Donald Trump, Russia, and the Political Witch Hunt That Isn't - By Frank Rich
Do Trump’s Tax Returns Show His Financial Ties To Russia?
Let’s not pretend we don’t know what is happening here. There is evidence that Donald Trump and his administration-in-formation are partially, perhaps wholly, beholden to the Kremlin and/or those Russian oligarchs in its thrall. This is why Trump refused to answer that question about contacts with Russia during the campaign — and why he’ll lie about it when he finally feels he must muster some kind of answer. His symbiosis with Russia is also why he will never release his tax returns, for what other reason could there be at this point except that they reveal the Russian financial ties he denies? After all, we already know the other embarrassments contained in those returns — that he hasn’t paid taxes for years, that he practices no actual philanthropy, and that his businesses are in a perennial waltz with bankruptcy, fraud, and failure.
No, Russia is the big story here. The elephant in the room is a bear. Trump has made no bones about repeatedly hiring fellow Putin sycophants, whether his former campaign chief Paul Manafort, the incoming National Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, or the secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson. When the heroic aviator Charles Lindbergh was awarded a medal, the Service Cross of the German Eagle, by Hermann Goering “by order of der Führer” before World War II, it helped make him persona non grata in the FDR White House. When Tillerson received a Russian Order of Friendship Award from Putin, Trump regarded it as an incentive to hire him.
How this will play out once Trump is inaugurated is impossible to fathom. We have a president-elect who trusts Putin and Julian Assange more than he does America’s intelligence agencies, whom he has compared to the Nazis. Perhaps Trump’s only real goal is to grab money from deep Russian pockets as fast as he can in opaque business deals managed by his sons while he’s in office. Even so, it’s entirely possible that he and Flynn will help facilitate Putin’s own political aims in exchange — all the while claiming that their motive is merely to band with Russia in “fighting ISIS.” What’s clear is that we are not going to get straight answers to any Russian questions. Even before Trump took over the lectern at his Wednesday press conference, his press spokesman, Sean Spicer, unleashed a preemptive lie about still another Trump-Kremlin connection by claiming that Trump “does not know” Carter Page, an investment banker who was investigated by the F.B.I. last summer for suspicions of private dealings with Russian leaders. In fact, Page had been announced as a Trump foreign-policy adviser by his campaign last year and had been cited by name by Trump himself in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board in March. Both Page and Trump, by the way, have used the term “witch hunt” to describe any attempts to investigate their Russian dealings — the same term used by the Kremlin to fend off evidence that Putin manipulated the American election. Perhaps Page and Trump have the same Kremlin handler, whether or not it is the former KGB agent Putin himself.
MORE:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/trump-russia-and-the-political-witch-hunt-that-isnt.html
