It was always about Russia and money

It was always about Russia and money

On the evening of Thursday 17 January, BuzzFeed News dropped the following bombshell: “President Trump Directed His Attorney To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project”.  The story, assuming the reporting by Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier is corroborated by others and turns out to be true, explains the details of the Trump-Russia connection during his campaign and presidency, and why the acts that flow from that connection are serious crimes.  The following is a lightly edited and glossed discussion of the importance of this story, taken straight from Lawfare.

This story is a big deal because of what it says about the president’s conduct in office. It’s a big deal because of what it says about the reality of Trump’s relationship with Russia during his campaign. And it’s a big deal because the story appears to be based on a serious law enforcement leak.

The stench of corruption

 

Michael Cohen’s plea deal and subsequent filings have filled in many of the gaps in the previously reported timeline of Trump-Russia connections in the 18 months prior to Trump being elected.  With the help of the Washington Post’s latest reporting and timeline (which I’ve borrowed for this post) and the older timelines I previously compiled, here is a condensed chronology of the Trump-Russia connections actually during the election campaign that we can be reasonably sure about now, and some of their implications (in red).  

Performative cruelty and the history of migration across the US southern border

Performative cruelty and the history of migration across the US southern border

If we separate the policies pursued by the Republicans independently of Trump -- the massive tax cut and the attempt to kill Obamacare -- Trump's own 'policies' since becoming president have largely been more symbolic than substantive solutions to real issues.  The ban on visits from predominantly Muslim countries; trade tariffs on friends and adversaries alike; the disdain for multilateral agreements; the proposed wall on the southern border; 'zero tolerance' for illegal entry to the US with its separation of children from their parents, all of these policies might be termed 'performative cruelty' -- ruthless provisions designed to appeal to the prejudices of most Trump supporters.  Each has real-world, often devastatingly tragic consequences, but none of them are rationally thought-out policies that will solve the very real problems the USA faces.  These policies, at least in the short term, predominantly impact 'others' rather than US citizens, and affect especially the 'others' that Trump has scapegoated as the cause of America's problems.

Tackling immigration, legal and illegal, has been perhaps the most popular rallying-call amongst Trump's base, and it is the issue that Trump has recently doubled-down on as the 'winning' issue for the November midterm elections.  The single issue that Trump and his remaining hardliners believe will retain the GOP hold of Congress -- and not incidentally protect Trump from impeachment or prosecution.  

The rhetoric frequently used by the Trump administration is that the current 'immigration crisis' was caused by Democrats and progressives wanting completely 'open' borders.  Indeed, Trump has tweeted that the Democrats, "don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country."  Beyond noting the dehumanizing language, it is worth pausing to consider how and why the southern border became such an issue.  It requires understanding some history.  (The following is adapted and lightly edited from the analysis prepared by Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson.)

Trump began his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that the new policy of separating children from their parents would deter illegal immigrants.  Regardless of the inaccuracy, incipient racism and immorality of these claims, both have confused America's long history of Mexican immigration with a new, startling trend of refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and then cynically blaming Democrats for coddling criminals.

Problems with Mexican immigration stem not from Democratic softness on crime, but from a bipartisan 1965 law that reworked America's immigration laws.  The law in 1965 was the first comprehensive reform of the immigration regime that prevailed since 1924. In the 1920s US immigration law limited immigration according to quotas assigned to each country.  Those countries were heavily weighted toward western Europe, virtually prohibiting immigration from Asia and Africa, and dramatically curtailing it from southern Europe.

The 1924 law did not monitor immigration from Latin America at all, for the simple reason that from the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it without restrictions. Laborers, especially, came from Mexico to work on the huge American farms that came to dominate the US agricultural sector, especially after 1907, when the Japanese workers who had been taking over those jobs were (unofficially) kept out of the country.  The US government actively encouraged that immigration during WWI, to help increase production.

The 1930s Great Depression coupled with the disaster of the western plains Dust Bowl made destitute westerners turn on Mexican migrants, (as well as on their poor white neighbors, as John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath). The government rounded up Mexicans and shipped them back over the border.

But World War II made migrant laborers vital again, and to regularize the system, the US government in 1942 started a guest worker policy called the "Bracero" Program.  It was supposed to guarantee that migrant workers were well treated, paid, and housed adequately.  But employers happily hired illegal as well as legal workers, and American workers and their trade unions complained.  President Eisenhower returned about a million illegal workers in 1954 under "Operation Wetback," only to have officials readmit most of them as braceros.  It was President Kennedy who initiated the process that ended the Bracero program in 1964.

