Russia-gate at the end of 2017

Sharon LaFraniere et al have reported a story that may save the Democrats from complications over the "Steele dossier": How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt New York Times 12/30/2017:

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. ...

The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.

If Mr. Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.

How this might get the Dems off the hook for a misstep in pressing the investigation of Russian election interference is explained in the post by Marcy Wheeler linked below.

The following two segments provide a good summary of what I think of as the reality-based spectrum on Russia-gate as of now. One is this segment from the conservative-leaning Morning Joe program on MSNBC, Definitive Timeline Of The Trump-Russia Connections 12/27/2017:

The Real News is a left-leaning website that has maintained a particularly skeptical position. In this segment, TRN's Aaron Maté interviews the Guardian's Luke Harding, whose book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win was published this year. Where's the 'Collusion'? 12/23/2017:

This segment provides some insights, perhaps despite the efforts of the two participants in the discussion. Maté is too argumentative in his role as the interviewer. And Harding apparently expected a softball interview and doesn't appear to be fully prepared to respond to some objections that have long been part of the discussion and gets unnecessarily punchy at moments. He comes off as a bit of a twit when Maté challenges him on particular points.

But what emerges is that Harding's defenses of his points does involved more assumptions than his initial statement of them might imply. And he's right to argue that the international pattern of Russian political intervention needs to be taken into account. But Maté is also asking appropriately skeptical questions. He's not just repeating hack Republican talking points.

And Maté has a particularly good point about how journalists and the public (and, by implication, the Democrats) should be handling the infamous Steele dossier, starting around 15:00 in the segment. And I give him credit for introducing the separate but related issue of Israeli influence operations into the interview.

But Maté also plays the game that other antiwar critics of the case against Trump on his Russian connection in using very narrow definitions of proof and evidence. Harding is right in his responses to Maté when he says that we have to look not only at larger patterns but the circumstantial evidence about collusion.

Having said that, it's also important to keep in mind that the specific charge of the Trump campaign illegally colluding with the Russian government on illegal Russian assistance in the campaign has always been a long shot. Even actors as arrogant and careless as several major figures in the Trump campaign have shown themselves to be may have been cautious enough to not leave blatantly incriminating evidence of that particular violation of the law. But whether or not there was such specific collusion, the various acts of inaccurate reporting of meetings with Russian nationals connected to the Putin government by officials getting security clearances, perjury in testimony to Congress, illegal business dealings with Russian entities, obstruction of justice in connection with official investigations, lying to the FBI, all of those can be legitimately considered as crimes in themselves.

Congress' power of impeachment gives them a lot of latitude (for better or worse) in deciding what sort of acts constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors." My understanding of the history of that centuries-old concept embedded in the US Constitution is that it doesn't have to be something specifically outlawed by statute. One item that might fall into such a gray area would be Trump's decision to leave Michael Flynn in his post as National Security Adviser with his top security clearance for three weeks after the Acting Attorney General had directly informed Trump that the Justice Department believed Flynn to have been compromised by Russian intelligence.

Marcy Wheeler has been following the Steele dossier story closely. And she is particularly critical of how the Democrats have been using that issue, as in this post of 10/25/2017 (Reasons Why Dems Have Been Fucking Stupid on the Steele Dossier: A Long Essay Emptywheel):

I have no doubt Russia tampered with the election, and if the full truth comes out I think it will be more damning than people now imagine.

But the Democrats have really really really fucked things up with their failures to maintain better ethical distance between the candidate [Hillary Clinton] and the [Steele] dossier, and between the party and the FBI sharing. They’ve made things worse by waiting so long to reveal this, rather that pitching it as normal sleazy political oppo research a year ago.

The case of Russian preference for Trump is solid. The evidence his top aides were happy to serve as Russian agents is strong.

But rather than let FBI make the case for that, Democrats instead tried to make their own case, and they did in such a way as to make the very solid case against Trump dependent on their defense of the dosser, rather than on better backed claims released since then.

Boy it seems sadly familiar, Democrats committing own goals like this. And all that’s before where the lawfare on this dossier is going to go. [my emphasis]

The Russia-gate story is one in which we all need to try to focus on the evidence, keeping in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence.