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From the beginning of the investigation into Russia, it was clear that he differed significantly from Watergate: the crimes that Nixon committed behind closed doors in the White House and secretly, that Trump committed to away. Lying repeatedly to the American public? Each time, Trump tweets or opens his mouth. Obstacle to justice? To turn Comey. Shooting sessions. Calling Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" and calling for an end. Falsify witnesses? Pardons pending. Indulge in the concealment of a crime? As he lives and breathes.
But Donald Trump and his people sought to hide the secret of the very first days of his campaign: their relations with the Russians. If, in the past, we thought we knew most of the contacts with Russia, this week's events taught us that we were wrong.
First, new revelations were given about the fact that Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi served as switches between Trump. campaign and WikiLeaks. The Guardian even announced that Stone had met Julian Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador in London.
It was then announced that the cooperation agreement between the special advocate Robert Mueller and the former Trump campaign leader, Paul Manafort, had exploded. Incredibly, it was revealed that Manafort's lawyers maintained an open channel of communication with Trump's legal team, likely informing them of Mueller's investigation center and all that the FBI and prosecutors of the team had asked Manafort. Mueller filed a document telling the same court that had signed the Manafort agreement that he had lied to the FBI and concealed information, in violation of his cooperation agreement with prosecutors.
On Thursday morning, Mueller had another surprise when his attorneys marched in federal court in Manhattan with former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen. Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. patiently asked Cohen to plead guilty to lying to two congressional committees over the proposed construction of a tower initiated by Donald Trump in Moscow. "I did these inaccuracies to be consistent with the political message of the individual 1 and out of loyalty to the individual 1," Cohen told the judge, referring to Trump as "individual 1". He then admitted: "I was aware of the repeated disadvantages of individual 1 trade and political links between himself and Russia, his repeated statements that the investigations on these links were motivated by considerations and without any evidence, and that any contact with Russian nationals by the Individual 1 campaign or the Trump Organization had ended before the Iowa Caucus on 1 February 2016. "
In D & ## In other words, Michael Cohen told the US Congress the same lies that Donald Trump had told the American people during his campaign and after his nomination as President of the United States. on several occasions that he had not concluded a deal in Russia, that he had nothing to do with Russia and that he knew no contact between his campaign and Russians.
Ove Over the last 18 months, we discovered that during Trump's campaign for the presidency and after, members of his campaign and other relatives like him, his son and son-in-law, met again and again with Russians. There were contacts between his campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, with Russians. He has had many meetings between his senior foreign policy advisor, Jeff Sessions, and the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
There was a meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with six Russians who had told the Trump campaign. they had information that would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton. There have been meetings between Trump and Kislyak advisers at the Republican National Convention and on the sidelines of an important foreign policy speech by Trump at the Mayflower Hotel. Contacts between Trump's campaign adviser Michael Flynn and Sergey Kislyak were repeated. There have been meetings at the Trump Tower between Flynn, Kushner, Bannon and others and Kislyak and Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Vnesheconombank, a large state-owned bank in Russia closely linked to Vladimir Putin. There was the meeting in the Seychelles between Trump's adviser, Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker closely linked to Vladimir Putin, seeking to establish a "return channel" between Trump and Putin.
There were so many contacts between Donald Trump's campaign that they were hard to follow
And this week we learned that the people of Trump had been even more busy with the Russians than we thought. The criminal information filed Thursday in court about Cohen's guilty plea contains links we do not know between the people of Trump and the Russians. Cohen was in touch in January 2016 about Trump's Russian project with the office of Dmitry Peskov, described as a "senior assistant to Putin". (Peskov is currently in Argentina at the G20 summit with Putin, as a press officer) Cohen has remained in contact with people in Russia through Felix Sater, identified as "Individual 2" in criminal information . Sater is a criminal and former FBI informant who worked with Trump on the Trump Soho Hotel project. In May 2016, Cohen discussed the possibility of traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia to meet with either Putin or the Russian Prime Minister. He discussed the possibility for Trump to travel to Russia to meet Putin about the Trump Moscow project after the Republican National Convention. Discussions on travel to Russia continued until June, with messages exchanged between Cohen and Sater from 9 to 14 June. Throughout this period, according to criminal information, Cohen repeatedly spoke of the agreement reached between Moscow and Trump and kept his children informed about his activities.
