and turn a blind eye to further Russian aggressions. In return, Putin will unleash his AI and Internet operatives to interfere with the 2020 election to Trump’s benefit.
The problem with corruption at the highest levels is it is conducted by monsters who speak a simple language of quid pro quo that is beyond the reach of laws that apply to ordinary criminals.
The Barr Letter not only covers up the truth of what Mueller documented, it diverts attention from the real corruption at hand. We and our nation loses as the false spin of “exoneration” and “no collusion” drowns out the darker reality.
4
Trump and his enablers will continue to use everything in their power to wiggle out of all legal jeopardy, hurling contempt on any person or committee or journalist with the gall to raise suspicions about past misdeeds. It seems only a matter of time until the Trump gang are caught in the net slowly but steadily tightening around them. The best hope for justice now rests with Democrats in the House.
1
This article describes perfectly why the investigation was never about collusion, which is not defined legally as a crime. What Mueller couldn’t prove was a conspiracy. Mobsters and their corrupt lawyers knew the difference.
I keep wondering if Barr didn’t just shut this down from day one after he was confirmed. Would have given Muller a few weeks to get things in order and write up the report as things stood “to date.” Something just doesn’t sit right with this - I along with most of the US believe Muller to be thorough and unsparing in applying the rule of law. So why the punt?
I also believe not enough has been explored regarding Cambridge Analytica ans how they were leveraged during the campaign. The whistleblower Christopher Wylie has several posts up in Twitter where he flat out states that they ran messaging by Russian leadership at the direction of Steve Bannon. How is that not coordination or collusion?
4
The biggest problem with our president is that always puts his own interests first and only puts Americans first in his big promises, e.g. "great health care for everybody" vs. the ugly reality this week of trying to throw the whole US health care system into chaos. The quid pro quo scenario Mr. Frankel explains is a particular case of the general problem of "Trump first."
2
I for one am just glad that all those people crowing about the Barr letter will stop saying, "The democrats are just mad they lost in 2016 because they ran a bad candidate."
This will definitely happen, right? The letter they're cheerleading explicitly stated Mueller found evidence that the Russians interfered in the election to help Trump. It's be wildly inconsistent and dishonest to keep using that talking point!
At some point, the Russian conspiracy talk gets close to Birther land.
The biggest thing Trump has done is dramatically increase US military spending. It's absurd: but it will widen the gap between US and Russian military capability.
How is that in any way what Putin wants? Putin did want the US to leave the TNF agreement in Europe. He did not want the US leaving the Iran deal.
The idea that he is a Russian agent of some is just crazy.
1
Max:
Thank you for still caring about the world, the nation, and for your ability to sum things up so well -
In terms much clearer than the Attorney General.
The unanswered question: what DO we do with an incompetent, destructive president, a mad trumpanik, who puts (like any petulant two-year-old) his own desires above those of the US, its allies, and humanity in general?
2
Really, all we have to do is wait until Mueller is on his deathbed. Then he can tell us why he backed away from pursuing the investigation to its logical end, and why obvious malefactors were left to dance away to cheat another day.
A failure of nerve? A fog too thick and toxic to discover the truth? Toadies with hearts so hardened by self-interest, that decency is snuffed out? Only time may tell.
1
Collusion does not have to be "hidden" for it to be a conspiracy. I don't believe that is part of the legal definition. It just takes a couple of people agreeing to work together to undercut another party. The "crime" in the 2016 election was betrayal of the American voter . . . and it was out in the open though intermittently accomplished. Trump is as guilty of that as McConnell is of not fulfilling the Senate's Constitutional duty to vote on Supreme Court nominees.
In fact, perhaps the entire Republican Party understands simple bank crimes better than legislating! For sure few of them understand that when they themselves do not vote for a resolution condemning the President for declaring a National Emergency when there is none and for taking money that THEY DID NOT GIVE HIM TO SPEND ON THIS PROBLEM BECAUSE THEY REFUSE TO DEAL WITH IT -- then they are also colluding . . . to violate their own Constitutional "power of the purse;" and to make the US a lawless and incompetent state.
Given the personality of the President I never thought that the Mueller Report would result in any surprises nor in any legislation -- let alone an impeachment! Now we can look forward to another two years of do-nothingism, unless it benefits the Republican Party. But maybe Trump will stop Tweeting from the toilet early in the morning. What a relief that would be -- for the rest of us!
2
Mueller was given a very narrow scope to investigate -- so narrow that short of Trump turning on himself there was zero chance of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump secretly and illegally conspired with Putin to keep his oft-declared nemesis Hillary Clinton from the presidency.
Unlike Ken Starr who deposed Clinton, Bob Mueller never pressed hard to depose Trump, not even through written interrogatories submitted to Trump's lawyers.
During Starr's tenure as Special Prosecutor (he was the last of three), which ran for 6 years and cost $60 million, he expanded the scope to include White House Counsel Vince Foster's suicide and later the Monica Lewinsky affair.
When Starr failed to prove any of the Whitewater allegations against the Clintons, he shifted the investigation to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and deposed Clinton, who was impeached for prevaricating about his relationship with the White House intern and later acquitted by Congress.
If Starr instead of Mueller was Special Prosecutor, Trump would have been indicted for lying about bone spurs to evade military service.
Mueller turned Trump's rock over and exposed all the creepy crawlers scrambling for cover. It's now up to other pest exterminators to do their job.
Trump never forgives those who he thinks have crossed him. Most of us feel the same way about him.
This is far from over.
2
Surely, surely we should all realize that a 4-page summary prepared by an avowed foe of the Mueller investigation is not anything remotely a complete or accurate rendering of the investigation's findings. I have been astonished at how quickly the parroting of "no collusion" has been embraced by the press, even the learned columnists of the Times. Is it so clear that "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" does not constitute collusion? Is it so clear that even unilateral Russian meddling (assuming it WAS unilateral) to insure the election of a rich guy who is in the financial pockets of its so-called "oligarchs" is perfectly OK even if it is executed only by winks and nods? Let's wait to see the full report, which is due to be leaked by somebody any day now, before we start dissing Mueller or dismissing his investigation.
3
Trump and NATO builds up NATO forces and holds one of the biggest war games on Russia's border. Trump sends nuclear armed U.S. war ships into the Black Sea. Trump trying to overthrow Russian client state Venezuela. Trump occupies and bombs Russian client state and its leader Assad. Trump arms anti-Russian Ukrainian rebels, something so provocative even Obama wouldn't go there. Trump actively trying to kill Russian-German pipeline, going so far as to impose sanctions.
I'm still waiting for the pro of this so-called quid pro quo Mr. Frankel says exists.
1
Gotta keep those McDonnell-Douglas and Raytheon ad dollars flowing, eh Max? That is the only reason I can think of why the American press and the Democratic Party establishment (campaign donations, don't you know) are so determined to force the blundering Trump into jacking up tensions with Russia - a nuclear power with a domestic economy stuck in neutral and a GDP less than Portugal. Besides, the Republican state legislators and the Supreme Court are much better at stealing elections than the Russians.
2
"So why all the secrecy and lying?"
Flynn, and others, ruined their entire lives when they committed felonies by lying to cover-up their Russian ties. And then Trump did everything he could to shut down the investigation and discredit it.
And you are saying it was over something that was bad form but legal?
These have got to be the most incompetent innocent people in the history of history. It seems to me more likely that Barr's version of the Mueller report is materially misleading or Mueller was simply unable to prove what they were covering up.
How could innocent people act so guilty?
3
Israel liked Trump more than Clinton. Does that mean Trump colluded with Israel?
Obama promised Putin to change things after he was elected. Does that mean that Obama colluded with Russia?
It is only natural that different candidates have different opinions and some opinions are more in agreement of the national interest of those nations.
When we elect our presidents we and the international community knows about our candidates foreign policy preferences. Trump was very open about his intentions. We voted for him knowing those views.
Let’s not do fake news again!
1
It’s obvious that some people will never accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency. But writing about a conspiracy, or a quid pro quo, right after the most detailed and exhaustive investigation has definitively concluded that there was no conspiracy, really stretches one’s imagination.
The New York Times is a paper and a forum where the writers and the readers are supposed to seek truth. That’s why we come here. Conspiracy theories, especially disproven ones, do not belong on these pages.
1
Trump did this Russia deal according to the civil preponderance of the evidence standard but not the criminal beyond a reasonable doubt standard. It still speaks to his corrupt sense of being which we have known about decades before 2016.
Don't like it? Vote him out. Use the rule of American law to expel this man and reassert American decency.
Remember "Russia, if you are listening..."? They were listening indeed and understood the message.
Putin holds US responsible for the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the XX century" - dissolution of the USSR. Think of it. Not the WWI, not the WWII with its destruction of the whole continent and tens of millions killed. It is a peaceful dissolution of the USSR that he regrets most. Putting Trump in charge of the US was the first take down. Calling him for 1-1s and keeping humiliated as in Helsinki is a continuing punishment. More to come as long as Trump is in the WH. Putin's revenge is not over yet.
Here is something else to consider. Early in the campaign, Jarrod Kushner went to Silicon Valley, and got a crash course in micro targeting voters on social media. He also wanted to open a secret back communications channel with the Russians, using their equipment. Then we have Market giving the Russians inside polling data. Put two and two together. This allowed the Russian troll farm to target the lies about Hillary to voters in key States like MI, PA, and WI. Why else would Mandatory turn over proprietary polling data to the Russians in a clandestine meeting in a cigar bar? If that's no cooperation with a foreign, hostile government to sway an election then, what is?
2
The pro-Russian foreign policy was demonstrated in the Obama administration's response to the annexation of the Crimea.
Barr knew that his hurried 48 hour summary would resonate louder than a detailed report with first hand evidence and facts weeks later. Sadly facts won’t matter anymore, because we won’t have any. That makes it easy for Trump scream that he is a victim. I have little faith in the referrals.
I want to know why meeting with the Russian lawyer for dirt on Hilary was not illegal? I want to know how did Roger Stone communicate with Assange and why that wasn’t treason? I want to know why Kushner lied on his clearance application? I want to know why wasn’t Gates sentenced? I want details, but for some reason no one is challenging the AG, because no one else has seen the evidence.
2
“the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions.”
But there’s no evidence Putin/Russia favored Trump.
“The Trumpites knew about the quid and held out the prospect of the quo.”
Then Frankel needs to present evidence to support this extraordinary claim. Note Trump sending heavy weapons to Ukraine and doing extensive NATO exercises on the Russia/Poland border. Those don’t look like friendly gestures.
“Run down the known facts about the communications between Russians and the Trump campaign and their deal reveals itself. “
This is bordering on McCarthyism. I sent a Russian an email in 2015...
“Early on, emissaries of the Russian oligarchs sent word of their readiness to help embarrass and undermine the Clinton candidacy. “
When did this occur? This isn’t the claim about the Trump Tower meeting.
“So why all the secrecy and lying? Candidate Trump made no secret of his intention to forge a warm relationship with the Kremlin. “
By pulling out of the INF Treaty?
“Mr. Flynn especially had to lie because though already in transition to power he was directly undermining Mr. Obama’s still active and punitive diplomacy against Mr. Putin.”
Does Frankel not know that “transition” means after the election? What Flynn did is well established transition activity for an incoming president.
Consider Frankel's analysis, based on solid evidence, for its policy significance to deal with Trump: Constitutional, legal, moral. Constitutionally Trump is highly impeachable if a resolute Congress decides he is. Highly unlikely given Republican control of the Senate; good luck with that but hope springs eternal. Legally, prosecution for actions intended to prevent the law's application (breaking the law) is hard to prove (starting with deciding what laws have been broken) and apparently can't be pursued in any case with a sitting president, as Mueller has found. Morally, Frankel goes to the heart of the matter. Trump does great injury to our fundamental values in his "quid pro quo" with the Russians, solely for his own aggrandizement by his "base" from which he wants loyalty and adoration, to which he returns harm, scorn, exploitation, and deceit. Frankel has presented the equation - we the people have to do the math. Rise up, America, and throw the rascal out through a combination of shaming (Trump will hate that and be thrown off his pace) and political action (assert yourselves). Alas, DNC and national Democrats are a weak read to lean on, except on a good day to help articulate policy goals (thank you Senator Warren). This is America. We the people rise up through our local communities, through state elections and on up to national office. Throw the rascal out!
1
Proving legal conspiracy is a high bar to clear. There is a lot of ground between "unseemly" and "traitorous".
Trump has micturated upon sacred institutions of freedom and democracy that were bought with American lives and lifetimes of civil service.
And people either love him for it, or hate him for it. He certainly speaks his mind.
Where was this factual, sensible, intelligent, moderate column when Democrats were hinting at something called "collusion" that was too specific?
1
Technically, no absolute proof of an illegal conspiracy.
Politically, absolute proof of unethical and unamerican behavior.
Let the judge and jury convene: 11.03.20
I don't care if there was coordination, or collusion, or whatever you want to call it. All I know is that my president took the side of a hostile foreign power and its vicious dictator over his own intelligences services. In plain sight, at an international press conference.
Whatever his motivation, this was jaw-dropping and treasonous. And yet, he was given a pass by his party and supporters.
2
Why didn't the Russians want Hillary as President.
As Secretary of State, she shook them down for a hundred and fifty million for the uranium deal.
They had to pay her husband half a million for a speech.
No way the Russians wanted to face her as President.
She would have taken half their Siberian Oil Fields.
Thank you, Mr. Frankel. So Trump didn't commit criminal conspiracy. He just sold out his country, and he did it more or less in plain sight.
Although, somehow, I would say, the New York Times managed not to see it. What say you come back to work for the Times, Mr. Frankel?
1
Mr. Frankel,
I'm ready for a Daniel Ellsberg moment for this continuing sham related to the Muller report. There must be some patriotic people in the Department of Justice who have had access to the entire report filed by Mr. Mueller. Someone should copy it, and send these copies to the New York Times and the Washington Post for the public to read, un-redacted. The secrecy and lies already associated with the report have aggravated the entire population. Let's see and read the report in it's entirety, and stop the crowing about " Complete Vindication". That's just one man's opinion.
1
Yeah, it’s obvious the Russians wanted Trump to win; that’s why they helped to create the salacious “dossier”, which painted Trump in the worst possible light.
Mr. Frankel is a very old man, and should remain retired.
This makes perfect sense. Trump didn't actively seek the assistance of the Russians with their campaign shenanigans but he rewarded it after the fact. The Trump campaign goaded, coaxed and benignly neglected the cyber sleuthing and hacking activities. He gets a hotel out of it...what do the American people get?
We have the right to see the findings can moneyed from this report. Transparency is the only thing that will allow me even remotely believe trump mo didn’t collude with Russia.
