The curious case of Trump’s Russian connections

Don Murdaugh was my mentor and my first editor way back in the late 1960s at the Trentonian newspaper. He cut his own journalism teeth in the 1950s and 1960s right here at the Delco Times. Don always hammered the five Ws of journalism – who, what, where, when and why.

And he taught me, if you weren’t there at an event (journalists rarely are) you get information from the people who were – witnesses, police, victims, winners, losers, and yes, sources, named if you can, but unnamed if you must.

And you tell both sides or all sides of the story. That’s journalism, real journalism in a nutshell. It always starts with a set of facts.

For example: The FBI (who) is investigating whether there were contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agents (what) during the 2016 presidential election campaign (where and when).

Why? Because Donald Trump has uncharacteristically been making nice to dictator and murderer Vladimir Putin since Day One, because several sources say Trump’s campaign associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents throughout his campaign and transition and because he may have business interests in Russia that he refuses to disclose.

His first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, talked to the Russian ambassador to the United States when he was still a civilian about things we still don’t know and he is now gone because of it.

The U.S. intelligence community that investigated the matter and the Obama administration that disclosed it confirmed that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and leaked embarrassing emails in an apparent attempt, perhaps successful, to influence our election.

Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for six months in the spring and summer of 2016, was an international gun-for-hire who had previously promoted Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych as the president of Ukraine until Yanukovych had to flee and seek asylum in Russia. Manafort may have been paid $12.7 million for that work, according to a Ukranian source.

Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil, had such close ties to Russia that Putin made him a “friend of Russia” a few years ago, and their multibillion dollar joint deal to run a pipeline through Ukraine has been held up by sanctions imposed by the Obama administration because of Russia’s invasion of that Ukraine.

Last week, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, in a profoundly stupid move (in my opinion), asked FBI Director James Comey to publicly deny news media reports that Trump campaign advisers had been in touch with Russian intelligence agents. Confirmed by White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

We know the FBI did not issue any such statement because, well, no statement was issued.

Then we learned that the heads of the House and Senate committees charged with investigating the Russian connection were also asked to tell reporters “there was no there there.” Again, those requests were not honored.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that “Justice Department officials” told them Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contacts with the Russian ambassador twice during the election campaign, something he publicly and explicitly denied doing during his confirmation hearing. He now says he met with the ambassador as a senator, even though one of those meetings was at a Trump campaign event.

Also on Wednesday the New York Times published a story saying former government officials told them the Obama administration spent its last days spreading information about the Russian hacking across government agencies to leave a clear trail of intelligence for investigators to follow even if the incoming Trump administration set about destroying as much data as it could.

These are facts, all reported by major traditional news outlets whose reporters put shoe leather to the pavement and telephones to ears and knuckles to doors and eyes to documents to verify these facts. This is real news, not fake news made up from thin air.

There is a lot we don’t know yet and as these investigations progress and the facts continue to drip, drip, drip out – actually now it’s more of a gush – you the reader are left to conclude what you will. The facts change daily and your conclusions may change as more becomes known. It may all be smoke and mirrors or it may be the biggest scandal since Watergate. We’ll all find out eventually.

Now this:

“Here’s the bottom line. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden.” – President Donald Trump

Actually no one believed that because absolutely nothing happened in Sweden on the night of Feb. 17.

Trump had merely conflated a story he had heard on a cable TV talking heads show the night before with maybe something that had happened in Sweden in 2010 and he could not even formulate a simple sentence to express those two, separate whatwhen ideas.

Whatever else he may be, it’s apparent Trump is no journalist.