Boing Boing Staging

Trump aides were in constant contact with top Russian officials during campaign

Xeni Jardin

This is so much bigger than Watergate. America has not seen a political crisis of this magnitude for generations. The other shoe drops on #Flynngate tonight. Trump, Manafort, and Flynn’s activities “raise a red flag.” The U.S. government is in “unbelievable turmoil.” Who is in charge of America?

CNN, The New York Times (which has a #FlynnGate ticktock here), and Washington Post are all reporting that the Trump White House is in freefall. “Flynn’s ouster has White House in crisis mode.”

Top Trump team members including Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn were in “constant contact” with senior Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign in which Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but somehow ended up in the White House anyway. No comment on any of this tonight from the White House as of the time of this blog post.

A “Dark Cloud of Russia” now hangs over the administration. Chilling. And this is real.

From CNN:

High-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to US intelligence, multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials tell CNN.

President-elect Trump and then-President Barack Obama were both briefed on details of the extensive communications between suspected Russian operatives and people associated with the Trump campaign and the Trump business, according to US officials familiar with the matter.

Both the frequency of the communications and the proximity to Trump of those involved “raised a red flag” with US intelligence and law enforcement, according to these officials. The communications were intercepted during routine intelligence collection targeting Russian officials and other Russian nationals known to US intelligence.

Officials emphasized that communications between campaign staff and representatives of foreign governments are not unusual. However, these communications stood out to investigators due to the frequency and the level of the Trump advisers involved. Investigators have not reached a judgment on the intent of those conversations.

Adding to US investigators’ concerns were intercepted communications between Russian officials before and after the election discussing their belief that they had special access to Trump, two law enforcement officials tell CNN. These officials cautioned the Russians could have been exaggerating their access.

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