Russiagate: Trump Is Trying to Put Out a Fire With More Smoke

If Republicans have a shred of intellectual integrity, they’ll ignore the president’s flailing, and follow the evidence wherever it leads.

There’s a lot we know — and even more we don’t know — regarding the Kremlin interference in the U.S. election last year. The most important thing we know is that there was interference. This is the consensus, “high confidence” assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, which further concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. That in and of itself is scandalous enough. What we don’t know — and need to find out — is whether the Trump campaign actively colluded with this Russian operation and, more broadly, what links if any exist between the U.S. president and the dictator in the Kremlin.

Much remains unexplained. Why, for instance, did Trump associates repeatedly communicate and meet with Russians close to Putin during the campaign? American and European intelligence agencies reportedly have found copious evidence of such conversations, but so far there is no indication of what transpired. If there was an innocent explanation, why did former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions lie about their conversations with the Russian ambassador?

More questions concern Trump confidante Roger Stone. Was he truthful in saying that he talked last year with Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks (described by Trump’s own CIA director as a “hostile intelligence service”), and with the hacker persona Guccifer 2.0, which U.S. intelligence has determined was simply a front for Russian intelligence? What did they discuss? And how is it that Stone seemed to know in advance of Russian-orchestrated leaks of documents such as the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta?

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/08/russiagate-trump-is-trying-to-put-out-a-fire-with-more-smoke/