2017 Mar 2^nd

That Russian connection just will not go away. Trump’s coziness with Putin initially raised suspicions and heightened everyone’s antennae toward any Russian connections…and boy were there connections. The first casualty was Paul Manafort, the multi-millionaire Trump Tower resident who had serious contacts with a very bad Ukrainian politician deeply indebted to the Russian government. Manafort made considerable coin working for this guy and trying to make him acceptable to Ukrainians; it didn’t work. Then Manafort attached himself to Trump Tower neighbor Trump and that didn’t work out either when his Ukrainian connections came to light. Manafort is worth about 500 million so he doesn’t need the work, but I believe he is currently at liberty.

Next is Lt. General Mike Flynn. He also had a close Russian connection and was paid for some speeches to the Russian senior people. Flynn’s reputation was checkered; he had some wild ideas about issues that were known disparagingly as “Flynn facts” by his military subordinates. General Mattis, his superior, fired him from his job as director of the defense intelligence agency for incompetence. Trump hired him anyway as his National Security Advisor, a position not requiring senate approval. Flynn was not forthcoming about his conversations with the Russians and lied to Vice President Pence who in turn told the lie to the American people. Trump, still full of praise for Flynn, reluctantly asked for his resignation. (Flynn, as a retired Lt. General, will not be at all short of pocket money even if he is out of work.)

Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions is now the Attorney General, the chief enforcer of our nation’s laws, but under the president’s direction of course. Minnesota’s Senator Al Franken grilled sessions in a hearing about any ties he had with Russian representatives. Sessions admitted that he did have a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak but he couldn’t remember what they talked about. Later he claimed that they did not talk about the election. This was an obvious contradiction as Franken has pointed out; if you don’t remember what you talked about how can you insist that you didn’t talk about the election. There are calls for Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation of Russian activities in our election.  Trump. predictably, says he has complete faith in Attorney General Sessions. (Sessions now claims he will recuse himself from any investigation of Russian attempts to influencing our election.)

Then there is the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary, Wilbur Ross. Secretary Ross is the majority owner of a bank in Cyprus that has been the conduit for oligarchs to get their money out of Russia. As I mentioned in a previous blog, when the Soviet Union came apart much of the state’s assets were sold off for pennies on the dollar to favored persons. These now very wealthy people needed to find some way to get this wealth out of Russia. Enter the Bank of Cyprus majority owned by Wilbur Ross, our very own Secretary of the Treasury.

Trump has benefited from the oligarch’s frantic efforts to relocate  their money. One these rich, make that obscenely rich guys, Dimitri  Rybolovelv, bought a house from Trump. This was no ordinary house; Trump paid 40 million dollars for this Florida palace. Trump only owned it for a little while until his good buddy, Dimitri, decided he wanted it and paid Donald Trump 100 million dollars for it. Trump made a quick 60million dollars on the flip.

If this was all handled by surrogates Trump could say with a straight face that he had no dealings with anyone in Russia, no financial interests with anyone in Russia. Trump will have trouble shaking off all of these Russian connections. The real mystery is why he doesn’t seem to try.