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Have Mueller’s Questions About Trump’s Collusion(s) Already Been Answered? - Part 2 Printer friendly page Print This
By Dallas Darling
Submitted by Author
Wednesday, May 23, 2018

collusion (n.) col·lu·sion. secret cooperation: secret cooperation between people in order to do something illegal or underhanded.
- Encarta World English Dictionary

As Part 1 of this article was being published [see here], marking the first year of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel to investigate if President Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, the president took to Twitter. Along with tweeting: “Congratulations America, we are now into the second year of the greatest  Witch Hunt in American History…and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction;” he turned the tables, accusing the Democrats of spying on him and colluding with Russia, and alleging that the FBI had planted an informant.(8) But what if the president is wrong about a Witch Hunt? To be sure, and unlike Witch Hunts in the past that were for all the wrong reasons, what if this investigation is for all the right reasons, namely collusion?

Part 1 told of the president’s inaugural motorcade stopping for a photo-op in front of The Trump International Hotel Washington to send a message: The Trump Organization was open for business and no boundaries would be drawn between presidential duties and colluding with foreign officials for personal and financial gain. We also discovered his 500 global businesses colluded with foreign officials, and that he’s had a history of bank fraud, tax evasion, drug and money laundering, and of cooperating with foreign nations and corporations to win the 2016 election. Text messages and emails moreover just showed that his lawyer was working on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow longer than previously admitted.(9) Was another two-minute photo-op in store, this time in Moscow?

Open Door Policy-Collusion Style

Indeed, Trump’s knowledge during the Transition of back channel communications with Russia and other nations, and efforts by Jared Kushner to do the same, has already been answered. Kushner, who comes from a family where some members have been arrested and charged with tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and witness tampering, had accumulated massive amounts of debts with properties like the 666 Fifth Avenue building in New York.(10) As a result, his financial vulnerabilities with the same countries mentioned in Part 1 influenced his role as a senior adviser to the president and liaison to Middle East policies. Secret plans of meddling and promises of either aid or sanctions during the election and before Trump’s inauguration were made as well.(11)

Trump and Kushner’s secrecy with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel through business deals and loans, highlighted in “The Intercept,” were answered during the 2015 and 2016 campaign season too. Not only did Kushner negotiate financial restructuring, but he did so with the blessings of Trump. And when Qatar disputed who was responsible to raise funds, the Trump Administration backed efforts by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain to block media outlets and threatened limited sanctions. They moreover precipitated a diplomatic crisis in the region among Gulf Allies. Collusive meetings with the Russian bank Vnesheconombank, a state-owned financial institution close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, achieved similar results too.(12)

Collusive Entanglements and Emails
Despite being a graduate of the Russian Academy of the Federal Security Service, the domestic intelligence arm of the Russian government, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, Vneshesconombank’s CEO. Both played a key role in at least one espionage case and are under U.S. sanctions.(13) Kushner also claimed the meeting was a diplomatic matter. Bank officials, however, give a different story saying it was in his capacity as the head of his family’s real estate business. Ivanka Trump is also under FBI scrutiny for benefiting from foreign deals. On the same day she dined with China’s president, she was granted a trademark monopoly to sell jewelry and purses. Consequently, business entanglements most always leads to pressure from foreign officials or some type of quid pro quo.(14)

In short, Kushner and the Trump Organization colluded with government owned and deeply political entities linked to foreign nations. So did Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, in fact made secret and illegal deals with Felix Sater, an American-Russian mobster, and Andrii Artemenko, a Ukrainian dissident lawmaker. In addition to working with Russian Internet Trolls to influence the election, they presented a peace plan to the newly inaugurated president-Trump. Mueller moreover wants to know what Sater meant when he e-mailed Cohen on November 3, 2015: “Our boy (Trump) can become president of the USA and we can engineer it…I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage the process.”(15)

Intended Collusion Leads to Unintended Consequences
There’s evidently no end to Trump and his family and the Trump Organization’s dirty laundry list of collusive deals. Like other elected officials, some think he too has used his children and family members as useful channels for monetary and political influence. Not only will these foreign entities continue to curry favor with the president, but they’ll use the same corrupt dealings as a type of obligation or some form of embarrassment. They may even be a sort of leverage to start another war. For instance, just how much did Israel’s access to the president through loans and business ventures, or the Israeli Company Magal Security Systems’ deal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, influence the president’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?(16)

Neither is there any end in sight to the collusive deals that most politicians make when they go to Washington. In effect, many treat public office as an entitlement instead of a privilege, making themselves rich through public service. Since transactions don’t fall under disclosure laws, this kind of corruption by proxy is hard to detect. But make no mistake, stuffing multibillion-dollar equity deals in the dark corners of the world into theirs’ or their family members’ bank accounts is illegal and tantamount to bribery. So are the secret deals they make which affect everything from national security to the standard of living. Indeed, politicians are constitutionally bound to make decisions that are best for the people they serve. Loyalty elsewhere means they’ve corrupted the Constitution.

