Russiagate today

Here are several recent articles that bring out important considerations on the Trump-Russia scandal, i.e., "Russiagate":

• Julia Ioffe, The Spy Who Drove Me GQ 07/24/2018
• Gene Lyons, So Does That ‘R’ Stand For Republicans — Or Russians? National Memo 07/24/2018
• Corey Robin, The Question of Russia and the Left Jacobin 07/23/2018, responding to this Facebook post by Scott Horton 07/21/2018 (?) [Facebook's practice of not showing the date on the current day's post complicates getting the actual dates on posts like this; it's especially difficult with a Facebook poster so prolific as Scott Horton]
• Seth Ackerman, Russiagate Can’t End Well for the Left Jacobin 07/24/2018
• Micah Zenko, Democrats Will Regret Becoming the Anti-Russia Party Foreign Policy 07/24/2018

I've been posting since 2016 about the Trump-Russia scandal. I've always seen two distinct concerns looking at it from a progressive viewpoint. One is that it is a real problem. Based on what was in the public record by the time of the election, at a very minimum we had reports that the "intelligence community" thought Russia was hacking the American election campaign in some way. So that's something that should be taken seriously and deserved a real investigation of some kind, whether Congressional or a fact-finding commission of some kind.

The other is that it was disturbingly clear at the time of the election that advocates of a hawkish policy toward Russia, both the neocon and humanitarian-hawk varieties, were eager to use the scandal to discredit antiwar critics and websites like The Intercept, Truthdig, and Consortium News that have often done important investigative reporting (The Intercept) and provided important, well-infomred dissent from warmongering narratives.

One early alarm bell was the Washington Post's infamous story promoting "PropOrNot," a website promoting a McCarthyist-style list of sites allegedly serving as Russian propaganda outlets. The Editor's Note that was later posted at the beginning of the web version of the article is an embarrassing admission about the quality of the story itself: Craig Timberg, Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say 11/24/2018. See also Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton, Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group The Intercept 11/26/2018, and Adrian Chen, The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda New Yorker 12/01/2016.

The general principle of "just because your're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" applies here, cutting both ways. Or maybe several different ways. Because, yes, Russia makes propaganda to screw with other countries' politics, including the US. Yes, the US also carries out similar operations, including against Russia. That doesn't mean that either side can or should ignore what the other side is doing it or should neglect to take measures to protect themselves. That's how international politics and international espionage works. And none of that means that people in any country shouldn't criticize such operations by their own country if they think it is problematic or wrong.

Another practical political problem in the United States is that the Clinton campaign immediately after the election seized on Russian interference as the reason Hillary Clinton lost to the Orange Clown. Of course, at various times, her loyalists have insisted that the reason was Jill Stein, that the reason was Bernie Sanders and the BernieBros, that the reason was James Comey. All without giving up the notion that Russian interference was the reason. Politics is politics. But aside from the fact that it was a deflection from some stunning mistakes by the Clinton campaign, the very slim but decisive margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin mean that it's nearly impossible to definitely say that any one of them was a unique cause of Clinton's loss. Plus, the very fact that she was a very sigificant majority of the popular vote nationally raises questions about how effective the Russian efforts may be.

The one thing I've heard that might plausibly turn out to be a decisive intervention - but also hasn't been shown to be so at this writing - is that if Russians worked through their NRA connections to finance and/or direct very targeted campaigns and get-out-the-vote operations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and/or Wisconsin on behalf of Trump. But that's also not something that can be justified based on what's currently in the public record.

The articles cited at the start of this post bring out aspects of the Trump-Russia issue that I find helpful in illustrating the various dilemmas for the press, political parties, and activists that we're seeing play out. Julia Ioffe's piece is an informative and entertaining account of her trying to figure out whether a talkative Uber driver she kept encountering at the Aspen security conference this year was a Russian agent of some sort. It's a reminder for people wondering about what kind of associations with Russians might be considered guilty ones. The lesson she draws from the experience sounds to me like a version of Obama's purported guidline for foreign policy, "Don't do stupid s**t." Most people involved in politics or familiar with basic ethics should have some sense of what kind of things it's okay to chat with strangers about and which not. And also to be on the lookout for people offering some kind of corner-cutting arrangements that might somehow be compromising or make thembody subject to blackmail of some kind.

