Time To Revisit Trump-Russia Collusion

Donald Trump Jr. and his friends and relatives at his wedding celebration underwritten by a Russian oligarch. Laura Gordon photography via Instagram.

The recent news from ProPublica that a Russian oligarch attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration on a private island in the Bahamas and covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for the lavish affair was not a surprise to anyone familiar with the main thrust of my new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. The book chronicles the decade-long covert operation Putin has waged against the United States to sow discord, influence elections (to benefit Trump), and court Trump and his crew. An important fact in the wedding story is that Umar Kremlev, this oh-so generous oligarch, is not just another Russian billionaire who has to make nice with Putin to keep his fortune; he has been a key member of Putin’s security apparatus—truly the inner circle—and became an oligarch (and head of a corrupt international boxing organization) because of that. In essence, a Putin operative infiltrated deep into the Trump clan.

This is not the first time Russia has attempted to squirm its way into Trump Jr.’s world. During the 2016 campaign, Junior received a message from an associate who worked with the son of another Russian oligarch. That contact informed Don Jr. that Moscow was plotting to secretly help Trump and wanted to send an emissary who had dirt on Hillary Clinton to meet with the Trump campaign. Trump Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say I love it.” The meeting soon happened, with Trump Jr., campaign chair Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner present. When the meeting was revealed—eight months after the election—Trump Jr. first lied about it, saying it was not related to the campaign, and then later claimed the emissary (who was tied to Russian intelligence) provided no useful derogatory information on Clinton.

What was most important about the meeting was that it signaled to Moscow that the Trump camp was a-okay with Putin meddling in the election and that it made the Trump gang aware that the Kremlin intended to covertly mess in American politics to assist Trump. Still, Trump, Trump Jr., Manafort, and other Trumpers would loudly assert throughout the campaign and in the years afterward that Putin had not interfered. That is, they knowingly lied.

Which brings us to collusion.

Collusion has been the buzzword at the center of the Trump-Russia scandal for 10 years. Trump and his minions have contended that there was no collusion and, thus, no scandal, meaning the whole Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a Deep State “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy Trump.

Their definition of collusion basically rested on whether Trump or his lieutenants were in the same room with Russian hackers as they pilfered the documents from Democrats that would later be made public by WikiLeaks. No evidence of such collaboration emerged. So, they have vociferously argued ever since, there was no collusion. And, therefore, no scandal.

The issue of collusion, naturally, has come up, as I’ve been doing media interviews about the new book. It has long seemed to me that the meeting Trump Jr. set up and the subsequent denials from him and other Trump players—which echoed and affirmed Putin’s denials of interfering in the election—were a form of collusion. Team Trump was colluding with Putin’s attempted cover-up. Maybe Trump and his lieutenants weren’t involved in the hack-and-leak operation. But they deliberately lied and provided cover for Putin. Smells like collusion.

As I’ve been discussing all this in media interviews, I’ve made the point that perhaps the better term is complicity. For 10 years, not just in 2016, Putin has been attacking US elections—the book details all this—and throughout that time, Trump has incessantly maintained that Moscow was doing nothing and that all claims otherwise were part of the Deep State’s bogus “Russia, Russia, Russia” conspiracy against him. Consequently, Trump has been complicit in Putin’s ongoing information war against the United States. That’s an act of profound betrayal.

In the stretch following the 2016 election, Democrats and Trump critics were too fixated on collusion. But it was the complicity, stupid.

Now let’s go back to collusion.

My book does have a chapter titled “Collusion,” and it digs into a 966-page bipartisan report on the Russian attack on the 2016 election that was produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee and released in August 2020. This investigation offers the most comprehensive account of what transpired in 2016. One of the most intriguing portions of the report zeroes in on Manafort. (Another very interesting section looks at whether the Kremlin obtained any compromising material on Trump. Read the book for that.)