You will remember that others at Trump Tower were occupied by Russians in June. On June 3, Donald Trump Jr. received an e-mail proposing to hold a meeting with several Russians who had incriminating information about Clinton. The meeting was held on June 9th. On June 14, Michael Cohen met Felix Sater in the lobby of Trump Tower and told him that he would not travel to Russia, marking the end of Trump's Russian project, according to criminal information filed Thursday. .
At the top of Trump Tower, the same day, Paul Manafort was promoted to President of the Trump Campaign as President.
The dates of the events related to Russia in the Trump campaign are interesting for a very important reason. On May 26, CNN announced that, after winning the Indiana primaries on May 3 and the last May primaries, Trump had crossed the threshold of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure his candidacy to the presidency of the party.
So when the Russians offered to dirty Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign in June and they were in contact with Felix Sater to try to arrange meetings between Michael Cohen and Putin before the convention and with Trump after the convention, they knew that they were dealing with the man who would run for the presidency of the United States as a Republican candidate.
This is the reason why the Trump Muscovite Tower Project was canceled on June 14th. Trump and Putin hired each other because neither man wanted to run the risk of compromising his chances of being elected president in November.
Putin had already begun to help Trump's chances for the elections. On June 12, the Washington Post reported that the mail servers of the Democratic National Committee had been hacked. We did not know then who had hacked the emails of the Democratic Party, but we now know who did it. On July 13, Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officials for hacking the Democratic emails. US intelligence agencies have previously announced that piracy was committed by order of Vladimir Putin.
On June 15, the day after the appointment of Manafort as Campaign Chairman and the closing of the contract with Trump Tower in Moscow, an online character calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" published the first e- emails from the Democratic Party. We now know that "Guccifer 2.0" was an officer of the Russian intelligence services.
Throughout his campaign, Trump praised Putin. On June 3, Trump told a campaign rally: "Putin has declared that Donald Trump was a genius and [the] the next great leader of the United States."
On July 25, Trump tweeted:
The new joke in town is that Russia leaked DNC's disastrous e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin I like it
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016
On July 27 Trump held a press conference and announced: "Russia, if you listen, j & Hope you will be able to find the missing 30,000 emails. I think that our press will reward you with power. "
All this was kept secret. All meetings between the people of Trump and the Russians. All contacts between Michael Cohen and the Russians about the Trump Moscow tower. All the information they had in advance about leaks emails from Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.
They kept secrets for the same reason as Nixon: because they were guilty of crimes. Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort and others pleaded guilty to their crimes. This week, we learned that Mueller's team was circling the Trump Tower like sharks around the carcass of a dead whale. They even flew to take Cohen's guilty plea in a New York City courthouse.
Do you want to know how to tell Trump he realizes how bad he is? On Thursday, as they climbed the stairs leading to Air Force One, at the Andrews Common Base, outside Washington DC, and were coming down the stairs from Air Force One in Argentina, Donald and Melania Trump were standing the hand. It was the first time in months that the President and his wife were touching each other. They are massaging the family image, but it is too little and too late.
There is speculation in Washington that Trump's family is in Mueller's line of sight. Congressman Adam Schiff, who will assume the presidency of the House Intelligence Committee on January 3, said it would be one of the first jobs of the committee to release the testimony of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to the investigators. Mueller, something that Devin Nunes and the Republicans have refused to do.
Also Thursday, 170 German federal police officers and prosecutors raided the headquarters of Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt, Germany, as part of an investigation to determine whether the bank had helped criminals to launder money. Last year, the bank paid a fine of $ 425 million to the United States for helping Russian banks launder $ 10 billion. Deutsche Bank is the only major lender to have agreed to lend to the Trump Organization in the last decade. Trump's latest financial disclosure forms revealed in May that he owed him $ 175 million according to MarketWatch.
Special Counsel Mueller issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank for information on Trump's borrowings last December, according to the New York Times.
With Donald Trump, it's still a question of money. He will not stay in the White House and watch his business empire suffer the same fate as Paul Manafort, who lost $ 46 million to the government as part of his plea deal. He will resign with the assurance that he will be forgiven for his crimes in the investigation of Russia, in the same way that Nixon has resigned by forgiving for his crimes in Watergate.
So, Russiagate is not that different from Watergate after all. They will have the same final game.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a West Point graduate, has a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered reports such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and the wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five successful novels and several unsuccessful films. He has three children, lives in East Long Island and spends his time worrying about the state of our nation and scribbling madly in an unsuccessful attempt here to make things better. He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.
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