The White House stonewalls a bipartisan request from the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian election interference.

Trump equivocates about whether Russia’s interference helped make him president.

Here are the latest additions to the Bill Moyers & Company Timeline:

• Also on March 22, 2017: In a joint letter to chief of staff Reince Priebus, the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee request information and documents relating to payments that former NSA Mike Flynn received from entities affiliated with foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey.

***

• April 19, 2017: The White House refuses the March 22 bipartisan request from the House Oversight Committee for more information and documents relating to payments that former NSA Mike Flynn received from entities affiliated with the Russian and Turkish governments.
• April 25, 2017: The Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism reveals that it has scheduled former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to testify on May 8, 2017.
• April 29, 2017: In an interview airing on Trump’s 100^th day in office, he tells CBS’s John Dickerson, “The concept of Russia with respect to us [the Trump campaign] is a total phony story.” Dickerson then asks, “You don’t think it’s phony that they, the Russians, tried to meddle in the election?” Trump answers, “That I don’t know.” Later, Trump says, “I’d love to find out what happened.”

On June-15-16, I’ll be appearing at the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Annual Convention. The title of my June 16 plenary address is The Role of the Legal Profession in the Trump Era. I’ll also be participating in a June 15 panel discussion on the future of legal education.

While we’re on the subject of Trump, and everyone is talking about his First 100 Days, consider this list of 10 achievements:

• Lowest presidential job approval rating since polling began (1953)
• Most executive orders found to be unconstitutional (2)
• Most attacks on the federal judiciary
• Most days at properties that a president owns (31 through 4/27 – per Wall Street Journal)
• Most taxpayer dollars spent days at properties that a president owns
• Most criticism of America’s staunchest allies
• Most reversals of campaign positions
• Least diverse cabinet since Ronald Reagan
• Wealthiest cabinet in history
• Fewest nominations to positions requiring Senate confirmation (60 out of 556)

There’s so much more: “100 Days of Deconstruction, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.”

Only 1,360 days to go.

In this week’s updates to my Bill Moyers & Company Timeline, Roger Stone has another “turn in the barrel.” He gets there with his comments and tweets about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks — the vehicles by which Russian intelligence interfered with the U.S. election and helped Stone’s candidate Donald Trump win.

And there’s new information about how documents that Russians had stolen when they hacked the DNC might have influenced FBI Director James Comey to make his highly unusual pre-election announcements relating to the Clinton email investigation.

To see how the latest entries continue to fill out the sordid Trump/Russia saga, review the entire Timeline.

• March 21, 2016: In a Washington Post interview, Trump identifies Carter Page as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page had helped open the Moscow office of investment banking firm Merrill Lynch and had advised Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, in which Page is an investor. He blamed US 2014 sanctions relating to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine for driving down Gazprom’s stock price. Earlier in March 2016, Iowa Tea Party activist Sam Clovis had recommended Page to the Trump campaign. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• July 5, 2016: FBI Director James Comey holds a press conference announcing that the bureau has closed its yearlong investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Comey says that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling “very sensitive, highly classified information,” but does not recommend prosecution. Typically, when the FBI recommends closing a case, the Justice Department agrees and no public statement follows. One possible reason for Comey’s unusual announcement could be a document that the FBI knew Russians had stolen when they hacked the DNC. In it, a Democratic operative suggested that Attorney General Lynch would not let the Clinton email investigation go too far. Comey may have worried that if Lynch announced end of the case, and Russia later leaked the document, doubts would arise about the investigation’s independence. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• By the end of July 2016: The FBI has opened an investigation into possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Aug. 10, 2016: Roger Stone addresses a Broward County Florida Republican Party group. An audience member asks (near the 46-minute mark of the video) about his predictions for an “October surprise” based on materials in the possession of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. In response, Stone says,“I actually have communicated with Assange.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]
• Aug. 12, 2016: On a #MAGA podcast (around the 7-minute mark), Stone says, “I believe Julian Assange — who I think is a hero fighting the police state — has all of the emails that Huma [Abedin] and Cheryl Mills, the two Clinton aides, thought they had erased….I think Assange has them. I know he has them. And I believe he will expose the American people to this information, you know, in the next 90 days.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]
• Also on Aug. 12, 2016: Stone tells Alex Stone that says he was “in communication with Julian Assange.” Later, Stone continues, “I am not at liberty to discuss what I have.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 16, 2016: With “TRUMP 2000” posters in the background from what appears to he Stone’s home office, he again tells radio host Alex Jones (around the 6-1/2-minute mark of the interview) that he has had “back-channel communications” with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange who have “political dynamite” on the Clintons. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]
• Also on Aug. 16, 2016: In an interview on The Blaze, Stone says he has “communicated” with Julian Assange through a “mutual acquaintance.” He continues, “I think that Assange is going to be very influential in this election….” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Aug. 18, 2016: In a C-SPAN interview, Stone says (around the 48-minute mark of the broadcast) that he’s never met Julian Assange, but he has been in touch with him “through an intermediary—somebody who is a mutual friend.” He continues, “I expect you’re going to see more from Mr. Assange.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 21, 2016: On a local Maryland radio program, Stone denies (around the 6-minute mark of the broadcast) that Guccifer 2.0 is connected to the Russians on local Maryland radio: “The DNC leaks that nailed Deborah Wasserman Schultz in the heist against Bernie Sanders was not leaked by the Russians, it was leaked by Cruccifer [sic] 2, I should say hacked and leaked first by Cruccifer 2, well known hacker who is not in the employment of the Russians, and then WikiLeaks. So that whole claim is a canard.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Aug. 26, 2016: In an interview with Breitbart Radio, Stone says (near the ten-minute mark of the interview), “I’m almost confident Mr. Assange has virtually every one of the emails that the Clinton henchwomen, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, thought that they had deleted, and I suspect that he’s going to drop them at strategic times in the run up to the rest of this race.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]
• Aug. 29, 2016: Stone tells a local Florida radio interviewer (around the seven-minute mark of the interview), “We’re going to, I think, from WikiLeaks and other leakers see the nexus between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.” About Assange, he says, “Perhaps he has the smoking gun that makes this handcuff time.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Sept. 16, 2016: Stone says on Boston Herald Radio (around the 12-minute mark), “I expect Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks people to drop a payload of new documents on Hillary on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that email server.” He says he’s in touch with Assange “through an intermediary.” He also says that Hillary Clinton’s association with Putin and Russia’s oligarchs was “far more troubling to me than Donald Trump’s.” [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Sept. 28, 2016: FBI Director Comey appears before the House Judiciary Committee and refuses to answer questions about whether the bureau is investigating connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. “We do not confirm or deny investigations,” Comey says. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Oct. 28, 2016: In a letter to key leaders in the House and Senate, FBI Director Comey says that in connection with the bureau’s closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, it was reviewing emails on a computer belonging to Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. Comey says nothing about the ongoing FBI investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Nov. 5, 2016: In a letter to key leaders in Congress, Comey confirms that the FBI’s has completed its review of the additional Abedin emails and, as a result, has not changed its earlier recommendation not to recommend prosecuting Clinton for her use of a private email server. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

***

• Also on March 4, 2017: Stone tweets – then deletes – about his communications with Assange: “[N]ever denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary.” Forty minutes later, the tweet was gone. [Supplemented on April 24, 2017]

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on April 21, 2017.]

100 Days of Deconstruction – Part 3

Trump promised to be a transformational leader. It wasn’t an idle threat. He has assembled an unprecedented governmental wrecking crew. This is the third installment on Trump’s unique combination of kleptocracy and kakistocracy that is reshaping America in ways that most of voters won’t like.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Don’t let the symbolic American missile strike on a Syrian airfield, dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” on tunnels in Afghanistan, or threats directed at North Korea distract from a central fact: Trump is Putin’s President. Former Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson is a player in the resulting saga. After Trump announced his choice for secretary of state, former Russian Energy Minister Vladimir Milov said that Tillerson was a “gift for Putin.” Indeed he is.

First, Tillerson announced that he’d miss his initial meeting with all NATO ministers and see Putin before visiting America’s staunchest allies. That move exacerbated strains that Trump had created within the Western alliance. After NATO ministers changed the meeting dates to suit Tillerson’s schedule, he reiterated Trump’s demand that participating countries pay a greater share of NATO’s costs. At a Group of Seven (G-7) foreign ministers meeting of European allies on April 11, Tillerson posed this unsettling question: “Why should U.S. taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?” That was only days after America’s ineffectual missile strike on Syria and tough talk about Russia’s failure to prevent Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

Perhaps Tillerson knew when he took the job that he would preside over the marginalization of the State Department so Trump’s son-in law Jared Kushner could run American foreign policy. In December, Kushner met at Trump Tower with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, at Kislyak’s request, an executive at a Russian bank subject to U.S. sanctions over Ukraine. In February, he orchestrated a call with China’s president to smooth Trump’s diplomatic blunder in speaking with Taiwan’s president. In April, Kushner met with Iraq’s prime minister to discuss the future of ISIS battles.

In fact, Tillerson is presiding over the decimation of the State Department. He spoke no public word of resistance to Trump’s proposal to cut its budget by 30 percent. He has accepted Trump’s rules: Trump can overrule Tillerson’s staffing proposals for key positions, including deputy secretary of state. As career policy personnel have departed en masse, replacements have not been forthcoming. Heading into March, the list of openings at the deputy, undersecretary, and assistant secretary of state level was stunning. As of April 12, 2017, Trump had yet to nominate anyone for 478 out of more than 533 crucial appointments across the entire executive branch.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson

During the campaign, Trump accused Ben Carson of having a “pathological temper.” After the election, Carson put out the word that he wasn’t qualified to run a federal agency. Now he presides over HUD.

Trump’s proposed budget would reduce the department’s funding by 13 percent, in part by eliminating the Community Development Block Grant Program that funds Meals on Wheels, housing assistance, and other community assistance efforts. When asked during his confirmation hearing about the department’s housing programs, Carson couldn’t rule out the possibility that money would go to the Trump Organization, which owns a stake in an enormous government-subsidized housing project in Brooklyn.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke

The person who runs the department charged with preserving federal lands for future generations has sided consistently with coal, oil, and natural gas industry efforts to exploit them. Zinke’s lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters is four percent (out of 100). On his first day in office, he signed an order creating more access to public land for hunters. Within two weeks of his confirmation, Ryan Zinke opened 73 million offshore acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration leasing.

Zinke’s professed desire to improve conservation efforts and national park infrastructure is impossible to square with Trump’s proposed budget, which would cut Interior Department funding by more than 10 percent. But Donald Trump Jr. likes Zinke, and that’s what matters most.

Other Notables

Who better to craft a Trump tax reform plan and frame national economic policy than billionaire Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s former national campaign finance chair? He’s a former Goldman Sachs partner who made a fortune from his purchase of a predatory lender that foreclosed on homeowners during the financial crisis. As nominee for Treasury secretary, he failed to disclose nearly $100 million of his assets on Senate Finance Committee disclosure documents, while forgetting to mention his role as a director of an investment fund located in a tax haven.

Over at the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry caused Harvard Professor Daniel Carpenter to describe “the least problematic of a very sorry pool of candidates” as “the most interest-conflicted commissioner in American history, by far.”

