Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Trump and Russia

  • Trump’s Pardon of Roger Stone Is Clearly Corrupt

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump attends a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    Nearly four years of Donald Trump’s corruption and incompetence have nearly numbed me, but when everyone from National Review, which has often given the president the benefit of the doubt, to Robert Mueller, the former director of the FBI who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, speaks out, we ought to pay attention.

    Friday afternoon, Trump commuted the forty-month prison sentence of his longtime accomplice Roger Stone, who had been convicted of witness tampering, obstructing an investigation and lying to Congress. (more…)

  • Recent Revelations in the Trump-Russia Scandal

    • After Trump fired FBI director James Comey — for refusing to end the investigation into his first national security advisor, Michael Flynn — the bureau started to investigate if the president himself might be working for Russia. Flynn is now on trial for lying about his foreign contacts.
    • Trump privately discussed withdrawing the United States from NATO.
    • Not only did he meet with Vladimir Putin five times without other officials present; Trump went so far as to snatch the meeting notes from his own interpreter and tell the linguist not to share what had transpired even with administration officials. (more…)

  • Trump Scandals Keep Piling Up

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump attends a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the many scandals swirling around Donald Trump, so my apologies if I’ve missed anything here since my last update. (more…)

  • Revelations in Trump-Russia Scandal

    When Russiagate skeptic John Podhoretz and Russiagate alarmist John R. Schindler agree there is big news, it’s time for an update. (more…)

  • Trump Puts Mueller Critic in Charge of Mueller Probe

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon)

    American president Donald Trump has replaced his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, with a loyalist, Matt Whitaker, who in the past criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    Here is everything you need to know. (more…)

  • “Only the Best People.” Two More Trump Campaign Officials Guilty

    Remember Donald Trump’s promise to hire “only the best people”? Now at least five of his top campaign workers turn out to be criminals.

    • Paul Manafort, Trump’s second campaign chairman, has been found guilty of filing false tax returns, failing to report a foreign bank account and bank fraud. All the charges were related to his political work for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. A jury in Virginia did not reach a verdict on allegations of bank fraud conspiracy.
    • Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime personal attorney, has pleaded guilty to tax evasion, making false financial statements and breaking campaign finance laws to pay off a Playboy model and a porn actress. Axios reports that, during his guilty plea, Cohen said he was directed to do so by an “unnamed candidate”. Guess who? (more…)

  • How Should Europe Deal with the Putin Apologist in the White House?

    Donald Trump Giuseppe Conte
    American president Donald Trump and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte arrive to a NATO summit in Brussels, July 12 (NATO)

    I’m glad Donald Trump’s shameful behavior in Helsinki, coming on the heels of his ally-bashing in Brussels and the United Kingdom, is finally waking up even conservatives to the fact that we have a Putin apologist in the White House.

    When former intelligence chiefs start to call the president a traitor for accepting Vladimir Putin’s denials of waging information warfare on the United States, we should perhaps ask ourselves if Jonathan Chait didn’t have a point when he argued in New York magazine that the Trump-Russia scandal could be worse than we thought?

    For us in Europe, the why matters less than the what. Whatever Trump’s motives, we must deal with an American president who is determined to sabotage the Atlantic alliance and establish an accord with Putin.

    The question is, how? (more…)

  • Don’t Believe a Word Trump Says

    Donald Trump’s latest allegation is that the FBI planted a “spy” in his presidential campaign and therefore the whole investigation into its ties to Russia is illegitimate.

    This is hyperbole. Both Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Marco Rubio, a Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have dismissed the president’s claim as nonsense.

    What appears to have happened is that somebody in the campaign talked to the FBI — far from a spy, at best an informant.

    This was when the bureau had already started investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, having been warned by foreign intelligence agencies and undoubtedly alarmed by the proliferation of Kremlin-friendly operatives around Trump, from Michael Flynn to Paul Manafort to Carter Page. (more…)

  • EU Budget Fight, California’s Housing Crisis and Trump’s Threats

    Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands are unhappy about the European Commission’s proposal to eliminate rebates in the EU’s next seven-year budget.

