Team Trump Just Blew Its Cover

[MelissaB]

Team Trump Just Blew Its Cover

By John R. Schindler • 01/30/18

In a recent column I noted how President Donald Trump seemingly can bend time in a near-supernatural fashion. Our commander-in-chief’s “fine-honed ability to make days seem like weeks and weeks seem like months, even years,” I observed, has the remarkable effect of nullifying even grave mistakes by jam-packing them into short periods of time so “they blur into each other inside the news cycle and soon melt into the morass of Trumpism.”

Even by Trumpian standards, yesterday was one for the record books. “Cover” is an espionage term that means a spy is pretending to be something he’s not to do his job: most often a diplomat, but there are many covers. This features prominently in spy novels and films yet in practice is frequently mundane and far from exciting. At root, cover exists because you will quickly be unmasked and probably arrested if you let everyone know you’re not the insurance salesman you pretend to be, rather a spy. Cover exists because it must.

Yesterday, after months of slippage, Team Trump finally blew its cover, exposing that it possesses a strange and unsettling fealty to the Kremlin for which there is no longer any benign explanation. Any one of yesterday’s bombshell developments would overtake the news cycle for weeks in any normal White House, yet this administration is anything but normal.

First, it was reported in the Swiss media, then picked up by The Daily Beast, that President Trump’s inner circle can be firmly linked to Russian intelligence. For months, speculation has swirled about the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan between top members of Team Trump and a Russian delegation led by Natalya Veselnitskaya, a Moscow attorney with high-level Kremlin connections. Donald Trump, Jr. and Paul Manafort (who is currently under indictment) attended the meeting, which they implausibly insisted was about Russian adoptions.

More: http://observer.com/2018/01/sanctions-nunes-memo-reveal-donald-trump-sean-hannity-ties-to-russia/

[dalton99a]

1. "We need to ask questions about Hannity's relationship with the Kremlin"

Hannity is clearly a key member of Trump's inner circle and should be investigated

[Botany]

2. " ... that President Trumps inner circle can be firmly linked to Russian intelligence."

I hope to live long enough to see them all in jail and the republicans who supported
this coup with acts of treason are driven from office.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Great article, well worth the read (esp. if you want to get pissed off) ...

I really dunno why so many articles make it sound like 'adoptions' was totally made up as a cover-story by Trump. I'd be pretty damn certain Natalia brought 'em up at the meeting, as in "maybe we give you our secret dirty documents on Clinton, but maybe you tell us your plans on russian (you know, wink wink) 'adoptions' ... if Donald were to be elected?".

Donald himself may've been clueless on the implication 'cause he's an idiot but I promise you Manafort was anything but. Adoptions are an OBVIOUS code-word for Magnitsky Act Sanctions.

[genxlib]

4. That is an important article

There isn't much new there but it certainly pulls together a lot of stuff happening at the same time.

To make matters worse, they even left out one. Russian Intelligence came for a meet and greet.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-usa-intelligence/russian-spy-chief-met-u-s-officials-in-u-s-last-week-sources-idUSKBN1FJ2PF

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. thanks for that additional info.

If we had to be at this time in history, I am so glad it happened with the circus clown rejects in office.

[IluvPitties]

5. Sean needs to go down. Dude is a traitor.

[cp]

7. Useful context

[ffr]

8. Can you imagine being under-cover CIA in Russia? You're moments from being outed.

I could never feel safe with tRump's intelligence sharing with the Russians. Me. My family. We're all in danger.

[TwistOneUp]

9. Treason!

Firing squad at dawn for all traitors!

[yonder]

10. K&R