For most people in the US and Europe, the risk of crossing paths with Russian agents is vanishingly small. But there are other kinds of "espionage" involving trade secrets, proprietary company information, legal confidentiality requirements, that do touch a large number of people. So while there are always borderline cases and gray areas, avoiding getting involved in foreign espionage isn't really that big of a challenge for most people it might touch.

A couple of fictional presentations involving espionage come to mind that actually are relevant to this. One is the recent, much-acclaimed TV series The Americans, which has generated many a fantasy about being seduced by Russian spies. Another is an older mini-series, Oppenheimer (1980), which stars Sam Waterston as J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhatten Project, who had his own issues with security matters.,

Marcy Wheeler describes a recent real world case in which she reported a source to the FBI that she "had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US.": Putting a Face (Mine) to the Risks Posed by GOP Games on Mueller Investigation Emptywheel 07/03/2018.

Propaganda is a squishier matter. But I have to admit that in general, that doesn't look to me (mostly) like such a complicated thing, either. Now, it's very possible that with decades of political junkiedom behind me, I'm oversimplifying a bit here. But the same kind of critical thinking people should be applying to news coverage generally, or to scientific claims in the popular press, or to any kind of advertising, should be sufficient to protect most people from getting suckered by fake propaganda claims of any sort, foreign election interference included.

It makes sense for public institutions to fund sites like EU vs Disinfo. But they need to be read with a sensible critical eye, as well. The same applies to other publicly-funded news sites, some of which, like the BBC or Austria's ORF, have a solid reputation for independent reporting. And, of course, anyone trzying to understand the diplomacy and international politics of countries adversaries of one's own needs to make some effort to know and understand what the propaganda promoted by the Other Side is.

And, on the critical thinking topic, facts and arguments used in propaganda may be true. Propaganda consists of presentations meant to persuade. In international politics, facts don't normally simply speak for themselves. But the difference between fact and fiction is still important.

The other posts deal with various aspects of the politics of Russiagate. Gene Lyons gives a decent picture of the current state of the Republican politics of this. The Republican base and most of its officeholders don't actually seem to care if Russia is meddling with our election system, as long as it helps Republicans. I probably would have speculated that in November 2016. Now it's hard to avoid that conclusion. (Gene does brush up against the "17 intelligence agencies" problem, though.)

Corey Robin and Seth Ackerman focused on the ways that a careless use of the issue by Democrats can backfire. Corey is reacting n particular to a Facebook post by human rights attorney Scott Horton. Horton in the screenshot from Corey's post:

European intelligence analysts I have spoken with over the last month say that they have picked up clear data suggesting that Putin has authorized and put in play a major active measures campaign designed to split and disable the Democratic Party because he believes this is the surest way to keep Donald Trump in power and undercut any opposition to him. The method used, according to these sources, will generally follow what was done during the 2016 campaign, where one of the core strands of the Russian operation focused not so much on supporting Trump as it did on persuading key Democratic constituencies that it wasn't worth going to the polls to vote. This included general demonization of Hillary Clinton and other candidates as "establishment" or "organization" candidates, and repeating claims that the DNC had "rigged' the vote against Sanders (designed to persuade Sanders supporters not to vote or to vote for another Russia-backed surrogate, Jill Stein); alienating blacks and Hispanics, and persuading them that the Democratic candidates really did nothing for them, etc. The Russian operation will also aim, in the classic fashion, to pick Democratic candidates in the primary period who, for whatever reason, are seen as likely not electable. Some evidence of this is clearly at play now. The key thing to look for is not positive messaging supporting any particular policy program, but negative messaging attacking other Democrats. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure from what I've seen that the 2016 Russian election operation "focused not so much on supporting Trump as it did on persuading key Democratic constituencies that it wasn't worth going to the polls to vote." That argument doesn't support claims that Putin was specifically trying to get Trump elected, although Putin did say in the press conference at last week's Helsinki lovefest that he did prefer that Trump be elected. It may be a distinction without a difference. From the reporting I've seen, it does seem that Russian interference in the US in 2016 was more aimed at causing headaches for Hillary than determining the outcome.