Another key Trump appointee, former congressman Mick Mulvaney, rode into office on the 2010 Tea Party wave and became a charter member of the radical “House Freedom Caucus.” The anti-government ideologue dedicated his career to sabotaging the nation’s ability to govern. Now he’s the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Here’s a list of agencies that would disappear immediately under the proposed budget he and Trump crafted:

• African Development Foundation (“supports and invests in African owned and led enterprises which improve lives and livelihoods in poor and vulnerable communities in Africa”)
• Appalachian Regional Commission (“innovates, partners, and invests to build community capacity and strengthen economic growth in Appalachia”)
• Chemical Safety Board (“an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents”)
• Corporation for National and Community Service (“invests in nonprofit and faith-based groups… AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, the Social Innovation Fund, the Volunteer Generation Fund, and more”)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting and the largest single source of funding for public radio, television, and related online and mobile services”)
• Delta Regional Authority (“works to improve regional economic opportunity by helping to create jobs, build communities, and improve the lives of the 10 million people who reside in the 252 counties and parishes of the eight-state [Mississippi] Delta region”)
• Denali Commission (“providing job training and other economic development services in rural communities”)
• Institute of Museum and Library Services (“inspires libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement”)
• Inter-American Foundation (“development assistance directly to the organized poor in Latin America and the Caribbean”)
• U.S. Trade and Development Agency (“helps companies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies”)
• Legal Services Corporation (“promotes equal access to justice in our Nation and provides high quality civil legal assistance to low-income persons”)
• National Endowment for the Arts (“supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America”)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (“serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans”)
• Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (“affordable housing and community development”)
• Northern Border Regional Commission (“partnership for economic and community development within the most distressed counties of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York”)
• Overseas Private Investment Corporation (“helps American businesses invest in emerging markets”)
• U.S. Institute of Peace (“strengthens U.S. security by reducing violent conflict”)
• U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (“coordinates and catalyzes the federal response to homelessness”)
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (“nation’s key non-partisan policy forum for tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue to inform actionable ideas for the policy community”)

It Will Get Worse

The current Trump rogue’s gallery is only the beginning. Legal scholars Eric Posner and Emily Bazelon observe that Trump’s first U.S. Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, “embraces a judicial philosophy that would do nothing less than undermine the structure of modern government – including the rules that keep our water clean, regulate the financial markets and protect workers and consumers. In strongly opposing the administrative state, Gorsuch is in the company of incendiary figures like the White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has called for its ‘deconstruction.’”

Trump’s lifetime appointments to the judiciary could inflict the most lasting damage on the country. During the final year of the Obama administration, the intransigence of Senate Republicans gave Trump 124 federal judgeships to fill, including 19 appellate positions. In his first term, retirements and other departures could give Trump the opportunity to name 40 percent of the nation’s federal bench – more than any president in nearly 50 years. Think about that as he rails against the federal judges who have dared to cross him on his unconstitutional travel ban.

Across the federal government, Trump is determining the country’s fate. The first 100 days of deconstruction set the stage for 1,360 that will follow. Make no mistake: he and his minions are playing for keeps.

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on April 19, 2017.]

100 Days of Destruction – Part Two

“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

— Steve Bannon to historian Ron Radosh on Nov. 12, 2013 (according to Radosh)

Beware of the enemy within. With respect to the US government, the ultimate inside job is well underway. Through key cabinet appointments, Trump is gutting federal agencies that have improved citizens’ daily lives in ways that most Americans will no longer take for granted.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos

In her confirmation hearing, billionaire Betsy DeVos made the world painfully aware that she isn’t an educator or expert in curriculum. She’s not familiar with the decades-old Individuals with Disabilities Act, or the fraudulent for-profit colleges and graduate schools that exploit their students. She seems unconcerned about the funding crisis that confronts public education in America. But she has all of the credentials required to serve in the Trump administration: she’s a billionaire with a mission to destroy the federal department she now heads.

Keeping Trump controversies in the family, DeVos’ brother Erik Prince is founder of the infamous Blackwater private security firm and was a $250,000 donor to the Trump campaign. In January, Prince met secretly in the Seychelles Islands with a Russian close to Putin. Russia’s goal in the meeting, according to the Washington Post, was to establish a back-channel line of communication with the Trump administration.

As a lobbyist through her organization – the nonprofit American Federation for Children – DeVos led the effort to privatize public education in Michigan. The result: widespread abuses, dismal performance, and no accountability for taxpayer funds flowing into the coffers of for-profit charter schools and management companies. In Michigan, DeVos helped to create a system that “leads the nation in the number of schools operated for profit, while other states have moved to curb the expansion of for-profit charters, or banned them outright,” the Detroit Free Press observes. “[Michigan is] a laughingstock in national education circles, and a pariah among reputable charter school operators, who have not opened schools in Detroit because of the wild West nature of the educational landscape here.”

Likewise, the Obama administration put pressure on for-profit colleges that exploit students and leave them burdened with debt. Trump, on the other hand, promised to reduce government intrusions and allow schools like Trump University to thrive. After November 8, the stock of for-profit schools soared. DeVos is now fulfilling Trump’s campaign promises.

Among her advisers is Robert S. Eitel, a lawyer on unpaid leave of absence from his job at Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Bridgepoint, a for-profit college operator whose stock is up 40 percent since November 9, faces multiple government investigations. One ended recently in a $30 million settlement with the federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau over deceptive student lending.

Another DeVos adviser is Taylor Hansen, a former lobbyist for the for-profit sector’s trade association that fought Obama’s “gainful employment” rule, which imposes minimal accountability on for-profit colleges. On March 6, 2017, the Education Department delayed the gainful employment rule deadline. Ten days later, DeVos rescinded an Obama administration rule that prevented student guaranty agencies from charging exorbitant interest rates. Until January 1, the largest such guaranty agency was United Student Aid Funds Inc., whose president and chief executive officer is William Hansen, Taylor’s father. In a letter to DeVos, Sen. Elizabeth Warren cited ProPublica’s report on Taylor’s conflicts. On March 17, he resigned.

On April 11, DeVos reversed Obama administration guidelines aimed at protecting student borrowers and penalizing abusive loan servicing companies. Meanwhile, DeVos’ agenda to clear the field for private education profiteers revealed itself in Trump’s proposed budget: it would reduce Department of Education funding by 14 percent. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers lamented, “This budget takes a meat cleaver to public education.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price

Tom Price is an orthopedic surgeon who seems to have forgotten his profession’s seminal creed, “First, do no harm.” As a Georgia congressman, Price was among the most prominent critics of Obamacare, which has provided more than 20 million citizens with health insurance that they otherwise would not have. As the Secretary of Health and Human Services, he is now working to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

On March 7, Price wrote Congress to express support for the Republican repeal effort. By then, Trump’s campaign promise of “health insurance for all” had devolved into Rep. Paul Ryan’s notion of “universal access” in the form of subsidies that would cover only a fraction of the premium cost for those most in need. (But it did have a nice tax break for the wealthy.) The Congressional Budget Office estimated that under the Ryan/Trump/Price plan, 14 million Americans would lose coverage immediately; by 2026, the total would rise to 24 million.

Trump, Price, and Ryan failed in their first assault on the Affordable Care Act, but they’ll be back. Watch for Price to issue rules and regulations that try to push Obamacare over a cliff. He’ll work at accomplishing administratively what Trump and Ryan could not achieve legislatively. Meanwhile, they and fellow Trump Party members push false narratives about “exploding premiums” when only three percent of Americans experience the individual rate increases they cite. They talk about Obamacare’s “implosion” due to insurers are leaving markets, but don’t mention that the Republicans – especially Sen. Marco Rubio – sabotaged the “risk corridor” program that reimbursed insurer losses for high-risk citizens. And they don’t acknowledge the latest studies showing that their “death spiral” rhetoric is simply a lie – unless Trump’s policies make it happen.

The Trump/Price impact on women’s health issues is becoming clear. On April 13, Trump signed a law aimed at eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood (after Vice President Mike Pence had cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate). As for medical research, forget it. Trump’s proposed budget would cut HHS funding (and its National Institutes of Health) by almost 20 percent.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions is just the person to send the federal agency charged with the pursuit of justice on a one-way ride back to a time of unspeakable injustice. In 1985 he led the prosecution of three African-American voter rights activists for voter fraud. As the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Alabama, Sessions lost that case. Ruling that his theory was contrary to election law and the Constitution, the judge threw out many of the counts and a jury acquitted the defendants of everything else. A year later, even the Republican-controlled Senate considered Jeff Sessions too racist to become a federal judge after President Reagan nominated him.

In December 2016, a Trump transition team member told The New York Times that if Sessions had it to do over, he’d bring the 1985 voter rights case again. In his January 2017 confirmation hearing, he echoed that sentiment in response to Sen. Al Franken questions about Trump’s bogus voter fraud claims about millions of illegal votes for Hillary Clinton. Sessions equivocated, but the “voter fraud” mantra has now become an excuse for a new round of voter suppression efforts.

Once confirmed, Sessions went to work quickly on his mission to turn back the clock. On February 22, his department coordinated with Devos’ to rescind the Obama administration’s restroom rule protecting transgender students. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision to hear a case on transgender rights and returned it to the lower courts in light of the Trump administration’s new guidance.

On February 23, Sessions issued a memo reversing the Obama administration’s directive to phase out privately run prisons. Obama’s order had come after a scathing government audit highlighting safety and security problems in private prisons. Sessions’ move was good news for the corporations that run those institutions, which have been reliable Republican campaign donors.

On February 27, the Department of Justice reversed the Obama administration’s six-year challenge to Texas’s voter-ID law. In 2016, a federal appeals court had ruled that the law discriminated against minority voters. But under Sessions, the Justice Department did a 180-degree about-face.

On March 17, the Justice Department filed a brief seeking to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which secured a $30 million settlement against for-profit college operator Bridgepoint (the same firm whose chief compliance officer is now on unpaid leave as a Betsy DeVos adviser). Trump now seeks unrestricted power to fire the CFPB director.

On April 3, Sessions ordered a review of all reform agreements with troubled police departments nationwide. The Justice Department’s former chief of special litigation, who oversaw investigations into 23 police departments including New Orleans, Cleveland, and Ferguson, Missouri, called Sessions’ announcement “terrifying” because it raised “the question of whether, under the current attorney general, the Department of Justice is going to walk away from its obligation to ensure that law enforcement across the country is following the Constitution.”

On April 11, Sessions declared the dawn of “the Trump era” in immigration. In addition his earlier threat to deprive sanctuary cities of federal funds, he has ordered the hiring of “border security coordinators” for all 94 U.S. attorneys offices, emphasized deportation for non-violent offenses, and promised a surge in the appointment of immigration judges to accelerate the flow of immigrants out of the country. Never mind that fewer than three percent of the undocumented have committed felonies – less than the six percent for the overall population.

The final installment in this series looks at the accomplishments of the Secretaries of State, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Treasury, and the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during Trump’s first 100 days.

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on April 17, 2017.]

Editor’s Note

Donald Trump may be a racist, misogynist, sexual predator, liar and bully, but he is still president of the United States, and we underestimate him at the nation’s peril. Viewed in isolation, his policies seem idiosyncratic and incoherent. Viewed in context, they reveal a strategy to plunder the government of what is profitable to Trump’s family and minions and leave what remains smoldering in the ruins. This series — “100 Days of Deconstruction” — seeks to provide that context.

If Trump succeeds, little of what makes America great survives. But knowledge is power, so read these essays and keep fighting in this decisive battle for our country’s heart and soul. Their author, Steven J. Harper, produced our recent Trump/Russia Timeline. He is a former litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis, adjunct professor at Northwestern University and the author of several books, including The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis.

–Bill Moyers

100 Days of Deconstruction – Part One

by Steven Harper

“If you look at these cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason. And that is for the deconstruction [of the administrative state].”

— Steve Bannon, chief White House strategist and senior counselor at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Feb. 23, 2017

At its best, government saves the environment from polluters, prevents companies from exploiting consumers, safeguards individuals against invidious discrimination and other forms of injustice, and lends a helping hand to those in need. None of those principles guides the Trump/Bannon government.

