Lifting Russian Sanctions Was The Key

This one was suggested by a friend and regular reader.  Thanks, CT!  It's based on another great piece from Rachel Maddow.  Maybe you saw it.  What follows is my humble attempt to summarize her remarkable narrative.  http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/lifting-russian-sanctions-key-to-trump-deal-exposed-by-cohen-1385505347911?cid=eml_mra_20181201
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Remember Michael Flynn, the first of Trump's dominoes to tumble in Robert Mueller's Russia probe?  As you may recall, in 2015 Flynn travelled to Russia at their request.  He sat with Putin at a state dinner and was paid $45,000 for his visit, plus expenses.  Upon his return, Flynn joined the Trump campaign.

After the election, Flynn was named National Security Adviser and promptly contacted Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and other Russian officials about the U.S. economic sanctions imposed by President Obama for Russia's annexation of Crimea, and later for election meddling.  Flynn asked the Russians to forgo any retaliation because when Trump took office, he'd drop the sanctions.  Flynn lied publicly about the true nature of his chat with Kislyak.  He lied about it to VP Pence and lied about it to the FBI.  Thanks to some dogged journalism, the truth came out and Flynn resigned as NSA chief after serving less than a month.  Trump immediately asked FBI director James Comey to go easy on Flynn, and when Comey refused, Trump fired him.  Several months later, in a plea deal with Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Kislyak.

K.T. McFarland is an ex-Foxbot who was Flynn's deputy at the NSC for three months.  She knew all about the Flynn-Russia sanctions talks.  Yet after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about it, she continued to lie about it publicly and under oath to the Senate and to the FBI.  Later, she "revised" her statement to the FBI, claiming she didn't mean to lie, she just forgot.  Oops!

Why such secrecy?  Why did both Flynn and McFarland feel such a pressing need to lie and keep lying about promising Russia that the sanctions would be lifted?  Clearly, both of them were compromised by Russia and by misplaced loyalty to Trump.

Trump himself first publicly advocated dropping Russian sanctions in July of 2015 at a FreedomFest business conference in Las Vegas.  Why would he offer his worthless opinion on this topic back then?  Because he pointedly called on Marina Butina, a.k.a. NRA Natasha, who fed him a softball question about Russian sanctions.  Trump gave the answer the Russians wanted to hear:  "I don't think you need the sanctions."  In July, Butina was arrested by the FBI and charged with being an unregistered agent of the Kremlin, a Russian spy.  She's been cooling her heels in a Virginia jail cell ever since.

Trump would also have an opinion on Russian sanctions because if they were dropped, he would personally stand to gain financially.  Since at least 2015, Trump had been trying to develop a big, multi-million dollar Trump-brand Tower in Moscow.  The deal included a free $50 million top-floor penthouse for Komrade Putin.  The entire development was to be financed by Russia's VTB Bank.  But there were those pesky U.S. sanctions against Russia, which meant Americans couldn't legally do business with VTB Bank.  (If only an understanding president would lift those sanctions  . . )

Trump has lied about this and all his other Russian entanglements repeatedly.  "I have nothing to do with Russia!"  But of course, he knew all about the Moscow Trump Tower deal, the Kremlin knew all about it too, and tried to help Trump by publicly lying about it as well.  When Trump's fixer Michael Cohen emailed Russian officials about the project, they claimed they saw his message, but never replied.  However, from the court filings of Cohen's recent guilty plea of lying to Congress about the Moscow deal, we now know that Kremlin officials did in fact respond to his email.

Here's where the cheese gets a bit more binding.  Rep. Jim Hines, (D-Conn), a member of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee chaired by Trump boot-licker Devin Nunes, has stated that there were multiple witnesses who testified to the Committee about the Moscow Tower deal, and that their testimony was virtually identical to Cohen's congressional testimony, which he now acknowledges was a big, fat fib.

So it would appear that a number of Trump protectors made a concerted group effort to individually tell the same lie to the Intel committee.  Who organized them in their deception and coached them all to sing the same song?  Don't know, but it sure sounds like a criminal conspiracy.

As a result, very soon they could all be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.  Nunes always refused to release their testimony (because as Trump's lackey, he knew they were all lying).  But in a couple weeks, the Democrats will take over the House (say hello to Adam Schiff!) and all the unreleased testimony will be immediately turned over to Mueller.  Indictments to follow?  He-he!

More lies.  Trump, Cohen and shady Russian real estate guru Felix Sater all publicly said the Moscow Tower deal was abandoned in January 2016.  Actually, they continued to work on it and push for it until June 24, 2016, well after Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee.  On that date, the Washington Post broke the story of how Russian operatives had hacked DNC emails and were hard at work trying to influence the November election for the benefit of Trump and the detriment of Clinton.  Not until that date did Trump finally give up on his Moscow development plan.

The Moscow Trump Tower project and the Russian election interference operation fit together -- two pieces of the same puzzle.

If you were an ex-KGB agent like Vladi and you wanted to install your very own president of the United States, you would first pick your easily-manipulated Bozo (Trump had long dreamt of a tacky tower in Moscow with his name on it), then you would compromise him by encouraging his secret, illegally-funded project and by helping him cover it up with lies (and maybe with a pee tape or two), and then you'd install your chump by interfering in the election and you'd get him to lift the sanctions which are financially harming you and your oligarch buddies.  For Russia, sanctions-relief was always the point.  They don't give a shit about some gold-plated high-rise Trump dump.

Although public scrutiny from the story of Russia's election meddling made the Trump Organization back off on their Moscow plans, it didn't stop the Kremlin from continuing to work to get their Idiot Amin elected.  And, goddam it, he was elected.

And Russia is still hoping Trump will end the sanctions.  After the Helsinki summit/debacle, Trump said he "would consider" lifting the sanctions.  A couple days ago, Trump referred to his work on the Moscow project during his presidential campaign as "very legal & very cool."

I'd say, very NOT!