Trump’s Theft of State Secrets and His Steadfast Love Affair with Russia and Autocracy
Trump is a presumptive Russian agent, and this makes his theft of documents, regarding our defense and nuclear vulnerabilities, immensely dangerous.
By
David Gottfried
Because so many facts, and “facts,” have been unearthed, and fabricated, regarding Donald Trump and his myriad misdeeds, people sometimes forget the important facts. They are inundated with news reports, that have gone on ad nauseum since 2016, and they are too tired and disgusted to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Why the Law may deem Trump a “Presumptive Agent” of Russia
Trump’s theft of top-secret materials regarding national security, and the vulnerabilities in our defenses and nuclear capabilities, is a heinous crime not merely because it is against the law, but also because we must presume that Trump is a Russian agent.
We don’t have incontrovertible proof that he is a Russian agent, but the Law sometimes allows one to presume that facts are true. For example, if a landlord brings an eviction action against a tenant within six months of a tenant’s submission of a complaint, to a governmental body, regarding that landlord, the Judge is directed to PRESUME that the eviction action is invalid and is a retaliatory eviction, New York Real Property Law, Section 223 b (5) (Footnote 1).
When the Law presumes that something is true, the presumption is rebuttable, but the party presumed to be guilty of a certain posture or misdeed has the burden of proving that he is not guilty of that misdeed. To return to the hypothetical about landlords: if a landlord is presumed to have started a retaliatory eviction action, the landlord must prove that his action is not retaliatory. Likewise, since so much evidence suggests that Trump is an agent of Russia, we must presume that that he is an agent of Russia, and the burden is on Trump to prove otherwise.
Yes, the Mueller investigation of Trump’s collusion with Russia did not go anywhere. However, no one has ever invalidated or disproved certain key facts (I am referring to the wheat as opposed to the chaff) which lead to the inexorable conclusion that we must presume that Trump is a Russian agent:
1) The New York Times reported, on at least two occasions, that because Trump has difficulty borrowing money from conventional sources (Because he has a history of evading his debts by making entities he controls – such as hotels in Atlantic City – declare bankruptcy), he has gotten money from the State of Russia.
2) The New York Times further reported, on at least two occasions, that Russia "laundered” money it sent to Trump via Deutschebank. Money is laundered when people want to conceal the source of money. Why was money from Russia to Trump laundered ? Obviously, because both Russia and Trump wanted to conceal the transmission of money.
3) Paul Manaforte, the manager of Trump’s 2016 campaign, was already convicted for his crimes. Among other things, he got millions of dollars from Russia. Manaforte and Russia tried to conceal the transmission of money: Russia did not send money directly to Manaforte; Russia sent money to Manaforte’s creditors. One clothier in New York City got over one million dollars. from Russia, for the fine threads it supplied to adorn Manaforte’s body. (In terms of dollars spent, Manaforte is the sartorial equivalent of Liberace in the political arena).
4) Leading members of Trump’s crime family lied to the FBI about their dealings with various high ranking Russian officials.
5) Trump’s first national security advisor got money from both the Russian government and the Turkish government. He never filed as an agent of Russia or Turkey, but he was legally deemed an agent of both nations. Likewise, since Trump got money from Russia, he should be deemed a Russian agent.
6) Gulf emirates have contributed over a billion dollars to boost Jared Kushner’s real estate investments. Do you really think they did this for him because he is a “nice guy.” And since his investments were in trouble, do you think they tendered the funds because they thought his properties were ideal money- makers. What did Trump and Jared Kushner promise the Arab aristocrats of the Persian Gulf ?
Of course, the wealth that gulf states gave Jared does not prove that Trump is Russia’s boy toy, but it does show that that family is marinated in theft, mendaciousness and consummate con jobs.
7) The New York Times reported that Russian social media manipulators posed as blacks and sent messages to blacks, particularly in Michigan, to dissuade blacks from voting for Hillary Clinton. Among other things, these Russian “influencers” said that Hillary Clinton was aligned with sinister Jewish bankers, particularly the Rothschilds. In fact, the black vote in Michigan, in the 2016 presidential race, was markedly depressed, and this enabled Trump to win Michigan.
