The second the Trumpster fire began to burn in the oval office the democrats who believed the election had been stolen from them had to find a justification for the atrocities they had just experienced. Surely it couldn’t have been the will of the American people to elect such a bigoted, racist orange transphobe over their candidate who was shrouded in corruption, under federal investigation and debate-ably one of the most unlikable humans alive.
No it couldn’t have been the Democratic Party digging the chasm of relatability between them and the average American citizen ever wider. It couldn’t have been their decision to bolster up a candidate you would need an A.E.D for to generate even the minutest bit of excitement in a supporter’s heart, NO! Someone else was to blame. It was......it was......it was the RUSSIANS!!!
The ground had been sowed by the 2016 Russian influence campaign and the seeds of paranoia planted by the mainstream media. With Trump now in office the fruits of "Russiagate" were ready for harvest. Within a month of Trumps inauguration there were "...already growing demands for a congressional investigation.” 1 Questions had to be answered!
"What were President Trump's advisers talking about with the Russians and what did they say with regard to the sanctions? How involved was President Trump, if at all, in these communications now and in the campaign? Were there connections between the interaction and the extensive hacking that took place by the Russians to influence the outcome of the election? What are President Trump's business interests in Eastern Europe?"
All of these questions and more would become the subject of the aforementioned scandal.
However President Trump himself regarded Russiagate as nothing more than “A witch hunt!” nonetheless the goal of his adversaries on the left was to find some sort of concrete connection and or solid evidence of collusion between his campaign and the foreign government. If only they could dig it up and expose it, than they could impeach the bastard! In an amazing display of insight the cited CNN article eerily foreshadowed what was to transpire in the years to come.
"Trump could survive the scandal while Democrats get consumed with it."
The intelligence report “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”2 cited in previous articles in this series was published only two weeks before Trumps inauguration. This report thrust Russian influence during the 2016 election concretely into the American consciousness as well as also clearly establishing that one of Russia’s main objectives was to “…denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”
Not even a week after the publication of the U.S intelligence communities report CNN came forward with a “bombshell” story that would inevitably begin the turning of the gears of the Russiagate machine. CNN reported that “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr.Trump…” 3 This compromising information was structured on a series of memos compiled by a former British intelligence officer who the U.S intelligence community considered “credible”.
One of the more lucid and eccentric claims made in the aforementioned series of memo’s was that Trump employed “…a number of prostitutes to perform ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.” 4 Allegedly he did this at a Russian Ritz Carlton hotel in a room where President Obama and his wife had stayed previously during an official trip to Russia. The “urination show” was to intended to be a form of petty vengeance. The hotel was known to be under FSB (Russian national Security and intelligence agency) video and audio surveillance. However the “pee tape” never came to light and was never actually proven to exist.
Ecstatic and damaging rumors of politicians are nothing new in the field. As Hunter S. Thompson documents in a series of his articles “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” wild accusations have been swung around the political schoolyard for decades. His example comes from former president Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.
“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pigf****r,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofb****h deny it.” 5
The pee-pee tape accusations became Trump’s personal “pigf****r” moment. Outside of the reports kink related allegations it made a number of other claims that encapsulated not only Trump but also some of his key campaign advisors and staff in the alleged collusion between him, his campaign and Russia.
A large portion of the dossier’s contents were obtained from testimonies given by sources that were either established in the Trump campaign or Russian government. Although no sources are directly named in the dossier some of the cited informant’s titles included “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” or “a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” Some of the Trump campaign informants included “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP” or “a close associate of TRUMP who organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow”.
The structure of the dossier was typically a summary of allegations made about a particular subject such as “SENIOR KREMLIN FIGURE OUTLINES EVOLVING RUSSIAN TACTICS IN PRO-TRUMP, ANTI-CLINTON OPERATION” followed by a “Details” section which further outlined and expanded on the summaries contents. In this details section the information within always seems to be sourced from a “close colleague” or “Trusted compatriot” of the author. Basically someone willing to sit down and say “Wait ‘till you hear this sh*t!”
One of the dossier's claims was that three of Trumps key staffers had "clandestine" meetings with Russian officials. The Trump campaign staff implicated by the dossier were his foreign policy advisor Carter Page, his lawyer Micheal Cohen and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
According to the dossier Carter Page allegedly met with Russian state oil company Rosneft’s chairman Igor Sechin. Using one of Sechin's close associates as a source the apparent motive as reported in the dossier for these meetings was to discuss the easing of sanctions imposed by the U.S and other countries on Russia and its energy sector. Sanctions that came as a consequence of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Sechin's close associate confided further details to the dossier's author in October of 2016. They stated that Page and the Rosneft oil company chairman had struck a deal that if Trump were to lift western sanctions on him (Igor Sechin) as well as the sanctions currently financially hog-tying his company he would broker up to 19% of the it to Page, Trump and their associates. Page allegedly heavily implied on behalf of than presidential candidate Donald Trump that such a deal would come to fruition should his boss occupy the oval office.