Two months into Trump’s presidency, historian Douglas Brinkley said it would be “the most failed 100 days of any president.” David Gergen, a seasoned adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, agreed. But they’re using a traditional scorecard. With the help of Trump Party senators and loyalists, Steve Bannon and his boss are remaking America. Future generations won’t judge kindly those who let it happen. Then again, if Trump’s trajectory continues, maybe there won’t be many more future generations anyway.

After losing his seat on the National Security Council, Bannon’s influence over U.S. foreign policy may have waned. But regardless of his future, he has already had an indelible impact on the country. At CPAC, he declared that key members of Trump’s cabinet were “selected for a reason.” In the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, that reason has become clear. They have demonstrated a collective determination to deconstruct not only the administrative state, but also the essence of America itself. They hold views that are anathema to the missions of the federal agencies they now lead. They blend kleptocracy – government by leaders who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed – and kakistocracy – government by the worst people.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt

Anyone who lived through the 1960s – or observes China and India today – knows what happens when polluters get a pass. Bill Moyers’ January 31, 2017 video essay previewed how Scott Pruitt was poised to return the nation to the darkest chapter in its environmental history: contaminated water unfit for drinking or swimming; smog-filled air unfit for breathing; a deteriorating planet careening toward a time when it will be unfit for human habitation. In 1970, President Richard Nixon created the EPA for a reason. Now it’s the victim of a hostile takeover.

After the election, Trump asked one of his billionaire friends, Carl Icahn, to screen candidates for the job of EPA administrator. As an unpaid adviser, Icahn wasn’t subject to the stringent ethics and conflict of interest reviews facing cabinet appointees. During his interview of Pruitt, Icahn asked specifically about an ethanol rule that was costing one of Icahn’s oil refineries more than $200 million a year. Pruitt said he opposed the rule; Icahn then supported Pruitt for the EPA job.

Along with Icahn’s blessing, Pruitt had other uniquely Trump qualifications for the position. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he sued the EPA 14 times; 13 of the lawsuits included co-parties that had contributed to Pruitt or Pruitt-affiliated campaign committees. He sided consistently with his state’s poultry farms, energy producers, and other polluters. Explaining why for the first time in its 50-year history the Environmental Defense Fund opposed Pruitt’s nomination to head the EPA, the EDF’s president said, “[A]t some point when the nominee has spent his entire career attempting to dismantle environmental protections, it becomes unacceptable.”

On February 16, 2017, an Oklahoma state court judge gave Pruitt five calendar days to release his email exchanges with the fossil fuels industry. But before another 24 hours passed, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and fellow Trump Party senators gave America the bum’s rush and confirmed Pruitt’s nomination to lead the EPA. A few days later, the release of 6,000 pages of Pruitt emails provided more proof of his cozy relationship with the industries he now regulates.

Once in office, Pruitt wasted no time. On March 9, 2017, he dismissed the impact of human activity on climate change: “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.” That put him at odds with the EPA’s findings and contrary to international scientific consensus. But he’s in line with Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax.”

Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney labeled climate science expenditures a “waste of money… I think the president was fairly straightforward: We’re not spending money on that anymore.” And they aren’t. Trump’s proposed budget would slash EPA funding by more than 30 percent – to its lowest level in more than 40 years. It would reduce by half the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. It would cut civil and criminal enforcement personnel by 60 percent. It would eliminate regional water cleanup programs from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, from San Francisco Bay to the Great Lakes, and from Long Island Sound to South Florida. Superfund money for cleaning up contaminated sites would decline by 30 percent. Appropriations for vehicle emissions and certifications would all but disappear.

While endangering the planet, Trump and his minions stage photo-ops to support an ongoing disinformation campaign about illusory benefits from their unprecedented environmental destruction. At the EPA on March 28, Pruitt, Vice President Pence, and group of coal miners surrounded Trump as he signed a sweeping executive order aimed at reversing President Obama’s signature initiatives. His actions, which included rolling back emissions standards and lifting the moratorium on mining federal lands, won’t bring back coal jobs that were lost to technology, cheaper sources of cleaner energy, and competitive market forces. But the Trump/Pruitt agenda will provide short-term profit incentives that encourage American companies to cede leadership in the development of innovative solutions to China, which has been doubling down on clean energy research for the long-term.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry

Rick Perry’s appointment to head the Department of Energy is a perfect complement to Scott Pruitt’s selection for the EPA. During a 2011 Republican presidential debate, Perry had such disdain for the Department of Energy that he vowed to eliminate as president. Now he heads it. In April, he replaced Steve Bannon on the National Security Council.

In Secretary Perry’s first address to his department, he said that Trump had told him to “do with American energy what you did for Texas.” But an approach that might work for one state competing with others doesn’t work for the zero-sum game that is the country as a whole. Even worse, there was a dark side to Governor Perry’s lower taxes, less regulation approach. Texas public schools are among the worst in the nation; rates of teen moms and uninsured kids are among the highest, as is its rate of uninsured citizens: 27 percent. Residents of the state’s two largest cities, Dallas and Houston, are the least health-insured of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Perry’s agenda is consistent with his oil industry connections. Until December 31, 2016, Perry served as a board member of Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners, which jointly developed the Dakota Access Pipeline that the Army Corps of Engineers had stopped before Trump took office. Four days after the inauguration, Trump blew past protesters carrying “No DAPL” signs and issued an executive order approving it. After the temporary employment of construction labor to build the controversial pipeline ends, it will create approximately 40 permanent operating jobs.

Two months later, Perry stood nearby as Trump announced his approval of the Keystone Pipeline that President Obama had stopped in 2015. Obama had said approving the project “would have undercut” America’s global leadership on fighting climate change. Reversing Obama’s order, Trump called it “the first of many infrastructure projects” and “a great day for jobs.” The pipeline will produce 35 permanent jobs.

The next installment in this series looks at what the secretary of education, the secretary of health and human services, and the Attorney General have done during Trump’s first 100 days.

Paul Manafort and Carter Page dominate this week’s set of updates to my Timeline for Moyers & Company. To see how the latest pieces fit, take a few minutes to review the entire Timeline. The growing challenge for the country is to prevent Trump’s ongoing military adventures from diverting attention from his deepening Russia election problems. The use of force against another nation is the ultimate distraction. And distraction from a topic it finds unpleasant is what Team Trump does best.

• November 2007: Paul Manafort’s firm receives a $455,000 wire transfer from Ukraine Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Manafort had been hired to improve the image of Putin-backed Yanukovych, who was portraying himself falsely as an anti-corruption reformer seeking to move Ukraine closer to the West. “The West has not been willing to move beyond the cold war mentality and to see this man and the outreach that he has extended,” Manafort says about Yanukovych at the time. Ukraine’s richest man – a billionaire industrialist – had introduced Manafort to Yanukovych. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Oct. 14, 2009: Paul Manafort’s firm receives a $750,000 wire transfer from Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The Russian-leaning Yanukovych was running for president and, in February 2010, he won. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• April 8, 2013: Three Russians whom the FBI later accused of spying on the United States discuss efforts to recruit American businessman Carter Page. According to The Washington Post, “[T]he government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow.” [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Feb. 22, 2014: Popular uprisings lead the Ukraine Parliament to oust President Viktor Yanukovych from office for gross human rights violations and dereliction of duty. With the help of Putin’s security forces, Yanukovych flees the country. But he leaves behind a handwritten ledger – the “Black Ledger” – with 22 entries for 2007 to 2012 purporting to show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Paul Manafort or his firm from Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Late 2015: The British spy agency GCHQ alerts its American counterparts in Washington to suspicious interactions between members of the Trump campaign and known or suspected Russian agents. The GCHQ provides the information as part of a routine exchange of intelligence information. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 5, 2016: Carter Page’s ongoing public criticism of U.S. sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine and his praise for Putin generate increasing attention and concern. In response, Trump campaign spokesman Hope Hicks describes Page as an “informal policy adviser” who “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.” Later that month, after the FBI believed that Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign, it obtains a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) warrant to monitor his communications. The initial 90-day warrant is reissued more than once. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 14, 2016: The New York Times reports that Ukraine anti-corruption investigators were seeking to identify and recover assets that it claimed former President Viktor Yanukovych had stolen from the Ukrainian people. Investigators had discovered the Black Ledger from Yanukovych’s pro-Russia Party of Regions. Later, Manafort questioned the authenticity of the Black Ledger, claims it had been falsified, and asserts that no public evidence existed that he or others received the payments listed on the ledger. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 17, 2016: The Associated Press reports that in 2012 Paul Manafort had secretly routed more than $2 million from Ukraine President Yanukovych’s governing pro-Russia governing party to two U.S. lobbying firms working to influence American policy toward Ukraine. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also Aug. 19, 2016: On the day he resigns from the Trump campaign, Manafort records documents creating Summerbreeze LLC, a shell company that he controlled. Shortly thereafter, Summerbreeze received a $3.5 million loan from Spruce Capital, small New York investment firm. Spruce’s co-founder is a developer of Trump hotel projects, including Trump International Hotel and Tower in Waikiki. One of Spruce’s financial backers, Alexander Rovt, is a billionaire who made his fortune in the privatization of the fertilizer industry in post-Soviet Ukraine. On February 1, 2016, Rovt had shared a Manor College stage forum about Ukraine with Andrii Artemenko, a pro-Putin member of the Ukraine Parliament. In January 2017, Artemenko would resurface at the Manhattan Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue with long-time Trump business associate Felix Sater and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen. During their meeting, Sater gives Cohen a sealed envelope containing Artemenko’s Ukranian-Russian peace plan and asks him to deliver it to Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. The plan would have leased Crimea to Russia for 50 or 100 years, essentially ceding to Putin the territory he had annexed illegally. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also on Sept. 23, 2016: Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News reports that U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page had opened up private communications with senior Russian officials, including talks about the possibility of lifting economic sanctions if Trump became president. [Added April 17, 2017]

• Sept. 25, 2016: Carter Page writes to FBI Director James Comey that in 2016 he “had not met with any sanctioned official in Russia….” [Added April 17, 2017]

• Sept. 26, 2016: Amid accusations that he has ties to Russia, Carter Page takes a leave of absence from the Trump campaign. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• Also on Dec. 9, 2016: Paul Manafort tells CBS News that he is not active in the Trump transition. Asked if he was talking to President-elect Trump, Manafort says, “I don’t really want to talk about who I’m speaking to, but I’m aware of what’s going on.” Interviewers also question him about the appearance of his name among the handwritten entries in the Ukraine Party of Regions’ Black Ledger from 2007 to 2012 (purporting to show more than $12 million in dollar payments to him). Manafort responds that the ledger was fabricated. [Added April 17, 2017]

***

• April 12, 2017: The Associated Press confirms that newly obtained financial records show Paul Manafort’s firm had received two wire transfers – one in 2007 and another in 2009 – corresponding to two of the 22 entries next to Manafort’s name in Ukraine’s Party of Regions Black Ledger. Manafort’s spokesman says that Manafort intended to register retroactively with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent for the work he had done on behalf of political interests in Ukraine through 2014. [Added April 17, 2017]

• April 13, 2017: Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page tells ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he wouldn’t reveal who brought him into the Trump campaign. Page also says that he doesn’t recall discussing the subject of easing Russian sanctions in conversations with Russian officials during his July 2016 trip to Moscow. “We’ll see what comes out in this FISA transcript,” Page says, referring to surveillance collected after the FBI obtained a secret court order to monitor him under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Something may have come up in a conversation… I have no recollection.” And later he continues, “Someone may have brought it up. I have no recollection. And if it was, it was not something I was offering or that someone was asking for.” Page says that from the time of his departure as an adviser to the Trump campaign through Inauguration Day, he maintained “light contact” with some campaign members. [Added April 17, 2017]

So in February 2016, Paul Manafort pitched himself to the Trump campaign — and offered to work without compensation! Journalist Josh Marshall thinks there’s a story there, and he’s probably correct.

