It is likely that Donald Trump is indeed a Russian spy. And this is not just a personal opinion: the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Department of Justice believe the same thing.

The respected New York Times published a couple of days ago absolutely sensational article. It is about the fact that in 2017, FBI employees began a counterintelligence operation against the president of their country. They tried to determine whether Donald Trump was acting on instructions from Moscow, or whether he was accidentally behaving in full accordance with the interests of the Kremlin.

According to internal FBI rules, an operation against a high-ranking official cannot be launched without the consent of the leadership of the Department of Justice. That is, there, at the ministry, they knew about this investigation. An important question: why did this investigation begin in the first place? The answer here is complicated.

In 2013, Trump was in Moscow, where he held a secret meeting with members of the Russian Presidential Administration, generals and oligarchs. We don’t know what they were talking about, but we know that soon after this Trump began to seriously talk about his participation in the US presidential elections.

In 2015, Trump's business partner Felix Sater wrote a very interesting letter to Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen. Among other things, there were the following words: “Our boy can become president of the United States. And we will help this. I will make sure that Putin's entire team will do this. I'll sort it out."

Felix Sater and “our boy” Donald Trump

Here it should be added that Felix Seiter was Felix Sheferovsky before moving to the USA. According to American newspapers, he may have serious connections with numerous mafiosi and bandits in the immediate circle of the Russian president. Sheferovsky-Sater also promised Cohen to help arrange everything for the construction of the Trump Skyscraper in Moscow. And just recently, by the way, it became known that negotiations with the Russians about this construction went on throughout the entire primaries - right up to the moment when Trump became the presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

We know that during the 2016 US election campaign, Russian intelligence agencies worked very actively in favor of Trump. And during the election campaign, he himself publicly asked Putin to help him find missing emails in Hillary Clinton’s mail containing supposedly compromising evidence. One detail: the very next day after this speech, someone tried to hack Hillary Clinton's email.

Apparently, Putin really listens to Trump.

Be that as it may, with Russian help, he nevertheless became the owner of the White House. Almost no one expected this. By the way, I was sure that he would win. U Most Americans were in real shock, but in Russia there was a festival. In the State Duma, people congratulated each other, and the editor-in-chief of the Russia Today TV channel, Margarita Simonyan, even planned to ride around Moscow with an American flag. And Putin himself has said many times that he considers Trump a more acceptable person for Russia than Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump had a lot of "respect" for Hilary Clinton

But the story did not end with Trump's victory. It immediately became known that a huge number of people from his campaign headquarters closely connected with Russia. Moreover, in some cases this connection could be illegal. In 2017, the FBI began investigating National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who traveled to Moscow and received money from the Russian government for participating in various events there.

And this is where the fun begins. President Trump has already demanded several times that FBI Director James Comey get rid of Flynn and close the investigation. Comey said he couldn't do it. Trump, after some hesitation, simply fired Comey, and in an interview with journalist Lester Holt honestly admitted that he did it “because of this whole Russian story.”

Here, many already thought that the president was covering up the traces of his cooperation with Russia, and was also trying to interfere with the investigation. But he didn’t really cover his tracks. After Comey's dismissal, Trump invited Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak and Putin's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit him in the White House. We don’t know what exactly they talked about there, but the photographs speak for themselves - they had a lot of fun, they seemed to be celebrating something.

Lavrov, Trump and Kislyak are having fun, as if they are celebrating something

According to the New York Times, it was then that shocked FBI agents began a secret counterintelligence operation against Trump. Employees realized that something is clearly wrong with the president. And they got to work. Congress immediately appointed Robert Mueller as special prosecutor for connections between Trump and Russia.

We do not yet know everything that Mueller and the FBI have dug up about the owner of the White House. But some data still made it to the media. Well, let's say we now know that in 2016, Trump family members and campaign leaders definitely met with Russian lawyers and spies to get dirt on Clinton from them.

Moreover, we know that Putin and Trump periodically meet without witnesses. This usually happens at large summits where many leaders from different countries are present. On the last day of such summits there is always a communal dinner. The press is not allowed there.

Everyone remembers the meeting between Trump and Putin in Helsinki, but there were others

It is known for sure that Trump and Putin met at such dinners, privately, twice: in Hamburg in 2017 and in Buenos Aires in 2018. In addition, everyone remembers their meeting in Helsinki. It ended with the American president agreeing with the Russian on everything and looking simply shameful.

According to the Washington Post, Trump hid even from members of his administration the details of personal negotiations with Putin. After five of their meetings, there is not a single transcript of the negotiations. The only person who can say anything about the content of their conversation is the Russian translator who helped Trump.