8) Trump asserted that he believed the reports of Vladimir Putin, and his secret police, that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election, and Trump mocked the reports of American intelligence services that Russian did intervene in the 2016 election.
9) Trump said that his talks with North Korea were splendid. However, North Korea did not curtail its nuclear program, and America did stop its military exercises with South Korea and Japan. We should say of Trump what Mary Mc Carthy said of Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including the words “and” and “the.”
There is Top Secret Information – and there is really top-secret information.
At first, I was not terribly alarmed by news reports to the effect that Trump stole top secret documents from the Whitehouse. After all, very often the designation “top secret” is wholly inappropriate. For example, when the Washington Post and the New York Times began publishing the “Pentagon Papers” in June 1971, the Nixon administration brought suit alleging that the Pentagon Papers contained confidential or top-secret information. However, the data in the Pentagon Papers, which the Nixon Whitehouse said was confidential, was widely known among informed sources and had been known, for many years, throughout Western Europe. The only people who did not know what was going on were the American people, as Americans had been fed an adulterated baby food diet of curtesy news in which Americans were always the good kind Daddies liberating humanity at large (Footnote 2)
However, this jaded political junkie was truly riveted by the allegations in the indictment. The confidential information contained the most valuable and critical information conceivable: Materials which documented weaknesses in our nuclear defenses. How much do you think Putin would be willing to pay for that.
Do you believe that Trump’s reign of ribald reaction has been laid to rest. Think Again. Like the totemic black cat, Trump seems to have nine lives to curse us with.
The indictment was a masterful denunciation of Trump that seemed to auger the blessed end of his sickening political life.
But it’s far too soon to assume that Mafia Don Donald has finally landed in his well-deserved rat trap.
After all, he should have been carted off to jail after 9/11. Donald Trump has been mobbed-up for decades, and the mob bears culpability for the deaths at the World Trade Center. I very distinctly recall reading reports, in the New York Times, that contractors, undermined by the mob, were supposed to provide building materials, insulated with asbestos, for the world trade center, that the building materials contained grossly deficient amounts of asbestos, and that an insufficient measure of asbestos, in the building materials, may have made the World Trade Center collapse. But Donald was unscathed by the calamity, and the press covered him as if he were the gallant and good golden boy of New York realtors (As if anything about NY and its grossly expensive and rat-infested realty, and rat-like realtors, were ever anything but an incentive for a Revolution) .
After all, he should have been carted off to jail, or thoroughly ostracized by all decent people, when Atlantic City hotels that he controlled all declared bankruptcy, and Trump evaded paying tens of thousands of electricians, plumbers and other contractors for services rendered.
After all, he should have been carted off to jail when Robert Mueller investigated him for his ties to Russia. (Trump’s ties to Russia are reviewed above.)
But somehow the Mueller investigation went nowhere. You cannot exclude the possibility that Donald Trump, a man whose minions threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi, did in fact injure Pelosi’s husband, threatened to kill Mike Pence and wore T shirts on January 6 which contained the words “Camp Auschwitz,” threatened, ala the Mob, to put people, aligned with Mueller, in cement shoes and then dump them in the river.
And didn’t we have Trump, on tape, telling Ukrainian officials that he would not give them weaponry, which they allegedly needed to defend themselves from Russia, unless they said that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden were guilty of corrupt activities in Ukraine.
It is United States’ policy to support Ukraine. However, Trump was willing to harm Ukraine, and consequently undermine United States’ policy, in an effort to buttress his political power. This is truly astonishing: The President of the United States, a man who was elected to defend the United States, was willing to trash the United States to get himself re-elected. But somehow Trump remained unscathed. Fat fucking fools from the Midwest and the South continued to go to his rallies to shout “lock her up,” with all the alacrity of Storm Troopers screeching Zieg Heil, whenever someone uttered the name Hillary. And Kevin Mc Carthy appeared to have chopped off his nuts and let Donald Trump shtupp him up the butt on national television, and today’s Republicans make Richard Nixon seem to be a gallant and fearless crusader for liberty.