But we should be careful about crediting Russia with superspy capabilities in something so difficult as fixing US votes to produce certain outcomes. The US voting systems need to be protected. But it's worth remembering that two of the CIA's most famous and successful regime change operations, Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, relied a lot on dumb luck. And we're still experiencing the long-term negative blowback from the former.

Horton amplifies his perspective in this post of 07/22/2018 (The Facebook embed function also doesn't show the posting date):



This fits more with a Russian approach of causing chaos. Although they have a specific goal of wrecking the EU. But Horton's presentation there blurs the very real distinction between rightwing anti-EU criticisms and strategies and the EU-critical position of parties like the German Left Party (DIE LINKE), the party of the politician Sarah Wagenknecht pictured there. Thre are real problems with the EU that neither the center-left or the center-right have addressed sufficiently. The best way for Putin to get his wish of seeing the EU break up is to continue with the extend-and-pretend solutions on which the EU currently relies in the long-range crises of the euro and of immigration.

Finally, Micah Zenko warns of the practical foreign policy risks of the Democrats treating Russia as a simple bogeyman:

When a political party increases its animus toward a foreign country—believing that this will enhance its own popularity—it introduces second-order effects that can manifest themselves years later. It creates a voting bloc of Americans who become socialized to hate a foreign government and, by extension, its citizens. It reduces the motivations and complexities of that government to a simplified caricature of anti-Americanism or just plain evil. More broadly, it engenders hostility between the United States and foreign countries, which makes cooperation over shared problems more difficult and rapprochement unimaginable.

Moreover, political parties attempting to out-tough each other has enabled some abysmal recent foreign-policy outcomes. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which declared it “the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” was passed overwhelmingly in the House, passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, and signed by President Bill Clinton in just 32 days. That legislation was preceded, and followed, by both parties wildly exaggerating the threat that Saddam posed to the United States and its regional interests. Likewise, Trump’s confounding withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—which Iran was adhering to—was politically cost-free to the president because Democrats and Republicans had demonized Iran to the point of simplistic malevolence for decades.

Actual foreign policy is important, too. We need a smart, practical, and peace-oriented foreign policy. And when it comes to Russia, a policy that addresses real problems and threats, from election interference to the Crimea, while also working to forward common interests like nuclear disarmament and sound climate policy. And one that recognizes that Russia is a power far weaker than the old Soviet Union and has no realistic possibilities to become one in any forseeable future. For the Democrats to blow that by following their own conservative instincts to present themselves as the tougher-than-the-Republicans party would be a real tragedy.

Why the Democrats still need to be careful about careless accusations of treason [deep sigh...]

Given the massive number of incidents, financial connections, guilty pleas, detailed indictments, intelligence reports, and stragely deferential policies toward Vladimir Putin's Russia involved in the Trump-Russia scandal, it is downright cautious to say that the information currently in the public record makes it highly probably that President Trump is not only compromised by the Russian government but may well be engaged in actual treason.

The Administration's clear (though barely this side of explicit) threat to turn former Ambassador Michael McFaul over to Russia authorities for prosecution or worse is only one of the most recent telling examples. (Ex-ambassador thanks Senate for resolution against Trump handing over officials The Hill 07/19/18)

Still, I would prefer to see the Democrats pushing hard for impeachment proceedings - which the timid Party establishment doesn't even want Democratic candidates to talk about in the 2018 campaigns - than try to shame Republicans into dissenting from Trump policies by escalating accusations of treson. Not that Democratic elected officials are combative enough even for that, in most cases!

Here's one reason Democrats and the left/center-left generally should be cautious and strategic with the treason rhetoric: Travis Gettys, Bernie Sanders’ campaign strategist Tad Devine turns up 16 times in evidence against Paul Manafort Raw Story 07/19/2018.

The headline will no doubt send a thrill up the leg of many a Hillary hardliner. The article is about the fact that Bernie's campaign "chief strategist" in the 2016 primary campaign "in contact" with Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and presumed Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik. There is no allegation of Devine in any way cooperating with an Russian election interference. According to the article, Devine had previously worked with Manafort on lobbying work for the Russian-friendly Ukrainian government of former President Viktor Yanukovych.

And, note bene, as they say in Latin:

The former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump and Devine worked together nearly a decade ago for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Kremlin Party of Regions, and the pair remained in contact until at least 2014.