He talked like a colluder, acted like one and sold out our own intelligence agencies. He has acted like a looney bin and a nut case. There’s no doubt in my mind he obstructed justice. Does it take a legal genius to see what he tried to do when he fired Comey. God help us all. If you believe this man then I have a nice bridge to sell you.
2
The real-life alternative for Americans was not some ideal all-knowing person - it was Hillary Clinton. Who could not even manage the security of her email. The Russians would have loved her.
1
Welcome back, Max Frankel. We need your logical, unadorned perspective. Write on!
If only the facts bore out Mr. Frankel's speculation, perhaps he would have mentioned some. He did not because the facts belie everything he says. There is no rational reason Putin would not have wanted to keep Hilary in favor of Trump.
Under Obama/Clinton: (a) Russia annexed the Crimea and meddled in the Ukraine; (b) its allies in the Ukraine shot down a commercial airplane killing hundreds using Russia supplied anti-aircraft batteries; (c) Russian forces were deployed in Syria and fought for Assad who used chemical weapons on his own people with no repercussions; (d) the Uranium One deal was approved and finalized; (e) Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Russia; (f) Obama fought increased oil and gas production in the United States via fracking thus keeping prices high, which benefits Russia (a gas station with a flag); and (g) allowed the "Russians" to engage in their campaign to influence the 2016 elections for over a year until any serious countermeasures were taken.
Under Trump: (a) the U.S. has provided offensive weapons to the Ukraine, which Obama/Clinton failed to do; (b) bombed Russia's ally Assad when he again used chemical weapons; (c) killed over 200 Russian mercenaries in one night when they threatened U.S. allies in Syria; (c) imposed the stiffest sanctions ever against Russia and its oligarchs; and (d) unleashed oil and gas production resulting in record low world prices and economic hardship for Russia.
Response?
1
Candidate Nixon secretly negotiated with South Vietnam on a peace deal if he were to become president, thereby sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks. In a phone call with Everett Dirkson, which was made public, Johnson referred to this as “treason”. How is Trump’s undermining Obama’s Russia sanctions policy as a private citizen any different?
Typical partisan denial that Hillary's "reset" button made Putin both the power, and the problem that has become.
NYT is complicit in trying to turn this story into the equivalent of a riveting reality TV show. I cannot blame them. It's a competitive world. They will milk this for all it's worth.
But there's a warning. This reporting/publishing is a kind of drug that develops a tolerance. The public is developing a tolerance that requires the dosage to be incrementally increased to draw readership. I don't know where it leads, and I understand the need to make money, but let's all be careful with the "both sides" reporting.
1
Wild speculation that sounds very plausible; none of it apparently illegal. Isn't it time to move on - or at least try to learn how we got bamboozled by mainstream media with Russiagate.
1
The DNC's emails were hacked by Russians. Millions of targeted voters were reached by Russian operatives. Two different departments of the Kremlin were involved. Putin admitted in front of cameras that he helped Trump. Russians visited different sites in the U.S. Cambridge Analytica had involvement, and Russians funneled money to Republicans in Congress and to Trump through the NRA.
This was a massive attack on the United States. All 17 intelligence agencies reported early on that the goal was to help Trump.
There were more than 100 contacts between the Trump campaign, Trump associates, or Trump family members with Russians in 2016.
This has the stench of treason.
Maybe in Trump world, that is not illegal. But there is something deeply wrong when a country that is pointing almost 1,500 nuclear missiles at the United States helps an unfit man into the White House who proceeds to hold meetings with Putin with no one else present, who ignores Congressional sanctions imposed on Russia, and who doesn't lift a finger to protect the United States of America and its democracy from an enemy.
1
The vast majority of Republican politicians in Congress today, as representatives of a foreign government, are a great deal more of a threat to the survival of the U.S. than the Communist Party U.S.A. ever was in the 1950's.
Perhaps this has now become part of the milieu for writers looking at how the Trump campaign and the Kremlin each danced with each other - even if not without touching.
But at the very least some credit for ideas in this piece should at least have contained a tip of the hat to Marcy Wheeler, who to my knowledge was the first to speak of “call and response” between the parties, agreeing to what is effectively a “quid pro quo” here.
(While I occasionally comment there, I have no role in Marcy’s blog.)
1
Great twist on this sordid event.
So many questions left unanswered and forgotten. Like why was there a server in trump tower with a direct connection to a Russian bank? Was that one ever answered?
the comments here are funny - it is like little children having a tantrum and can't admit they are wrong, or perhaps can not perceive that they are wrong. we know that Mueller led an broad and extensive investigation, and that his conclusions about collusion are as unequivocal as possible. Barr's and Rosenstein's summary (it was not just Barr as has been incorrectly reported in these editorials) is correct. You can believe otherwise, but you are dead wrong
Trump advocated a more pro-Russian policy than Clinton and the Russians liked him for that. Hardly surprising.
And it is foolish to believe that a "one president" policy should mean that you can't talk in private with foreigners about how your intended changes might work out. Such talks happen all the time. Remember that nobody - including Trump himself - expected him to win.
"So why all the secrecy and lying?"
Because of articles like this that try to distort what happened.
This would mean that the Liar-in-Chief was actually telling the truth for once when he said no collusion. A proposition up with which I cannot put.
The Mueller report is said to be over 700 pages long. Barr could not possibly have read that report in the less than 48 hours that he had it. I believe Barr wrote his four page summary before he even had the report.
Today Putin and Trump wish it to appear that U.S. and Russia are adversaries. But they are trying to break apart the European Union (a big win for Putin.) And a big loss for the civilizing effect of regulations and a social safety net (with real unions) built up over decades--that is the quo part for Trump.
The media is complicit in this. The owners like the quo.
4
When trump publicly although he says jokingly, asked Russia to find Hillary Clinton emails, the then Obama Administration as well as the FBI had enough alarm to worry about. Here, a presidential candidate is asking a foreign government directly for hacking help into a former Secretary of State emails. They acted accordingly, it wasn’t a conspiracy, it was natural for the FBI to look into Trump’s most public and loud pronouncement!
7
Two things left out that push this in a darker direction. 1. The qpq also involved Russia dangling a $300M Moscow hotel deal--more than DJT ever made on any other venture--as part of the enticement on their side. Again, not illegal, but exceedingly compromising during the election had it come out that they were still in active talks about it, which they were. 2. Regarding said deal, and the meetings, and other ancillary matters: DJT&Co were actively LYING about them during the campaign. And continued to lie about them later on. Again, this isn't necessarily criminal (except in the case of lying to the FBI) but it IS necessarily LEVERAGE, or "kompromat" to use the Russian term. Leverage being willingly handed to an American adversary. THAT was and is the problem, from a counter-intelligence standpoint, which is what the Mueller investigation actually was. And it's a problem that still exists, in the sense that the POTUS is still beholden to a foreign dictator to keep the full scope of his involvement with same secret. None of this has gone away.
11
This column correctly assesses the situation. And don’t forget Trump’s watering down the GOP campaign platform on Russia specifically and only. Part of the same big picture. It is what I have been thinking all along and it dovetails perfectly with the Steele dossier.
The entire Mueller should be released. We cannot trust Barr’s summary. Does anyone else wonder whether Mueller subpoenaed the interpreters of Trump’s meetings with private Putin? Why was Trump so anxious to collect and, presumably destroy, their notes?
8
"Mr. Flynn especially had to lie because though already in transition to power he was directly undermining Mr. Obama’s still active and punitive diplomacy against Mr. Putin." - this is a key point, and speaks to why then President Obama was visibly upset about what he (obviously) knew was going on behind his administration. Remember, Mr. Obama actually READ his Daily Briefings. I think Mr. Obama should be asked to voluntarily testify regarding what he and his administration knew in 2016 and early 2017.
7
Mr. Putin is a convenient villain, isn't he? Why didn't Saudi Arabia receive the focus Russia has?
Especially given 9/11, the incentive for a divided Congress pays Dividends to the Saudi's, no?
In 2016, the Saudi's had much more to gain, or prevent from further erosion. Their proximity to power and influence has grown, seemingly the beneficiary of all this deflection to Mr. Putin. Had the Saudi's not imprisoned and allegedly tortured their own wealth class, and naively arrange the killing of a reporter who coincidently happened to be the nephew of a knowledgeable Iranian arms dealer with a memory and his own yachting and Intelligence connections, the Saudi's may have launched their IPO and the value of oil would be north $100, solidifying MBS a master. But Rex, another contingency of stakeholders, likely got in the way. Many non-Russia players (Turkey, France, China, Brazil) have benefitted from the outcome of our Election and events since. Divide and conquer, right? If US intelligence officials aren't aligned and coordinating, like 9/11, then what's to say internal US divisions didn't create the climate for just this kind of "hacking", then foster two convenient years deflecting and corrupting the real evidence in favor of a self-imposed dead end, ignoring the real enemies of the state who remain, more powerful than ever? The fact that the Majority of Americans don't accept the narrative proffered by Press or Government speaks volumes. Mr. Schiff must continue Digging.
5
This was exactly what happened. The Russians actively interfered in our election to favor Trump and harm Clinton. Trump knew about this and approved the idea and there were extensive private and public contacts by the Trump team with the Russians.
The aim was to obtain a more pro Russian policy and to lift sanctions. This was strangely articulated by Trump in his campaigns and in the changes in the Republican platform and in the choice of Manafort, a pro Russian agent, as campaign director.
It also helped the Russians that they knew that Trump was financially dependent on them for real estate money and wanted to build a Trump Tower Moscow even negotiating during the campaign for this. There was a quid pro quo and real but informal collusion and yes the Russians got a President who has strengthened their political standing in the world,
6
I love how so many people are claiming they don't accept the findings of the Mueller report. People like Adam Schiff who has already made comments about a report he has never seen.
Pretty much like he made comments claiming he had seen the evidence that there was collusion. He hasn't seen that either but he promoted his fairy tale of collusion day in day out for the last few years.
2
@Mr Chang Shih An Did you just not read the article, or do you not know how?
"Collusion" isn't actually a crime, so of course there was never going to be any evidence that Trump committed the crime of collusion. He and Kellyanne chose that word and started repeating it over and over and over again specifically for that reason.
You can claim victory all you want, but to sit there and try to claim that you won on the merits of your abilities, and not because you move the goalposts every time the other side is about to score, is beyond laughable.
2
@Mr Chang Shih An - How do you know what Adam Schiff, the head of a Congressional Intelligence Committee has seen?
1
As elected president Trump had to prepare himself and that meant talking to people - including foreigners. So there was nothing wrong that he and his people talked to some Russians too.
One of Trump's proposals that was popular with the voters was to have friendlier relations with Russia. So when Obama introduced last minute sanctions he went against the popular will. Neither was there any objective reason for more sanctions: Obama was deliberately sabotaging his successor. This is exactly the kind of vicious actions that has been making American politics so toxic.
So Trump had to walk a fine line when he prepared himself. He had to prepare for a different future while not publicly disagreeing with Obama. I believe he did well in that respect.
3
@Wim Roffel that is a very Partisan point of view and one that roughly 60% of the country disagrees with. I for one, wanted more sanctions such as denying all Russian Oligarch visas for themselves and their families. No American education for their children, no visits to the states and very limited access to the US banking system.
1
Mr. Roffel. You are suggesting that Trump was exercising restraint and subtlety? Unless your intent is satirical, I suspect that you haven’t been watching very attentively.
The release of the full Mueller report will provide the requisite insight into his "no collusion" conclusion and reveal to all Americans what so many legal experts have struggled to even agree on: what constitutes collusion and whether a sitting president can even be charged for any crime? Hopefully, the Mueller report will also give us insight into all the collective amnesia experienced by Trump and those working for him, including family members, surrounding all things Russian encounters and ever evolving details of those encounters. Since Mueller stated that Donald Trump was not exonerated after this 22 month investigation, the American public is owed the detailed explanation of just what Trump is guilty of. Is indictment of any criminal activity being left to the discretion of the Trump's AG? Obstruction of justice? Helping Don, jr cover up the infamous Trump Tower meeting? There exist so many instances of Donald Trump appearing to obstruct justice with respect to the Russia meddling and all those players involved in the investigation. Russia and the Mueller investigation will continue to shadow Trump for at least as long as the full report is withheld from the public and perhaps indefinitely once all the details and evidence are released and studied by legal and Constitutional scholars. Furthermore, release of the full report will at least force Congressional Republicans to address the actual contents and findings of the report, not the imaginary rose colored GOP ones
10
This is a great analysis of the quid pro quo reached between the Russians and Trump. It was so masterfully carried out because it was carried out in plain sight. There was no need for secret meetings, exchange of information or complex spy protocols. On the Trump side it was done in front of the television cameras or in front of willing supporters, and on the Russian side it was done with a low cost campaign to stimulate the worst of American society.
Yet, it is a grave mistake to think the bargain has been concluded. Trump's ego and thirst for wealth (similar to that of his son-in-law's) is being massaged with the promise of the great business deals which may be carried out by bending American foreign policy interests. And this is also being done in plain sight. Trump's dream of a tower in Moscow is the icing on the cake which for obvious reasons cannot be done now, Kushner's injection of greatly needed capital by a middle eastern country and Ivanka's slew of patents in China are not taking place in a vacuum. These are all signs of new quid with a very visible quo. Unfortunatelly it is all being done at the expense of American long and short term interests.
20
Mueller made a huge mistake in not being willing to fight and win the battle to have the president sit down with him in person and answer questions. He would have had a series of lies being told with which to charge the president with purjury at the least. A golden missed opportunity. That alone would have been worth the price of the investigation.
8
Barr's letter to Congress confirms (once again!) that the Russians meddled to help Trump beat Clinton, which, in turn, confirms (once again!) that Trump won with the help of a foreign government that is our adversary. Collusion, or semi-collusion, or no collusion at all, this FACT alone makes Trump an illegitimate president.
And this is not a quantitative fact (Can you prove how many did the Russians sway?), but a qualitative one (I say, a million. Can one prove otherwise?)
14
This makes perfect sense. It's probably confirmed in grand jury testimony by Flynn and others where Barr can bury it. At the very least the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have full security clearance, should be able to see the complete, unredacted Mueller report. As far as the grand jury testimony is concerned, the ordinary secrecy should not apply when constitutional Congressional oversight of the Executive branch is concerned, not to mention national security--the entire Congress and the American people should be able to see the full report with only classified information redacted. Let us decide for ourselves, Mr. Barr, if you are a patriot.
9
The THOUGHT of collusion in the Trump in the Trump Tower deserves to be given a THOUGHT of punishment.
The ACTUAL buying by Hillary Clinton of the made up Russian salacious dossier should be punished with ACTUAL jail, a few decades. With furloughs around election time, so she can wreak havoc on her party's candidates.
That may take a while, but the good news is that the process is starting full blast as we speak.
2
@novoad you so funny.......
@novoad Funny thing about "made up Russian salacious dossier ", is that none of the "made up"claims have been disproved.
The FBI knew the author was reliable, they already possessed corroborating evidence to confirm some of the facts he presented. so I guess it would not be a crime after all.
Papadopoulos shooting off his mouth in London had already started things rolling regardless.
In 1993-1994, Mrs. Clinton's husband, Kissinger, and Brzezinski, started the NATO march to the Russian border. That is the biggest international fact of the last 25 years. The macho undertaking destroyed the possibility of friendship that newly democratic Russia sought, and the prospect of a permanent peace to succeed the Cold War.
Frankel is quite wedded to the continuation of this aggression toward Russia. To him, the easing of tensions would be an appeasing of Russian interests. The implication is that "our" interest is to remain caught up in our stalemated New Cold War.
Well, Trump has 18 months to go. Maybe he and Putin can work out some sort of cleaning-up of the mess Frankel's team created.
11
@alyosha You completely ignore the fact of Putin, the oligarchs, and Putin's desire for revenge for the end of the Soviet Empire in 1992.
@alyosha Are you kidding me...poor russia.
Vlad is evil, no attempts to blame Hillary will ever change the Vlad evil part.
Was it the RNC and NRA that were conspiring with the russians? Yes.
And none of it could have happened with Mitch McConnell running interference.
We want our Country back. Stop the lying.
@alyosha
Maybe they can clean it up in the Kremlin wing of the White House ? ! The back channel can be just an intercom from the Oval Office.
Go back through the last 75 years and look at how many times the Russians failed to negotiate in good faith.
Such an outpouring of support for Trump's "victory". It'll be satisfying to see the mea culpas flying when all the investigations are complete. I noticed that none of the MAGAs, in their labored defense of his treasonous actions, defined Trump as either an inspiring leader or even a competent president.
26
I have been searching four days trying to understand the no collision decision by the Special Council after seeing the strange overtures by the Trump campaign and administration to Russia.
Mr. Frankel has done a great service to the readership by viewing shenanigans of the Trump Gang through a subconscious lense.
12
The facts is that Mr. Trump is doing the bidding for Putin in the international arena. Trump's antagonizing of our Cold War allies and of NATO will fulfill one of the unrealized goals of Stalin. Putin's Russia is aiming to rebuild the USSR back to its pristine original boundaries and continue the push for world dominance. For a fistful of rubles, in the form of real estate, Trump colludes with those aims.
36
@Marcos Hardy
This must be why Trump armed the Ukrainians with antitank missiles, opposes the Russian pipeline to Germany, backed out of the Iranian deal which Russia supports and even now warns Russia to get out of Venezuela as Trump tries to overthrow Putin’s ally Maduro.
I wish Trump did try to have better relations with Russia.
1
Russia dreams about world domination? What a sin! Everybody knows only the USA should dominate the World.
1
I agree with this piece. Trump has always been an expert at being unethical while never doing anything that would land him in prison.
An open question is why he didn't cheat the Russians as he cheated others who worked for him. Did the Russians have some leverage in the form of kompromat? Unfortunately, there is no way for Mueller to find out about that. The only people who know what the Russians have on Trump are the Russians.
23
Don't forget that Trump also wanted a hotel in Moscow, according to Michael Cohen.
Trump was also trying to line up a lucrative deal for himself if he lost the election by playing nice with the Russians.
He essentially was moved by a "whatever helps me personally is good" view of public policy. I haven't seen anything quite so unseemly since Dick Cheney gave his own company the first no-contract bid of the Iraq War.
Those moves may not be illegal, but voters should know better than to elect someone who represents primarily not America but himself.
40
Trump has not been friendly to Russia.
He wanted to be, but it didn't work out that way.
The US would have been better off if we had been able to establish better relations. On that prospect, Trump was correct. Perhaps we could have settled Ukraine, and Syria, if we were not at each other's throats.
Cold War 2 is a neocon project. Trump's enemies went full neocon only partly because many of them are neocon (yes, many Dems are, see the Iraq War they supported).
It is also because they were willing to sacrifice the good of the country for hoped-for advantage in their partisan attack on Trump.
None of that proves collusion.
As for Hillary, she was opposed by Russia because she was hostile to Russia, a strongly committed neocon adventurer in the mold of Dubya.
Also, because she did the same to Russia in 2012, and Putin said at the time he was furious about it. So he took payback. Nobody should have expected any other attitude from him.
17
@Mark Thomason
"Trump has not been friendly to Russia."
Where in the world Mark has been since January 2017? Not in the real world. Trump has advanced almost every one of Putin's interests, and thereby propped Putin up at home. Trump has isolated America. Pulled America out of its international agreements. Abandoned our traditional aspirations and values, especially human rights, torture, democracy, free speech, the free press. Broken NATO. Supported the separation of the UK from NATO. Undone sanctions. Refused to apply sanctions. Castigated our own intelligence agencies. Divided America against itself. And no doubt I've forgotten another several hundred or so important things.
60
@Robert -- Relations with Russia have rarely been worse. This comment follows the meme instead of the facts of sanctions, arms, and confrontation.
3
@Mark Thomason
Starting with Trump's one and only change to 2016 RNC Party Platform On Ukraine Support; softening the RNC's stance against Russia after they invaded the Ukraine
2
Can 1 of Americas 1.34 million Attorneys explain how this quid pro quo, between a private citizen candidate and a foreign government, to remove sanctions, which I assume would be considered adversarial, does NOT violate the Logan Act.
21
Being a democrat, I have to admit made me very skeptical that Republicans deciding the fate of other Republicans for crimes would be productive. Throughout the Mueller investigation, Trump slammed the DOJ and the FBI constantly, calling them a deep state and on a witch hunt. This shows clearly that Trump intended to and did obstruct in that these untrue allegations were constantly trumpeted, especially to his devoted followers.
The Trump Tower meeting with Russians showed that the Russians were there to get the sanctions released on their oligarchs, as a result of the Mininsky act. Putin tried to punish the United States by disallowing the adoption of Russian children. There was a definite quid pro quo: US release the sanctions in exchange for dirt on Hilary Clinton (dumping 30,000 emails).
The president took part in this exchange by changing the purpose of the meeting to a meeting on adoption. Not true.
The Republicans said that Mueller determined that there wasn't evidence to support a conviction on collusion beyond a reasonable doubt. Trump attacked this investigation so often that his attacks alone constituted obstruction of justice and made collusion almost impossible.
What happened to the Israeli participant at that meeting who was an expert in the use of social media to spread misinformation?
It's a shame that this all took two years when the DOJ memorandum sunk it from the beginning. Refer it to Congress.
11
It's rather odd that an administration currently pursuing a far more hostile policy towards Russia than the previous Obama administration is accused of treasonous support for Russia, so we're a little short on quid. None of Trump's business deals that he proposed to carry out in Russia have materialized, as far as we know, so there's also a lot less quo than claimed. No evidence has been produced to show any causal connection between the Trump campaign and the hacking of Clinton's emails or the attack of the Russian bots. So what we're left with is that the Russians tried to influence the 2016 election to defeat Clinton - with, by the way, no evidence that their efforts made any difference one way or another - and that Trump really likes Putin because he's the kind of guy Trump fancies himself to be. One may seriously disagree with Trump's attitude and policies towards the Kremlin, but that's a bit short of proving treason. So after spending over 2 years stirring up Russophobia instead of trying to figure out how to correct their assorted political mistakes and their own lack of a popular program the Democrats are stuck with an emboldened Trump who can rightfully claim they have nothing on him. The Democrats were warned that pursuing this course could result in an own goal. If the 2020 election should have been the Democrats' to lose I think we can conclude they're already half-way to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
3
@john riehle
Trump never though he was going to win- all polls and the popular vote pointed otherwise. Trump was kissing Putin's asx because he figured that would grease a Trump Tower in moscow after he lost. Compared to Obama, Trump has pursued a much more benign policy towards Putin. This column is spot on. We haven't seen the Mueller report yet. Obstruction is an open question and collusion is obvious- it just wasn't a bag of cash.
12
@john riehle: I have sympathy with some of your comments, but: "So after spending over 2 years stirring up Russophobia instead of trying to figure out how to correct their assorted political mistakes and their own lack of a popular program the Democrats are stuck... The Democrats were warned that pursuing this course...". Did you forget who initiated the investigations? Hint: It wasn't the democrats; at least, not primarily, and not by themselves.
I just don't get all the complaining I hear from the right that boils down to: if an investigation didn't find any illegal activity, the investigation itself must have been wrong. Sorry, an investigation is just that—an *investigation*. There were plenty of reasons to be suspicious, enough to justify the investigation in the minds of many *republicans* who in fact set it in motion. I shared the suspicions, but suspected from the start that there would be no evidence of conspiracy between Trump himself and the Russians. I mean, if you were in their shoes and wanted to influence the election, is he the kind of person you would trust with your plans? The investigation seems to me to have been an ovewhelming success, and worth every day and every penny: look at all the crooks who have been convicted or indicted.
7
@john riehle You may have missed it - Republicans held all the levers of government from Trump's inauguration to the start of the current Congress in January. The Democrats "lack of a popular program" resulted in 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016 and the largest domination of the House election since Watergate.
There is no "own goal" because Democrats run the House. They will continue to offer positive proposals to improve the country while Trump and his minions try to take health care from 20 million people.
8
Reliance on Muller delivering grounds for impeachment was misguided from the beginning. Wishful thinking to avoid reckoning with what made Trump appealing to a large enough part of the electorate. (So he didn't win the popular vote? No candidate has to under the current system.) The outcome has delivered Trump a short-term victory and ammunition to beat up on his opponents for the alleged witch hunt. (Never mind the indictments and convictions.) A great opportunity for further distraction. Is the timing of the announcement to call on the courts to kill Obamacare (with objectively undesirable results for most Americans) completely coincidental? Did anyone think about this possible outcome? Whatever. Newsflash: Dems better muster up a candidate who can win an election in 2020.
6
@Enough Already
I guess this will be cited by our "intelligence community" as more evidence of interference in our politics from Russia.
This analysis is absolutely consistent with everything that has been documented, known to be true, and is understood by millions upon millions of Americans who will not tolerate anything less than the truth.
Please be mindful of that, Attorney General Barr.
16
We must see the Mueller report, and we must see DT's tax returns. No two ways about this.
21
If the past several years represented the first few chapters of a John Le Carrie novel, readers would have discovered the plot early on and the climax could be predicted easily. The US President was compromised by the Russians. Every American knows this and certainly the truth would bring down the President quickly either by the courts or by impeachment. Le Carre is clever though, and the surprise factor in this novel is that the President, a truly self centered unbalanced thug, has gained full control over his political party and the justice Department. The real drama begins as the President tries to consolidate power through executive orders and a total disregard to Constitutional norms. The only hope America has is the 2020 election. Meanwhile, the President, a truly ignorant and intellectually incompetent man stumbles daily in his effort to destroy everything that defines America: decency, morality, honesty, and fair play. Can we make it to 2020?
25
This is a long established Republican tradition of quid pro quo that borders on treason.
Nixon's overtures and interference with the peace talks in 1968.
Reagan in bed with Iranians during the 1980 campaign.
It's a Republican value to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.
Would Kim or Putin disagree?
16
@Lawrence And so many of the junior Nixon team still at it.
Don't forget the corruption of the Courts with Federalist movement (Judicial activism was replaced by Judicial Arrogance); and the birth of fox-fake-news.
Corrupt to the core of their very beings.
1
Democrats have had a few days now to think things over and they're getting creative. They bet all their chips on Mueller as a highly qualified straight-shooter, which he turned out to be, but then when he said there was no collusion that put them in a corner--how to get out? Easy, say he was trapped into investigating the wrong thing. It wasn't covert collusion after all, it was overt collusion. You know, the legal kind, open discussion of foreign policy options in a presidential election campaign. Invisible before because it was so out in the open, it's now, 3 years later, plain as the nose on your face. The fact that supposed foreign policy deals were not struck between Mr. Trump and the Russians doesn't matter, they could have been. Proof? Never mind about that, you can see the handwriting on the wall, can't you? Well, can't you? Give it up Dems, you just keep digging yourselves into a deeper hole.
1
@Ronald B. Duke
There is premature elation among many people that the threads have all been tied together and the verdict is in.
IT IS NOT. The jury is still out. In particular it was noted, today, that a grand jury convened by the Mueller team continues robustly in Washington DC.
There are many things going on that we cannot know yet. Whatever the status of all the parts of the investigation and despite Special Counsel's conclusion, the House should continue to investigate.
Mr Trump does not get a pass because he chooses to collude and OBSTRUCT in plain sight. I prefer to believe my eyes and ears. His words and actions convict him.
7
@Ronald B. Duke Truth moves slow ronnie, but it won't get stuck in the slim of republican propaganda.
Shouting nonsense, is still nonsense.
"Mr. Flynn especially had to lie because though already in transition to power he was directly undermining Mr. Obama’s still active and punitive diplomacy against Mr. Putin"is that not treason? Or do we soft pedal?
11
Exactly-lots of cooperation but no collusion.It makes Americans very angry when their enemies are given a warm welcome by a candidate for president. No wonder everyone lied-they turned their backs on the United States and exchanged money and motives with a country which is no friend of ours.
13
Let's give Trump some credit for pulling a fast one on Putin. Perhaps Trump received a " quid ", but Putin certainly didn't receive a " quo ". Maybe he should have read " The Art Of The Deal ".
2
It may well be, I do think it is worth considering, that Donald Trump, with his character and behavioral problems, (whether or not he affected collusion with Russia), that Donald Trump is one of the ways V. Putin has been successful in attacking and continues to be successful in attacking us and undermining our America.
9
Mueller needs to publicly answer two questions. First, is it true that Manafort gave Republican polling data to the Ukrainian oligarch Kilimnik? (Republican polling data would include details of what voters the campaign was targeting and what issues that subset of voters responded to. Further Kilimnik is alleged to have close ties with Putin). If that is true, then an explanation is required as to why that is not evidence of coordination?
18
As students of antitrust law will know, oligopoly behavior does not require direct communication, let alone collusion. If everyone knows who the other players are and what they want or need, each side can independently decipher what the right moves are and make them accordingly.
Beyond Trump and Russia, oligopoly is also what makes the campaign finance system work. Huge political donations from corporations and their lobbyists are followed up by "position papers" and legislative drafts on key topics. No need for unseemly bribes. The politician knows what the donor wants and knows that more money will be forthcoming only if he or she is accommodating.