Manafort’s overture is one of several items that I just added to my Timeline for Moyers & Company. To see how the latest Manafort piece fits, take a few minutes to review the entire Timeline. The symbolic bombing of a Syrian airfield sure looks like a distraction.

• Feb. 29, 2016: Paul Manafort submitted a five-page, single-spaced proposal to Trump. In it, he outlined his qualifications for helping Trump secure enough convention delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination. Manafort described how he had assisted rich and powerful business and political leaders, including oligarchs and dictators in Russia and Ukraine: “I have managed Presidential campaigns around the world.”

***

• April 5, 2017: In an interview with The New York Times, Trump said, “The Russia story is a total hoax.”

• April 6, 2017: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation. Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, a Trump supporter, assumed control.

[This article first appeared on billmoyers.com on April 7, 2017. It’s the eighth in my series. You can read the earlier installments here.]

“The cause of America is, in great measure, the cause of all mankind.”

— Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Donald Trump’s presidency threatens two central pillars of democracy: free elections and the integrity of the office he holds. As the Trump Resistance continues, tactics will adjust to changing battlefield conditions. A few key principles can guide the overall strategy.

Tactic #1: Remember the Audience

Donald Trump and his minions aren’t the audience. Every American patriot is. In the near term, the most important targets consist of a few Real Republican senators. Once three courageous Republicans step forward consistently, Trump will have to deal with Senate Democrats representing the majority of citizens who never wanted him running the country.

Tactic #2 Define Victory

Trump must become weaker than a lame duck. Real Republican members of Congress will realize that only bipartisan actions will carry popular federal legitimacy until the next presidential election. Losing his compliant Senate won’t stop Trump completely, but it should slow him enough to save the country until his replacement arrives. And remember, even the drastic step of impeachment won’t cure the problem because Pence was on the Russia-supported ticket, too.

Tactic #3: Keep The Heat On

Keep the heat on the Trump Party. They don’t care that Russia interfered with an American election, and they don’t believe that Presidential corruption matters. Don’t let them pretend that calling Trump a Republican makes him one. He never has been, and he never will be. He’s the founder of a party to which no Real Republican can ever belong.

Tactic #4: Begin the 2018 Offensive

The future is imminent. In 2018, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and primary elections are already underway. Get to work now because the payoff will be enormous. With Trump’s popularity in the tank, even supposedly “safe” districts will become increasingly less secure for any Trump Party member of Congress. Unless they disavow his attacks on the two pillars of democracy, go after them – along with any of the eight Republican Senators also facing re-election who remain hitched to their Trump albatross. Remember, every Republican in the Senate voted to help Trump blow it up. They wiped out that body’s longstanding filibuster rule so Trump could name a U.S. Supreme Court justice whom some have predicted will be the most conservative member of the bench. Beating out Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for that prize is no easy feat.

To recap, the eight senators up for re-election are: Nevada’s Dean Heller and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Texas’s Ted Cruz, Nebraska’s Deb Fischer, Wyoming’s John Barrasso, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and, if he runs, Utah’s Orrin Hatch. If Jason Chaffetz seeks Hatch’s seat, Democrats can register as Independents for the primary and join Real Republicans in voting him out of office.

Tactic #5: The 2018 Defense

Protect the Democratic flank. Twenty-five Senate Democrats face re-election in 2018. Those uniting in the cause of repelling Trump’s assault on the two pillars of democracy deserve all the support that the Trump Resistance Plan can provide. Those who refuse to fight deserve primary challenges – just as their Republican counterparts do. When it comes to the nation’s survival, party labels no longer matter.

Tactic #6: The 2020 Mission

On Inauguration Day 2017, Trump filed for re-election in 2020. He never stopped campaigning, and neither can the Trump Resistance. Equally important, a new U.S. census in 2020 will provide state legislatures with another opportunity to gerrymander districts that will last through 2030. Attorney General Sessions will do what he can do help them. Republicans won only 51 percent of the votes cast for House of Representatives candidates in 2016, but they hold 67 percent of the seats. The Trump Party will do much worse. Republicans also control 32 state legislatures and 33 governorships. Until they opt-out individually, they’re all presumptively Trump Party members. Work with Real Republicans to turn them out of office.

Tactic #7: Stand Up for Victims

Don’t look the other way. Trump exploits a vicious circle of fear and anger to divide Americans. History will judge all of us by how we react to a bully who abuses our most vulnerable citizens. When Trump attacks, fight back as if he were attacking you because he is. Call, write, visit, march. Contribute what you can in time, money, or both to a cause of your choosing that makes America a better place, even as Trump makes it worse. There are plenty, including those listed at the Moyers & Company website and here.

Tactic #8: Make Your Voice Heard

There are no bystanders in this war. The Trump Resistance Plan provides tools that every citizen can use. Organize and protest publicly at every anti-Trump opportunity, regardless of the particular issue. Whatever your sign says, carry it proudly and add these: “Russia interfered” and “Presidential corruption matters.”

Tactic #9: Remain Vigilant

Beware of the ultimate diversion. Trump won’t be able to deliver on most of the promises he made to the disaffected. Their lives will get worse in ways they couldn’t have imagined. When the same people who cheered his divisive campaign rhetoric become unhappy, frustrated, and angry, Trump will manufacture excuses that shift the blame to others. That’s what he does. That’s who he is. He’ll point his angry mob toward new targets – immigrants; political opponents; the media; anyone who disagree with him; maybe even a foreign country with whom he starts a war. That is when America will face its most perilous hour.

Tactic #10: Embrace former Trump supporters

Over time, millions of Trump voters will recognize their mistakes in casting their 2016 ballots. Trump’s dismal approval ratings prove that some of them have already seen their calamitous error. Welcome them to the Trump Resistance Plan. Inclusiveness in promoting the TRP’s message – even in the face of disagreements over almost everything else – will help to inoculate the populace against the venom that Trump will increasingly inject in an attempt to turn us against each other.

This concludes the Trump Resistance Plan, but not the Trump Resistance. Perhaps the Batman villain, Bane, inspired Trump’s inaugural remarks about giving power “back to you, the people.” If so, Trump missed the most important point: The people already have it. As citizens mobilize, he’ll see what happens when they use it. And he won’t like it a bit.

On April 3, 2017, I added the following items to my Timeline for Moyers & Company. For context, see how they fit into the larger Timeline picture.

***

• March 4, 2017: Trump was reportedly furious that Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation. He unleashed a tweet-storm, claiming that President Obama had wiretapped his phones during the presidential campaign. Stunned by Trump’s outburst, White House staffers began searching for evidence to support his false wiretap claim. Among those reportedly involved in the effort were White House Counsel Donald McGahn II and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a 30-year-old Trump transition team member whom former NSA Mike Flynn had brought to the White House as senior director for intelligence programs. [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• Also on March 7, 2017: Michael Ellis, 32-year-old general counsel to Nunes’ intelligence committee, joined White House Counsel McGahn’s office as “special assistant to the president, senior associate counsel to the president, and deputy national security council legal advisor.”

***

• Also on March 10, 2017: Mike Flynn’s replacement as NSA, H.R. McMaster, told Ezra Cohen-Watnick that he was reassigning him. Unhappy with the decision, Cohen-Watnick appealed to Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. They intervened and took the issue to Trump, who ordered that Cohen-Watnick should remain in his position. [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• March 14, 2017: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and Ranking Member Adam Schiff invited former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to testify before their committee at an open hearing on March 28, 2017. [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• Also on March 15, 2017: On the subject of his wiretapping claims, Trump told Fox News, “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.” [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• March 23, 2017: In a letter to acting Assistant Attorney General Samuel R. Ramer, Sally Yates’s lawyer disagreed with the Justice Department’s objections to Yates’ anticipated congressional testimony. Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools responded that Yates’ testimony was “likely covered by the presidential communications privilege and possibly the deliberative process privilege.” But Schools added that Yates needed only the consent of the White House, not the Justice Department, to testify. [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• Also on March 24, 2017: Yates’ lawyer wrote to White House Counsel McGahn about Yates’ upcoming testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. He noted that unless McGahn objected before 10:00 a.m. on March 27, Yates would appear and answer the committee’s questions. [Added April 3, 2017]

***

• March 27, 2017: Trump tweeted that the House Intelligence Committee should be looking into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russia: “Trump Russia story is a hoax.” [Added April 3, 2017]

• March 30, 2017: The Senate Intelligence Committee opened its hearings into the Trump/Russia investigation. Clinton Watts, senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security and former FBI agent, testified that the committee should follow the money funding misinformation websites. Watts then added a more ominous suggestion: “Follow the trail of dead Russians,” he said. “There’s been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation who have assets in banks all over the world. They are dropping dead, even in Western countries.” Eight Russian politicians, activists, ambassadors and a former intelligence official had died since Trump’s election. Some were apparent assassinations. [Added April 3, 2017]

• Also March 30, 2017: The New York Times reported that Nunes’ sources for the information that he’d reviewed nine days earlier on White House grounds – and then reported to Trump directly without informing anyone on his committee – were two members of the Trump administration: Ezra Cohen-Watnick (the NSC staffer whose job Trump had saved personally around March 13) and Michael Ellis (who had served as general counsel of Nunes’ committee before becoming Trump’s “special assistant, senior associate counsel, and deputy national security council legal advisor” on March 7) [Added April 3, 2017]

• Also on March 30, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reported that Mike Flynn was seeking immunity from prosecution in return for testifying before congressional intelligence committees. The next day, his lawyer confirmed, “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit.” [Added April 3, 2017]

• March 31, 2017: Trump tweeted, “Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” [Added April 3, 2017]

• Also on March 31, 2017: During an appearance with Bill Maher, Roger Stone denied that Guccifer 2.0 was an arm of Russia. “I’ve had no contacts with Russians,” he insisted. [Added April 3, 2017]

On March 27, 2017, I added the following items to my Timeline for Moyers & Company. For context, see how they fit into the larger Timeline picture.

• 1979: Roger Stone met Donald Trump when the notorious attorney Roy Cohn introduced them. [Added March 27, 2017]

• 1980: Stone founded a lobbying practice with Paul Manafort; Trump became one of Stone’s first clients. In the 1980’s, Trump hired Manafort on gambling and real estate issues. By 1988, Stone was one of Trump’s closest advisers. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• 2000: Roger Stone served as chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential exploratory advisory committee. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• June 2005: Paul Manafort proposed that he undertake a consulting assignment for one of President Vladimir Putin’s billionaire oligarchs. Manafort suggested a strategy for influencing politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet republics to benefit Putin’s government. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• Aug. 8, 2015: The Trump campaign said it had fired Roger Stone; Stone claimed that he’d quit. Either way, Stone remained a prominent Trump surrogate for the rest of the campaign. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• March 29, 2016: On Roger Stone’s recommendation, Paul Manafort joined the Trump campaign as convention manager. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• May 19, 2016: Paul Manafort became Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist. [Added March 27, 2017]

***

• March 20, 2017: In a House Intelligence Committee public hearing, Paul Manafort’s name came up more than two dozen times. [Added March 27, 2017]

• March 21, 2017: In his daily press briefing, Sean Spicer said that, with respect to the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort had “played a very limited role for a very limited period of time.” [Added March 27, 2017]

• March 22, 2017: Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, bypassed his fellow committee members and went directly to the White House with alleged evidence that Trump associates may have been “incidentally “ swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. Nunes refused to release the information or name his sources, even to fellow committee members. And he confirmed that he still had seen no evidence to support Trump’s claim that President Obama had ordered his wires tapped. [Added March 27, 2017]

• March 24, 2017: Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger Stone volunteered for interviews with the House Intelligence Committee. [Added March 27, 2017]

• Also on March 24, 2017: Nunes cancelled public hearings scheduled for March 28. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had been slated to testify before his committee. Nunes postponed their appearances indefinitely. [Added March 27, 2017]

• March 26, 2017: In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Roger Stone said, “I reiterate again, I have had no contacts or collusions with the Russians. And my exchange with Guccifer 2, based on the content and the timing, most certainly does not constitute collusion.”

