As much as President Donald Trump protests that he's the victim of a partisan witch hunt, Republicans face increasing difficulty challenging the growing body of evidence linking his campaign to the Russia election-meddling scandal. Republicans in Congress are starting to agree that the president's mantra-like claim of "no collusion" between his presidential campaign and Russian intelligence looks weaker by the day.
On Saturday, The New York Times obtained previously top-secret documents from a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrant that reveals the extent of FBI investigations into the interaction between a key Trump campaign adviser and Russian intelligence agents. Such documents rarely make it into public view, and they offer a glimpse of the thorough, nonpartisan review process required for such investigations to proceed. To dismiss this process as a Democrat-led conspiracy is simply to ignore the facts.
The newly released information goes far to weaken the administration's witch-hunt assertions and to advance the argument that actual collusion occurred between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. At a minimum, the documents expose how lax Trump's campaign was in vetting its most senior advisers and how naive Trump is about Russia's efforts to undermine U.S. democracy.
Not only did Trump embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials at their Helsinki summit last week about Russian meddling, he has doubled down by inviting Putin to yet another summit this fall. Trump continues to post angry tweets denigrating U.S. intelligence and reiterating his claims that the Russia probe is bogus, even though his own party blasted him for such antics after the Helsinki summit.
The campaign's former foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, is linked in the heavily redacted intelligence document to three Russian spies who had been under FBI investigation since 2010.
The four court judges who approved the surveillance of Page were all appointed by Republican presidents. And one of the most outspoken supporters of the court's review process is Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a former FBI agent who insists that Russia poses a clear and present danger — and that Trump doesn't understand what's at stake.
"It needs to be accepted as fact by everybody in our government because we need to respond to that reality and it's a significant threat. We cannot let that happen again," Fitzpatrick told National Public Radio on Sunday. The White House, he added, doesn't grasp the urgency posed by ongoing Russian efforts to subvert American elections and divide the nation from within.
"The president was manipulated by Vladimir Putin," Fitzpatrick said. "Vladimir Putin is a master manipulator."
Another Republican, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, wrote in The New York Times that he believes Trump "actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign." He is a former CIA officer.
Trump's obsession with blaming Democrats for his troubles flies in the face of facts. His blind rejection of the evidence puts America in ever-greater danger.
REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH
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