Follow the Russian money

Trump and his Russian pals

Bret Stephens in today's NY Times:

Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” is often cited but less often read, which is a shame because the landmark 1964 essay helps explain our times...The principal lesson of paranoia is the ease with which politically aroused people can mistake errors for deceptions, coincidences for patterns, bumbling for dereliction, and secrecy for treachery. True conspiracies are rare but stupidity is nearly universal. The failure to know the difference, combined with the desire for a particular result, is what accounts for the paranoid style...

Stephens is referring to Senator Johnson and nutty Republican conspiracy theories. But he goes on to scold Democrats, as if the president's critics face the same danger:

Should the president’s critics really be quite so sure of their suspicions when it comes to Trump’s dealings with Russia? Should they invest so much of their credibility on being proved right? And are they prepared for the political fallout if they turn out to be wrong? The smart course is to let Robert Mueller do his work, defend his probity and the integrity of his investigation, and only draw conclusions from the facts as he finds them. America already has one party that’s lost its mind. We don’t need another.

Of course let Mueller finish the investigation. Only Trump's conservative enablers, not Democrats, are trying to undermine Mueller. 

It's not certain that Trump has a suspicious relationship with Russia, but it's increasingly probable. And it's not necessarily about collaborating with Russian interference in the 2016 election. More likely it's about money laundering, since Trump is all about money.

After US banks stopped lending Trump money, Russia filled the gap: see A Russia expert’s theory of the Trump scandal, 'Steele dossier' firm suspected Trump-Russia money laundering and Trump building in Panama tied to Russian mafia, international crime.

Trump is obviously already guilty of obstruction of justice.

Congressman Nunes's hometown newspaper, the Fresno Bee, hammers him in an editorial: Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump’s stooge, attacks FBI.

Thanks to Alternet.