Patriots for Change: Trump Is A Clear and Present Danger

Enjoy this guest column from “Patriots for Change”

Those lefty Democrats in Congress have been at it again, it would seem, releasing a damning report that “lays out a stunning web of contacts between Trump, his top election aides and Russian government officials in the months leading up to the 2016 election,” as noted in The Guardian newspaper.

Except it wasn’t a Democrat thing. The nearly 1,000-page report on Russian meddling, more than three years in the making, was issued in mid-August by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

Among its many findings, the report shows that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, now a convicted criminal, had direct contact with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign, a contact that posed a “grave counterintelligence threat.” The report details how Manafort briefed Kilimnik on the Trump campaign’s polling data and provided details on how the campaign was working to beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

Kilimnik may have been linked to the Russian government’s efforts to hack and leak Democratic Party emails, the bipartisan Committee’s report noted. The Committee also noted that it was often hampered in its efforts to gather material because Manafort and Kilimnik went to great lengths to keep their communications secret, using burner phones and encrypted chat services, among other things.

The Committee’s report describes the Russian government’s work in support of Trump’s candidacy as “aggressive and multi-faceted” and in many areas it goes beyond Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s description of Russia’s election interference as “sweeping and systematic.” In fact, the Committee report comes across as more damning than the Mueller report in its outlining of the high level of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Trump has called it all a hoax and a witch hunt, while supporting policies helpful to Russian president Vladimir Putin and his government, and turning a blind eye to reports that Russia may have been paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Even now Trump rejects warnings from American intelligence agencies that Russia is actively working to help secure his re-election in November. Most Americans, however, have a different opinion: according to a recent poll, 75 percent of us expect Russian and other foreign interference in the November election.

Patriotic Americans who smell treason must continue to ask: Why does Donald Trump have such a strong affinity for Russia and Putin, and where is the outrage by Republican Senators who should be shouting from the rooftops about the clear and present danger in the White House? It’s time for all Americans – Republicans, Independents, Democrats – to tell Trump “Nyet!” and “Proshchay!” Ask your pal Putin for the translation, Donny.