A different source reported to the dossier's author the details of a separate clandestine Carter Page meeting. This one with a man named Divyekin who was a member of the Internal Political Department of the Presidential Administration. The purpose of this meeting was to apparently discuss the existence of 'kompromat' (compromising material) the Russian government possessed on Hillary Clinton. Divyekin also allegedly claimed they had similar 'kompromat' on his boss Mr.Trump, warning Page to "bear in mind" that fact when Trump engages in "dealings" with Russia.
Paul Manafort was Trumps campaign manager and another individual who tied Trump and his presidential run to the Russians. Paul apparently had extensive business dealings in Ukraine and received "kickbacks" from former pro-Putin prime minister Viktor Yanukovych. The Russian’s concern was that the Western press would be able to find a trail of breadcrumbs linking Manafort to Yanukovych than back to them (the Russians).
The Western media had started to put a trail together but lacked the hard evidence the Russians allegedly sought to cover up. According to the source who was described as "well-placed Russian figure" a meeting was held between Russian officials and Yanukovych in August of 2016 to discuss the existence of a paper-trail and what to do about it.
Yanukovych assured Putin and the Russians that there was "no documentary trail left behind that could provide clear evidence". The Russians were apprehensive to believe this since Yanukovych had been unsuccessful at covering up his own corruption in the past.
According to an "American political figure associated with Donald Trump" Manafort’s role in the campaign was on thin ice anyway but the allegations of his Ukrainian ties caused him to resign as Trumps campaign manager.
Trumps personal lawyer Michael Cohen was also accused of having secret meetings with Russian officials. Using a "Kremlin insider" as a source the dossier claims that Cohen met with members of the Kremlin in Prague, Czech Republic. This was allegedly facilitated by a member of the Russian Duma (legislator) Konstantin Kosachev who was the head of the foreign relations committee at the time. The meetings were apparently orchestrated through a quasi-government organization known as Rossotrudnichestvo. The reason for using Kosachev, meeting in Prague rather than Moscow and the involvement of the parastatal institution was to maintain "plausible deniability" should news of the meetings get out. Western media's blowback caused by the revelations of Trumps previous campaign managers Paul Manafort’s corrupt relationship with former pro-Putin Ukrainian Prime Minister Yanukovich and the media's uncovering of Carter Page's clandestine Russian dealings created the need for the added layers of protection.
Cohen supposedly took the place of a major player after Manafort was dismissed from Trumps campaign. Other than the Prague meeting Cohen allegedly met with the Russians on several other occasions and always with layers of protection to maintain "plausible deniability". The apparent purpose of these meetings was to discuss damage control over the aforementioned accusations of Trump-Russia collusion made by the Western media as well as creating contingency plans in the event of a Clinton presidency.
The accusations made by the dossier of these three key players in Trumps campaign having meetings and ties to the Russians was what established the link between Trump and the motherland. On top of the meetings the dossier also made claims that the Russians possessed 'kompromat' or compromising material on Trump therefore possibly putting him in a position to be blackmailed by the foreign government.
Two key documents helped lay the foundation for Russiagate. The report published by U.S intelligence solidified the involvement of Russia in the 2016 election and the dossier authored by a "credible" MI6 agent allegedly tying Trumps campaign to that stream of foreign "disinformation" was a one-two punch to the Trump presidency and preordained it to be shrouded in the future Russiagate scandal before Trump himself even took the oath of office. Therefore as the new president took his first steps into the white house simultaneously the first steps of the Russiagate scandal had been made in unison.
Footnotes:
Jullan Zellzer, "Russiagate: What kind of scandal?", CNN, February 20 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/19/opinions/russiagate-scandal-zelizer-opinio
National Intelligence Council, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections", January 6th 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, "Intel cheifs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him", CNN, January 12 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html
"US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMPS ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA AND COMPROMISING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KREMLIN", Buzzfeed, January 10 2016, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
Jack Shepherd, "This Hunter S. Thompson passage is particularly poignant in light of that David Cameron and the pig story", The Independent, September 21 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/this-hunter-s-thompson-passage-is-particularly-poignant-in-light-of-that-david-cameron-and-the-pig-story-10510787.html