The end of that system coincided with congressional reworking of the 1924 immigration act.  In the midst of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, Congress wanted to end the racial quota system of immigration and replace it with one that did not so obviously discriminate against Asia and Africa.  The 1965 Hart-Celler Act opened immigration to all nations, setting a general cap on total immigration levels.  But southern congressmen, appalled at the idea of black immigration, introduced a provision that privileged family migration, arguing that "family unification" should be the nation's top priority.  They expected that old-stock immigrants from western Europe would use the provision to bring over their relatives, which would keep the effect of the 1924 law without the statute.  But their provision had the opposite effect.  It was new immigrants who wanted to bring their families; not old ones.  So immigration began to skew heavily toward Asia and Latin America.

At the same time, Hart-Celler put a cap on Latin American immigration for the first time, just as the guest worker program ended.  The cap was low: 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually at that point.  And American agribusiness depended on migrant labor.  Workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed (and exploited), as always.  But now their presence was illegal.  In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the United States and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers.  But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of guarding and militarizing the border.  Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants quite understandably refused to take the chance of leaving and not being able to re-enter.

Since 1986, US politicians have refused to deal with this disconnect, which grew in the 1990s when NAFTA flooded Mexico with US corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work, largely in the American Southeast.  But this 'problem' is hardly either new nor suddenly catastrophic.  While it is estimated that about 6 million undocumented Mexicans currently live in the United States, most of them -- 78% -- are long-term residents, resident in the USA more than ten years.  Only 7% have lived in the USA less than five years. (This is a much more stable ratio than undocumented immigrants from any other country.)  And since 2007, the number of Mexicans living illegally in the United States has declined by more than a million.  The Mexican economy is good enough that more Mexicans are leaving America these days than coming.  Undocumented Mexican "criminals and rapists" are not really the issue at hand.

What is happening right now at America's southern border is thus not really about Mexicans at all.  It is a relatively new issue, which began around 2014. The people now arriving at the US southern border, where children are separated from their parents, are generally from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, countries with warlike levels of violence that are creating masses of refugees.  (And longstanding US support of rightwing regimes in those states is in no small part a reason why that violence has become endemic.)  Those people now arriving in Mexico from those countries are not sneaking over the border for work or to commit crime; they are refugees applying for asylum, which is legal in the United States.  And while the Trump administrations is trying to stop them by taking their children, researchers say that, while it is possible to discourage economic migrants -- like most Mexicans -- no deterrent will stop migrant refugees, for they are fleeing potential death.

But all of this history is irrelevant to Trump.  Whether refugees, economic migrants or actual criminals, people wanting to enter the US from the southern border are all a 'national security' problem.  And taking a 'tough' stance against these 'enemies' plays well with his supporters.  Don't expect that attitude to change, regardless of the facts.

Trump's lasting damage to the US political system

The overt corruption of the American presidency is happening more or less in plain sight. 


This past week news broke about a number of recent deals involving Trump, his family, hangers-on and his enablers, that show that the worst fears about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest expressed prior to his election were entirely justified.  Last year’s efforts by Michael Cohen to enrich himself based on his closeness to Trump pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump’s family is raking-in through the patriarch’s political position.  The dealings of the Trump Organization, now under the notional management of Trump’s two adult sons, but still owned by the President, are prime examples of the corrupt self-dealing enrichment evidently going on. The China and the Lido City project in Indonesia is a good example – Trump promising to save jobs in, wait for it, China, and disregarding his own administration’s concerns about cybersecurity lifting sanctions against ZTE in the process – and in apparent return, receiving Chinese financial backing for his next mega development in Indonesia.  

Trump again uses his thumbs to distract, again

The current furor over Trump's comments about the NFL is leading to some much needed discussion about race issues on mainstream venues -- which is important. 

But...

