Trump's Association with Putin is just got 100 times more real to most Americans. Eisenhower and Reagan are turning over in their graves.
begin quote from:
Suspicion
is mounting about Donald Trump’s ties to Russian officials and business
interests, as well as possible links between his campaign and the
Russian hacking of U.S. political …
Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Political Hacks
GOP Blocks Probes Into Trump-Russia Ties
Russian
hackers are apparently trying to mess with our elections. But
congressional Republicans are crippling any investigations—while their
probes of Hillary Clinton continue.
09.29.16 10:15 PM ET
Suspicion is mounting about Donald Trump’s
ties to Russian officials and business interests, as well as possible
links between his campaign and the Russian hacking of U.S. political
organizations. But GOP leaders have refused to support efforts by
Democrats to investigate any possible Trump-Russia connections, which
have been raised in news reports and close-door intelligence briefings.
And without their support, Democrats, as the minority in both chambers
of Congress, cannot issue subpoenas to potential witnesses and have less
leverage to probe Trump.
Privately,
Republican congressional staff told The Daily Beast that Trump and his
aides’ connections to Russian officials and businesses interests haven’t
gone unnoticed and are concerning. And GOP lawmakers have reviewed
Democrats’ written requests to the FBI that it investigate Trump before
they were made public.
But the
lawmakers in both chambers have declined to sign onto them. Republicans
have no appetite to launch inquiries into their party’s presidential
nominee, and they continue to believe that the FBI flubbed its
investigation into Clinton and her aides, who should have been charged
with mishandling government secrets, the staffers said.
Instead
Republican lawmakers appear far more interested in probing Hillary
Clinton’s use of a private email server, nearly three months after the
Justice Department declined to press charges against her or her aides.
FBI Director James Comey has been called to testify to Congress three
times about the email investigation, and Republicans have launched a
separate inquiry into whether the former secretary of state committed perjury when she testified before Congress about her unorthodox communications system.
As
a result, Clinton is likely to face relentless grilling on Capitol Hill
from now until Election Day, but Trump can rest assured that his fellow
partisans will go easy on him.
Trump
has made no secret of his affection for Russian President Vladimir
Putin and came to his defense in the first presidential debate this week
when he dismissed the assertion that Russian government hackers were
behind intrusions at the Democratic National Committee. Although it’s
practically the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community that the Kremlin is seeking to undermine the presidential election through cyber attacks and leaks,
Trump said, “I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China, it
could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting
on their bed who weighs 400 pounds, OK?”
Democrats are left shaking their heads.
“I
can’t say that I was surprised to hear Trump say that because he has
been such an apologist for the Kremlin,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the top
Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Daily Beast.
“It’s once again great propaganda for Putin.
“He has no idea the kind of damage
that he does,” Schiff said of Trump. “He’s a human wrecking ball,” the
lawmaker said, noting that the leader of Hezbollah, which the United
States considers a terrorist organization, endorsed Trump’s assertion that Clinton and Barack Obama co-founded ISIS.
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Democrats
have implored the FBI to look deeper into Trump’s dealings with Russia
and those of his aides, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort,
who worked for the pro-Russian government of Ukraine, and Trump foreign
policy adviser Carter Page, who met with Russian government officials
in July, including one believed to be connected to the gathering of
information about the upcoming U.S. election, according to Yahoo News.
But GOP lawmakers won’t sign onto the Democrats’ requests.
At
a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Rep. John
Conyers, the top Democrat, complained that his Republican colleagues
weren’t pressing Comey on the Trump campaign. “Instead, I believe that
the focus of this hearing will be more of the same: an attack on you,
and your team at the Department of Justice, for declining to recommend
criminal charges against Secretary Hillary Clinton,” Conyers said.
In
the past month, the top Democrats on four House committees—including
those that have most strongly pursued questions about Clinton’s
email—have written to the FBI director asking him to investigate whether
connections between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government
“may have contributed” to hacks against the Democratic National
Committee and other political organizations (PDF).
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,
meanwhile, asked the FBI to investigate, among other things, the
meetings between Russian officials and Page. Reid was prompted to write
to Comey after an intelligence briefing about the hacks on the DNC and
Russian efforts to interfere with the election, two individuals with
knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast. (Page denies the meetings ever happened.)
Republican leaders’ decision not to
investigate Trump represents an ironic turn for a party that only four
years ago was being criticized for being too hawkish on Russia. Now,
it’s Democrats who are being accused of using “McCarthyite” tactics.
Of
course, there’s no great love for Russia and Putin in the Washington
GOP establishment. House Speaker Paul Ryan has called the Russian
president a “devious thug.” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the
powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says Putin is a
“dictator” and that he personally disagrees with Trump’s praise of
Putin as a strong leader.
But
Chaffetz—who has doggedly investigated whether Clinton jeopardized
national security through her use of a private email server, and has
reminded witnesses that his committee enjoys a broad writ to investigate
all sorts of matters—maintains that there’s nothing for the committee
to investigate when it comes to Trump. Chaffetz has argued that the
nominee isn’t a federal employee, and that his campaign staffers’
purported involvement in Russian affairs doesn’t have a clear link to
matters that concern the oversight committee, like Clinton’s possible
mishandling of classified information does.
“His position hasn’t changed,” Chaffetz’s spokesperson told The Daily Beast.
Obviously,
Democrats will get no help from fellow lawmakers in their pursuit of
Trump. But it’s not clear whether the FBI is investigating the GOP
nominee.
Comey, in testimony
before the House Judiciary Committee this week, refused to confirm or
deny if the bureau has taken Democrats up on their requests, noting that
as a matter of policy the FBI doesn’t comment on its own
investigations.
That didn’t stop Democrats from trying to draw him in.
In
a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee this week, Democratic Rep.
Ted Deutch pressed the director on whether the FBI would investigate an
American citizen who met with senior Russian government officials for a
possible Logan Act, which bars private individuals from conducting
foreign policy on behalf of the United States. Deutch didn’t initially
mention Page, but Democrats want to know if he made promises to lift
U.S. sanctions on Russia in a future Trump administration when Page was
in Moscow last summer.
“I don’t
think it’s appropriate to answer that,” Comey said. “That gets too close
to confirming or denying whether we have an investigation. Seems too
close to real life, so I’m not going to comment.”
Remarks like that came
tantalizingly close to at least suggesting that the FBI might be looking
into Trump. But it also prompted Democrats to accuse the law
enforcement agency of a double-standard when it comes to Trump versus
Clinton.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler
noted that the FBI not only publicly confirmed its investigation of
Clinton’s email but publicly released interview notes and its final report to the Justice Department recommending that she and her aides face no charges.
Comey
insisted that the Clinton investigation was an “extraordinary” case,
and that considering the high-profile nature of the investigation, it
was important that the FBI be more transparent than usual.
Nadler wondered why the same wasn’t true for the Republican nominee for president.
“It
is a dangerous violation of federal law if Donald Trump’s adviser
Carter Page is engaging in freelance negotiations with Russia,” Nadler
said.
Referring to his Republican colleagues, Nadler said, “I assume we all agree the allegations are very serious.”
It’s not clear that they do.
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