Reports from CNN, the New York Times, and other sources say that an unnamed MI-6 agent has disclosed information linking Russian hacking and investigations with damaging information about now President-Elect Donald trump.
FBI
In a first, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly conducting a serious investigation into charges that Russian agents whether private or state-sponsored, have collected “salacious and damaging” information about President-Elect Trump.
On the same day when controversial Alabama Senator Jim Sessions was appearing before the Judiciary Committee as part of his nomination to become head of all Federal criminal investigations, including the FBI, memos were distributed to various intelligence committee Congressmen and several news outlets stating that Russian individuals and possibly government agencies have collected and are keeping damaging personal and perhaps financial information about President-Elect trump.
Blackmail anyone?
Such information, if it exists, could pose a grave national risk if Russia demanded that President Trump while in office bend to their desires on various global matters and on removal of sanctions. This information is serious enough that during his intelligence briefing with heads of various agencies scheduled to outline their case that Russian hackers directed by high government officials including Vladimir Putin, President-Elect Trump was reportedly given the same two page memo outlining the evidence that Russia was holding damaging information about him personally.
Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, denied that any such information was included in the briefing given President-Elect Trump.
Asked about this on CNN, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, who, along with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate scandal and helped force President Nixon to resign his office, simply referred to Ms. Conway as Trump’s Minister of Propaganda.
Dangers squared and cubed
It hardly seems necessary to point out the dangers involved in having a President of the United States possibly confronted with leaks of damaging information, possibly criminal matters, or only entanglements with various foreign governments and banks.
It had already been rumored that the reason Candidate Trump and later President-Elect Trump refused to release his tax records and is being very vague about whether he would be putting all of his investments and business dealings into a blind trust, could mean that he has close financial ties with various foreign governments, some of which may not be friendly, and which he would find embarrassing at the least to have disclosed.
The mere existence of possible compromising information in the hands of a hostile foreign government is dangerous in the extreme - add that to the way President-Elect Trump refuses to accept information gathered by his own country’s top intelligence agencies, instead defending Russia, as well as the way he takes every opportunity to praise Mr. Putin and even denied repeatedly that Russia had invaded and annexed The Crimea, and you have not just a potential political scandal, but a plot worthy of John le Carré (real name David John Moore Cornwell), British spy novel author of books including “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” or, worse yet, cold-war to hot war author Tom Clancy.
Need not be true to be dangerous
The worst part of all this is that it doesn’t even need to be true. It may be entirely false, but given the high-level sources and the fact that an incoming President is involved in such an investigation poses the possibility that it could poison every action he takes if such actions even slightly benefit either Putin or Russia directly or indirectly
Doubts will always linger now whether a President Trump once in office is taking some action because he truly thinks it is best for The United States, or if he was pressured to do so.