In the Manafort passages, the committee—led at the time by a Republican senator named Marco Rubio—revealed that while he was chairing the Trump campaign, Manafort was interacting with and passing sensitive internal campaign data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a close business associate who was also a Russian intelligence officer. And, the report noted, Kilimnik had connections to the Russian military intelligence unit that ran the hack-and-leak operation that targeted the Clinton campaign. Moreover, the report noted that committee investigators had uncovered “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.”

The report’s description of this information was redacted, as was much text about Kilimnik. In my reporting for the book, I learned that the redacted portions disclosed that Kilimnik was an agent for the GRU, the Russian intelligence outfit that ran the hack-and-leak attack—a fact buttressing the possibility that Kilimnik was involved in or aware of that operation when he was in communication with Manafort.

Because of all the redactions—the intelligence community did not want to reveal too much of what it knew about the Manafort-Kilimnik connection to protect sources and methods—the public has never learned the full story. It appears there’s a chance that there was indeed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation via Manafort.

In any event, the fact that Trump’s campaign chair was in direct contact with a Russian agent—they communicated through means that left no traces—ought to have triggered a major scandal. Yet this Republican-backed report—which affirmed that Moscow intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump actively exploited the Russian attack and “publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia”—had little impact on the public view of the Trump-Russia affair.

It was released during the Covid pandemic in the summertime, when the two political parties were holding their presidential conventions. By then, most of the political-and-media world had moved on from all that Russia business, particularly after the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller noted he had found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. (He did point out he had amassed plenty of evidence that Trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice.)

So Trump and those within MAGA-land could continue to peddle the narrative that collusion was a bogus charge that had been concocted by the Deep State, the media, and nefarious Democrats.

Trump Jr.’s wedding should prompt a reappraisal of the collusion question, as it illuminates what I try to convey in the book: Putin has been running an extensive covert action against the United States for a decade, and Trump and his crew have both colluded and been complicit.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

This is for anyone in the Washington, DC area. Politics and Prose, a great independent bookstore, will host a book talk and signing for How Russia Won on September 26 at 3:00 p.m. It will be at the main outlet on Connecticut Avenue. Hope to see you there.

The judges never cease to be amazed at the idiocy spewed by people who are allowed to broadcast their ideas and opinions to millions. Here’s a doozy from Fox News host Jesse Watters: “If I were a citizen of another country and a neighbor of the US, I'd consider it an honor to be taken over by the United States of America.”

That’s exactly the argument that Vladimir Putin, the murderous war criminal, makes about Russia and its neighbors.

With the never-ending tsunami of stupidity, the judges last week missed what would have been true contenders for the prize. Speaking at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas—a Trump cultfest—Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) served up a demagogic rant that stirred threats of violence:

Cruz: When Mamdani says he wants to seize the means of production, he means it.
Crowd: He should be shot!
Cruz: When Abdul El-Sayed says he has an obligation to Sharia Law, he means it.
Crowd: He should be shot!
Cruz: And when James Talarico says he wants to dismantle capitalism, he means it.
Crowd: He should be shot!

This is stochastic terrorism. (Dictionary.com defines that as “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”) With this rhetoric, Cruz was indirectly encouraging violence.

Also at that Trump cult gathering, a video was played that repeatedly proclaimed, “God gave us Trump.” It hailed him as a savior sent by the Big Man to rescue America. This ridiculous Christian fundamentalist agitprop praised Trump as the “most diligent worker” who will “fight the system all day and finish a hard week’s work by attending church on Sunday.”

Trump attending church on Sunday? Yeah, right. There was no mention of the golfing.

Focusing on this week, the judges could not avoid Trump’s usual flurry of dumbassery. "Look, it could end before the midterm,” he said of the Iran war that he launched with no strategic plan. “But it will end after the midterm. Iran wants to make a deal so badly. They are calling constantly."

So the best dealmaker in the entire world cannot make a deal when the other side is dying to make a deal and calling constantly? Does Trump know this makes absolutely no sense and casts him as profoundly incompetent?

Then there was this social media post:

Trump was accusing the Democrats of plotting an assassination attempt. No evidence, of course. Once upon a (quaint) time, if a president were to accuse the opposition party of trying to kill him without producing a scintilla of proof, he would have been slammed across the political spectrum. Now? Well, you know.

