Tag: Trump and Russia

Russia is nowhere and everywhere in the impeachment saga

WASHINGTON — When the House Judiciary Committee began its historic session Wednesday night to consider two articles of impeachment against President Trump, one issue was glaringly absent — Russia.

For three years, House Democrats made the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and his bitter fight against the special counsel investigation into Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, the centerpiece of their argument about why he was unfit to lead the country.

But as the Democratic-controlled House prepares to make Trump the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, Democrats will only consider Trump’s efforts to press Ukraine to smear his political enemies as he runs for reelection.

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It couldn’t be any clearer that Trump serves the interests of the Kremlin

AlterNet logoOne thing that came through in many of the House Intelligence Committee’s interviews with Ukraine experts was the symbolic importance to President Zelensky of having an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. It was widely understood that he would be strengthened both at home and in his upcoming negotiations with Vladimir Putin. The meeting with Putin occurred in Paris on Monday. Zelensky entered the summit without the benefit of an Oval Office meeting.

Not only that, Zelensky lacked anything resembling unified American support. The whole world now knows that President Trump does not like Ukraine and accuses them of trying to “take him down” in 2016. They know he sees the country as irredeemably corrupt and uniformly unsupportive of his political future. They know that Trump put Ukrainian military aid on hold and only released it reluctantly when he realized that he was about to face down a scandal that could (and will) cause his impeachment.

Meanwhile, some in the Republican Party have now embraced a debunked theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. They adopted this theory because it’s the only way to defend Trump’s demand that Ukraine blame themselves for the hacking of the Democrats if they wanted to receive a formal visit in the White House. For those who can’t quite embrace this level of craziness, they simply argue that Ukraine was almost as guilty of Russia because some of them objected publicly to Candidate Trump’s opinion that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia.

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Deripaska and Allies Could Benefit From Sanctions Deal, Document Shows

An agreement that the companies controlled by the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska negotiated with the Trump administration may have been less punitive than advertised. Credit: Sergei Karpukhin, Reuters

WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting sanctions against a trio of companies controlled by an influential Russian oligarch, it cast the move as tough on Russia and on the oligarch, arguing that he had to make painful concessions to get the sanctions lifted.

But a binding confidential document signed by both sides suggests that the agreement the administration negotiated with the companies controlled by the oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, may have been less punitive than advertised.

The deal contains provisions that free him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company, the document shows.

View the complete January 21 article by Kenneth P. Vogel on The New York Times website here.