Democrats in Congress, by the way, already want to call this interpreter to a hearing and force him to tell what the American president talked about with the Russian one. Realizing how this could end, Trump took away all the notes and working notes from his meetings with Putin from his translator.

Breaking news: President Trump was shot in the arm at the inauguration.

The official Twitter account of the BBC Northampton channel addressed its audience with this message.

According to the hashtag, the assassination attempt on the 45th President of the United States occurred in Washington on Friday during a parade in honor of the new head of the White House.

Soon the resonant “tweet” was deleted from the account of the British news service, and a message with an apology appeared in its place.

The broadcaster's division has launched an investigation into the hacking of its Twitter account. Both hands of Donald Trump are in order - with them the new owner of the White House is busy signing his first presidential decrees.

The latest tanks in Europe

The United States has deployed “more than 6,000 tanks” to Europe, Life reports. Heavy equipment will be stored in warehouses in Holland, Belgium and Germany, and placed there for rapid deployment units that can arrive in Europe in the event of conflict.

This and a number of other publications of Russian and world media came to the attention of the weekly publication Disinformation Review: “Disinformation Review” is published by order of the EU and identifies the most striking cases of the publication of fakes in the media. The official verdict of the truth tellers: there are much fewer tanks in Europe.

In reality, we are talking about 3,500 soldiers, 87 tanks and 144 Bradley fighting vehicles. “Six thousand fake tanks” were obtained by adding all military vehicles and even personnel into one pile. Add to this the obligatory “damaged phone” that occurs when information is copied by nearby media - and you get the required six thousand.

“For readers, disinformation of this kind can cause panic and the feeling that significant military forces are being drawn to the borders with Russia, which in fact is not true,” the researchers note.

Englishwoman craps with fakes

The day before, news of the death of the Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia was rapidly spreading on the Internet: Russian diplomat Vladimir Dedushkin, Russian ambassador to Yemen since 2013, was allegedly shot dead in the city of Sanaa.

The Russian Embassy in Yemen, as well as Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner Maria Zakharova, on the same day denied the murder of Vladimir Dedushkin, as well as the very fact of provocations and attacks on the embassy.

According to the Fort-russ portal, the source of the fake news is the Saudi publication Barq, more precisely, the publication’s Twitter message. “Perhaps they communicated with failed terrorists and published the story about the assassination attempt long before its successful end,” journalists believe.

Spreading through Twitter and Facebook is one of the favorite media practices to popularize fake news. The last few decades have been remembered for stories like these, which have acted in some way as fuel for wars based on false conclusions. Because of this, millions of innocent people died, Fort-russ emphasizes.

Sinatra vs. CNN

Frank Sinatra's daughter, actress Nancy Sinatra, accused CNN of lying and forgery. The point is the channel's report that she was unhappy with Donald Trump's decision to use his father's songs during the inauguration.

“It’s not true, I never said that. Why are you lying, CNN?” asked Sinatra’s daughter rhetorically.

Users of social networks ridiculed another example of the publication of fakes by CNN journalists: in their news there are no statements by Sinatra about “dissatisfaction” with the use of her father’s songs during the inauguration, this conclusion was made by the channel’s employees themselves.

The president-elect takes office, and Washington can only talk about how badly this will all end.

“The most dangerous enemies of republican government,” wrote Alexander Hamilton, “are produced chiefly from the desire of foreign powers to obtain undue weight and influence in our councils. How can they best condone this unless by creating creatures of their own in the highest authority of the Union?” Hamilton, with his 1788 warning about “intrigue and corruption,” somehow uncannily reminds us of today’s Washington, where Trump’s enemies imagine that he is a Russian agent of influence, bribed or blackmailed by the Kremlin. The new head of state operates entirely in the Nixon regime, at war with the media, with the intelligence community, with the establishment and with the “rotten system,” although he is taking his seat at the table in the Oval Office for the first time. The scandal - if you call it that - is already somewhat reminiscent of Watergate. Can you imagine that Trump, like Nixon, will eventually be forced from office?

It would seem absurd to ask such a question at the time of the inauguration of a new president. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee has already announced hearings on “connections between Russia and people involved in political campaigns.” The committee's Republican chairman issued a statement noting that the investigation would be "bipartisan" and that "people will be subpoenaed to testify" if necessary. And “the committee will follow the information, no matter where it leads.” If Trump's staff or friends actually met with Russian representatives to coordinate hacking of the US presidential election, there is a word for it: treason. This is the most important of all the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that the Constitution speaks of as grounds for impeachment. But Trump's people deny such meetings took place. And even if they were, what was discussed there? And if there were discussions that were troubling to the Senate committee, did Trump know about them? What did the President know, and when did he know it?