But such absurd and reckless conspiracizing was not enough to win Trump the trophy. Instead, the nation’s No. 1 toady—that is, Vice President JD Vance—bested Trump with this pitch for the midterm elections. "Give us another chance. Or give us another couple of years.”

Too often, politicians count on voters having amnesia. Trump promised to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours (and to do so before he took office on January 20, 2025). He said he would start to bring down prices on the first day of his presidency. Neither happened. He also pledged not to get the United States stuck in any more Middle East wars.

Trump often vows he will solve a national problem, such as the health care crisis, within “two weeks.” Then two weeks go by and…nothing. Now Vance wants not two weeks, but two years. Pleading with voters for two more years is not a sign that Vance is a fool but that he believes the voters are.

This video is brilliant.

In response to an issue that examined whether Russia might yet again intervene in an American election during the midterms, Harry Gerecke wrote:

No outside election interference is needed. Trump has already done more than Putin and his minions have done in the past, interfering in the upcoming mid-term elections. As you have cited in this column, he has reduced our government security and intelligence forces that target foreign disinformation and interference. Trump does not need Putin nor Xi to interfere. Only a massive voter turnout may keep the country alive. 

Harry is right in that Trump can cause plenty of chaos all on his own. Still, Russia has and will be intervening to try to exacerbate any confusion and discord Trump causes. He can do a lot on his own. Putin’s operatives can make it worse.

Cindy Elliott shared this:

I was glad to see you use the word “apartheid-esque” in your Dumbass Comment of the Week segment, since a large portion of American adults now are too young to remember the global struggle to get Elon Musk’s homeland to end apartheid. Perhaps this will flick on the light switch for some of them. It is how Musk grew up. And of course it is why he is such a racist.

It is hard to consider Musk’s blatant racism without thinking of his years growing up in South Africa. That apple grew in poisonous soil. And I've given up expecting folks to remember much of what happened prior to a year or two back.

Sheryl Collins emailed:

I just read your email article, “Will Putin Meddle?” Obviously, yes he will. For the life of me, I cannot understand why this man running our country is not behind bars. He’s committing treasonous acts. His money always sets him free. When will our government officials understand that we are collapsing under our present leadership? China must be laughing their asses off. Putin is ecstatic. Supporters of our present government cannot see this is what is actually happening.

Tommy Quirk posed a question:

I will likely buy your book. I’m sure it is revelatory and engrossing as all your work. Just one question. I think most people wonder about this and want to know, but feel it impolite to ask. But I cannot help myself and really must ask your opinion: Getting back to the Steele dossier, is there or is there not a pee tape or other kompromat? If there is, that would, certainly, explain a lot.

The book does explore the topic of kompromat, noting that the above-mentioned bipartisan Senate investigation found indications the Russians might possess incriminating material on Trump—though not a video of sex workers engaged in “golden showers” for Trump—but could not confirm any of this. And after many years, I've seen no evidence of a pee tape. I assume Trump was surveilled and recorded by Russian intelligence during his trips to Moscow, which did include cavorting. Still, it's always been my hunch that no such dirt was needed for Trump to embrace Putin and be complicit in Russia’s assault on America. 

Jane Meyer noted she had a favorite Our Land feature:

I think you have perfect timing for your new book; it is so needed, and I am looking forward to it. I love your newsletter and especially Moxie and the MoxieCam™. She is perfect to lighten us up at this time.

I read this note to Moxie, and she asked for a raise. Speaking of which…

“Is this some cheap promotional stunt for your book?”
“Moxie, there’s a good reason for this. As you know, Facebook’s algorithm throttles posts that contain political content. When I publish posts about my book, very few people see them.”
“And…?”
“So if I put up a cute pet photo and don’t mention the book’s title in the caption, maybe it will get more traction, and my friends and followers will see I have this new book out.”
“Seems you’re behaving like a desperate author.”
“Is that any different from behaving like an author?”