While Trump stirs up another high profile culture conflict that sucks-up all the media oxygen:

• Trump's administration has done little to diffuse the potentially devastating conflict with North Korea.
• Trump is threatening to tear-up the Iran nuclear deal, despite no reason to do so, the consequences of which would be to potentially create another North Korea situation and, moreover, would massively alienate the other partners in the deal and make future deals much harder to negotiate.
• Puerto Rico has not been granted the disaster relief it needs; meanwhile, Trump has been silent on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Maria on the territory. 
• The environmental disasters caused by Hurricane Irma on Houston, and the warnings of scientists that climate change would led to this, has been effaced from public view.
• The Trump administration has revised and extended its travel ban.  
• The massively destructive GOP Obamacare repeal effort is no longer making headlines, and although repeal seems doomed, the repeal effort is not going away, and there are other health programs serving millions are under threat.
• The news that Jared Krushner and other Trump admin officials have been using their own private email accounts to conduct government business has barely registered in public consciousness -- one can only imagine how Hillary Clinton feels about that.
• The massive graft and personal enrichment of the administration continues.
• Facebook is finally being forced to admit its platform actually did have a pernicious impact on the spread of actual fake news in the 2016 election. 
• and, then there still is the ongoing revelations of the Russia investigation. 

I haven't seen the analytics yet, but I'm willing to bet the NFL/anthem tweets and subsequent story dominates almost mainstream media at the moment.  Dangerously, Trump may not know much about anything, but he is very effective at disguising that fact and distracting everyone from pressing issues at any given time.

Pardoning the unpardonable

While much of North America is worried about the impending landfall of a potentially catastrophic hurricane in Texas, the US president has quietly pardoned the Arizona Sheriff recently convicted of racial profiling and refusing to obey a federal court’s injunction against continuing such practices.  Trump’s pardoning of Joe Arpaio may seem like a rather minor issue compared to the litany of major issues that have bedeviled this president, or indeed the impending disaster facing South East Texas.  I don’t want to diminish those other issues, but I want to highlight why this pardon is also a very big deal.  


Trump has recently mused publicly about the extent of his pardon powers.  And the Arpaio pardon his may well be the trial run of a string of pre-emptive pardons.  But even if it isn’t, the suggestion that Arpaio merited a pardon, as he hinted at his Phoenix political rally with the phrase that Arpaio had been “convicted for doing his job” is indicative of the contempt Trump holds for the rule of law and to his willingness to use the Presidency’s judicial privileges for crass political gain.


Normally, a president considering a pardon solicits and make publicly available the recommendation of the Department of Justice.  However, in this case that is unlikely to have happened since it was Trump’s own Department of Justice that secured the very conviction for criminal contempt that is the subject of the pardon.  A president can ignore a DOJ recommendation, but the DOJ’s participation is one check on the abuse of this extraordinary power in the hands of a president.  And even Attorney General Sessions was hardly likely to recommend a pardon for a law enforcement officer convicted of willfully and openly flouting a federal court order, prosecuted by his own department.


Moreover, this case is still active with Arpaio’s lawyers preparing an appeal of a decision that was only issued this past July.  Normally (and this pardon just goes to underline how far from ‘normal’ the US has travelled in the past 7 months), this would be a strong reason for a pardon to be thought entirely premature: the president is literally intervening in the middle of an ongoing legal proceeding.  Thus the pardon circumvents normal judicial process and has the appearance of being (and substantively is) a direct interference in the regular administration of justice.  Trump has already shown himself to have difficulty grasping and respecting the independent and impartial operation of federal law enforcement.  With this act, Trump has dramatically escalated the assault on these limits.


Trump is pardoning a political ally who quite deliberately flouted the law and did so as a law enforcement officer.  It places Trump, again, on the side of bigotry and racism. Trump has already made political spectacle of Arpaio in order to placate some of his restive critics: at his Phoenix political rally he asked, “Do people in this room like Sheriff Joe,” showing explicitly the very defined political audience for the pardon.  Perhaps Trump thought that pardoning Arpaio would bring political gain without cost.  It is true that this pardon cannot be stopped and will please the Trumpite base.  But it will also not escape the attention of Mueller and his team as they investigate obstruction of justice and evaluate evidence bearing on Trump’s motives and lack of respect for law.  


Unlike a pardon of himself, family members, or aides in the Russian investigation, pardoning Arpaio will probably not result in a demand for an impeachment inquiry.  But as impeachment pressure increases in the future (as they will), the Arpaio pardon in the background will be highly damaging to the Trump’s position.  Ultimately, it will strengthen the arguments of those who have long claimed Trump does not have the requisite respect for the rule of law, or an understanding of the meaning of his constitutional oath, to remain the president.