My newest Moyers installment is now up: If Trump has nothing to hide about his Russia ties, he’ll take this deal. http://bit.ly/2nTeymq

Russian dollars flowing into Trump’s pocket, Roger Stone’s “time in the barrel,” and FBI Director James Comey’s confirmation that he’s investigating connections between the Trump campaign and Russia during the U.S. presidential campaign highlight the newest entries to the Trump/Russia Timeline. On March 20, 2017, I added the following items to the complete Moyers & Company Timeline.

• August 1998: Russia defaulted on its debt and its stock market collapsed. As the value of the ruble plummeted, Russian millionaires scrambled to get money out of their country and into New York City, where real estate provided a safe haven for overseas investors. [Added March 20, 2017]

• October 1998: Demolition of a vacant office building near the United Nations Headquarters was making way for Trump World Tower. Donald Trump began selling units in the skyscraper, which was scheduled to open in 2001 and became a prominent depository of Russian money. By 2004, one-third of the units sold on the 67^th through 83^rd floors of Trump World Tower involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia or neighboring states. Assisting Trump’s sales effort was Ukranian immigrant Semyon “Sam” Kislin, who issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar Trump World Tower apartments. In the late 1970s, Kislin had co-owned an appliance store with Russian immigrant Tamir Sapir and they had sold 200 television sets to Donald Trump on credit. By the early 1990s, Kislin had become a wealthy commodities trader and campaign fundraiser for Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who in 1996 appointed him to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Meanwhile, Sapir had made a fortune as a New York City real estate developer. [Added March 20, 2017]

***

• Also in 2002: Efforts to sell Russians apartments in Trump World Tower, Trump’s West Side condominiums, and Trump’s building on Columbus Circle expanded with presentations in Moscow involving Sotheby’s International Realty and a Russian realty firm. [Added March 20, 2017] In addition to buying units in Trump World Tower, Russians and Russian-Americans flooded into another Trump-backed project in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. In South Florida alone, members of the Russian elite invested more than $98 million in seven Trump-branded luxury towers. [Added March 20, 2017]

***

• Dec. 10, 2015: Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who would become Trump’s national security adviser, sat at Putin’s table for the 10th anniversary gala of Russia’s state-owned television propaganda network, RT. Flynn had made a paid appearance on the network. For his December speech, he netted $33,500 of the $45,000 paid to his speakers’ bureau. For all of 2015, Flynn received more than $65,000 from companies linked to Russia. [Added March 20, 2017]

***

• July 7, 2016: In a lecture at the New Economic School in Moscow, Carter Page criticized American foreign policy. He said that many of the mistakes spoiling relations between the U.S. and Russia “originated in my own country.” Page said he had sought and received permission from the Trump campaign to make the trip. [Added March 20, 2017]

***

• Also on Feb. 17, 2017: The Senate Intelligence Committee sent Roger Stone a letter asking him to preserve any records he had in connection with the Committee’s inquiry into Russia’s interference with the U.S. election. [Added March 20, 2017]

***

• March 12, 2017: John McCain told CNN’s Jake Tapper that former Trump adviser and surrogate Roger Stone “obviously” needed to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee concerning his communications with Guccifer 2.0. McCain said that Stone should also explain fully his prior involvement with former business partner Paul Manafort in matters relating to Ukraine’s pro-Putin former president. [Added March 20, 2017]

• March 13, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said that Roger Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 were part of the Committee’s ongoing investigation and that Stone could be called to testify. [Added March 20, 2017]

• March 15, 2017: Riding in a car near Pompano Beach, Florida, Roger Stone was sitting in the front passenger seat when another car broadsided it, shifted gears, backed up, and sped away. In January, Stone had claimed that he was poisoned in late 2016 with polonium, a radioactive material manufactured in a nuclear reactor and used to kill former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Litvinenko had defected to Britain and become an outspoken critic of Putin. As he lay in a hospital bed, he said that Putin had been responsible for his impending death. On January 21, 2016, retired British High Court Judge Sir Robert Owen concluded a House of Commons inquiry and issued a 328-page report finding that Litvinenko’s accusation was probably correct. [Added March 20, 2017]

• Also on March 15, 2017: The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, said that the Committee had no evidence to support Trump’s March 4 wiretapping claim. “I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower,” Nunes said. “Are you going to take the tweets literally? If you are, clearly the president is wrong.” [Added March 20, 2017]

• March 16, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee leaders issued a joint statement rebutting Trump’s unfounded assertion that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower: “Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.” [Added March 20, 2017]

• March 17, 2017: Roger Stone said he had just received via email the Senate Intelligence Committee’s February 17 letter asking him to preserve his records relating to Russian election interference. Quoted in The New York Times, Stone said, “I had never heard allegations that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian asset until now, and am not certain it’s correct.” He said that his 16 interactions with Guccifer 2.0, which included public Twitter posts and private messages, were all part of “exchanges,” not “separate contacts.” [Added March 20, 2017]

• March 20, 2017: On the morning of FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress on its investigations into Russian election interference, Trump tweeted: “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!” Hours later, Comey testified that the FBI was investigating Russian interference with election, including “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” With respect to Trump’s wiretapping claims, Comey said, “I have no information that supports these tweets.”

[This article first appeared on billmoyers.com on March 10, 2017. It’s the seventh in my series. You can read the earlier installments here.]

“The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection.”

— Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Paine’s line should resonate with former White House attorney Fred Fielding. As deputy and associate counsel to President Richard Nixon during Watergate, he witnessed the truly alarming spectacle of a president undermining the office’s integrity. Donald Trump must be giving Fred Fielding unpleasant flashbacks. All of Trump’s scandals – from Russia to his business conflicts – are on track to coalesce in the definitive crisis for American democracy.

About Those Conflicts

As foreign countries seek to curry Trump’s favor, his Washington, D.C. hotel gets the most attention. But it’s a symbol of larger problems. Trump’s business holdings rumble beneath every presidential decision. Sometimes they bubble to the surface.

The most obvious example is Russia. It’s impossible to divorce Trump’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin from his persistent efforts over the past three decades to develop business in that country. As recently as November 2013, Trump boasted: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”

But Russia is just one of many conflicts between Trump’s business interests and his presidential responsibilities. The unconstitutional ban on immigrant travel to the U.S. from seven (now reduced to six) Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries – none of which produced a terrorist who killed anyone on American soil – excludes five Mideast nations where the Trump Organization has done business, including:

• Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden’s birthplace and the home of more terrorists who have attacked the United States than any other country;

• The U.A.E., which includes Dubai where Trump has two golf club projects, and Abu Dhabi whose Tourism & Culture Authority is a Trump Tower tenant;

• Turkey, where Trump has what he calls a “major, major building in Istanbul”; and

• Azerbaijan, where the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku was built but never opened. According to legal experts, that project should have raised numerous Trump Organization red flags relating to involvement of the country’s oligarchs, connections to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The first lawsuit on Emoluments Clause issues offers a sample of Trump’s additional foreign entanglements:

• As president-elect, he sought European Parliament member Nigel Farage’s help in opposing wind farms that would impede views from his Scottish golf course.

• Trump’s business partner in the Philippines is now a special envoy to the United States.

• Trump’s company plans to build 20 to 30 luxury hotels in China, whose government is a business partner in a Trump New York City office building.

• The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a government-owned entity, is among Trump Tower’s largest tenants.

The Con

On January 11, 2017, Trump revealed a plan that was supposed to deal with all of this. He trotted out Sheri Dillon and Nixon’s former deputy counsel, Fred Fielding (now 77). Dillon, who did all the talking, invoked Fielding’s reputation as a legal adviser to presidents: “Mr. Fielding has been extensively involved with and approved this plan.”

Except as a public relations ploy, Fielding’s imprimatur is meaningless. Immediately after Trump’s press conference, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, spoke on behalf of the American people: “[T]he plan does not comport with the tradition of our Presidents over the past 40 years.”

Across the political spectrum, legal experts agreed: Trump’s conflicts plan is a sham.

• Trump’s two adult sons and a current Trump executive now control his businesses. They get input from “Ethics Advisor” Bobby Burchfield, a long-time Republican insider and partner at the King & Spalding law firm. Burchfield serves as chair of Crossroads GPS, which Karl Rove founded. It collects “dark money” – meaning its donors remain secret.

• Trump still owns his businesses through a “revocable trust,” a standard estate-planning tool that wealthy individuals use to avoid probating assets at death while retaining the benefits of ownership during life. Functionally, Harvard Law School Professor Robert H. Sitkoff observes, the trust beneficiary – here, Donald Trump – remains the owner.

• The trust isn’t “blind.” Trump sees periodic reports of how much money he’s making.

• A new “Chief Compliance Officer” is supposed to “assure that Trump Organization businesses operate at the highest levels of integrity and are not taking any actions that actually exploit, or even could be perceived as exploiting, the Office of the Presidency.” For that role, the company designated George Sorial, a Trump executive since 2007. He blew his assignment when, shortly before Trump announced his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Trump’s sons greeted senators at the White House. (More on the plan’s legal flaws here, here, and here.)

The Plan at Work

Every day, Trump violates a core principle of the U.S. Constitution – that foreign states should be unable to buy influence over any government official, much less the president. Domestically, his conflicts are equally troublesome. Two weeks after the election, he told The New York Times, “The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before.” Thanks to the illusory constraints of the Dillon/Fielding plan, Trump is making the most of it.

His extensive biography remains a prominent page on the Trump Organization website: “On January 20, 2017, Mr. Trump was sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States….”

• January 24: The Guardian reported that the Trump Organization would proceed with multi-million dollar plans to expand a boutique hotel and build another 18-hole course at the Trump International Golf Course Scotland in Aberdeenshire. “Implementing future phasing of existing properties does not constitute a new transaction, so we intend to proceed,” a Trump spokesman said.

• January 25: Bloomberg reported that Trump Hotels CEO saw no reason why the chain couldn’t expand from its current presence in five major U.S. metropolitan areas to all 26.

• February 4: The American Red Cross, which is subject to government oversight, held its annual ball at Mar-a-Lago. After Trump’s election, the membership fee for the club doubled to $200,000.

• February 8: The Defense Department was looking for lease space in Trump Tower to support operations when he is in New York.

• February 10: The Trump Organization revived a long-dormant licensing deal in the Dominican Republic.

• February 11: Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago. Trump asserted that he was hosting Abe and his wife as a “gift,” but it’s unclear whether his largesse extended to the entourage accompanying both world leaders to Florida.

• February 16: Trump finally prevailed in his decade-long quest to secure trademark rights in China.

• February 18: Eric and Donald Trump Jr. opened Trump International Gold Club, Dubai.

• February 28: Trump’s sons opened the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver, B.C.

• March 6: China granted the Trump Organization provisional approval to 38 new trademarks for which it applied in April 2016, when Trump was railing against that country’s trade policies. The trademarks ranged from hotels and golf clubs to bodyguard and concierge services. A prominent Hong Kong intellectual property consultant said, “For all these marks to sail through so quickly and cleanly, with no similar marks, no identical marks, no issues with specifications – boy, it’s weird.”

And when it comes to exploiting his office, Trump is a family man. On February 8, Trump blasted Nordstrom’s for dropping Ivanka’s fashion line. The next morning, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway took a cue from her boss and violated federal ethics rules with a Fox & Friends appearance plugging Ivanka’s “stuff”: “I’m going to give it a free commercial here. Go buy it today everybody. You can find it online.” For that, Conway received “counseling.”

