Smoke Vision Goggles

Donald Trump and the GOP set off all kinds of smoke this weekend. It’s a remarkable case of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” but with a twist. This time the smoke doubles as a smokescreen. With our eyes stinging and our vision clouded, how do we clear our vision?

First, the smokescreen. This morning Donald Trump launched a five-tweet ministorm. Going after Hilary Clinton, Trump touched all three corners of his current Clinton Bermuda Triangle of Bullshit: (1) Clinton’s link to the Steel dossier, (2) the made-up but scary story of Clinton brokering uranium to Russia, and (3) “but her emails.”

Of course, we don’t know whether Clinton herself knew about the Steele dossier, but we do know that David Corn reported the truth about a year ago: Republicans initiated Christopher Steele’s research into Trump, and Democrats picked it up after Trump had secured the GOP nomination. As for the uranium deal, there’s literally no scandal at all. And the emails.... We’re back to that again?

Remarkably, the GOP itself launched an anti-Hillary campaign almost a year after her election loss. The official GOP account tweeted: “The script has flipped on the Russia investigation. Now Hillary and the DNC have explaining to do. Demand answers.” And two House committees have launched investigations of the non-scandal.

One might wonder: Why are Trump and the Republicans so worked up over Hillary Clinton when she’s nowhere near the reins of power? There’s a simple answer: on Friday CNN reported that special  counsel Robert Mueller now has his first criminal indictment. Someone’s about to get arrested in the #TrumpRussia investigation. 

We’re hardly surprised that, facing such a threat, Donald Trump would set off every distracting smoke bomb in his arsenal. What’s more distressing, yet not surprising, is that the Republican Party and its politicians are collaborating. We’re facing the greatest cover-up in US history, a genuine crisis of democracy, and one party is completely down with the deception.

What with all the smoke in the air, almost everyone missed an incredibly important element of the cover-up. At week’s end the Trump administration sought and received a resignation from Dana Boente, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The goal, NBC News reports, is for Trump to select Boente’s successor. However ordinary it may look, this is a huge story. Boente served as interim Attorney General after Sally Yates was fired. More to the point, last spring it was Boente’s office that issued subpoenas for business records related to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor. In other words, Trump has removed a federal prosecutor who is playing a key role in the Russia investigation. 

There’s more. A few days ago Trump took the remarkable step of personally interviewing potential US attorneys for the District of Columbia and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. It also appears Trump interviewed a candidate for Southern Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located and where Trump has conducted suspicious real estate deals with shady Russians. It’s no exaggeration to see this news as chilling. Presidents almost never interview US attorney candidates, as federal prosecutors are not supposed to relate directly to the White House. Indeed, Trump has interviewed no others.

Let’s take one more step. Trump’s special interest in US attorneys seems restricted to the four districts most germane to the #TrumpRussia investigation. I’ll let that pass without further comment.

The cover-up is massive at this point. We may not know the truth beneath it yet, but we do have some facts.

• During his campaign candidate Trump famously claimed he had no deals with Russia. We now know he was negotiating Trump Tower Moscow at that time, a deal that ultimately fell through.
• Candidate Trump openly encouraged Russia to publish dirt on Hillary Clinton, even though he repeatedly voiced skepticism that Russia was involved in the campaign. Put another way, Trump actively assisted the Russians in interfering with a US election by denying the strong judgments of the intelligence committee. 
• Several of Trump’s closest associates are on record denying or failing to disclose (that’s a crime) contacts with Russia during and after the campaign. Among them are a campaign chair, his current attorney general, and a national security advisor. Trump himself played a role in covering up the nature of a meeting that included his son, his son-in-law, his campaign chair, and Kremlin agents.
• And of course Trump fired FBI director James Comey, stating in an interview that he was motivated by the #TrumpRussia investigation. He and his allies have devoted their attention to smearing Robert Mueller as well.

At this point, there’s no smoking gun that proves Trump collaborated with Russia in the 2016 election. But the facts above are incontrovertible. No dispassionate person could view them without judging that a cover-up is almost certainly in play. Thus, this weekend’s smokescreen. We’re facing a big week this week. By the time the smoke clears, our democratic experiment itself will hang in the balance.