Conspiracies to the left of us, conspiracies to the right, and Russia….in the middle?

Recent political campaigns, particularly the 2016 British Brexit vote, the 2016 US and 2017 French Presidential elections, are now all under scrutiny for potential meddling by Russia operatives and allies.  In all three cases an influence and propaganda campaign has been detected, with operatives directed by or sympathetic to Russia trying to manipulate social media and release hacked information thought damaging to the party not favoured by Russian interests.  Russian interference has led to a multitude of conspiracy theories about Russian influence, on both the left and right of the political spectrum, on social media manipulation by shady elites, on the rise of ‘alternative’ media outlets with Russian connections or pro-Russian views, and rapidly proliferating fake news about fake news. 

We are Approaching a Dangerous Moment in the Trump Presidency

Right now, Trump still has too many powerful defenders for him to face a political or legal reckoning, but he is getting seriously frustrated with the political crisis he has himself wrought, and wants desperately to ‘change the channel’ to distract attention from his manifest troubles.  And when he is on the defensive, Trump lashes out.

Trump throws out some red meat to his base

While everyone is (rightly) obsessed with the Comey firing... Trump appoints another white nationalist ideologue to lead his dangerous “election commission”.

Yesterday (May 10), just before basically conceding the White House lines on the Comey firing over the past 48 hours were fabrications, Trump launched a long-promised commission on “election integrity,” rekindling a controversy over the prevalence of voter fraud at US polls.  The commission, established by executive order, is the upshot of Trump’s unsubstantiated claim shortly after taking office that more than 3 million undocumented immigrants illegally voted in November’s election.  The new commission includes Republicans Connie Lawson, the secretary of state of Indiana, and Kenneth Blackwell, who formerly held that post in Ohio; Democratic election officials William M. Gardner of New Hampshire and Matthew Dunlap of Maine.  Christy McCormick, a Republican member of the nonpartisan US Election Assistance Commission appointed by President Barack Obama, has also been selected to serve on the panel.  All these officials seem entirely reasonable choices, but he has appointed Kris Kobach to co-lead (along with Vice President Mike Pence) this commission and its investigation.  Kobach is a white nationalist, anti-immigrant ideologue with a long and notorious career of voter suppression efforts.  The new commission is unlikely to find much evidence of real voter fraud, but with Kobach’s guidance, it could entrench voter suppression measures nonetheless.

Comey's Firing: A Moment of Truth for America

A Key Turning Point for Trumpism and Democracy

James Comey’s firing by Trump was lawful, and for some legal experts even overdue, but the now former FBI Director's role in leading the Trump-Russia investigation means that Trump’s action has brought his presidency to a turning point moment – a very dangerous moment for American democracy.  It really all depends on whom Trump nominates to succeed Comey.  If he tries to nominate a loyal stooge, then a constitutional crisis, or worse, the slide into authoritarianism, lies ahead.  If he nominates a credible, independent replacement (or a special prosecutor), or if the Republican controlled Senate insists on an independent replacement, then this will eventually blow over and Trump’s shambolic presidency will limp on. 

Grand Jury Investigations into the Russian Connection

Are there Grand Juries already investigating the Trump-Russian connection?

A number of Washington insiders certainly think so.  And FBI Director Comey’s comments to the Senate on Wednesday seem to indirectly confirm such suspicions.

Resources on the Russian Connection (updated to 3 July)

Updated to July 3, 2017.

I've moved my timeline to here and will update it from now on at this page.  Recent and new entries are dated in bold italics.
Also, live links to organizations keeping track of the Trump-Russia investigations.

Lawfare's Discussion of Possible Theories to Explain the Russian Connection

Seven Charts that Explain all the Trump-Russia Connections (at Politico) 

Senator Feinstein's Timeline about Flynn To the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism

Timeline of Comey's Firing

Timeline of VP Mike Pence role in Russian Affair

CNN's Many paths from Trump to Russia

The Washington Post Profiles of Those Connected

Trump by the numbers: The First 100 Days

A selection of his ‘achievements’ with some sources.