If it is legal for a member of Congress to do this dance with corporate interests, then why not Trump and Russia?
10
It sure sounds like collusion to me. Maybe not in the legal sense but politically, yes, it was collusion. It will be interesting to see if this is in Mueller's final report. We will know soon enough.
11
The rules of evidence are exact and frustrating. Mueller, an old FBI hand knows them well. You need documents; you need corroboration. If you show up without them, you will lose the case.
The rules of evidence don't include the sniff test, the quacks like a duck test, or even the appearance of impropriety test – all of which we have been applying to our assessment of Donald Trump and his walk through the halls of power.
The rules of evidence are constructed to protect the wealthy and the powerful. Mastery of them is what makes expensive lawyers so expensive.
There were no serious consequences for Iran Contra.
There were no serious consequences for the sub-prime debacle.
Misconduct of presidents and their donor/masters typically go unpunished, and those of us in the community of the powerless are left with "what ifs" and conspiracy theories. There are undoubtedly still some of us who will go to our graves believing that the Warren Report was part of the cover up.
Meanwhile, the new tax law is intact.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is being filled with incompetent apparatchiks.
Meanwhile, affordable healthcare is being branded a Socialist plot.
The air is fouled, the rivers are polluted, the ice is melting.
The Trump rallying cry for 2020: We will build the wall, and your Social Security checks will pay for it.
39
@michaeltide
The time to criticize the process or game rules is BEFORE the verdict is in or the game is played. As a Bernie supporter, I saw that the nomination process was rigged. But I criticized it DURING the process (and these nomination processes are the only game in town, in our two-party system.)
3
How can the Trump campaign, via its chairman, Paul Manafort, pass specific polling data to the Kremlin and not be culpable of collusion?
25
Why would be specific polling data a secret?
There has been for a very long time a federal criminal statute which at least in part addresses the problem dealt with by the author: The Logan Act, which essentially outlaws the active making of US foreign policy by persons not a part of our federal Government. Candidate Trump was certainly not the first presidential candidate who improperly (if not unlawfully) actively engaged in making US foreign policy before his election as President -- Nixon did it in 1968, in concert with North Vietnam; and Reagan did it again in 1980, in concert with Iran. I wonder if the Mueller Report contains any discussion of whether and/or to what extent Mueller considered a possible Logan Act violation. In any event, the House has an obligation to consider a possible Logan Act violation by candidate Trump, as well as a long-overdue Congressional review of the Logan Act and how it may need amendment to make sure that its plain purpose can and should be effectively enforced by our Government. If, as numerous legal "experts" have told us that the Logan Act is practically unenforceable, there is no excuse for leaving such a defective criminal statute unamended.
20
@richard young The Logan Act has never been used to prosecute anyone, and is most likely unconstitutional. Citing to the Logan Act is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
Seriously, do you think the Russians would trust Trump with information on strategy or want to include him in planning? His value is in chaos, and so it is reasonable that the plan was devised to execute independently. Perhaps that was the real outcome of the Trump Tower meeting: best to leave them out of the loop.
9
The infuriating and shocking aspect of the verdict so far, is learning that:
It is legal for a President-elect to encourage longtime adversaries to meddle in our elections to benefit yourself.
It is legal for a President to hold secret meetings with adversaries and then lie about such meetings to the American public.
It is legal for a President to bypass all our National Security and give a security clearance to a family member who attempted a secret backchannel to Russia, has compromising businesses worldwide, and has ties to a corrupt Saudi leader.
It is legal for a President to dismiss our own National Security advisors, take advice from adversaries instead, and say so to the American public.
It is legal for a President to lie, repeatedly, to the American public about every issue confronting this nation.
With a President like this, who needs enemies?
94
@SLBvt
That the things enumerated are legal does not follow from what AG Barr said.
What does follow is that the evidenced adduced by Mr Mueller's team, in the AG's opinion, will not prove criminality by the applicable standard, viz., beyond a reasonable doubt.
The better description is that criminality of these items, to the AG, does not appear provable.
But there is no prescribed standard for impeachability.
What might that standard turn out to be if it is assumed such standard will ultimately be offered, challenged and adopted by SCOTUS?
It could be proof by one of the other standards in non-criminal actions at law, viz., a preponderance of the evidence. No way to know what the AG would conclude based on the Mueller evidence which he found doesn't/wouldn't meet the criminal standard.
In any event as to legalisms, the enumerated items in this comment do self-evidently prove reprehensibility on the part of PT; in this observer's view.
6
@SLBvt
Your list is correct and could continue for a few more pages. We should all be shocked and infuriated at what we have learned about what a President can do that is not illegal.
Michal Kinsley said it best, "The scandal is not what is illegal, the scandal is what is legal."
4
Russia is a third rate economic power but a first rate military threat, especially to the former Soviet sphere. Russia is a competitor of the US in both energy and arms exports.
So the Trump "pivot to Russia" makes no sense unless you consider the primary Trump foreign policy goal of disrupting American alliances and international organizations we have traditionally led, in the interest of "America First".
The world is divided between rules-based countries and power-based countries. Prior to Trump, the US led the rules-based countries, with values for human rights, territorial integrity and mutual economic and security interests, which brought more than a billion people out of poverty.
Trump has now aligned the US with the power-based countries, like China and Russia. If this new alignment remains beyond 2020, a global power free-for-all is likely. Most of the Pacific nations will have to fear Chinese hegemony, many Eurasian nations will be squeezed between Russia and China and Central and South America may see a return to US intervention, all accelerated by climate change.
If you are old to remember the bloody post-colonial struggles of the second half of the 20th century, you may yet see these horrors revisit our world.
15
@Look Ahead The US has long been more a power-based than rules-based country. The rules basis was a relatively brief idyll from @1932-1980, and it was only relative - there were serious chipping-away moves with FDR and JFK and a solid deep state undercurrent of lawlessness in service to the increasingly stateless oligarchs. And, really, nations are now just vehicles to structure stateless alliances constantly shifting in response to the flow of fortunes and power. A soup of evil.
@Look Ahead you're correct. It makes sense for Trump himself to deal with Russia who has been his personal willing partner for sometime. We can't extrapolate Trump's policy as being in the US interests. That's the problem with his fooling the working class to get elected. They got suckered.
I would like to know about the mysterious and abrupt change that was made to the Republican platform during their 2016 convention. It reversed plans to provide military equipment to Ukraine. Did Mueller find out who was responsible for that sudden switch and why it was made? A majority of Americans still believe that Trump was complicit with Russia in its attempt to defeat Hillary Clinton. Robert Mueller notwithstanding, the American people know collusion when they see it.
39
Didn't the majority of Americans believe that Iraq had WMD? Seems to me, reality is often not what the majority thinks
@Whole Grains Right, and lets not forget what else was happening around this time: Russian Soldiers (with their IDs suppressed) 'vacationing' with their AK47s in eastern Ukraine during this period, shooting local Ukrainian soldiers, and "maybe-probably" shooting down a civilian airliner..and the Magnitsky Act response to Bill Browder's experience with 'justice in Russia"...as well as seizing Crimea....Despite the Obama moves to 'renormalize' relations with Russia, somehow Putin did not get the memo, and remained a bad actor for years and years...and rightly, the US congress acted with sanctions....So why did Trump want to make nice with this despot?
The Democrats should try to verify every assertion in this article, using the Mueller report. For if every assertion is true, it paints a picture of a man unfit to be President. The report should clarify the exact role of everyone from Flynn to Cohen.
For this reason, Barr will seek to hold back as much of the report as he can. We must think of Barr as Trump's defense attorney; I call him Rudolph Barr. This being the case, the Democrats are justified in being utterly ruthless in their drive to pry out as much of the report at they can. The American people demand it.
33
@Chasethebear I don't understand 'Rudolph', Chase: can you explain?
I could understand Roseanne Barr: rabid pro-Trumpite...
Explanations can be so simple, yet explain so much: hiding in plain sight. Trump made the devil’s bargain in secret and guarantees it in public.
28
@Susan "Hiding in plain sight"? Where ya been Susan?
I'd like to know more about how much relief Trump has given to the Russians. And I'd like an accounting of all of the ways in which Trump has gone against the Russians and why. And I'd like to know if there was ever a promise of a real estate deal in Russia after Trump leaves office. And I'd like to know more about the intentions of the Russians. Are they out to help themselves. Are they out to weaken us. A mix of both?
So many questions. I'd say, as of know, this is merely a theory. Yet it's written as if it were fact. We need some more meat on these bones before I'll buy it.
1
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you Max Frankel. Someone finally putting all these things together in a cohesive article that clearly shows collusion, not with the election interference and maybe not criminal but clearly evident collusion. As for Matt Gaetz and Kellyanne Conway calling for Schiff to resign for supposedly lying about collusion, he did NOT lie but told the truth about the evidence he saw. Yet, we know who DID lie again and again, with over 100 contacts with Russia and plans for a tower in Moscow, and meetings in Trump tower and to turn over polling data. The Trump administration, the most corrupt in American history, began by stating they had no deals or contacts with Russia and they lied on security clearances, in interviews, before Congress and the FBI. If Gaetz and Conway are concerned about lying, they should look at the President and his administration and as to the reasons for the investigation, there were an abundance of reasons to be suspicious and still are, especially when your President before the world took Putin's word over his own intelligence. How can any American support a president who cares more about his own interests than he does about the majority of the American people? He appeals to the worst in us to gain the most for himself and his billionaire cabinet and corporate friends. Justice still needs to be served. The day of reckoning will come.
68
@GraceNeeded
You make good points. Yes, Justice still needs to be served. ....And somehow, no matter how it seems right now, I do believe the day of reckoning will come.
1
James Comey in his interview with Lester Holt revealed that he cannot understand why Mueller did not make a decision about Trump’s obstruction of justice as well as stating that there may be more evidence regarding the Russian connection that was not allowed in Mueller’s narrow threshold.
Democrats should call upon Mueller to speak at open congressional hearings as well as have Barr explain his findings.
If the country is ever to move forward, it won’t do so by changing the discussion to Trump’s choice of distraction health and education, but by having straight answers to the investigation that took two years and millions of dollars of our money.
We want the truth, and we’ve waited long enough to find it out.
No more gloating from McConnell, DeVos, and Trump.
If Adam Schiff is pencil necked, then Trump is dilophosaurus-necked with his threats against elected officials and award winning journalists.
Enough with making hit lists of his enemies. Time for the Mueller report to be released.
48
It's a bit of stretch to say Trump has "otherwise appeased Russian interests" when we bombed targets they didn't want us to in Syria and sold arms to the Crimeans. I certainly think there was some connection with the campaign and Russia and an attempt to influence, but you must account for all the facts before you make assumptions like these.
6
@Steinbeck Reefs We did not sell arms to the "Crimeans." We sold a limited number to the Ukrainians so that they could fight off the Russian in Donetsk and Luhansk. This deal was done at the urging of Trump's nemesis, Sen. McCain.
9
@Steinbeck Reefs Trump had an out of the way, insignificant airport bombed--and for some reason the bombs missed the runway--the next day after the old planes that were already in the plane cemetery as they were not flyable were removed--the airport reopened. It was a sham of a mission --just like all the other cons from Don. It's the Trump base who have been brain washed and gas lighted by this lying POTUS and his swamp.
"Run down the known facts about the communications between Russians and the Trump campaign and their deal reveals itself. Perhaps, somewhere along the line, Russians also reminded the Trump family of their helpful cooperation with his past financial ventures."
If true, Mr. Frankel, why didn't you bring it to the attention of the Special Counsel?
20
The special counsel knows all this and it’s probably laid out in his report. But it’s difficult to prosecute except for those who lie to the FBI.
"The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy."
Yes, they did. Everybody's aims were clear. Given that, neither of Mr. Mueller's criteria for conspiracy, as reported by the extremist partisan Mr. Barr, were ever likely to be satisfied. No formal agreement was needed between the Trump campaign and Russia. And no evidence of knowingly conspiring would ever needed to be produced. It was--in the everyday sense of the words--collusion and betrayal. I and many others like me, of all political persuasions, gave Mr. Mueller a generous measure of our trust, which he failed to repay in any way. It is altogether inexplicable that he did not seek to question the principal target Mr. Trump. It is negligent that he left the decision on obstruction to Barr whose views everyone was aware of--unless Mueller intended something very different, e.g., perhaps he intended to let Congress make the decision. In order for our democracy to function, Americans have faith in their government and its institutions. As things stand now, Mueller, Barr, et al. have furthered the desired Trump outcome of destroying that faith.
50
Finally. Someone is writing what is closer to the truth and more important. It's a start. Thank you, Mr. Frankel. Keep going. There is more.
52
When both sides of a deal, rather than money changing hands between them, conspire to profit at others' expense, that is still a conspiracy.
If two or more companies which are industry competitors conspire to fix prices among themselves, no money changes hands among the companies, but they are each stealing from their customers, and that's illegal.
When it happens at the country level, and the beneficiaries are partisan, as opposed to the overall countries involved, that's treason.
Some Fake.A.G. spinning it otherwise changes nothing.
43
We actually don't know anything that Mueller actually said. And to top it off, it was not clear, at least to me, that he wasn't an independent council. Obviously, Mueller shouldn't have been reporting to a person selected by the criminal in chief himself. What real value could he provide in those conditions?
27
@Kristin Mueller was definitely not an independent council. He was a special council working under the authority of the justice department. First under Rosenstein when Sessions recused himself and then under Barr. Barr had already written a memo indicating that he did not believe the President could be charged with obstruction.
10
Thank you, Mr. Frankel, for laying this out so clearly and cogently. The other commenters here agree. If the quid pro quo is so obvious, and it is, why did it escape Mueller? It seems like a copout. Until we see the entire report verbatim, we won’t see why Mueller came to the conclusions he did.
Trump is now behaving like a caged lion set free. Not a pretty sight for those Americans who now have to worry about their health care because he wants revenge any way he can get it.
72
Without the release of Mueller's report, we do not know what was said or how it was said. Everyone is spinning--figuratively and literally.
There is little reason to trust Barr's short summary. I doubt he would lie, but he would obfuscate and dissemble. No matter his prior level of respect as a legal practitioner, he is now tainted.
62
@JSK or as Wilson put it in his book title" Everything Trump Touches Dies" - and that includes reputations.
1
@JSK
Or as Richard Blumenthal said of Barr agreeing to be AG: “The bed was on fire when he laid down on it.”
1
so Trump's AG is asking us to believe
that every researched news report, every court filing by Mueller's team, every indictment and every word of testimony from Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, Session et al. never happened?
so Trump's AG is asking us to believe
that Trump's clear and documented obstruction of justice wasn't really obstruction because there wasn't sufficient evidence to support a claim of coordination with Russia to subvert our elections?
if there was no collusion why did so many of Trump's intimate and Trump himself repeatedly lie?
what motivates an innocent man to compulsively lie other than certain knowledge that he is not an innocent man but a guilty man getting away with it.
