The story about how Trump told Theresa May he doubted Russia was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter is only now making the news.
Donald Trump disputed that Russia was behind the attempted murder of a former Russian spy in a tense call with Theresa May, it has emerged.
Despite the widespread conclusion that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last year, the US president is said to have spent 10 minutes expressing his doubts about Russian involvement.
According to the Washington Post, Trump “harangued” May about Britain’s contribution to Nato in a phone call with Britain’s then prime minister in the summer of last year, before disputing Russian involvement in the Skripal case.
“Trump totally bought into the idea there was credible doubt about the poisoning,” said a figure briefed on the call. “A solid 10 minutes of the conversation is spent with May saying it’s highly likely and him saying he’s not sure.” Continued
Can you imagine if it came out that this revelation was about President Barack Obama?
This was the story from The Guardian over a year ago:
Theresa May has asked Donald Trump to raise the issue of Russian aggression against the west, including the Salisbury nerve agent attack, when he meets Vladimir Putin for high-stakes talks next week.
The prime minister told Nato leaders, including the US president, that it was time for them to call out Russia’s “malign behaviour”, which was undermining democracies and damaging their interests around the world.
Downing Street made clear that she expected Trump to bring up the novichok attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, which claimed the life of British woman Dawn Sturgess this week, at his summit with Putin in Helsinki on Monday. Continued
Little did we know at that time how futile May’s request was.
Of course Trump’s expressing doubt about who was behind the assassination attempt isn’t treason per se, but it does suggest that he was taking his cue from Vladir Putin over what western intelligence agencies had determined. This is an old story. Only if there was proof positive that Trump acts at Putin’s direction against the interest of the United States and its allies for whatever reason, kompromat or financial self-interest (or both) would this rise to the level of an impeachable crime.
Call it treason or treachery now we find so many instances of Trump’s impeachable behavior that the biggest debate within the Democratic Party is whether to impeach him for just the easiest case to make for average Americans to grasp, or confuse them with a litany of examples of how he violated his oath of office.
What do you think?