The Answer's in the Pudding
For now, it was reported that Trump would decide by May 17 if he would sit down for an interview with Mueller. This has now been changed to after the summit with North Korea-if there is one.  Though Trump has always said he’s more than willing to talk and “tell the truth,” others think he’ll plead the Fifth. He might also cite executive privilege and refuse to comply with the Special Counsel’s subpoena. Despite a Constitutional crisis, his lawyers will more than likely argue that it’s either a “tremendous distraction” or “unjustified action,” not to mention detrimental to his duties as president with the North Korean nuclear summit slated to occur.(17) Perhaps tyranny can be defined after all as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.

Mueller’s ongoing investigation continues to uncover other collusive deals. Not only did a Senate committee conclude that the Russian effort to interfere with the 2016 elections was “extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton,”(18), but Cambridge Analytica admitted it was backed by a wealthy Republican donor with a stipulation of only helping the president at the exclusion of Hillary Clinton and Democrats.(19) And then there’s the the president finally acknowledging that he paid his personal attorney $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet during the election-something he’s repeatedly denied and which should have been disclosed but is now a conflict of interest.(20)

Collusion Dam Continues to Burst
Still, the dam continues to burst wide open. Trump’s lawyer is now facing claims that he asked a Qatari businessman to send millions through him to the Trump family. The prodigious amounts of money flowing into the Trump Organization from Saudi Arabia is under suspicion too, as are lobbyists that range from U.S. arms makers to public-relations firms and influential think tanks in Washington. Both the president and arms dealers are moreover supplying billions of dollars in weaponry to aid Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, a war many call a genocide. Given that the president is planning to build hotels in Saudi Arabia, not to mention $175 million that just poured into the Trump International Hotel Washington and Mar-a-Lago(21), no wonder Mueller’s investigation is taking so long.

Questions About Collusion Already Answered
Michael Caputo, a former communications adviser during Trump’s campaign, warned the president on CNN that: “These folks are very well prepared. Every question they asked me” he said, “they already had the answers to.” He’s obviously right since the investigation has led to 18 indictments and 4 guilty pleas of people in Trump’s orbit. Given that Mueller has rejected a proposal from the president’s legal team to send in his own written answers, and to keep within the same parameter as those questions, questions asked might be ignored. And yet, many have already been answered. Indeed, every human is born of collusion, and remains in collusion-some more than others. But exposing that collusion in a polarized and fledgling democracy is a different story.

Consequently, George Bernard Shaw may have been right when he wrote: “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” Some think it’s clearly obvious that Mueller’s questions about Trump’s collusion(s) has already been answered, repeatedly. If the truth was known, they’ve also been answered with other major players in the 2016 election and those in charge of the investigation. In other words, some warn that almost everyone in Washington monetizes access and official favors the moment they start to “serve.” This included Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden, and yes, even Robert Mueller. Collusion in the U.S., to be sure, will always be politics by other means until the people decide otherwise.

 

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and  www.WN.com/dallasdarling.

(8) www.newsmax.com. “Trump Trashes Mueller ‘Witch Hunt’ Again,” by Bill Hoffman. May 17, 2017.
(9) www.aol.com. “Cohen’s Efforts to Build a Trump Tower in Moscow Went on Longer Than Previously Admitted,” by Hunter Walker and Brett Woods. May 17, 2018.
(10) Schweizer, Peter. Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2018., p. 216.
(11) Ibid., p. 217.
(12) Ibid., p. 218.
(13) Ibid., p. 216.
(14) www.latimes.com. “Ivanka Trump Won Chinese Trademarks the Same Day She Dined with China’s President.” April 18, 2018.
(15) Schweizer, Peter. Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends., p. 201.
(16) Ibid., p. 205.
(17) www.msnbc.com. “Kelly: Trump Embarrassed by Mueller Investigation,” May 11, 2018.
(18) www.cnn.com. “Senate Committee Agrees With Intelligence Community Assessment of Election Meddling, Breaking With GOP Led House,” by Jeremy Herb, Lauren Fox, Manu Raju., May 16, 2018.
(19) www.cbc.ca. “Money Man: Reclusive U.S. Billionaire Robert Mercer Helped Donald Trump Win the Presidency. But What Is His Ultimate Goal?,” by Keith Boag., March 19, 2018.
(20) www.npr.com. “Trump Acknowledges Financial ‘Liability’ for Stormy Daniels Payment, by Peter Overby. May 17, 2018.
(21) www.forbes.com. “Donald Trump Has Gained More Than $100 Million on Mar-a-Lago,” by Chase Peterson-Withorn. April 23, 2018.



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