Trump’s Russophile son and Wikileaks

The US president’s week was marked by a handful of scandals

Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met Trump’s son Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met Trump’s son

KremlinGate continues to provide hours and hours of entertainment for the masses in the United States. Two weeks ago, Paul Manafort, the campaign head for president Donald Trump, and Richard Gates were charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III. In the same week we learnt that George Papadopoulos, of the foreign policy advisory panel and who was arrested by the FBI, had admitted to having had undeclared -which is obligatory under US law- contact with Russian officials.

A Russophile son

The latest in KremlinGate, which took a break last week, has not taken long in coming. The big protagonist this week is the elder son of president Trump, Don Jr. Some months ago, the New York Times published the transcript of recordings from a meeting between Don Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer and close friend of Russia’s Attorney General, which means Don Jr’s connections with Russia were already known a while ago. After this publication, the Congress and Senate intelligence committees asked Don Jr. to cooperate in the KremlinGate investigation. Robert Mueller’s office is also investigating president Trump’s elder son. The news of the week is that a member of the Congress or the Senate leaked previously unknown information: the messages that Wikileaks and Don Jr. directly exchanged in the past two years on Twitter.

The Atlantic has published a good summary of the conversations but I’d like to highlight two aspects. The first is that Wikileaks tried to get the Trump family to leak their tax declaration so as to “seem more neutral”, with an explicit recognition that Wikileaks is anything but neutral. The second, concerning the meeting between Don Jr. and Veselnitskaya, Wikileaks asked for emails but Don Jr. preferred to publish them himself on his Twitter account. At least as far as Don Jr. is concerned there does not appear to be collusion with Wikileaks -according to experts, Wikileaks is part of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. What seems more likely is a Wikileaks persecution of Don Jr. However, that does not mean that, as happens here, Don Jr. cannot simply ignore Wikileaks.

Justice and politics

The US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was summoned on Tuesday to an open hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. What was supposed to have been a simple appearance has turned into a scandal -another one- as Sessions repeatedly refused to answer basic questions on democratic rules. The context of the appearance is important, as a day earlier president Trump was tweeting and putting pressure on the DoJ (Department of Justice) in the Uranium Ore case and, obviously, Hillary Clinton’s emails. No doubt that is why the Democrat congressman for Michigan John Conyers - at 88 years old- asked Sessions whether "in a functional democracy it is usual for the President to order the judicial system to take reprisals against political rivals? Yes or no, please." The Attorney General did not want to answer the question and answered by asking "is this the question?" After a brief exchange, Sessions answered that the judicial system should not be used for reprisals against political rivals. What is the scandal? The fact that to do so is an offence and this was the second article on which the impeachment of president Richard Nixon was based. Different legal experts have explained that these tweets by president Trump are "impeachable offenses" and that the Attorney General’s response is unacceptable.

The avalanche of accusations of sexual harrassment also continues to run its course. The world of artists has opened up the way into the sphere of justice and a man who was once the head of Alabama’s legal system, Roy Moore, who has received five accusations of attempted rape. The latest is from Beverly Young Nelson when she was only 15. No doubt, the US is discovering how hard and cruel the lives of women are, even in the world’s main superpower. The infamy appears to have no limits.

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