offered at the end of a day during which I have spent far too much time on this.
The indictments provide a template which has been used by multiple people to apply to a lot of things already known and put them in context.
Very little of what I offer here I can claim I arrived at independently. I am combining the analyses of multiple people who specialize in this. I am also adding some further speculation of my own. I do so to stimulate further cogitation and analysis by others.
If interested, continue reading below the break. If not, I understand.
1. The Presidential election was won using data information stolen by the GRU and passed to the Trump campaign. Key to this was the theft of the Democratic party’s data analytics, which after being analyzed by Trump folks led to a massive shift in financial resources in the last weeks of the campaign.
2. Attempts were made to cover tracks — thus there were cutouts used to allow some — for example Roger Stone — to make comments redolent with what Colbert would call truthiness about not DIRECTLY receiving information from Russians.
3. People associated with Trump, and Trump himself, knew that the materials they were using were the result of theft. If Mueller can demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt (and I think he will be able to) it is not a question of “collusion” and it may not even matter if it meets the necessary criteria for conspiracy charges (which only requires one overt act to establish a conspiracy even if it is not successful) — it represents evidence of felonious activity merely in accepting/using the results of a theft.
4. Among the people who will be in serious legal jeopardy because of this are Trump, Manafort (who was clearly still in the loop even after being “fired” from the campaign, Stone, Kushner, Don Jr., Brad Parscale (who under the supervision of Kushner ran the data operations), quite conceivably Kelly Anne Conway, just to list the first names that come to mind. There are dozens more.
5. We need to turn back to the VP selection. After meeting with Pence Trump wanted to leave and planned to name Christie. Manafort invented a claim about plane problems to delay that and to persuade Trump to select Pence. At the time Pence was clearly at serious risk of losing his reelection race for Governor. Regardless of what you might think of him, there is clear evidence that Christie would have attempted to stop the Russian influence: remember, when head of the transition he did not want to give Flynn any position. People have rightly noted Kushner’s antipathy to Christie because of his father Charles Kushner having been convicted/imprisoned by Christie. But now there is the further possibility that the real objection to Christie is that he would have been a problem for using the Russian support. Which also has to lead to two further questions
- how is Pence considered more acceptable to the Russians?
- was Kushner himself attempting to follow in his father-in-law’s footsteps and use dirty Russian money to bail out the problem at 666 Fifth Avenue?
6. The indictments point at broader Russian intervention. In all likelihood the Congressional candidate who sought the information from Guccifer 2.0 is Brian Mast, now representing the 18th CD in Florida, a district that was an open contest because the Democratic incumbent had chosen to run for the Senate. But there were other Congressional (and Senatorial) races that may have been affected. We know about Annette Tadeo and her primary loss to Joe Garcia. I am prepared to argue that the use of the analytics probably cost at least 2 Senate seats — in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which I note were two of the three states won narrowly by Trump that gave him the electoral college. The evidence is less clear about the seat in NC.
7. Some around Trump began to realize that they might actually win the election about a week out. But Trump himself did not expect to win. It took a combination of factors, the absence of any of which would still have meant Clinton would have won the election. Clearly Comey’s letter to House Committee chairmen was also a necessary factor, but would have been insufficient absent the Russian interference and the campainns use of stolen analytics to guide its ad buys. Those two things, also building on the disruption of the Democratic convention by release of DNC emails just before the convention thereby infuriating Sanders supporters, helped swing the election. Again, remove any of these and Clinton still wins.
8. There is serious responsibility on American media for what happened. Here I focus especially on the New York Times, CNN, and Morning Joe. The media issues are fueled by two factors
— longstanding hostility towards the Clintons, especially among certain key voices in the media
— the desire for a competitive race to have something to cover.
Let’s look at the second. Even without the Access Hollywood tape, one can legitimately argue that once Trump got the nomination there was enough fragmentation among Republicans that Clinton would have won by 8 points or more. With the release of the tape, had that not been immediately followed by the email dump that was obsessively covered by the media (even lacking anything of real significance), Trumo would have been blown out. I remember Steve Schmidt saying it could even cost Republicans the House. But that dump of emails fed into the narrative of Hillary’s private server, which again became an issue with Comey’s October letter. Which is ironic considering that Clinton’s server was never successfully hacked, whereas servers of the DNC, the DCCC, State, Defense, and others were.
As far as the media. Let’s start with CNN. They obsessively covered Trump rallies even lacking anything “newsy,” thereby giving him billions in free media, EVEN BEFORE HE WON THE NOMINATION. As for Morning Joe, they would regularly let Trump phone in, whereas they required others candidates (especially during the primaries) to come on their set.
9. Now I come to a touchy issue — Mitch McConnell. We now have to ask what he may have known. Was his refusal to let Obama issue a statement under the auspices of the Gang of Eight because he knew how deeply the Republican debt to the Russians were, and if that can of worms were opened up it would not just take down Trump but could totally blow up the Republican party? Was the appointment of his wife to the cabinet the completion of a quid pro quo?
10. We have the famous remarks of Kevin McCarthy about Putin paying Rohrbacher and Trump, and Ryan telling people to keep it in house. Does that indicate a level of knowledge of what was going on that can help explain Ryan’s continuing to back Devin Nunes in his attempts to destroy Mueller’s investigation?
I could add an equal amount of additional numbered issues, but this is sufficient for now. Feel free to add more in the comments.
Now let me transition to some summative conjectures/assessments.
First, the election of 2016 was totally distorted and corrupted. There is unfortunately no mechanism for a direct redo.
Second, actions currently being taken by Republicans are intended to keep the American people from learning the truth and locking the results of that corrupt election irrevocably into place. It is not just the current Supreme Court opening and the one that should have gone to Garland. It is not even all the vacancies McConnell kept open so a Republican president could pack them. Watch the Republicans attempt to pack the entire judiciary by creating hundreds more judgeships at District and Appellate Courts and filling them with people who will make Gorsuch and Kavanaugh seem sane (think here of Wendy Vitter, for example). This is something that could in theory be stopped, since we still have a filibuster on legislation which would be required to move in that direction.
Third, continue to watch efforts to destroy/dismantle the social safety net, the programs of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to roll back the expansions of civil liberties and civil rights under the Warren Court.
Fourth, the mechanisms are already being put into place to make the voter suppression of the past few elections pale in comparison to what is being done now and in the future, in the expectation that packed/distorted courts will present the veneer of legal legitimacy for such actions.
I am NOT saying all is lost. Not yet.
I am saying that by any fair and reasonable standard, we do not have a legitimate president, there are real questions about the legitimacy of a chunk of Congress, and between them those two branches are moving to equally distort the judiciary.
There is still — as of right now — people committed to the notion of a liberal democracy. Some are still Republicans. Some are career military and intelligence and law enforcement personnel.
The war is not yet lost.
But it is ongoing, not merely from continued Russian attacks and the complicit actions of witting and unwitting accomplices (and I would place Trump and his family in the category of the willing, but in the refusal of far too many others to speak up and push back. That includes Congressional electeds who know better (Jeff Flake and Bob Corker should be rejecting appointments etc to make the point beyond empty words). It also includes the media which is not yet fully calling this administration to account.
Here endeth this screed.
Make of it what you will.