Come Sail Away

Trump’s Administration produces chaos even for the US military 

 
Remember 10 days ago when the US administration raised global anxieties (at least those following the news) because it claimed that Trump had ordered a carrier strike group to head towards North Korea in advance of that regime’s sabre-rattling missile tests?  Well it turns out the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its supporting ships were actually conducting exercises off the coast of Australia, a US defense official acknowledged today. Indeed it was actually traveling in the opposite direction — towards the Indian Ocean, not to the northwestern Pacific — as recently as four days ago.  Trump and his spokespeople thus either lied or were totally confused about the warships’ whereabouts.  Given the track record and general ignorance of Trump and his proxies, either likelihood seems possible; both are laughably ridiculous if the brinkmanship deployed by Trump in this episode wasn’t so frightening. 

Behold Trump, Bringer of War

Trump has reversed his pre-election non-interventionism and seemingly embraced Republican foreign policy hawkishness. 

Is this a good thing?  No.

Even before the missile strikes in Syria, Trump’s unknowledgeable, unpredictable and combative approach to foreign relations raised alarm amongst foreign policy experts about the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, China or North Korea.  After the Syria missile strikes and the unleashing of the unprecedented use of the MOAB weapon in Afghanistan, those worst fears are now nearer to being realized.

Syria

Trump, Syria and Distraction

Last night, Thursday 6 April, Trump flip-flopped on a major campaign plank and intervened directly in the Syrian civil-war quagmire by ordering a missile strike on the air base understood to be the launch point of the Syrian air force’s chemical weapon strike against its own civilian population earlier this week.  While ostensibly reacting to the most recent atrocity and war crime of Assad’s regime, I think there are good reasons to be sceptical about the purpose and ongoing commitment of Trump’s apparent turn of heart.  There is also reason to be extremely anxious about this impetuous and instinctual use of American military might by Trump.  In several ways, this action – even though it is directed at a murderous, criminal regime fully deserving of punitive treatment – confirms some of the worst fears expressed before the election about handing to a man like Trump the keys to the world’s most powerful arsenal.

Russia Again (updated to April 30)

 The Russian Connection, revisited, and a timeline of the links

You may have heard about reports that indicate that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is trying to cut a deal with the FBI, copping a plea in exchange for telling everything he knows about Donald Trump’s team and Russia, including possible collusion in that country’s interference with the 2016 election.  The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn has offered to be interviewed by the agency and the congressional intelligence committees in exchange for immunity, “but has so far found no takers.” His lawyer told Bloomberg that, “Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.”  As many have noted, this is somewhat ironic since Flynn told Meet the Press last September, “When you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime.”

Trump's Ideologues 4: Bannon and Miller and Islamaphobia

Trump's advisors and Islamaphobia

Islamaphobic ideologues now hold some of the most powerful positions in American government.  As a group, these figures understand the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims entirely through the lens of its most extreme outliers.  In an oft cited and telling analogy, its akin to suggesting Christianity should be understood by taking the views of the Klu Klux Klan as the norm.  Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller’s anti-immigration views, as I outlined in my previous blog, stem from a concentration of far-right views that have also viewed Muslims as a particular threat to the far-right’s peculiar understanding of Christian Western Civilization.  In this blog I’ll be outlining some of the sources and implications of their views on Islam.  

Trump’s Ideologues 3: Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller on Immigration

Trump’s Ideologues 3:  Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller on Immigration

Stephen K. Bannon is acknowledged as the chief ideologue in Trump’s inner circle even if, as FiveThirtyEight has detailed, there maybe as many as eight potential power centres within the Trump administration and they all have different perspectives and (in part competing) agendas.  But as his chief advisor (and, significantly, an outsider to the Washington establishment) Bannon is the most important of the ideologues at this moment.  His young and aggressive protégé, Stephen Miller, is also an ideologue, but Miller’s views parallel Bannon’s so it makes sense to look at them together.  (To put another way familiar to historians: If Bannon were Robiespierre then Miller would be St. Just.) 

Looking at his overall worldview, it is apparent that Bannon seeks to influence Trump under four broad headings: restricting immigration, Islamaphobia, economic nationalism, and the destruction of the political establishment.  Although all four headings are related in Bannon and Miller’s worldview, I’ll be devoting a separate blog post to each heading, ending with how they all fit together.  This first post will set out the place of restricting immigration to the United States since this has been a priority acted on during Trump’s first 50 days.

The Russian Connection

The Russian Connection

Just in case you are having trouble keeping track (I was), here is some information on the current Trump advisers, appointees and aides either reportedly under investigation by the FBI for having contact with Russian agents, or have had significant business and/or political ties with Russia.