    The commission has proposed to cut solidarity spending by 7 percent and agricultural subsidies by 5 percent to make up for the loss of Britain’s contribution.

    It also wants to eliminate “correction” mechanisms that benefit the wealthier member states.

    The stakes are low. The rebates add up to €6 billion. The proposed budget — €1.25 trillion — altogether represents about 8 percent of the EU economy.

    Expect a big fight nevertheless. For center-right leaders in Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, who face competition from the nativist right, this is a perfect opportunity to bolster their Euroskeptic credentials. In the end, the commission will give in a little and everybody walks away happy. (more…)

  • Republicans End Russia Probe, Italian Democrats Choose Opposition

    Republicans in the House have wrapped up their Russia investigation and declared there was no collusion with the Donald Trump campaign.

    Just like that.

    I don’t suppose anyone was expecting House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes to release an unbiased report. He has been doing Trump’s bidding from the start. But to simply declare the investigation over, without Democratic consent, is particularly brazen.

    This isn’t the first time Republicans have put party before country. When evidence of Russian meddling in the election emerged in late 2016, Senate leader Mitch McConnell warned President Barack Obama that he would consider it an act of partisan politics if his administration publicized the information.

    When intelligence agencies finally did tell the public Russia was tampering with the election, on the same day (such a coincidence!) WikiLeaks published stolen emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta. (more…)

  • Trump Rejects Immigration Compromise, Mueller Indicts Russians

    American president Donald Trump has for the second time torpedoed a bipartisan immigration bill by threatening to veto it.

    The reason, NBC News reports, is that he wants to keep immigration as a political issue to rally his base going into November’s congressional elections.

    The cynicism is astounding. Chris Hayes points out on Twitter:

    • First the president unilaterally ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, creating uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as minors.
    • He gave Congress six months to fix the problem (he had created), promising to sign whatever bill lawmakers would put in front of him.
    • He was promptly brought a bipartisan deal, which combined increased border security with a pathway to legal status for the so-called Dreamers. He rejected it.
    • He was then brought a second bipartisan deal with even more support. He rejected that.

    Clearly the president isn’t interested a solution. He lied — as usual.

    Also read David A. Hopkins, who argues Trump has pushed Republicans to the right on immigration, and Greg Sargent in The Washington Post, who points out that the Republican position on Dreamers is far to the right of Middle America’s. (more…)

  • Debunking Trump in the Russia Scandal

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon)

    American president Donald Trump and his allies have come up with various defenses in the Russia scandal: There was no collusion; Collusion isn’t a crime anyway; The FBI is biased; Trump had every right to fire James Comey; And what about Hillary Clinton?

    Here I’ll debunk those arguments. (more…)

  • Party of Conspiracy Theorists

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon)

    Damon Linker wonders what’s worse: that Republicans believe the FBI was doing the bidding of the Democratic Party by using opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign to get a court order to approve surveillance of a Donald Trump campaign advisor, Carter Page — or that they are only pretending to believe it in order to whip the Republican electorate into a conspiracy-addled froth of indignation against the legitimacy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation? (more…)

  • Three Ways Republicans Could Undermine Russia Probe

    Washington DC
    View of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, February 17, 2015 (Matt Popovich)

    In their desperation to save Donald Trump from scandal, Republicans in the United States are looking for ways to undermine Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    NPR reports there are three ways they could do it: (more…)

  • Trump Apologists Muddy Waters After Flynn Pleads Guilty

    President Donald Trump’s defenders are muddying the waters in the Russia scandal after his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.

    Two of Trump’s confidants (Flynn and Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager) may have lied to investigators; four (also counting Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos) may have been charged with felonies, but at least, the president’s apologists argue, there is no evidence of collusion!

    Yet. (more…)