The Challenge

Sinister forces of corruption have clear pathways to a president who embraces their arrival. We, the people, must send a message to Republican senators who will determine the fate of the republic. Based on their cautious approach to candidate Trump, the most receptive are likely to be: Maine’s Susan Collins, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Nevada’s Dean Heller, South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, Arizona’s John McCain and Jeff Flake, Utah’s Mike Lee, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Ohio’s Rob Portman, and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse. Senators Heller and Flake are up for re-election in 2018. So is Tennessee’s Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s responsible for assuring that Trump’s business conflicts are not distorting America’s foreign policy.

In addition to Step 3’s message urging Congress to establish a bipartisan commission investigating Putin’s role in Trump’s victory, send this:

“Trump’s business conflicts undermine the presidency. For the sake of the country, stand up for democracy.”

In a 1985 interview, Fred Fielding reflected:

“Every time I think that the lesson of Watergate is a permanent legacy, someone turns around and does something so stupid that I realize that there is never a universal lesson to learn from anything. I guess history does have to repeat sometimes.”

Call; write; visit. At anti-Trump protests, add this banner: “Presidential corruption matters.” Maybe Fred Fielding will see it.

It has been an eventful ten days for the Trump/Russia Timeline that I’ve been curating for Bill Moyers’ website. After Attorney General Jeff Session’s qualified and carefully worded recusal – covering only investigations relating to the 2016 presidential campaigns – Trump campaign surrogate and adviser Roger Stone returned to the spotlight. Stone’s recent revelations shed new light on 2016 events that have taken on added significance and are now included in the Timeline. Below are the new entries, but for the full contextual impact, see how they fit in the entire Motyers & Company Timeline.

• 2015: An FBI special agent contacted the Democratic National Committee to report that at least one DNC computer system had been hacked by an espionage team linked to the Russian government. The agent was transferred to a tech-support contractor at the help desk. Neither of them followed up on the call. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Late April 2016: The Democratic National Committee’s IT department noticed suspicious computer activity, contacted the FBI, and hired a private security firm, CrowdStrike, to investigate. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• May 2016: CrowdStrike determined that highly sophisticated Russian-intelligence affiliated adversaries – denominated COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR – had been responsible for the DNC hack. FANCY BEAR, in particular, had indicators of affiliation with Russia’s Main Intelligence Department (also know as the GRU). [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• June 15, 2016: A hacker with the online persona “Guccifer 2.0” claimed credit for the DNC hack and began posting internal DNC documents on the Guccifer 2.0 website. CrowdStrike reiterated its conclusion that the hack had been a Russian intelligence operation. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• July 6, 2016: Another batch of hacked DNC documents appeared on the Guccifer 2.0 website. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• July 14, 2016: Another batch of hacked DNC documents appeared on the Guccifer 2.0 website. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 5, 2016: Trump surrogate Roger Stone wrote article for Breitbart News. Stone argued that Guccifer 2.0 had nothing to do with Russia. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 12, 2016: A batch of hacked Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) documents appeared on the Guccifer 2.0 website. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 13, 2016: After receiving complaints about the publication of private information, Twitter and wordpress.com (host for the Guccifer 2.0 website) suspended the Guccifer 2.0 accounts. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 14, 2016: Roger Stone tweeted, “[N]ow Guccifer 2.0 – why are those exposing the truth banned?” Without explanation, Twitter reinstated the Guccifer 2.0 account. In a private message to Guccifer 2.0, Roger Stone wrote “Delighted you are reinstated. Fuck the State and their MSM lackeys.” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 15, 2016: Continuing their private exchange, Guccifer 2.0 responded to Stone: “wow thank u for writing back and thank you for an article about me!!! do u find anything interesting in the docs I posted?” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Also on Aug. 15, 2016: Guccifer 2.o released hacked DCCC documents on primaries in Florida. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 16, 2016: Stone published an article in The Hill and asked Guccifer 2.0 to retweet it, “PLZ RT: How the election can be rigged against Donald Trump – thehill.com/blogs/pundits-…” Guccifer 2.0 responded: “done” and “I read u’d been hacked” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 17, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 sent another private message to Stone: “I’m pleased to say that u r great man and I think I gonna read ur books” “please tell me if I can help u anyhow it would be a great pleasure to me.” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 21, 2016: Trump surrogate Roger Stone tweeted, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. ‪#CrookedHillary” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Also on Aug. 21, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 posted hacked DCCC documents on Pennsylvania’s congressional primaries. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Aug. 31, 2016: Guccifer 2.o posted documents hacked from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s personal computer. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Sept. 9, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 sent Roger Stone a link to a blog post about voter turnout, along with this message: “hi what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign? Basically how it works is there are people who will vote party line no matter what and there are folks who will actually make a decision. The basic premise of winning an election is turnout your base (marked turnout) and target the marginal folks with persuadable advertising (marked persuadable). They spend millions calculating who is persuadable or what we call a ‘soft democrat’ and who is a ‘hard democrat.’” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Sept. 15, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 posted hacked DCCC documents on New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, and North Carolina. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Sept. 23, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 posted hacked DCCC documents on chairman Rep. Ben Ray Lujan. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Oct.  4, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 posted documents hacked from the Clinton Foundation. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Jan. 6, 2017: The CIA, FBI and NSA released their unclassified report, concluding unanimously, “Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.” The three intelligence agencies agreed that “the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible.” The report also stated that WikiLeaks had been Russia’s conduit for the effort. “Russian military intelligence (GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyberoperations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Feb. 25, 2017: Nigel Farage, ex-leader of the U.K. Independence Party, key Brexit campaigner, and one of Donald Trump’s most visible foreign country supporters during and after the presidential campaign, dined with Trump, daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Florida Governor Rick Scott at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• March 2, 2017: Trump said he has “total confidence” in Jeff Sessions and he shouldn’t recuse himself from the Russia investigation. An hour later, Sessions recused himself “from any existing for future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.” [Revised Mar. 13, 2017]

• March 7, 2017: WikiLeaks released a trove of alleged CIA documents relating to the agency’s hacking tools for smartphones, computers, and Internet-connected devices. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• March 8, 2017: Nigel Farage met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where Assange had found sanctuary since 2012. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• March 9, 2017: In an online press conference, Assange threatened to release more documents relating to CIA’s hacking capabilities and methods. [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• Also on March 9, 2017: When reporters asked Sean Spicer about Nigel Farage’s meeting with Julian Assange and whether Farange was delivering a message from Trump, Sean Spicer said, “I have no idea.” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

• March 10, 2017: Trump campaign surrogate Roger Stone admitted that in August 2016 he had engaged in private direct messaging with Guccifer 2.0, whom U.S. intelligence agencies had later identified as the persona for the Russian hacking operation. Describing the messages as “completely innocuous,” Stone said, “It was so perfunctory, brief and banal I had forgotten it.” [Added Mar. 13, 2017]

This Timeline was first published and updated at billmoyers.com. It will be updated periodically. 

• Trump’s efforts to develop business in Russia date to 1987. In 1996, he applied for his trademark in that country. Discussing ambitions for a Trump hotel in 2007, he declared, “We will be in Moscow at some point.”

• 2002: Russian-born Felix H. Sater and his company, Bayrock Group – a Trump Tower tenant – began working with Trump on a series of real estate development deals, one of which became the Trump SoHo. Another development partner in Trump SoHo was Tamir Sapir, a Russian immigrant born in the Republic of Georgia who left the Soviet Union in 1973. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• 2005: Donald Trump gave Sater and Bayrock an exclusive deal to develop a project in Russia, according to Sater’s 2008 deposition. “I’d come back, pop my head into Mr. Trump’s office and tell him, you know, ‘Moving forward on the Moscow deal.’ And he would say ‘All right… I showed him photos, I showed him the site, showed him the view from the site. It’s pretty spectacular.” But that early effort to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow failed. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• February 2006: Two of Trump’s children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, traveled to Moscow. Sater claimed that Donald Trump Sr. asked him to show them around the city: “He asked if I wouldn’t mind joining them and looking after them while they were in Moscow.” He summarized the attitude of Trump’s children as “nice, big city, great. Let’s do a deal here.” Ten years later – October 2016 – Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten said that the presence of Sater and Trump’s adult children in Moscow at the same time had been a coincidence. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Sept. 2007: As Trump spoke at the launch party for Trump Soho, Sater and his Bayrock partner, Kazakhstan-native Tevfik Arif, stood next to him. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Oct. 15, 2007: Trump said: “Look at Putin — what he’s doing with Russia — I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done — whether you like him or don’t like him — he’s doing a great job.”

• July 2008: As the Florida real estate market began to crash, Trump sold a Florida residence to a Russian oligarch for $95 million, believed to be the biggest single-family home sale in U. S. history. The Russian oligarch never lived in the house and, since then, it has been demolished. Three years earlier, Trump had bought the home at auction for $41 million. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• September 2008: Donald Trump Jr. said: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

• January 2010 – January 2011: After leaving Bayrock, Sater became “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump,” according to his Trump Organization business card. He also had a Trump Organization e-mail address and office. The phone number listed on his business card belonged previously to a lawyer in Trump’s general counsel’s office. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• June 18, 2013: Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?” While at the pageant, Trump said, “I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper.”

• July 8, 2013: After a BBC reporter questioned Trump about Felix Sater’s alleged prior connections to organized crime, Trump ended the interview. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• October 17, 2013: On The Late Show, David Letterman asked Trump, “Have you had any dealings with the Russians?” Trump answered, “Well I’ve done a lot of business with the Russians…” Letterman continued, “Vladmir Putin, have you ever met the guy?” Trump said, “He’s a tough guy. I met him once.”

• Nov. 5, 2013: In a deposition, an attorney asked Trump about Felix Sater. “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump answered. When asked how many times he had ever spoken with Sater, Trump said, “Not many.” When asked about his July 2013 BBC interview during which he was questioned about Sater’s alleged connections to organized crime, Trump said he didn’t remember it. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• November 2013: Trump said: “I do have a relationship [with Putin] and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today [at the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow]… I do have a relationship with him… He’s done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s represented.”

• While Trump was in Moscow for the pageant, he and Alex Sapir (whose family was one of the co-developers of Trump SoHo with Trump and Felix Sater) met with the Russian real estate developer who had facilitated Trump’s $20 million deal to host the Miss Universe contest in Moscow. They discussed plans for a new Trump project in Russia. “The Russian market is attracted to me,” Trump told Real Estate Weekly upon his return. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Nov. 11, 2013: Trump tweeted: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”

• Mar. 6, 2014: Trump said: “You know, I was in Moscow a couple of months ago. I own the Miss Universe Pageant and they treated me so great. Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present.” On the same day, President Obama signed an Executive Order imposing sanctions on Russia for its unlawful annexation of Crimea.

• June 16, 2015: Trump declared his candidacy for president.

• Aug. 21, 2015: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions made a surprise appearance at a Donald Trump rally and donned a “Make America Great Cap.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Sept. 21, 2015: On Hugh Hewitt’s radio program, Trump said, “[T]he oligarchs are under [Putin’s] control, to a large extent. I mean, he can destroy them, and he has destroyed some of them… [T]wo years ago, I was in Moscow… I was with the top level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top of the government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Sept. 29, 2015: Trump told Bill O’Reilly: “I will tell you in terms of leadership he [Putin] is getting an ‘A,’ and our president is not doing so well.”

• Nov. 10, 2015: Trump said: “I got to know [Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes.We were stablemates, and we did very well that night.”