According to the new court filing, Manafort and Devine communicated by email through June 2014, about five months before he joined the Sanders campaign that November.

Devine and Sanders had worked together on campaigns in the 1990s, and the Democratic strategist has also worked as a campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis. [my emphasis]

Some of the Hillary hardliners have tried pretty much since Election Day to use the Trump-Russia scandal to smear Sanders and Democratic progressives, as well.

So, if Bernie Sanders, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis can be smeared with a vague guilt-by-association with dubious actors, can we really be surprised that Trump's defenders think they convince his fans that Hillary Clinton is the real Russian agent? For just one odious example: Benny Johnson, Rand Paul: The Only Person We Know Coluded With the Russians The Daily Caller 07/18/2018.

It's not a recent thing, either. It's been a Republican taling point for a while.

Digby Parton that tactic in Latest weird right-wing trick: The Russians were actually helping Hillary! Salon 10/24/2017. The Reps were encouraged by a new report that week that special prosecutor Robert Mueller is looking into possible failure to register as a foreign agent by a lobbying firm considered to by close to the Democrats:

Needless to say, the right-wing media went nuts at this news. This was the hook they've been waiting for. For months they've been pushing a narrative that has Hillary Clinton as the real beneficiary of Russian manipulation, and this is supposed to be proof that connects all the dots. Rush Limbaugh has cooked up a massive conspiracy featuring President Barack Obama, Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Russians over that uranium sale from years ago that's going to blow the lid off everything. (If you can make heads or tails out of what Limbaugh says happened or will happen, take a drink. You need it.)

This uranium story is all over the alternative-facts media, particularly Fox News, with breathless accounts of nefarious Clinton illegality and corruption. According to Rush and others, congressional investigators are on it.

A New York Times story on Monday indicated that the three congressional committees that were supposed to be looking into Russian interference in the election, and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, are hitting a wall. Partisan infighting and GOP lack of focus and interest are pointing toward the conclusion that nothing will be done about any of it. If Mueller's investigation comes up with something concrete, maybe they'll take another look -- but if anyone was expecting the U.S. Congress to be even slightly concerned about the propaganda campaign, the hacking or the attempts to break into actual voting systems, they're going to be disappointed. The Republicans don't give a damn about any of that and they are running the show. [my emphasis]

Trump tossed it out himself in a 2016 in what I still say was a clumsy effort by Hillary to tie Trump to Russian collusion. Trump responded in a typical, "no, your're the poopy-head" mode (Trump to Clinton: 'No, You're the Puppet' Bloomberg Politics 10/19/2016):

And, sad to say, the Republicans are just better at this kind of sleaze-slinging than the Democrats are.

This is not to say that Democrats or the left shouldn't make fact-based criticims of left-leaning arguments that Russian election interference shouldn't be considered a serious matter.

It is to say that Democrats should avoid the temptation to use treason accusations ins a cheap-shot fashion against Trump and the Republicans. The politics of treason are complicated. And the politics of combatting treason should be, also.

Democrats, Russia, Trump and nuclear disarmament

California Sen. Kamala Harris attracted a good bit of attention in 2016 as a possible corporate Democratic candidate for President in 2020. Here position in the liberal/progressive continuum is not entirely clear, even after serving as California's Attorney General for six years before entering the Senate in 2017.

She appear in this Morning Joe segment talking about the Nunes Memo, potential Constitutional crisis, and the Dreamers Senate Intel Committee Member Kamala Harris Criticizes Nunes Memo 02/05/2018:

Harris' comments about the Trump-Russia affair and about the upcoming budget deadline were sensible. And nothing that would gives Democratic progressives any particular cause for concern.

But I'm also concerned about what the Democrats are not saying about Russia. They need to bee making this a major issue: Ben Doherty, US's new nuclear policy 'a blueprint for war', Nobel peace laureate says Guardian 02/05/2018. Tilman Ruff, the chair of the Australia-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), warns that the Trump Administration's new nuclear policy increases the risk of nuclear war. And that policy doesn't look sound like one that Russia should especially like:

Last Friday the release of Donald Trump’s nuclear posture review revealed a significantly more aggressive stance towards Russia, saying Vladimir Putin’s regime must be convinced it would face “unacceptably dire costs” if it were to threaten even a limited nuclear attack in Europe. ...