Trump's life—going back to his being sent away to reform school as a thirteen year old—has been that of a guilty man getting away with it.
67
@ebmem You've got as many lies in six paragraphs as Trump tells in an hour. And a serious case of false equivalency.
Mr. Frankel, I think you've gotten it exactly right. Sometimes the truth is hidden in plain sight. Those tax returns on the other hand.....
49
Mr. Frankel needs to be more specific about how President Trump has "watered down" the sanctions. With the exception of two oligarchs, the sanctions are still in place. In addition, President Trump's policy actions toward Russia have been every bit as harsh as those of President Obama. The Trump administration has stepped up NATO deployments in eastern Europe, has stepped up hostile air and sea patrols in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, and massacred a battalion of Russian infantry last February in Syria -- something I'm not sure Obama would have had the guts to do.
15
@James Ribe They killed Russian mercenaries that were among Syrian troops. In self defense, not a planned op. Hardly the same thing.
The rest of it is biz as usual. What isn't biz as usual are the Trump-Putin meetings. What isn't biz as usual is Trump publicly asking Russia for help in hack Clinton e mail. And so on...look it up.
@James Ribe
The Trump Administration has been very tough on Russia. His critics see nothing but the absence of a public spanking.
@James Ribe:
If, as you say the "trump administration [...] massacred a battalion of Russian infantry last February in Syria"... it would have been in headlines internationally. Since no such headlines exist, the then you must be mistaken. I would contend your other "facts" are also from dubious sources.
If you trust your sources, please cite them. We'll know your story is false if you learned of it from Breitbart or similar ilk.
This is infact a core argument about Trump -Russia relationship.
We should not forget , so far Trump is giving a lot to Russia, Sanctions relief, Crimean annexation approval ( Golan annexation Approval), Suppressing Allies reaction towards Russia, Giving Syria to Russia, Let see what Russians are going to give Trump family. this is a future oriented deal, while he is in office Russians will not pay anything, but when he leave the WH, Russian eventually fulfill their side of obligations. Getting elected in presidency is half of the payment.
For what I am watching is In long run what CIA and FBI actions towards Russians and Trump family.
12
@su
Obama gave Syria to Russia, Trump has been taking it back.
Obama refused to sell Ukraine weapons when Russia invaded, Trump did sell weapons to Ukraine. Trump is attempting to persuade Germany to buy natural gas from the US rather than supporting a pipeline from Russia to wean their dependence on Russian energy.
Russians paid the Clintons before the election, and had no reason to believe they would not continue the Russian reset and appeasement policy of Obama. The premise of this article is that the Russians paid off Trump by fixing the election and he would repay by taking an even better appeasement policy toward Russia. The benefits to Russia have not happened.
You seem to be conceding that fixing the election was not the quid, but rather some hypothetical future payoff is due. It seems doubtful the Russians will pay off in the future, since they haven't gotten the quo.
1
Has anyone considered that Trump needed Putin help in dealing with China North Korea and Syria knowing full well Putin's character. This Witch Hunt could well have been instrumental in Russia and China having their first ever joint military maneuvers and Russia now assisting North Korea evade sanctions. this was a serious foreign policy consideration. at the time China was militarizing the South China Sea, Korea was testing nukes and firing missiles. Anyone with rudimentary understanding of geography can see that Confronting North Korea and China has a better chance of succeeding with tacit Putin support than facing all three cooperating in unison.
This Witch Hunt has made it impossible for Trump to deal with Putin potentially having serious geopolitical consequences.
3
@Lane
Right. We are supposed to believe that Trump, who doesn't even listen to our intelligence services, who disrespects them at every turn, who lies daily and doesn't attend briefings, and who doesn't study or read, and who spends his time golfing and watching FOX and twittering, understands the fine points of foreign policy.
I don't think so.
6
@Lane
Trump has never shown himself to be such a grand thinker. His usual thinking is how it benefits himself. To think about such things in advance, he would need to actually study the briefings he is given and not just the pretty pics of himself. His advisors keep saying he only wants 1 page double space briefings, nothing detailed and it must have something about himself in it. Otherwise he doesn't pay attention.
5
@Lane. You would have a point except when Obama uttered the word “flexibility” for the same reason, Republicans screamed like banshees as if he were some traitorous hypocrite. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.
This article is trying to make the case that Russia helped to defeat HRC so Trump Admin can start a new pro-Russian foreign policy and to forge a warm relationship with Kremlin. I don't know what planet the author has been living on, but here is what I've noted that the Trump Admin has done so far.
Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia for violating nonproliferation laws in Iran, Syria and North Korea. Trump has also issued more sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its continuing occupation of Crimea. Trump supplied Ukraine with weapons so it could defend itself against Russian attacks. Trump expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers and ordered multiple Russian consulates to close after Russia used a military-grade chemical weapon in the U.K. Trump blocked Russian’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia if it goes ahead. Trump has explicitly opposed the Maduro government in Venezuela being propped up by Russia. All of these tough actions have weakened Russia in the world stage and damaged their economy. So, no, I don't think Trump has been good for Russia. Russia may be waiting for another big red button to reset the relationship like the one from HRC, but I think they'll be waiting a long time.
15
@Chat Cannelle
Actually it was congress that passed the sanctions with a veto proof vote. And trump has ignored implementing many of the sanctions that congress passed. So if he doesn't implement them, he is watering them down.
21
@Chat Cannelle Trump has been very good to Russia--he still has not implemented all of the sanctions, he has ripped up the INF agreement, got rid of the nuclear arms race, has secret meetings with Putin with no official note taker, asked for the interpreter's notes so that he could destroy them, believed Putin over the US intelligence agencies--he saw no reason to believe Putin wasn't telling the truth, has withdrawn troops from Syria--now Russia is taking the lead and the US has no more leverage in that country and there is still more that I have not listed.
9
@Chat Cannelle
If only the "Journalist" that wrote the article included the facts you did as well as noting Trump stood up to Syria, Russia's values allie after the use of Chmical weapons, and that our military killed 200 Russian Mercenaries in Syria.
I am thankful for the few voices in the comments section of the NYT as a whole that point out the obvious omissions. There are none blinder than those who will not see and sadly I fear there are many who only see what they want to.
1
Thank-you Mr. Frankel for the simple truth. I emitted a deep sigh when I finished reading your analysis. So many compromised (many of them quite intelligent) human beings who traded in ego and greed. One of the compromised, Michael Cohen, said it all at the end of his House public (and this time truthful) testimony - those who lie for him will suffer.
37
You are exactly right, Mr. Franken. But I continue to believe it went further than that based on Mr. Trump's very public statement to Russia: "Russia if you are listening, we need Hillary's emails." He then added that if they find the emails they would be rewarded "by the press." We knew he did not mean that they would be rewarded by the press. We knew he meant he would reward them. It was so obvious, and I continue to believe it was a conspiracy, because that very night Russia broke into the DNC computers, taking a step in furtherance of the crime. Indeed, committing a crime itself by breaking into those computers.
57
@Barbara Strong: Russia had probably broken into Democratic computers weeks or months before Mr. Trump's request. They just chose to release the e-mails to honor his request. As I recall, the material in the e-mails didn't do much to hurt Ms. Clinton's campaign. She created most of her problems by ignoring the Midwestern voters.
9
@Bearded One
She won the popular vote. And hurt to Ms Clinton or not as you believe, it matters the Russia is trying to influence our votes.
38
@Mary Elizabeth
She did not win a majority of the popular vote and she lost the electoral vote, where Trump won the majority. She won a plurality in 20 states plus DC that contain 44% of the population. Trump won a plurality in 30 states that contain 56% of the population.
The Russian intent was to undermine democracy in America and to make it more difficult for Hillary to govern, once it was known how corrupt the Democrat nomination process is. The Russians adored Obama energy policy, which maximized Russian revenues by keeping oil prices high, along with the "Russian reset" of Hillary/Obama which took an appeasement policy toward Russian aggression.
The Russians did not get their preferred candidate, Hillary. They did win in that people like you have bought into the biased editorials that create the pretense they were helping Trump. The NYT and Democrats have been acting to undermine faith in American government, in accordance with Putin's wishes. They cannot believe that all of the dark money Hillary spent was not sufficient to buy her the presidency.
This is what is so maddening. It’s not like nothing was going on. Quite obviously, a tremendous amount was, so clearly that only those who willfully deaden their senses would fail to be aware of it. Using my lay understanding of the word, I think it even rises to the “coordination” standard, or at least to a level warranting consideration of impeachment. Others argue differently, which is why we need to know as much as possible, as soon as possible. The special counsel’s report must be made public. They are the facts, impartially gathered. Attorney General Barr should know by now the questions will not simply vanish because he deems them unworthy. They will fester, to the detriment of Mr. Trump’s political future but, much more significantly, to the cohesiveness of America, and to the manner the nations of the world interact with each other.
65
@Alan
It was illegal for Hillary to purchase intelligence from foreign agents, particularly those that were hostile to Trump. The fact that the purchase of the Steele dossier was illegal is the reason why Hillary fraudulently reported the purchase as legal fees to the FEC. The FEC would have been obligated to report the illegal election spending. She bought fake information from foreign agents.
Obama used the data to induce FISA courts to spy on his political opponents, not on the Russians. None of the recorded conversations indicated improper conversations on the part of any American, and yet, the Americans were illegally unmasked and leaked to the Press by political operatives for partisan purposes of influencing the election.
Obama, Hillary and members of the executive branch violated the law and their government authority to undermine a political opponent.
What is not going to be released from the Mueller report is the details of criminal violations on the part of the deep state. A professional Justice Department and FBI do not reveal that they are conducting a criminal violation. If they do not find sufficient evidence to indict, they remain silent if they close without an indictment. They do not exonerate someone, as they attempted with Hillary. The Comey report .on Hillary not being prosecuted was an improper political act.
There will be a September 2000 surprise. The shock of the February indictments will be reinforced by the September convictions.
Makes perfect sense. Again out in the open, in plain sight.
And yet. Like many, I can't get over how it appears the Robert Mueller was timid, as if he almost feared Trump in the Age of Partisanship. He couldn't be bothered to do the hard work of pursuing a live conversation, because he let it wouldn't be worth it.
But wouldn't his taking the 5th reveal more about Donald Trump's "intent" than any decision not to do so? After all, intent and state of mind are essential for an obstruction of justice indictment, and Mueller couldn't "conclude" beyond the shadow of a doubt without the interview.
We all know what we've heard and seen over the past three years. Nut if the quid pro quo was election help in return for sanctions help, well, when did these deals get made?
Well, all those secret conversations with Putin or his emissaries, might just be how and when these deals were made.
49
Max Frankel is absolutely right. The leaders of the two countries made a deal, and I hope Mr Frankel will write the sequel; who first called the deal a collusion - and why did so many people agree.
24
Most likely the truth.
The real question is why is America so obsessed by the fact that another country attempted to affect American politics, when every single day, America attempts to affect the politics of other countries?
Good for them but not us?
11
@Jamie Hill not all americans are on board with that setup jamie. Id be willing to bet the majority cringe each time we see efforts to interfere in other governments affairs to our advantage and the disadvantage of their citizens. It seems under the current. Admin the greed has gotten worse and our voices have gotten harder to hear. But theres a new day dawning and a lie cant live forever.
11
@Jamie Hill
We do a lot of things to adversarial countries that we should not do to our own citizens. Why don't you examine why your political beliefs align so closely with Russian Propaganda? Why so Americans dismiss this attack on our elections is beyond me.
@Jamie Hill
Venezuela, anybody?
My biggest problem with Trump exclaiming 'total exoneration' and taking Fred and Ginger quick steps to celebrate is his behavior and statements before and after the Mueller Report. If I had been in his shoes I would have offered to sit down anywhere anytime with Mueller or whomever at their convenience to answer any and all questions without legal counsel. They could bring anything and anyone to the meeting or meetings, as needed, absolutely no preconditions. I would have supported whatever I could do to help accommodate Mueller and his team in reaching their conclusions and an end to the time and expense of the investigation. For me being confrontational and defensive would be pointless and without merit.
31
Agree! If it were me under suspicion, and I was innocent no one could keep me from sitting down with Mueller!
20
Thank you for this truly excellent analysis. I simply can't believe how terribly the denouement of the Mueller report has turned out. Who would have thought that it could all get turned around and the media attacked further? How far down is this situation going to go?
71
It is hard to tell if there was an agreement between Trump and Russia but it does seem to be the case that Trump is in effect working in the self-interest of Russia when it comes to undermining US liberal democracy and weakening NATO and the EU. It has been speculated that the Russians identified Trump as a possible presidential candidate several years ago and then compromised him by rescuing his financial empire when he could no longer obtain loans anywhere else. It appears that Trump and several people he has associated with have made fortunes by selling out to the Russians. Russia has been run by ex-KGB people including Putin and they are experts at identifying people's weaknesses and figuring out how to compromise them so they can get what they want. That appears to be how Russia works. So far since Trump was elected everything has been going Russia's way. The US is losing influence in the world and Russia is gaining influence, even with a weak economy and very limited military. And that is the end game for Russia.
44
@Bob. "It has been speculated ..." After 2 years, this continues to be the basis of the NYT editorials. In this piece ot is: "perhaps, perhaps". Perhaps all this factless speculation has done great harm to the country and should be ceased.
@Bob Yes, Putin et al knew a greedy mark when they saw pmr - they have been grooming him for years. Their Manchurian candidate won. Just follow the money, and you will have all the answers. Just as in Watergate.
1
This is the best summary of what the facts are and logical conclusion they point to. In their rush to impeach Trump, the Dems overreached, handing Trump an unexpected victory.
4
@GeorgeAmerica. It is not any more logical than the case Trump supporters can make showing Trump has been tough on Russia. It is ALLLL just speculation.
13
@GeorgeAmerica
The Democrats had nothing to do with Mr. Mueller's investigation. Mueller was a republican, as was Mr. Rosenstein. After the election, Ms. Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders made a point of not calling for impeachment.
1
@GeorgeAmerica:
Regarging "handing trump a [...] victory" -- where did trump get a victory? Perhaps in some peoples' minds, trump's bloviating exhortation of "EXONERATED" rings true.
Those who have spent time with hardened liars know their behavior, even when they are caught... oh how they continue to lie.
This isn't over. Not until Mueller's report is released - and then trump's face will turn from is usual shade of orange to one of fiery-hot red.
Trump obviously saw there was no need for "smoking gun" secret coordination when both he and Putin clearly saw their common interests.
And it can't be denied that with Trump's otherwise unaccountable deference to Russia he can now look forward to huge business in Russia after leaving office.
Note that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause (that Trump flouts) was supposed to block such motivations.
38
Mueller and Bar hand the Republicans and Trump a tactical victory. But this is not over. Our democracy demands strategic satisfaction. And that is on the House. And I am sick of people using the "but Obama" defense.
26
@Robert Hodge: what makes you believe there's a "victory" fo trump?
Perhaps you believe Barr's version of the Mueller report? It's likely that Barr's letter was meant to (and does) mislead us about what the report contains. That's why trump chose Barr as his AG -- because Barr had previously defended trump and railed against the Mueller/special counsel investigation.
There's no "victory" for trump of his dopplegangers -- the truth will come out.
5
Exactly!
Quoting the subhead:
"The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy."
That sounds like a fine outcome to me. Too bad the second prong fell through. A disappointing but predictable bipartisan congressional furor, backed by think tanks and pundits, did it in. That broad-based effort was incidentally helped along by a modest level of Russian malfeasance.
But it's understandable. Without sizable state-level enemies, how would the legislative-military-industrial complex sustain itself? Even Iran isn't quite big enough. We need endless hostility toward Russia and China. Many jobs depend on it.
And no, I'm not writing from the Internet Research Agency's facilities. :-)
9
@Cyclist
I can't agree. Right now, pro-Russian means agreeing with the invasion of Ukrainian territory, gangster oligarchs destabilizing western democracy, and a flat out plan to destroy American democracy. Under those terms, no way.
Trump campaigned on the theme: Would it not be a good thing if America got along better with Russia? There was no secret that Trump would Not follow the Obama model. Trump did not however warn Americans that he would bow before Putin. That he would accept as gospel Putin’s explanations or denials. That he actively pursued a Trump tower in Moscow during the campaign. No collusion so found. Far too cosy. For sure.
26
@Milton Lewis -- Hillary Clinton warned people though: she specifically said in the debates that Trump would be a Putin puppet. If not criminally coordinated, then just out of sheer incompetence, this at least seems to have proven to be the case.
Well, of course. There is no need to interfere in an election if you can be assured that both candidates will treat you the same, and neither is advantageous.
So of course the Russians interfered to get Trump, who is friendly, and not Clinton; and of course there was no need for a conspiracy, because the Russians could figure this out on their own. The Trump campaign just sort of buried their knowledge that they were benefiting from a hostile foreign power, most likely because they decided that Putin isn't hostile - to them.
The question was always how involved the Trump campaign was in being cooperative; how much they knew; and how much individually people profited from the relationship personally which opened the door to being paid by a foreign power for policy decisions and direction. And frankly how little they would do after the election to make sure that no foreign power has that much propaganda control again.
The whole episode was corrupt and a travesty of democracy. That doesn't mean you can prove conspiracy.
The Trump Administration is an ethical cesspool. There's no conspiracy - all of it is right out there in our faces being ignored by voters and Senators like Lindsay Graham who like being part of the In Club.
77
The Russian interference helped Trump but only because he was the opposing candidate. Trump benefited but did not work with the Russians. Just as the Russians decided to help the Brexiteers. They are just taking advantage of opportunities to disrupt the western political system. Social media has given them an inexpensive way to influence the normal chaos of democratic institutions. It is the new normal.
12
Congress, as an institution, was intended by the framers to respond to situations like this. The term "high crimes and misdemeanor", the threshold for impeachment, does not mean that the sitting president has committed a prosecutable crime. It means that the president has committed acts injurious to the presidency and the country. The entire rationale behind the appointment of a Special Counsel was to take the investigation out of the hands of political actors so that the eventual report could be submitted to Congress. Congress would then have the constitutional responsibility to decide whether the president's actions rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Barr short-circuited that process by inserting himself. I suspect Mueller did not expect Barr to make any decisions on obstruction of justice. In any event Barr isn't constitutionally empowered to determine whether Trump's behavior rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Only Congress can make that decision.
Barr is acting as the president's political defense. He's slow-walking the release of the report to Congress-- he may still only give Congress a more detailed summary, not the report itself--because it contains information detrimental to Trump. Last year Barr said that he thought the president couldn't commit obstruction of justice because he was exercising his legal authority--in other words, he dismissed the entire theory of abuse of authority. Barr believes in the unitary executive theory.
39
Mr Frankel does what he does best - wrote an editorial laying out publicly known facts. However those same facts were the subject of a criminal investigation for the past two years by a special counsel with unlimited resources. If that special counsel concluded there was no collusion, why are we giving higher regard to a 500 word editorial above the criminal investigation? The mind boggles.
15
@JB
Because that's not what the special council found. We haven't seen what the special council found, we only know what the hand-picked AG has claimed it said. In fact, it said that the evidence did not exonerate Trump of coordination with Russia, except that it didn't amount to criminal conspiracy. That's way different from "concluded there was no collusion". In fact, it pretty much proves there was collusion.
Reading comprehension is going to take some work by our comrades on NYTimes comments.
31
Rob @portland
I beg to differ. The AGs summary of the Mueller Report clearly laid out the Mueller conclusions there was no collusion and in addition laid out the justice department rules why there would be no obstruction of justice charges on these facts from this or any other justice department investigation including SDNY.
1
@JB The Barr report only said that the Mueller investigation found every element required to make a collusion case in court EXCEPT for one. To me, that doesn't mean there was no conspiracy or collusion.
2
The Obama sanctions didn't just hurt the Russian mafia, it nixed a half-trillion-dollar Exxon investment with the Russians to exploit Siberian fossil reserves. These sanctions were vigorously opposed by the CEO of Exxon at the time, Rex Tillerson. Tillerson is also known as Trumps first choice for Secretary of State (Tillerson retired from Exxon to run the State Dept). It's possible this assignment was more 'signalling' from the incoming administration that it was going to do everything it could to bring that Siberian oil deal back to Putin and his mafia. We're lucky Congress didn't go along, but it is clear what the Trump-Putin-Exxon relationship was about: fossil fuel. Leaving the Paris Accord was another way for Trump to reward Putin for his past and future help.
46
@Phil
100% correct. There’s a fortune in those Siberian oil fields that only Exxon has the expertises to bring to market.
Wanna hear my take on Helsinki? OK.
There’s this newly discoverd natural gas field in the Pursian Gulf, shared by Qatar and Iran.
It’s the South Pars/North Dome field.
It’s got more gas than all the gas fields in the world combined.
The best way to get this gas to the European market is to go through Iraq to Syria to Europe via the Mediterranean.
This would be a disaster for Russian since they dominate the European gas market now.
I believe Trump gave Syria to Putin in Helsinki. That two hour private meeting they had. With Putin in charge of Syria, he can effectively cork that outlet, and allow an amount of gas to go through under his terms, getting his cut, and not letting so much gas through as to harm Russia’s exports from the motherland.
This is one of a very few ways Russia makes money.
Oil and gas pipelines, exports, transfer fees and they sell lots of weapons too.
BTW: The reason Saudia Arabia and friends are blockading Qatar by air and causing problems for Qatar is because Qatar and IRAN are collaborating to get their shared gas to market.
I’m finished. Thanks for reading.
5
From Nixon's interference with the 1968 Vietnam peace talks, through Bush and Reagan's likely overtures to Iran before Reagan's election, and Reagan's Iran-Contra misadventure, to Trump's dalliance with Russia - Republican presidents and candidates have done and keep doing these reprehensible things. And yet the only president to be impeached in the modern era was a Democrat who perjured himself over a stain on a blue dress. Republicans have repeatedly and successfully managed to mislead the nation about what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanour." And our national polity is much the worse for that.
150
Great post except you left out the fraudulent fiasco that was the invasion of Iraq and probably the Afghanistan war too. I do blame Pelosi and Obama for not pursuing war crimes in at least the case of iraq.
4
Drop your mic.
I’m glad that I’m not the only person who see this...
2
@Partha Neogy
Oh, so now it is a high crime and misdemeanor for a candidate for President to have a different foreign policy from that of the current President? Jesus wept!
1
Everything in this essay seems to be accurate. But to what end? Call it collusion or something more legalese like treason. Whatever it is, we know that it's wrong. So the operative question is: Can it be prosecuted?
There may be enough publicly available information to bring about a trial. Or an investigation like we just saw. But unless there is iron clad proof of breaking a law I fear that we are stuck in the current situation. Mueller didn't see enough proof of conspiracy or obstruction. And we likely do not wish to start down the prosecutorial road unless the outcome is nearly certain.
I really fear that the US has landed in a position of being suspended between what is right and what is wrong only in a legal sense.
19
@Mr. SeaMonkey
A letter in today’s west coast home delivery NYT reports that Scottish courts can conclude, Guilty, Not Guilty, or Not Proven, the latter not being exoneration. That’s what we have with the Mueller Report. Not Proven. We know what we know about all the Russifying the Trumpites engaged in, but for all that, Mr Barr gave Trump a greasy pass.
17
Trump is learning from hiss Sith Master; to be honest.
Trump is learning everything he can n how to turn Democracy into something similar to what Putin created in Russia. Yes, technically Russia is a democracy. It is more Democratic than the old USSR. But, make no mistake about it, in all three cases the 1% of Russia control everything.
Russia, has a multi party Democracy; in theory. However, all the media is controlled by a very few who owe their allegiance to Putin. All other opposition is either curtailed or silenced.
In the days of the Iron Curtain,it was said "those who control the media, control the country". Putin has done a great job of this. He has rewarded loyal oligarchs handsomely, and had those opposed to him jailed or assassinated.
In the US, as media companies become fewer and larger, it will no take much to do in the US, what was done in Russia. Think Fox, Sinclair, and Nexstar (soon to have Tribune) are all pro-Trump, conservative leaning, outlets. These three entities will have media aoutlets in every market. Newspapers are seeing similar consolidation. Radio has already consolidated.
Trump, the GOP, and the 1% oligarchs, already have large media coverage. They had more influence in 2016, than Russian interference in the US elections; honestly.
Trump has learned well from his Sith Master. He has much of the oligarchy, on board, with tax cuts. If the courts repeal the ACA, and let's him bypass Congress, the US will be a Democracy in name only.
40
This is why we need to see the whole report. Coordination and conspiracy would have been horrible, but the article correctly identifies quid-pro-quo as another serious concern.
I'd add that potential kompromat--the elephant in the room--is just as serious. Did Mueller investigate it? If so, what did he find? If not, why not?
It remains suspicious that Trump is SO licentious towards Putin, that he meets with him in private, confiscates his translator's notes, and that he and Manafort went out of their way to change a single, fairly obscure part of the Republican Party platform.
I'll buy that Mueller resolved issues of conspiracy and coordination. What about compromise?
29
Thank you Mr. Fankel and the NYT for printing what has been incredibly obvious to many of us all this time, the fact that Putin and his Russian aided and abetted Trump's election prospects by interfering in our elections with an underlying agreement that Trump's White House would go soft on Russia.
Deal or no-deal, the fact is that this perhaps unprovable contract of minds, so to speak, is the reason "WHY" Putin preferred Trump over Hillary. But at the time, you could suggest that Putin was simply wagering a bet as he could not be certain that Donald would step in line.
Or could you?
The fact is that despite some of Trump's anti-Russian moves, he is far more pro-Putin than anti Putin. But to keep things fair and square, he is also pro Kim, pro MBS and pro every other dictatorship in the world. Is that just for cover or simply because he longs to become one himself?
Thank god for the Senate and the House. At the very least, our Constitution and structure of government is actually designed to protect our democracy in the event that the Executive is corrupt in this manner.
Unfortunately, our Senate still lives in LaLa Land and Trump knows this. He is playing GOP Senators like pawns and thus far getting away with it.
But if the GOP is fine with letting Russia have the Middle-East and perhaps even chunks of Europe, who are we to complain?
17
Interesting part is what Muller didn’t see that almost every one saw.
44
@Eraven
I think Mueller saw exactly what was going on; but he was (and is) constrained by the standard for acts constituting an indictable offense.
As was explained to me by a judge many, many years ago "The law is not about justice and justice cannot depend solely on the law." I believe his point was that, in the final analysis, justice depends on community standards as enforced by the community.
In traditional Native American communities, I have seen this work with my own eyes. It is formidable.
Given how federal law is written (and can be spun) for Mueller to have presented the conclusion of "indictable offenses" would be fool's errand in light of the standard of "reasonable doubt."
No, Mueller saw clearly that this was a political matter and would have to be resolved in the court of public opinion. The battle is now between the congress and the executive to demonstrate that Trump has violated the most fundamental premises of our federal system and social contract.
Trump is a villain and should die penniless in a prison of his own making. That would be justice. If we're suitably ruthless in using the law as written, it may incidentally in a federal institution. That would be legal.
All we know is that Mueller didn't find sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy to indict (the campaign team of) a sitting President. For which the Barr is likely high.
@Eraven
Yes, Mueller missed what all the Trump haters see so clearly. Remarkable.
Yes but there is lots of evidence that Trump did not do anything to prepare to be POTUS. The most obvious reason for this is that he did not expect to be elected.
My opinion is that there was indeed a grand bargain between Trump and Putin that on Trump's side involved promising relief of sanctions in exchange for the Trump tower and other business opportunities and financial forgiveness from Russia.
Putin was serious about making Trump president to fulfill the deal.
Trump was not. He is always about promising and never delivering. He is always going for the con. Running on relief of sanctions and other things in support of Russia's wish list was the only quo he thought he needed to reap a financial quid.
He would lose; Putin would love him. Who would ask?
65
@Christine
Let me add that the collusion they did before the election (and it was collusion, a nonlegal term that the Trumpists themselves introduced) was to keep up the appearance that Trump took the bargain seriously.
9
@Christine
We have also seen that whatever Trump states in advance or response to "breaking news," is generally contrary to the facts. He is doing exactly what he has promised supporters with the exception of "draining the swamp."
5
@Groups Averse
Maybe I am thinking too narrowly in terms of his working class supporters who are not crazy evangelicals, sexists or racists but I can't see that he has done anything he promised them. Destroying the ACA will bring them great harm and as I said, there is no evidence he has ever had a plan to replace it with something better.
Destroying support for public schools will harm them most of all. Environmental catastrophes always happen to the people with the least means.
1
That was the quid pro quo?
This summary fails to say that Trump was in negotiations with Russians for a real estate deal that would have that would have scored him hundreds of millions of dollars, and that this was a project in which Putin had direct knowledge and significant control.
That Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his children, and others close to him were part of these negotiations and were constantly updated.
Among many other statements to this effect, in February 2017 Trump said:
"I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
Trump was motived by the most venal and corrupt personal incentives to sell out our foreign policy.