Context

Kissinger supports Trump on Russia

The culmination of Trump's meteoric rise

"Trump forgot about American Muslims"

President Trump's speech

A university professor named Robert Kuttner began his own campaign to impeach the president. He is trying to convene “an independent body of reputable lawyers and other top-notch specialists to assemble a file of abuses and violations that provide grounds for impeachment.” This dossier (a word that resonates in Washington today) will be handed over to the House Judiciary Committee if, as Kutner hopes, impeachment hearings are initiated. “We need to give him a chance to take office,” he told me, echoing congressional analysts. “We need to see what actions of his provide grounds for impeachment during his presidency.” We need to gather evidence... so that congressional Republicans feel the need to distance themselves from Trump... That's exactly what happened with Nixon."

Professor Kutner pins his hopes on the emoluments clause of the American Constitution, which states that an official cannot receive gifts from foreign countries without the permission of Congress. “Trump cannot help but confuse his personal interests with his presidential responsibilities. He simply can’t control himself and doesn’t know what to do.”

The Founding Fathers considered foreign bribes so dangerous that they included a remuneration clause in the first article of their new constitution. They were referring to the scandalous incident of Benjamin Franklin, who received a diamond-encrusted snuff box from the French king. Franklin was allowed to keep it only after approval by the Continental Congress.

Trump's lawyers say the emoluments provision does not apply to him. And Trump himself, giving an interview after the election New York Times said: “The law is completely on my side, since the president cannot have a conflict of interest.” After this, he announced that he planned to transfer his business to a trust. True, it will be managed by his sons, and therefore it is far from an anonymous trust, as other presidents have used. His lawyer, Sherri Dillon, told a press conference on the matter: “No overseas deal will be made while President Trump is in office. New transactions within the country are permissible, but they will be subject to careful scrutiny."

But what happens if foreign diplomats start checking into Trump's Washington hotel? What if banks start lending his companies money at low interest rates? What if foreign corporations start buying up apartments in Trump Tower? Trump has rightly stated that he has few commercial interests in Russia, but Russians are investing massively in New York real estate and (as his son Donald Jr. admits) in Trump companies.

Perhaps Trump's opponents think he has done to the Constitution what Russian prostitutes allegedly did to the bed in the Ritz Carlton presidential suite. (Pity the maid if that’s the case.) But no one saw any recordings of his sexual pleasures. It is quite possible that incriminating evidence exists. But here it is better to use another term of the Russian special services - provocation or fabricated operation with the aim of misleading the enemy. Last March, someone from the US intelligence services told me about another alleged recording, about Kremlin money being sent to Trump aides for his campaign. The recording was allegedly made by the Estonian secret service. The dossier, compiled by former MI6 man Christopher Steele (many of the allegations therein are unproven), talks about a meeting that his sources say was spied on by Estonians. If the Senate Intelligence Committee finds nothing in this pile of breadcrumbs, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee will not vote to hold impeachment hearings. But if something appears, anything is possible. Trump, like Nixon, may then complain about Congress' attempts to overturn the election results. “By resigning now,” Nixon told his cabinet as calls mounted for him to leave the presidency, “America could go down the path of parliamentary government, in which the executive branch would remain in power only if it received a vote of confidence.” from the legislative branch."

According to Trump supporters, this is the minimum that opponents can do. Currently the most popular story on the right-wing “news” site Infowars sounds like this: won't the CIA kill Trump? “If you're at home,” the site advises, “barricade yourself and prepare to ride out the storm. Don’t trust the media, and try to notice if there has been a coup and if the constitutional authority has been overthrown.”

Infowars is the tool of host Alex Jones, who told his radio listeners that we should expect a military coup. As evidence, he cited a tweet calling for martial law, written by liberal TV host Rosie O'Donnell, who had a past spat with Trump. “The first time you heard it from me,” Jones said. “Ladies and gentlemen, they are openly saying that they want to overturn the election results. They are preparing... saying we need to declare a state of emergency and restore order if Trump is a Russian agent... They are planning to send 50 million Americans to re-education camps. And these people are serious."

This is quite interesting, but I heard something similar at an impeccably liberal reception in Washington on the eve of the election. Intellectuals from the field of national security gathered there. “If Trump is elected,” said one guest, “it will end in a military coup. Tanks on the White House lawn." Another person told me the same thing at this reception. Conversations in Washington are like some kind of hallucinations. Impeachment, however far-fetched it may seem, is not the strangest scenario being talked about in this city today as the 45th president takes the oath of office.

Paul Wood is a BBC correspondent and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.