The Pentagon-led review of the US nuclear arsenal and the policies that govern it was ordered by Trump a year ago. Such reviews are customarily done at the outset of a new US administration. ...

[Ruff says,] “The goal of a world free of nuclear weapons has disappeared from that document. It’s been described as a blueprint for nuclear war, and I don’t think that’s too extreme a characterisation.”

Ruff said on myriad indicators the risk of global nuclear war was increasing. “The continued reliance on nuclear weapons; the continued massive investments on keeping them indefinitely; making them more usable and more deadly; the lack of talks about disarmament, the increasingly belligerent postures and extraordinarily specific threats to use nuclear weapons by multiple leaders in multiple parts of the world,” he said.

The US position has also been criticised – predictably – by China, Iran and Russia.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the Trump administration’s policy statement was both “confrontational” and “unscrupulous” while Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said it risked “bringing humankind closer to annihilation”. [my emphasis]

Not having a nuclear war is a good thing. Peace is a good thing. Peace is also popular. And Democrats need to be advocating it.

Listen carefully to see if you hear any hint of such a thing in the comments Democrats make about Russia these days, including Kamala Harris' appearance above.

The antiwar critics who accuse the Democrats of using the "Russiagate" issue to promote hawkish foreign policies and bigger military budgets are right, so far as that goes. We need a pragmatic Russia policies with reducing the nuclear threat at the heart of it.

Of course, Russian interference in the 2016 election has to be seriously addressed. So do Russia-NATO tensions, trade relations, climate change, and a variety of other issues. The Democrats should be building a political program for a practical approach to Russia and nuclear disarmament, not simply an anti-Russia policy, which they are pretty doing presently.

And this is another reminder that the Dems need to be careful about accusing the Trump Administration of being a "puppet" of Russia or the like. Because when we look at policies like the critically important nuclear posture, we don't see anything close to an across-the-board "pro-Russia" policy.

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.

Guideposts for following the Trump-Russia scandal

James Henry explains in his long article on Trump's connections to various dubious Russian oligarchs (The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections The American Interest 12/19/2016):

... the individual case-based approach to investigations employed by most investigative journalists and law enforcement often misses the big picture: the global networks of influence and finance, licit and illicit, that exist among business people, investors, kleptocrats, organized criminals, and politicians, as well as the “enablers”—banks, accounting firms, law firms, and havens. Any particular component of these networks might easily disappear without making any difference. But the networks live on. It is these shadowy transnational networks that really deserve scrutiny. [my emphasis in bold]

This is a good consideration to keep in mind. It's part of why the Russia-Trump story is popping up so quickly right now in various forms There are a lot of pieces to it.

Matthew Schofield reports on how House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes actions this past week have made it more difficult for the Republicans to avoid an independent investigation of the Trump-Russia legal issues (More signs that House panel’s Trump-Russia probe is reeling McClatchy 03/24/2017):

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced Friday that he’d postponed what was to have been another public hearing on Tuesday, a decision that was angrily denounced moments later by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Californian who is the highest ranking Democrat on the committee. Schiff pointedly called the postponement was a cancellation. ...

Schiff accused Nunes of canceling the hearing, which was to have heard from Obama administration officials, to “choke off public information” and avoid any more embarrassment to the White House. ...

Schiff pointed out that the three former officials scheduled to appear Tuesday – Obama-era Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates – had all agreed to testify in an open session. When they will now appear before the committee is not known, a committee spokesman said.

This followed on Nunes' stunt earlier in the week of publicly saying that he had seen evidence of individuals from the Trump campaign having been monitored in surveillance operations that were aimed at foreign nationals. That action undermined his credibility to head an investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal. It also caused a lot of confusion because it wasn't clear what Nunes had seen or what the real significance of it was.

The Young Turks describe that particular mess in Oops: Devin Nunes Backpedals Spying Claims 03/24/2017:

Here's a report on that from the Morning Joe crew, Joe: Devin Nunes Blew Up Hopes Of Independent Russia Investigation 03/23/2017:

The very capable Charlie Savage offers us Amid Trump Inquiry, a Primer on Surveillance Practices and Privacy New York Times 03/24/2017. It mainly focuses on what "incidental collection" is.