From that standpoint the quid quo pro was cash for Trump in return for undermining American policy.
Why is this neglected here?
89
@Eric How much do you think Russia actually bribed Trump to run for President of the United States or threatened him to do what they required or face the consequences, letting the world know how failed a businessman he really was.
2
Sure, everyone knows it's not a real bank robbery if you do it in daylight and don't wear a mask.
Benedict Arnold had the decency to flee to Great Britain, the country for which he sold out America.
I wish Trump would follow Arnold's excellent example.
78
@Sara
I'm sure Moscow would welcome him with open arms
@Sara
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072890/
A Republican presidential candidate making overt policy assurances to a foreign country in exchange for continued cyberattacks on the Democratic candidate? At the very least this will become a campaign issue in 2020 when everything Trump does will be measured for its effect on Russian policy.
26
Here we have elements of the national security state still playing the game of deception on the American people.
And why not? There are billions of dollars in potential weapons sales at stake. It's not that Trump is above collusion, but it didn't happen at that time in this case.
The winners in this whole scenario are the military industrial complex and the corporations that feed them.
How quickly we forget that the Steele memo was initiated by the Clinton campaign to uncover dirt on Trump. His campaign was doing the same and it appears that the Russians were playing both sides against the middle.
Every nation seeks favor with a new administration. Some do so openly, others quietly and some covertly. Russia was no different.
But not only was there no finding of collusion, there is no evidence that the handful of Russian bot and FB ads had any impact on the election.
Frankel asks "why all the secrecy and lying?" And immediately concludes that it must have been because of collusion.
But anyone who has watched Trumps career knows that secrecy and lying is always what he does and no one should be surprised that he surrounds himself with people that do the same.
Trump proclaimed during the campaign that if he couldn't make money from being president than it wasn't worth it. Many who were drawn to him thought the same way. The presidency was going to be a golden ticket.
The Mueller investigation can at least be credited with forestalling many of those plans.
8
@Drspock
The Steele memo was actually initiated by a conservative group.
From Wiki -
In October 2015, Fusion GPS was contracted by conservative political website The Washington Free Beacon to provide general opposition research on Trump and other Republican presidential candidates. In April 2016, attorney Marc Elias separately hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC. The Free Beacon stopped its backing when Trump became the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee in May of 2016.
11
@Drspock
Freethinker is correct. The Steele memo originated by conservative opponents to Trump. Only later did the Clinton campaign obtain it.
Wonder what they could have done with just a Few Dollars More ...
4
@Drspock the handful of bot adds were in the millions. That's some big hands!
I've been practicing law for 37 years but I don't understand how Paul Manafort passing on pivotal polling data to Russian intelligence did not constitute conspiracy or, if we must, collusion in Mueller's opinion. Media does not ask this question.
233
@birdiesboy The polling data was public record. They also passed it on to the Israelis.
1
@birdiesboy
Nor do I. The Manafort act, alone, constitutes conspiracy to assist an enemy meddle in our election. I also want to know why all the attempts at secret back channels to the Kremlin (Flynn, Kushner, Prince); how is that not more than stupid and unseemly?
3
Lawyers can dance on the head of a pin but as Mr. Frankel so elegantly explains, there was collusion in plain sight. Trump is just lucky that he has McConnell to avoid conviction. If this case were in a courtroom, any jury of reasonable people would convict.
118
There's no doubt Mr. Frankel is right. A mentally and financially challenged con man deeply dependent on dirty Russian money from mafiosi and oligarchs close to Putin was the ideal stooge for manipulation. Every stroke against NATO or America's trading partners and best interests would appeal to Trump's impulsive striking out against traditional wisdom. It would also represent a kick at Obama (whom he could never equal, and who so greatly infuriated him as an educated colored man who had won the Nobel prize and was genuinely eloquent, intelligent, and popular. So Trump's narrow victory (75,000 votes in 3 swing states for the Electoral College, popular vote defeat by almost 3 million votes) was just what Putin needed. Mueller's failure to find open and shut evidence of conspiracy and coordination by the Trump campaign does not mean "no collusion" as the scam artist in the White House and his Republican enablers pretend. It doesn't even mean such evidence does not exist.
91
I will not be satisfied until the full report is released.
Can anyone explain why Jr. was never charged with lying to Congress?
128
@Patty O ...and Erik Prince, and Roger Stone.
1
@Patty O
That would be declaring war on the Trumps as a family.
They wanted to avoid that.
1
Trump-Russia is not over. Barr threw a hook into the media news cycle, and it was devoured, along with the line and sinker. Barr's letter looks like a public gas-lighting, and the theme it has generated, i.e. that this is all a "done deal", and the "verdict is in" contributes to the gas-lighting, undermining the most dire need for public accountability in generations. The other theme, that all the Citizenry has seen in Trump's public behavior that strongly suggests not only collusion during the campaign, but continued collusion, and obstruction should be disregarded... Barr's letter is all we need. Trump has won. Democrats have lost. It is a lot of nonsense.
21
@Ghost Dansing,
And what better president to establish a clean political slate and alliance with Russia, beautifully orchestrated, with such finesse that it is tempting to weep. America was in for a lot of tromperie when our current president went in search of 'The Birther' certificate and led some of us on a wild goose chase.
The headline is correct: the real goal for Putin was to have Hillary defeated—not to help Trump.
10
Will we ever reach the point where we distinguish 'No evidence of collusion' from 'insufficient evidence to indict' for collusion?
It is quite fair to say that this is the reason behind Mueller's statement, reflected in Barr's woefully insufficient summary (but there nonetheless) that Mueller's report does not exonerate trump.
And this is entirely and clearly the point being made in this article.
Russia was doing what it was doing for trump and did not have to actively 'collude' when an understanding was already in place.
A full understanding of this, along with the considerations regarding obstruction of justice by trump, absolutely requires that the full report be made public, and without any opportunity given to trump and his people to 'correct' it beforehand.
This is necessary for the correct verdict to be rendered in 2020, along with the results of the myriad other investigations and a thorough consideration of trump's policies and policy-making — and their consequences for the American people.
A 'good economy' is a frail tissue to hide behind when you are actively working to upend the health care system, denying 20+ million of health insurance, and perform mean-spirited actions such as defunding the Special Olympics to save a dollar amount that is equivalent to 5 weekends at Mar a Lago.
It is ALL relevant to deciding in 2020.
95
@Doug Keller
To say that Mueller exonerated Trump of "colluding with Russia" is nonsensical because that's really not the precise question that Mueller addressed. Rather, he addressed the question of whether Trump or his associates committed a crime with Russia. There's no such crime as "collusion with Russia." What I'm getting at--and what Frankel is getting at--is this: Trump can betray his country, he can collude with Russia, he can have an explicit or implied quid pro quo relationship with Russia, without necessarily falling afoul of a criminal statute. Not every act of treachery is defined as a felony by our criminal statutes. Not prosecutable does not mean innocent, and we shouldn't be deceived by the hucksters who would equate the two.
4
@Mark
That is actually another way of stating my point.
Criminal conspiracy IS a crime. The evidence (apparently) was not sufficient to be indictable on that definition.
It does not mean that trump is innocent, and does not mean that he did not act in ways that betrayed the United States for the sake of his own interests.
Which is why the 'hucksters' do not want us to see the report. Criminal or no, it is entirely relevant to the citizens of the US rendering judgement on the presidency of trump in the next election.
2
@Doug Keller
Do you have any evidence to support the collusion claims?
Mr. Frankel, in his cogent description of the situation, alludes to the real smoking gun in the deal - Trump is in hock to Russians, many of whom are no doubt in Putin's circle and who were severely restricted by the Obama administration sanctions. The ideal solution was for Trump to win the election so as to be in position to relieve the onerous sanctions, thereby satisfying his creditors and relieving pressure on himself. This didn't require collusion per se, just a mutual "understanding" of the quid and quo. But of course the perfect "cover" is that all this is and has been out in the open, and the national tragedy is that fully half the country is perfectly ok with it all. Watergate was just jaywalking compared to this, yet Nixon was forced from office. Here Trump is doing a victory lap, and leading the GOP circus in the process.
182
@Michael - well said.
2
After reporting and misleading America about Trump / Russia collusion (with no evidence) for two years, you would think that the New York Times would assume a more humbled position and just apologize for two years of fake news and Russian drama. Not a chance, it's on to the next Fake news. Read Mike Taibbi and get the real story.
21
@P McGrath
I read Matt Tabbi's detailed story and appreciated its nuance. But, so far, there's been no humility seen here, only justifications that what the paper (and other media) did was right. The sad part is that it wasted two years of time in which both the media and Democratic Party could have been working on the real issues - vast income inequality being the most important. But maybe that was the point of it after all.
12
@P McGrath What is more important than knowing if your president and advisors are making policy decisions based on anything other than the interest of the American people?
3
@P McGrath
Your comment indicates that you assume because the Mueller investigation (appears) to have not found sufficient evidence of collusion to charge Mr. Trump (although, many others have been indicted for Russian interference), that means that the investigation was a sham.
How silly. An investigation, by definition, seeks to determine whether or not X is true in the first place.
A good way to avoid being investigated about colluding with Russia is to avoid getting repeatedly caught in lies about denying contacts with Russians.
I read the Times every day. I'm not sure what fake news you are referring to. Maybe Trump's M.O. of claiming fake news without usually identifying what is actually fake, might be contagious. The Times did report on a real investigation, and the troubling multitude of lies by Trump and his campaign about the involvement with Russia.
1
Max Frankel identifies the real story: Outrageous, determined, and clearly successful foreign interference in an American domestic election. That surely requires a follow-up explanation as to why the Russians supported one candidate over the other?
26
If Trump has ACTUALLY been “totally exonerated”, as he claims, by the Mueller report, then Mitch McConnell should be eager to release the WHOLE seven-hundred page Report…and not just a four page summary OF that Report.
Does the word “coverup” spring to mind?
208
@Robin M. Blind: "...Mitch McConnell should be eager to release the WHOLE seven-hundred page Report…and not just a four page summary OF that Report."
It's not McConnell's call to release any of the report - that's the responsibility of the Attorney General. As I understand it, there are parts that may not be released for a host of legal reasons. The sad truth is that the Democrats and their media cohorts have been hanging their hats on the hope that the Mueller investigation would find something, ANYTHING with which to begin the process of impeaching Trump. Now that the report apparently doesn't deliver the goods, the next step is to take any scrap of material possible out of the report and still try to impeach him. What if you can't find anything then?
2
@hm1342 We don't actually know what goods the report delivers. That is why it needs to be made public, not summarized by a Trump stooge.
6
Seems some of the Russian collusion conspiracy theorists are trapped in serious denial.
16
Now, how many people have been indicted for lying about russian connections?
We have to thank the Russian press for what little we do know about the meetings between the Russian Oligarchs, Putin, and Trump.
22
You are no doubt correct & it's of a piece w/ his undermining the environmental protections to appease other entities w/ whom he will have ongoing deals after he leaves gov't (unless he's living on the government's dime in a different kind of facility than the White House).
7
So it was treason, then, not collusion per se? Treason's a crime too, no? Can you get in trouble for that?
33
@Looking-in
Unfortunately, the constitutional definition of treason is very strict and to date has been restricted to "enemies" as defined by those with whom we are at war. That list does not include Russia.
"Under Article III, treason against the United States consists only of (1) levying war against the United States, or (2) adhering to our enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
There's a lengthly analysis in the 24 July, 2017 Take Care legal blog.
1
@Looking-in:
You need to look up the definition of treason in the US constitution. You've badly misused the word.
Trump will go down in history as the president who sold the U.S. to a Russian dictator for personal gain. And I'm sure he won't care. He'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
130
@Panthiest:
"Trump will go down in history as the president who sold the U.S. to a Russian dictator for personal gain."
By pulling out of the INF treaty, by running NATO war games in Poland on the Russia border, by backing an illegal coup in Venezuela?
@Panthiest
More likely Russian conspiracy theorist and their media enablers will be the basis for case studies in partisanship and media misses. Like "Group Think" and the Cuban missile crisis.
1
What's the difference between agent and stooge?
18
Please stop with this nonsense. The Russians have tried to interfere in every U.S. election since the dawn of communism. The idea being presented here is more of the same schlock that Mueller just debunked. Move on already.
25
@Mattbk
You are correct, and 2016 was their greatest success thus far.
42
@Mattbk We don't know what Mueller debunked. We haven't seen the report. We only know that he could not prove that the Trump campaign did not rise to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal conspiracy to interfere in our election with the Russians, but Manafort gave polling data to them to help in their pinpointing of voters crucial to Trump winning in their influence campaign.
3
@Mattbk
It's just that Mr. Trump is the first president to deny that interference, and then do nothing, absolutely NOTHING, about it.
1
Then why were the Russians paying to run PRO-Hillary ads on Facebook, etc. hmmm?
6
@Kate Your source please.
25
Disinformation perhaps? They were caught pushing for opposite sides to sow discord.
1
concoct a grand diplomatic bargain by which the Russians would be allowed to legalize their seizure of the Ukrainian Crimea.
Not so bad considering Trump recently acknowledging Israeli ownership of acquired land from a previous war and occupation is it?
8
Thank you for putting into words what we all know because this what we all saw:
1. After the Trump Tower meeting, Donald Trump asked for Russian assistance right in front of all of us (”Russia, if you’re listening...”)
2. Donald Trump received Russian assistance as per their offer and this assistance was timed perfectly, per Donald Trump, Jr.'s suggestion to the Russians to release the emails at the end of Summer 2016.
3. Donald Trump benefited from Russian assistance.
4. Donald Trump rewarded Russian assistance with his sanctions relief and pro-Putin stance.
I find it hard to understand how this is not seen for what it is - a deal made right in the open. The offer, the acceptance, the delivery and the compensation.
275
@SStockdale
And all that the Russian social-media, propaganda machine needed to do was change the way about 70,000 voters in three key states cast their ballots. That's about 1 in 200 of the electorate in those three states.
Ask an advertising executive how easy that would be. It's not possible to fail in convincing so few to change their vote.
14
@SStockdale
Except that the 30k emails he facetiously asked for are still missing.
And
The DNC emails on Wikileaks have no verified source. Assange never revealed that.
@SStockdale
This is not seen for what it is in the same way that financial institutions scamming people on mortgages was not seen for what it is in 2008.
The super wealthy class doesn't answer to your rules.
3
Obviously, the very obvious is not enough to prove collusion. Obviously, the Trump-Putin quid pro quo was a great success. The Russians celebrated the results of the Mueller Investigation while the Americans went from gloom to doom.
17
@NNI
We have not seen the results of the Mueller investigation yet. And no, the very obvious is actually quite enough to prove collusion to an unbiased AG.