• Nov. 30, 2015: When an Associated Press reporter asked Trump about Felix Sater, he answered, “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. I’m not that familiar with him.” Trump referred questions about Sater to his staff. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Dec. 10, 2015: Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who would become Trump’s national security adviser, sat at Putin’s table for the 10^th anniversary gala of Russia’s state-owned television propaganda network, RT. Flynn had made a paid appearance on the network.

• Feb. 17, 2016: As questions about Russia swirled around Trump, he changed his story: “I have no relationship with [Putin], other than he called me a genius.”

• Feb. 28, 2016: Jeff Sessions formally endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. Three days later, Trump named Sessions chairman of his campaign’s national security advisory committee. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 17, 2016: Jeff Sessions discussed Trump’s foreign policy positions, saying, “I think an argument can be made there is no reason for the U.S. and Russia to be at this loggerheads. Somehow, someway we ought to be able to break that logjam. Strategically it’s not justified for either country.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Mar. 21, 2016: In a Washington Post interview, Trump identified Carter Page as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page had opened the Moscow office of investment banking firm Merrill Lynch and had advised Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, in which Page is an investor. He blamed U.S. 2014 sanctions relating to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine for driving down Gazprom’s stock price. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Mar. 31, 2016: Meeting with several of his national security and foreign policy advisers, including J.D. Gordon, Trump said that he “didn’t want to go to World War III over Ukraine.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• April 20, 2016: Paul Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager. Reports surfaced about his 2007 to 2012 ties to Ukraine’s pro-Putin former president, whom Manafort had helped to elect.

• Early June 2016: At a closed-door gathering of high-powered foreign policy experts visiting with the Prime Minister of India, Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page hailed Vladimir Putin as stronger and more reliable than President Obama and touted the positive effect that a Trump presidency would have on U.S.-Russia relations. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• July 7, 2016: In a lecture at the New Economic School in Moscow, Carter Page criticized American foreign policy. He said that many of the mistakes spoiling relations between the U.S. and Russia “originated in my own country.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• July 18, 2016: The Washington Post reported that the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes on a Republican Convention platform plank. It gutted the GOP’s longstanding support for Ukrainians’ popular resistance to Russia’s 2014 intervention.

• Also on July 18, 2016: At a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican Convention, Jeff Sessions spoke individually with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also during the July 2016 Republican Convention: Carter Page and J.D. Gordon, national security advisers to the Trump Campaign, met with Ambassador Kislyak. They stressed that Trump would like to improve relations with Russia. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• July 22, 2016: On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released its first trove of emails stolen from the DNC.

• July 24, 2016: When ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked whether there were any connections between the Trump campaign and Putin’s regime, Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort answered, “No, there are not. And you know, there’s no basis to it.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• July 25, 2016: Trump tweeted, “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• July 27, 2016: Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” At the same press conference, he insisted: “I never met Putin. I’ve never spoken to him.” In an interview with CBS, he reiterated: “But I have nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do, I never met Putin, I have nothing to do with Russia whatsoever.”

• July 31, 2016: Manafort denied knowing anything about the change in the Republican platform. That afternoon, Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s Russian-born adviser, spouted the Kremlin’s party line telling CNN: “Russia did not seize Crimea. We can talk about the conflict that happened between Ukraine and the Crimea… But there was no seizure by Russia. That’s an incorrect statement, characterization, of what happened.”

• Also on July 31, 2016: Jeff Sessions defended Trump’s approach to Russia: “This whole problem with Russia is really disastrous for America, for Russia and for the world,” he said. “Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also on July 31, 2016: Trump told ABC News that he was not involved in the Republican Party platform change that softened America’s position on Russia’s annexation of Ukraine. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Aug. 5, 2016: Hope Hicks described Carter Page as “an informal policy adviser” who did not speak for Trump or the campaign. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Aug. 6, 2016: NPR confirmed the Trump campaign’s involvement in the Republican platform change on Ukraine.

• Aug. 19, 2016: As reports of Manafort’s financial connections to Ukraine intensified, he resigned from the Trump campaign.

• Sept. 8, 2016: Jeff Sessions met Russian ambassador Kislyak in his Senate office. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Sept. 23, 2016: In response to reporter inquiries about Carter Page, Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks replied, “He has no formal role in the campaign.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Oct. 1, 2016: Six days before WikiLeaks released emails that the Russians had hacked from John Podesta’s email account, Trump’s informal adviser and surrogate, Roger Stone tweeted: “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

• Oct. 4, 2016: Trump tweeted: “CLINTON’S CLOSE TIES TO PUTIN DESERVE SCRUTINY.”

• Oct. 7, 2016: In a joint statement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence said, “The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations… We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” But two other stories dominated the news cycle: WikiLeaks began publishing stolen emails from the account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tapes became public.

• Oct. 12, 2016: Roger Stone told NBC News, “I have back-channel communications with WikiLeaks.”

• Oct. 19, 2016: During the third presidential debate, Trump dismissed the Oct. 7 US intelligence findings: “[Clinton] has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else… Our country has no idea.” And he said this: “I don’t know Putin. I have no idea… I never met Putin. This is not my best friend.”

• Oct. 30, 2016: The $100 million plane belonging to the Russian oligarch who had bought a Palm Beach residence from Trump for $95 million in 2008 was in Las Vegas on the same day that Trump was holding a rally there. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Oct. 31, 2016: Asked about news reports that the FBI was investigating connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, former campaign manager Manafort said, “None of it is true… There’s no investigation going on by the FBI that I’m aware of.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Nov. 3, 2016: The plane belonging to the Russian oligarch who had bought a Florida residence from Trump for $95 million in 2008 was at the single-runaway airport near Concord, North Carolina, where Trump was holding a rally. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Nov. 9, 2016: After Putin announced Trump’s election victory, Russia’s Parliament erupted in applause.

• Nov. 10, 2016: Russia’s deputy foreign minister admitted that during the campaign, the Kremlin had continuing communications with Trump’s “immediate entourage.”

• Also on Nov. 10, 2016: Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said, “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Early December 2016: In Moscow, Russians arrested a Russian computer security expert and two high-level intelligence officers who worked on cyber operations. They were charged with treason for providing information to the United States. The arrests amounted to a purge of the cyberwing of the F.S.B., successor to the K.G.B. and the main Russian intelligence and security agency. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also in December 2016: Russian ambassador Kislyak met at Trump Tower with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s NSA-designate Mike Flynn. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also in December 2016: Officials in the Obama administration became concerned that the incoming administration would cover up or destroy previously gathered intelligence relating Russia’s interference with the election. To preserve that intelligence for future investigations, they spread it across the government. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Dec. 8, 2016: Carter Page was in Moscow for several days to meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Dec. 9, 2016: In response to a Washington Post report that the CIA had concluded Russia had intervened in the election to help Trump win, he said, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

• Dec. 11, 2016: Trump praised Rex Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil and recipient of Russia’s “Order of Friendship” Medal from Vladimir Putin in 2013, as “much more than a business executive” and a “world-class player.” Trump said Tillerson “knows many of the players” and did “massive deals in Russia” for Exxon. Two days later, Trump nominated him to be secretary of state.

• Also on Dec. 11, 2016: Asked about the earlier US intelligence report on hacking, Trump said, “They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, they have no idea.”

• Dec. 12, 2016: While in Moscow, Trump’s former campaign surrogate Jack Kingston met with Russian businessmen to discuss what they might expect from a Trump administration. “Trump can look at sanctions,” Kingston said. “They’ve been in place long enough.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Dec. 13, 2016: NBC News’ Richard Engel reported from Moscow on Trump’s secretary of state pick, Rex Tillerson. Former Russian Energy Minister Vladimir Milov told Engel that Tillerson was a “gift for Putin.”

• Dec. 29, 2016: On the same day that President Obama announced Russian sanctions for its interference with the 2016 election, national security adviser-designate Lt. Gen. Flynn placed five phone calls to the Russian ambassador.

• Dec. 30, 2016: After Putin made a surprise announcement that Russia would not retaliate for the new sanctions, Trump tweeted, “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) — I always knew he was very smart.”

• Jan. 3, Jan. 4, and Jan. 5, 2017: Trump tweeted a series of attacks on the integrity of the US intelligence community’s findings that Russia had hacked the election.

• Jan. 6, 2017: The CIA, FBI and NSA released their unclassified report, concluding unanimously, “Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.” The three intelligence agencies agreed that “the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible.” The report also stated that WikiLeaks had been Russia’s conduit for the effort.

• Jan. 10, 2017: At Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing to become attorney general, Sen. Al Franken asked Sessions, “[I]f there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” Sessions answered: “I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Jan. 11, 2017: At his first news conference, Trump said, “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people.”

• Also on Jan. 11, 2017: The final question of Trump’s first news conference came from Ann Compton of ABC News: “Mr. President-elect, can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?” Trump never answered her. Away from cameras and heading toward the elevators, he reportedly said, “No,” his team didn’t have contact with Russia.

• Jan. 13, 2017: In response to The Washington Post’s article about NSA-designate Flynn’s Dec. 29 conversations with the Russian ambassador, press secretary Sean Spicer said it was only one call. They “exchanged logistical information” for an upcoming call between Trump and Vladimir Putin after the inauguration.

• Jan. 15, 2017: “We should trust Putin,” Trump told The Times of London. Expressing once again his skepticism about NATO, Trump lambasted Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.

• Also on Jan. 15, 2017: Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vice President Pence said Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador on the same day President Obama announced new sanctions was “strictly coincidental,” explaining: “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure on Russia…. What I can confirm, having to spoken with [Flynn] about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.”

• Jan. 19, 2017: The New York Times reported that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, along with advisers Roger Stone and Carter Page, were under investigation in connection with possible links to Russia. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Jan. 20, 2017: Trump inaugurated. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Jan. 22, 2017: Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn was sworn in as National Security Adviser, a position that did not require Senate confirmation.

• Jan. 23, 2017: At Sean Spicer’s first press briefing, Spicer said that none of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador touched on the Dec. 29 sanctions. That got the attention of FBI Director James Comey. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comey convinced Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to delay informing the White House immediately about the discrepancy between Spicer’s characterization of Flynn’s calls and US intelligence intercepts showing that the two had, in fact, discussed sanctions. Comey reportedly asked Yates to wait a bit longer so that the FBI could to develop more information and speak with Flynn himself. The FBI interviewed Flynn shortly thereafter.

• Jan. 24, 2017: According to a subsequent article in The Washington Post, Flynn reportedly denied to FBI agents that he had discussed US sanctions against Russia in his December 2016 calls with the Russian ambassador.

• Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had made misleading statements about his late December conversations with the Russian ambassador. Sean Spicer later said Trump and a small group of White House advisers were “immediately informed of the situation.”

• Late January 2017: At the Manhattan Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, met with Felix Sater and Andrii Artemenko, a pro-Putin lawmaker from Ukraine. Artemenko and Sater gave Cohen a peace plan whereby Russia would lease Crimea for 50 or 100 years and, eventually, get relief from U.S. sanctions. According to The New York Times, Cohen said he would give the plan to NSA Mike Flynn. Responding to questions from the Washington Post, Cohen denied that statement, calling it “fake news.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Jan. 30, 2017: Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. According to his statement, the reason was that she had “betrayed the Department of Justice” by refusing to defend Trump’s travel ban in court.

• Feb. 8, 2017: Flynn told reporters at The Washington Post that he did not discuss US sanctions in his December conversation with the Russian ambassador.

• Also on Feb. 8, 2017: Jeff Sessions, the first senator to endorse Trump’s candidacy and the former chair of the Trump campaign’s national security advisory committee, became attorney general. Every Republican senator and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted to confirm him. During the confirmation process, Sessions had said he was “not aware of a basis to recuse myself” from the Justice Department’s Russia-related investigations of Trump.

• Feb. 9, 2017: Through a spokesman, Flynn changed his position: “While [Flynn] had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

• Feb. 10, 2017: Trump told reporters he was unaware of reports surrounding Flynn’s December conversations with the Russian ambassador.