Please, dear Readers, if you doubt the veracity of my assertions, if you care to consider only one of my assertions, please listen to this: Republican office holders, who purport to be brave Americans who support our national defense, are the progeny of Norway’s Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian Political leader who helped the Nazis conquer Norway. (The word quisling has become a synonym for the word traitor.)
Indeed, I remember a news report in the Times, several years ago, to the effect that several Republican legislators in Washington, talking amongst themselves, acknowledged that Trump is supported, in part, by the Russian state and that they must conceal this from the public at large. Their continued support of Trump, in light of their knowledge of his sponsorship by Russia, is tantamount to traitorous activity.
Republican officeholders are already lining up to spew lies into the fetid public discourse to rehabilitate Trump. Indeed, tonight I heard Chris Christie, who is better than most of the reprobates of the GOP, say that Jim Comey had it in for Trump and had favored Clinton in 2016.
When anyone shovels that sort of shit in your face, i.e., bullshit to the effect that the establishment has always cursed Trump, remember the important facts, the wheat instead of the chaff:
During the 2016 election, Comey was investigating BOTH Trump and Hillary Clinton. While Comey publicized the FBI’s investigation of Hillary, he hushed-up the FBI’s investigation of Trump. Very simply, Comey made Trump look good and made Hillary the wicked witch of the west. Somehow, the tentacles of Trump’s tyranny had even managed to engulf FBI director Comey, a man who was supposed to be investigating Trump.
Finally, I appeal to the religious right which, I must concede, I often condemn. Isn’t there something in the New Testament that says that the Devil will sometimes mask himself and appear to be angelic and good. Please ponder the revelations about Trump and national security, please consult the bible you purport to cherish and which Trump degrades and defiles with a succession of lecherous, adulterous, and often non-consensual liaisons, and ask yourself if the man who shouts MAGA is really a spawn of Mephistopheles.
A Final Note Regarding What Might Appear to Be A Contradiction on My Part:
In some essays, I have expressed sympathy for Russia. In this essay, I condemn Trump as an agent of Russia. My sympathy for some aspects of Russia’s predicament, and its poorly understood relationship to the West, is not inconsistent with my denunciation of Trump for working for Russia. I simply cannot stand a man who, while pretending to be America’s savior, would deceive Americans and become Russia’s pliant and malignant tool.
Footnote 1:
In an action or proceeding instituted against a tenant of premises or a unit to which this section is applicable, a rebuttable presumption that the landlord is acting in retaliation shall be created if the tenant establishes that the landlord served a notice to quit, or instituted an action or proceeding to recover possession, or attempted to substantially alter the terms of the tenancy, within six months after:
a. A good faith complaint was made, by or in behalf of the tenant, to a governmental authority …
New York Real Property Law, Section 223 (b) (5)
Footnote 2:
The information that the Justice Dept. said was confidential but was in fact already known to savvy and informed Americans and Western Europeans included data regarding the alliance between Vietnamese Communists and Americans in fighting the Japanese, America’s refusal to speak to the Vietnamese Communists after the end of world war two because we were wholly committed to the resumption of French colonial rule, United States’ efforts to stop the 1956 election (Because a CIA poll showed that Ho Chi Minh and the Communists would get 80 percent of the vote), American support for the coup against Diem, and the falsity of the American allegation that North Vietnam attacked American naval forces in Tonkin Gulf.
David, I'm going to read this entry again just to make sure I didn't miss the golden nugget in the thin stream of 'I distinctly recall', 'the New York Times reported,' and best of all, 'Republicans in Congress talking to each other' as your sources of authority. Trump lies, he lies extravagantly and what's worse, he gets away with it. But surely you are not a member of the Saintly Joe Codger brigade ? Before I read again, I'll put some money on the table : the President is the final arbiter of what's secret; further, the whole process of document classification is corrupt and out of control, grand juries only slightly less so. These charges are another futile expedition in the never-ending Democratic safari to pin Russia's transgressions, real and imagined, on Trump, to make him go away. Not only won't it work, it may well provide the fuel that returns him to the White House in 2024. He'll never see the inside of a cell and in any case, let's remember that Eugene V Debs got 5 million votes for president while he was behind bars. Those are my assertions but at least I don't pretend they're facts. Back to you this weekend.