12
After US banks refused to lend to Trump following his colossal billion-dollar business failures, and Russian oligarchs rescued him, his son told the press that Russian money made up a disproportionate percentage of Trump's assets. Trump has also wisely, for a con man, refused to release his financials. And even before election, he changed the Republican Party platform statement about the Ukraine to suit Vladimir Putin - and he's made many public statements against NATO and our allies, while flattering Putin, for no logical business or diplomatic reason other than to please Russia.
I agree there never was complicated collusion - it's just the continuation of rotten Trump business, in every way.
153
@common sense advocate
What I don’t get is why so many Repubs go along with him and aren’t disgusted with this vile, putrid presidency. It’s sickening what these people have done to our country. And this whole “president cannot be indicted” trope is garbage.
7
We all watched it happen. Hard as it was to believe, we saw it happen, we heard the lies, we watched the video, we read as the evidence was uncovered in the press. And because we waited for Mr. Mueller to make the case, we're now left with the GOP brazenly insisting that none of it happened. It can make a citizen kind of seasick.
334
@teach
You say:
"We all watched it happen. Hard as it was to believe, we saw it happen, we heard the lies, we watched the video, we read as the evidence was uncovered in the press."
You watched what happen? What lies? What video? What evidence in the press?
Apparently "it" didn't happen (Hard evidence of collusion/ laws broken). Otherwise there would be charges of illegality recommended by Mueller.
As for "evidence" in the press? There never was any real evidence presented, it was all speculation, all the time.
4
@teach "we're now left with the GOP brazenly insisting that none of it happened." I realize your Russian collusion conspiracy bubble has burst, but for over two years I have listen to the Democrats and the liberal media tell me what impeccable credentials Mueller has-a man of integrity, of honor, a straight shooter, a non-partisan skilled FBI investigator. It was Bob Mueller who said that after an exhausting two plus year investigation with thousands of subpoenas, Grand Jury testimony, sworn testimony in front of congress, and access to NSA databases of every transmission of phone and internet data collected in the world in its metadata base and FBI wiretaps it found "no evident that Trump or his campaign colluded or coordinated with the Russians, or obstruction." Get over it. Move on to Trump's true criminal enterprise, his business empire. That's where Trump's crimes will be discovered. But the longer you obsess about Russian collusion the longer you fail to pivot to the real crimes and you give Trump and his supporters ammunition to deflect from those crimes.
@teach
Nonsense. You saw only what you wanted to see. All a lie. There was nothing there. And still there isn't.
Max Frankel seems to think that endless sanctions, hostility and demonization directed towards Russia is just fine. But, then how do we explain our alliance with Saudi Arabia? It’s puzzling why so many smart people want to hate and distrust Russia, an influential nuclear power with which we share many interests. Oh, I forgot, only the US is exceptional.
9
@Cord MacGuire
Here is the answer: Russia and Saudi Arabia are equally despicable and must to be sanctioned.
"Share many interests" with Russia ? Our only interest is to see Russia broken by multiple small denuclearized states.
5
@Cord
I was thinking the same. I thought the Cold War was finally over.
1
@VB It makes sense that this comment originated in Washington D.C. The home of the bipartisan proponents of endless war.
The Democrats are so strong on foreign policy. Look how much they accomplished while they had the chance. Nada. Now this columnist is fashioning collusion out of what should have been our policy with Russia all along which is to act with firmness and resolve in ongoing discussions while keeping the door open to true and fundamental change. The rewards will be great—an opportunity to keep both China and Europe from beating us to the punch in improved Russian relations. The Russian market is vast. China is already making deals. We should be in there too. At the height of the Russian collusion hysteria much alarm was raised over Trump’s private meeting with Putin. They weren’t talking about hotels. They were talking about trade deals. Both countries can benefit.
8
@Edward
A few comments:
1. I'm not sure what foreign policy failures you blame the Democrats for. The only one I can recall (not counting the Vietnam War -- a big deal but a long time ago) would be drawing a red line in Syria and not following through. Otherwise, it's just limited success in undoing the damage caused by W.
2. Although the Russian territory is vast, the Russian market is insignificant, and life has proven difficult for westerners, or even Russians not willing to kiss Putin's ring, trying to do business there. Bill Browder, Garry Kasparov and Mikail Khodarkovsky come immediately to mind; there are others.
3. Finally, do you actually claim to know what Trump and Putin talked about in private? Unless you're the translator, you're talking through your hat.
27
GPS
#1 Egypt, Libya, Israel, Afghanistan, etc. Not notable successes. The Iran deal? We got taken. Part of the problem was Obama’s narcissism. He thought he could just step in and utter fine sentiments, and then the world fall at his feet. As Mubarak said, “He doesn’t understand.”
#2 No one said it would be easy, but I don’t think we should cede the field to our economic rivals.
#3 Then how can the Dems be so sure that they were “colluding?”
@Edward Yeah, Trump was super firm with Russia when he sided with Putin over our intelligence agency's over Russia's involvement in our elections. And boy was he firm with them when he turned tail and ran out of Syria. He also did such a great job destroying our chances of stopping a nuclear armed Iran by ending our deal with them, a deal Obama, a Democrat made. Trump has made so much progress in North Korea so far, now they only have an estimated 15 nuclear armed missiles up from none under Obama. And that trade war with China has done nothing to help anyone, I don't know where you get your information but it has been a disaster all around.
3
Every day we spend on Trump/Russia/Mueller now is a day wasted. That is true both in terms of current events-like Trump's proposal to slash Medicare and in terms of the 2020 election.
Trump RAN on improving relations with Russia. This was not a secret.
He RAN on Tariffs. Not a surprise.
He RAN on the wall. Not a surprise.
We have to stop mulling over Mueller and start working toward the 2020 Election.
13
@Lefthalfbach
He RAN on "improving relationships with Russia" while his organization was in the middle of negotiating for a deal with them which would have netted him hundreds of millions.
That was indeed a secret, and something which he denied constantly, until it was no longer possible because the information had become public.
13
The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.
The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger conservative political apparatus that made a conscious decision to collaborate with him.
357
@teoc2
"has" become?? Seriously? What do they have to do to prove themselves more evil? For DECADES they have been against the interests of the majority of Americans with direct intent to harm. "trump" is a dream for them: a pure vehicle to autocracy. "Danger" indeed. Do you hear your own words? Do you plan on doing anything about it?
"Collaborate" indeed. Be cautious there, don't go out on a limb. Please do NOT call them co-conspirators. Lord knows that would be too much. It's just so sad: we are so not up to this challenge. Our muscles are atrophied. We are easy pickings. Low hanging fruit. Ripe and ready.
6
Yes, this is what I have thought from the beginning. Quid pro quo.
Why? Because there was no need for collusion in the sense that the Trump campaign had to give Russia anything (except maybe that polling data.)
With a little understanding of American politics and resentments, Russia could and did manipulate Americans simply using social media.
But not a crime, as the author indicates? I'm not sure about that.
I cannot name the code violation, but something tells me it's a crime to agree to alter government policy in exchange for a foreign government's help to win an election, especially when that help included crimes of breaking into servers and stealing emails, which, given Trump's inability to keep his mouth shut, the Trumps were aware was happening.
134
@MT
OMG. Trump made that statement AFTER all her drives had been bleached as clean as possible, when the FBI could get little from the drives. At a time when, with or, more likely, without proof, everyone was blaming Russia for every hack that had ever happened. So, when everybody was talking about the inability to get Clinton's emails, Trump joked something like if you did hack them, why not release them.
The fact that you - and ex-CIA director Brennan can - I don't know - be or pretend such obtuseness, shows how political you are.
Finally, 2 things. Obama knew all about this and, except for saying "Cut it out" did NOTHING until Trump won the election Second, the Russians did get what they want, discord and "resistance," I doubt they thought Trump would win either. They just wanted to cause discontent and anger and, thanks to progressives, they were quite successful.
2
We were terribly misled not only about the acumen but also the character of Robert Mueller. I have been around athletics all my life and I can never remember even a Jr High Basketball official who couldn't make a call. They don't go to the Principal and ask him or her to make it.
21
Donald Trump made a solemn sworn oath to preserve, protect and defend whatever profitable Trump Organization advantage that he is hiding from the American people in his personal, family and business income tax returns and records arising from his occupation of the Oval Office of the White House.
Smiling and smirking Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin aided and abetted Donald Trump in his quest knowing that Trump would do whatever they wanted for them in return.
104
There is not even any reason to look outside the US for evidence of Trump's corruption. Virtually every cabinet or cabinet-level appointee in the administration was chosen because of enormous conflicts of interest and/or because of their stated opposition to the purposes of their position. However, because the Republican party has explicitly advocated that sort of corruption for decades, and the Democrats themselves have been too corrupt to make the case against it, the public has come to either cynically accept it, or naively believe that it is in their interest.
36
@Martin
Yes, Trump has done plenty in the US to cause him to spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth -- if he doesn't face prior convictions in New York that land him in Sing Sing.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't plenty to look at outside the US. Yes, of course it's treason to do the bidding of a foreign adversary; I'm not sure in which jurisdictions it still carries the death penalty.
Maybe when he skips town while on bail, Trump will be given a really nice villa on the Black Sea... or maybe he'll be quietly shot in the Lyublanka.
Any of these scenarios would be fine with me.
5
Mr. Mueller had time and resources, and yet you choose your words carefully, ie. had a deal, that is intended to leave us with collusion. The Trump campaign was happy to get to any help from leaked eMails, any dirt or help. It was ego, I won fair and square. Despite misgivings, Mr. Trump did win fair and square, that is for a New Yorker.
1
@NYT Reader
Puleeze! Trump gets no love in New York unless it's paid for on a transactional basis. As Michael Bloomberg famously said during the campaign, "I'm a New Yorker and I know a con when I see one."
@NYT Reader No need to group and insult New Yorkers. In fact, these of us who have inhabited NY for years knew of DJT's corrupt ways and did not vote for him.
Perceptively, Mr. Frankel has spotted the forest among the trees.
Mr. Mueller may have been right that this was legal--although if there was the promise of value (a Trump tower? not using leverage from prior improprieties by Mr. Trump?) in exchange for a policy shift then the law may well have been violated.
Now it is Congress' turn to explore what was agreed upon, explicitly and with winks and nods.
And it is the Democrats' turn to figure out how best to rid the country of the pestilence that is the current maladministration.
281
@JJM
How can this be legal?
What is bribery if not "quid pro quo?"
2
Reply to @JJM: Even according to Barr’s letter, Mueller didn’t say “this was legal.” Mueller only said he didn’t uncover any evidence that it was illegal.
1
@JJM
"Perceptively, Mr. Frankel has spotted the forest among the trees."
You, guys, seem oblivious to how ever more ridiculous you sound by the day.
Here's a "forest" for you:
Obama to Putin, "I'll have more political capital after re-election."
Obama let Putin have Syria all over while drawing his rainbow red lines in the thin air.
Obama only tepidly moved on Putin at the end of his term.
Trump left the sanctions in place. Kicked Russian operatives out and closed down their consulate in SF.
Trump met personally with Poroshenko and supplied Ukraine with Javelins and military trainers. Trump ramped up European spending on NATO.
"Now it is Congress' turn to explore what was agreed upon, explicitly and with winks and nods."
Another truckload of my tax $ wasted on exploring something we all know? There has been nothing agreed - USA policy toward Russia has not changed since Obama's presidency.
Should we task Mueller with investigating the Obama admin? (btw, Lynch-Clinton tarmac collusion is a sure thing).
2
Two old white men afraid of a little old Grandma.
21
This is obvious. Republicans spend probably over a billion dollars trying to destroy the Clintons. Benghazi and the email scandal were wars waged against Clinton. The Republican establishment and electorate after years of vilifying Clinton were totally ready for Russia’s help. Mitch McConnell and all Republicans know and participated in weaponizing the emails and to the obstruction in to responding to Russian interference. Think what they would have done to Clinton had she won. Part of the goal was to so damage her if she won they would vilify her, investigate her to death, and impeach her. This is the party of birtherism, remember that. They will do anything.
The Republican Party obstructed all Senate and House investigations of trump and Russia. They manipulated the process to move everything into the Mueller investigate because they knew they could shut it down. It was not just trump who worked with Russia, it was the entire Republican Party
Ask yourself what would be the result if Mueller said Trump conspired with Russia? What would happen to Trump and what would happen to the Republican Party. The ramifications are astronomical of the GOP. The democrats could sue the Republican Party for billions. Mueller, Rosenstein and Barr are Republicans before they are Americans. They will not bring down the Republican Party. The Party is absolute to them.
190
@BillC Save the party and destroy the country. Is that the GOP's new mantra?
34
@Wally Wolf
The Republicans, back in the 90's, used to chant "Country First!", even if they didn't mean it.
Personally, I thought it should have been "Blues First, Jazz Second, Country Third, Rock 'n' Roll Fourth". Personally, I like classical music, too, but it's mostly not American in origin.
YMMV.
16
@BillC I don't agree with lumping Rosenstein in with the others, nor Mueller. I think both have acted honorably to try to ensure a legal investigation.
2
Finally a thorough and correct view on the Russia investigation.
Barr's letter dismissed Trump and his campaign of actively conspiring with the Russian govt in their election interference activities. Most people didn't actually think they helped hack the DNC, that would be preposterous. Adopting this conclusion lets him off easy.
The quid-pro-quo was for sanctions relief. You do me a solid, I'll do you one. Not only does Barr's letter not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice, it doesn't even exonerate him on "colluding" with the Russians AT ANY POINT IN TIME.
Release the full report.
434
@SSS Yes, if that is your definition of collusion but then every president we have ever had colluded with other leaders. The question here is whether Trump colluded to win an election and that is illegal. See the difference?
10
@Matt
It’s a clear summary on the Russian policy “quid” but Frankel misses the Trumpian “quo.” Trump Tower Moscow. Follow the money.
As this story unfolds in the Southern District of NY, real estate will be the focus. Broadly speaking, the Russians got the sanctions lifted so they could dominate the Ukraine while the President of the United States got a glistening tower in downtown Moscow. Not a great deal for the American people or freedom generally, especially when you consider that Jefferson paid Napoleon a mere 25 million for Louisiana, about 1/4 of the North America at the time. Now that was a bargain! Huge deal. Huge!
16
@SSS
Obama's hot mic moment in 2012 appropriately signaled to the Russians that he would have more flexibility to negotiate a missile defense treaty after his election, which is what Trump and his corrupt cronies should have done, rather than attempting to make clandestine changes before his official time in office. Your whataboutism merely proves the difference between Obama and Trump: the former had scruples, and the latter doesn't know the meaning of the word.
2