• Also on Feb. 10, 2017: On the Friday preceding Trump’s weekend at Mar-A-Lago, the plane belonging to the Russian oligarch who had bought a Florida residence from Trump for $95 million in 2008 flew from the south of France to Miami International Airport. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 13, 2017: The Washington Post broke another story: Then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned the White House in late January that Flynn had mischaracterized his December conversation with the Russian ambassador, and that it made him vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Later that evening, Flynn resigned.

• Feb. 14, 2017: The New York Times corroborated the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister’s admission on Nov. 10. Based on information from four current and former American officials, The Times reported, “Members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior intelligence officials in the year before the election.” Meanwhile, advisers to Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterated his earlier position: Sessions saw no need to recuse himself from the ongoing Justice Department investigations into the Trump/Russia connections.

• Also on Feb. 14: Press secretary Sean Spicer denied that anyone in the Trump campaign had any contacts with Russia during the campaign. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 15, 2017: Trump tweeted a series of outbursts attacking the Trump/Russia connection as “non-sense” and diverting attention to “un-American” leaks in which “information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy.”

• Shortly thereafter, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz and other congressional Republicans formally asked the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate the leaks, but they and their GOP colleagues resisted the creation of an independent bipartisan commission with the power to convene public hearings and discover the truth about the Trump/Russia connections. During an afternoon appearance with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump refused to answer questions about connections between his presidential campaign and Russia. That evening, The New York Times reported that Trump was planning to appoint Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump ally, to lead “a broad review of American intelligence agencies.” Feinberg has no prior experience in intelligence or government, but he has close ties to Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

• Also on Feb. 15: Chief of staff Reince Priebus asked FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to rebut publicly The New York Times’ story about Trump aides’ contacts with Russia during the campaign. McCabe and FBI Director Comey refused. The White House then asked senior intelligence officials and key lawmakers – including the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees conducting the Trump/Russia investigation – to contact the media and counter the Times story themselves. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also on Feb. 15: Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page denied having any meetings in 2016 with Russian officials inside or outside Russia: “I had no meetings, no meetings.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 16, 2017: Trump continued his diversionary twitter assault on the intelligence leaks that were fueling intensified scrutiny of his Russia connections. At Trump’s afternoon press conference, he said: “I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia… Russia is fake news. Russia — this is fake news put out by the media.” Reporters asked repeatedly about anyone else involved with Trump or his campaign. “No,” Trump said. “Nobody that I know of.”

• Feb. 17, 2017: FBI Director Comey met privately with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the Russia investigation. Immediately thereafter, the Committee sent a letter asking more than a dozen agencies, organizations and individuals – including the White House – to preserve all communications related to the Senate panel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 20 – 26, 2017: Trump continued his attacks on the media and the FBI leaks that were generating the Trump/Russia stories. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 26, 2017: NBC’s Chuck Todd noted a pattern: Trump’s attacks on the press followed immediately after a new and unflattering Trump/Russia story breaks. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Feb. 28, 2017: On a party line vote, the House Judiciary Committee killed Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s Resolution of Inquiry calling for Trump to provide documents relating to Trump/Russia connections and his business conflicts of interest. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also on March 1, 2017: More than 10 days after the Senate Intelligence Committee had requested that the White House and other agencies preserve Trump/Russia-related communications, the White House counsel’s office instructed Trump’s aides to preserve such materials, according to the Associated Press. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 1, 2017: In response to reports in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times about Jeff Sessions’ pre-election contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sessions issued a statement saying he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss any issues of the campaign.” [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 2, 2017: Trump said he has “total confidence” in Jeff Sessions and he shouldn’t recuse himself from the Russia investigation. An hour later, Sessions recused himself from any investigations relating to Russia and the election. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• Also March 2, 2017: Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page admitted to meeting with Russian ambassador Kislyak during the campaign. Another former adviser, J.D. Gordon, admitted that he’d met with Kislyak during the Republican Convention in July. Gordon said he had successfully urged changes in the party platform that Trump had sought to soften U.S. policy regarding Ukraine. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 4, 2017: Trump was reportedly furious that Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation. He unleashed a Tweet-storm, claiming that President Obama had wiretapped his phones during the presidential campaign. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 5, 2017: Sean Spicer announced that neither Trump nor the White House would comment further on Trump/Russia matters until Congress completed an investigation into whether President Obama’s executive branch abused its powers during 2016 election. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

• March 5, 2017: FBI Director Comey asked the Justice Department to rebut publicly Trump’s assertion that President Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump’s phones. [Added Mar. 6, 2017]

This is part of a series by Steven Harper for Moyers & Company. Read the other posts in the series: Trump Resistance Plan.

[This article first appeared on billmoyers.com on February 2, 2017. It’s the fifth in my series. You can read the first four installments here, here, here, and here.]

“Time makes more converts than reason.”

— Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Stay on message. The Trump Resistance Plan focuses on two messages that are central to our democracy: “Russia interfered” and “Presidential corruption matters.” This installment covers the first one: “Russia interfered.”

In a joint interview with Senator Lindsay Graham on January 7, Senator John McCain described the stakes: “What Putin did poses a threat to the very fundamentals of our democracy…”

Senator Graham emphasized that this is not a partisan issue: “We should get to the bottom of all things Russia when it came to the 2016 election, period. Wherever it leads in whatever form…”

Trump and Russia

Putin engaged successfully in a sophisticated cyberattack on a cherished American right – voting. Among other methods, Russia used WikiLeaks to distribute emails that it had hacked from the Democratic National Committee. The public record is incomplete, but the relatively few known facts paint a disturbing picture. Roll the tape:

— Trump’s efforts to develop business in Russia date to 1987. In 1996, he applied for his trademark in that country. Discussing ambitions for a Trump hotel in 2007, he declared, “We will be in Moscow at some point.”

— October 15, 2007, Trump said: “Look at Putin – what he’s doing with Russia – I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done – whether you like him or don’t like him – he’s doing a great job.”

— 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. said: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

— June 18, 2013, Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?” While at the pageant, Trump said, “I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper.”

— November 11, 2013, Trump tweeted: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”

— November 2013, Trump said: “[Putin’s] done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s represented.”

— March 6, 2014, Trump said: “You know, I was in Moscow a couple of months ago. I own the Miss Universe Pageant and they treated me so great. Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present.”

— November 10, 2015, Trump said: “I got to know [Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes. We were stablemates, and we did very well that night.”

— December 10, 2015: Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who would become Trump’s National Security Adviser, sat at Putin’s table for the 10^th anniversary gala of Russia’s state-owned television propaganda network, RT. Flynn had made a paid appearance on the network. 

— February 17, 2016: As questions about Russia swirl around Trump, he changed his story: “I have no relationship with [Putin], other than he called me a genius.”

— April 20, 2016: Paul Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager. Reports surface about his 2007 to 2012 ties to Ukraine’s pro-Putin former president, whom Manafort had helped to elect. 

— July 18, 2016: The Washington Post reports that the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes on a Republican convention platform plank. It gutted the GOP’s longstanding support for Ukrainians’ popular resistance to Russia’s 2014 intervention.

— July 27, 2016, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

— And at the same press conference, he insisted: “I never met Putin. I’ve never spoken to him.”

— July 31, 2016: Manafort denied knowing anything about the change in the Republican platform. That afternoon, Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s Russian-born adviser, spouted the Kremlin’s party line telling CNN: “Russia did not seize Crimea. We can talk about the conflict that happened between Ukraine and the Crimea…But there was no seizure by Russia. That’s an incorrect statement, characterization, of what happened.”

— August 6, 2016: NPR confirmed the Trump campaign’s involvement in the Republican platform change on Ukraine.

—August 19, 2016: As reports of Manafort’s financial connections to Ukraine intensified, he resigned from the Trump campaign.

— October 1, 2016: Six days before Wikileaks released emails that the Russians had hacked from John Podesta’s email account, Trump’s informal adviser and surrogate, Roger Stone tweeted: “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

— October 4, 2016: Trump tweeted: “CLINTON’S CLOSE TIES TO PUTIN DESERVE SCRUTINY.”

— October 12, 2016: Roger Stone told NBC News, “I have back channel communications with WikiLeaks.”

— November 9, 2016: After Putin announced Trump’s election victory, Russia’s Parliament erupted in applause.

— November 10, 2016: Russia’s deputy foreign minister admitted that during the campaign, the Kremlin had continuing communications with Trump’s “immediate entourage.”

— January 11, 2017: the final question of Trump’s first news conference came from Ann Compton of ABC News:

“Mr. President-elect, can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?”

Trump paused, and then reverted to a standard Trump strategy: deflecting, diverting, and distracting. He never answered her. Away from cameras and heading toward the elevators, Trump reportedly said, “No,” his team didn’t have contact with Russia.

Other characters lurk in the background. After the election, Carter Page – an early foreign policy adviser to Trump – was in Moscow to “meet with business and thought leaders.” Rick Gates was involved with Paul Manafort in Ukraine and a deputy on the Trump campaign.

Find All Dots and Connect Them

The known data points cluster to create a clear impression: Putin helped Trump win and Trump welcomed the assistance. Why?

Trump’s admiration enhances Putin’s status on the world stage. If he can get Trump to lift economic sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, so much the better. Those sanctions are crippling Russia’s economy. Meanwhile, Trump’s persistent questioning of U.S. intelligence findings undermined those agencies’ credibility while emboldening Putin to continue flexing his cyber-muscles in European countries’ democratic elections.

What does Trump get in return? The presidency and who knows what else. His refusal to release comprehensive information about his business connections to Russia – or anywhere – leads to ugly inferences. Trump should want to dispel them, unless he can’t because they’re correct. Whatever Putin knows – and he may know a lot – might give him enormous leverage over the president.

Now add Trump’s comment to The Times of London on January 15, 2017: “We should trust Putin.”

Expressing once again his skepticism about NATO, Trump lambasted Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. That would have pleased Putin. The Western alliance contributed mightily to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin seeks to destabilize the West and restore Russia’s lost sphere of influence.

Send the Message

Congress must authorize a special independent “9/11” type commission. Step 2 of The Trump Resistance Plan offers contact information and language for messages that concerned citizens can send to Republicans and Democrats in Congress, especially senators. Phone calls, written letters, and office visits are even better.

Americans possess another potent weapon: The power of peaceful protest. Keep using it. And keep expanding the ranks.

The Women’s March was more successful because it also included husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. To be sure, issues affecting women affect everyone. But with new executive orders every day, Trump will generate additional protests on the environment, health care, civil rights, immigration, and more. Divergent individual motivations for public demonstrations on any such issues need not undermine a united collective purpose.

To the contrary, they can complement it. The Revolutionary War was the first model for diverse Americans uniting to achieve a common objective. In the 1960s, the combined force of the civil rights and anti-war movements created a whole vastly greater than the sum of its parts.

Here’s the key point: Every patriot can join any anti-Trump demonstration. In addition to posters expressing concerns about particular issues, anyone can bring a banner that unites us all: “Russia interfered” and, as the next installment in this series explains, “Presidential corruption matters.”

Woody Allen said, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

Stay on message and keep showing up.

Jan. 11, 2017: Sheri Dillion and Trump’s law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, release the White Paper describing their plan to deal with Trump’s conflicts of interest.

It includes this line: “The sole responsibility of the Chief Compliance Officer is to assure that the Trump Organization businesses are operating at the highest levels of integrity and are not taking any actions that actually exploit, or even could be perceived as exploiting, the Office of the Presidency.”

Jan. 31, 2017: A picture displaces 2,000 lawyer-words: https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/826592233281486849

Zeke Miller on Twitter
“Trump sons greet the senators”
TWITTER.COM|BY ZEKE MILLER