"There's a Smell of Treason in the Air"

The greatest political scandal in American history was not Aaron Burr’s shooting of Alexander Hamilton, and perhaps wasn’t even Watergate. Rather it may have been Richard Nixon’s secret efforts in 1968 to sabotage a U.S. diplomatic effort to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon’s initiative, long rumored but confirmed only a few months ago, was meant to improve his election chances that year. After Nixon won, the war dragged on and cost thousands of additional American and Vietnamese lives; it’s hard to see his behavior as anything but treason.

Now the F.B.I. confirms that we have had an investigation underway for eight months into whether another presidential campaign colluded with a foreign power so as to win an election. To me, that, too, would amount to treason.

I’ve been speaking to intelligence experts, Americans and foreigners alike, and they mostly (but not entirely) believe there was Trump-Russia cooperation of some kind. But this is uncertain; it’s prudent to note that James Clapper, the intelligence director under Barack Obama, said that as of January he had seen no evidence of collusion but that he favors an investigation to get to the bottom of it.

I’m also told (not by a Democrat!) that there’s a persuasive piece of intelligence on ties between Russia and a member of the Trump team that isn’t yet public.

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McCain’s statements came just as CNN reported that the FBI may have information on Trump’s associates’ interactions with Russian operatives to politically harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Carl Bernstein, best known for working with Bob Woodward to expose the Watergate scandal that took down President Richard Nixon in 1974, told CNN on Wednesday that “I’ve been saying for a while that there’s a coverup going on here. The coverup is among those who worked in the Trump campaign and associates of Trump and it’s now becoming much more clear what it is that they have been concealing which are these contacts, which revolve around leaked emails from [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta’s account.”

“It’s a bizarre situation,” McCain told Van Susteren. “I think that this back and forth and what the American people have found so far is that no longer does Congress have the credibility to handle this alone.”

McCain’s comment about congressional credibility referred to a public feud between the House Intelligence Committee’s two ranking members, Devin Nunes, a Republican, and Adam Schiff, a Decmocrat.

On Wednesday Nunes told reporters that he had personally visited the White House to inform President Trump that the intelligence community had “incidentally collected” communications from both members of Trump’s transition team and possibly Trump himself as part of a larger surveillance project.

“What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate,” Nunes told reporters. Trump said that he felt “somewhat” vindicated by Nunes’ reports.

In response to Nunes’ actions, Schiff told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that “it’s simply not possible to do a credible investigation if you take information that’s pertinent to the scope of what you’re investigating and bring it to the White House instead of bring it to your own committee.”

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OldJourno said:

Which states swung to Trump due to Russian influence?
How many votes were hacked?
Perspiring minds want to know.

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KingOrfeo said:

Paul Manafort writes:

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phrodeau said:

I find myself profoundly disinterested in anything Paul Manafort has to say.

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Rightguide said:

There's been a "smell of treason" in the air since the election of Barack Obama.

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Rightguide said:

There's been a "smell of treason" in the air since the election of Barack Obama.

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bronzeage said:

It was not written by Paul Manafort. The linked article is an Op-ed by Nicholas Kristof.

I don't know why the OP attributed it to Manafort.

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KingOrfeo said:

Newsweek: Trump would be wise to negotiate a resignation before his presidency is fatally wounded.

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