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Despite Denials, There Is Evidence of Collusion Between the Trump Campaign and the Kremlin
It is a common talking point among Trump supporters that “there is not one shred of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.” This statement is far from true. In fact, the evidence is quite extensive.
The Kremlin supported the Trump campaign through a broad spectrum of means, including staff, funds, propaganda, black operations, trolls, and thugs. We address each of these in turn.
Staff
Prominent Trump campaign officials who are known to be paid Kremlin agents include Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Campaign Energy Advisor Carter Page, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was formerly chief henchman to Putin-allied Ukrainian dictator Victor Yanukovych. Manafort was also directly involved in the transferring of millions of dollars of such Russian mob funds into US real estate ventures.
Trump Energy Advisor Carter Page is a major investor in the Russian state owned energy company Gazprom. As a Gazprom investor, Page has a personal financial interest in ending Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, a move which, along with recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump himself said he was considering during the campaign. But it gets worse. Page actually endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, going so far as to compare US support for Ukrainian independence to the killing of black youth by police officers. “The deaths triggered by U.S. government officials in both the former Soviet Union and the streets of America in 2014 share a range of close similarities,” wrote Page in January 2015.
Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had dinner with Vladimir Putin last year. Such fraternization bore fruit for the Kremlin, as evidenced by the action by Trump operatives to eliminate language in the GOP platform advocating US support for Ukraine’s defense. In exchange for his trip to Moscow, Flynn received $50,000 from Russian state owned TV company RT, a payment which he concealed from federal agents investigating him for purposes of checking his security clearance. Flynn was appointed chairman of the National Security council by President Trump, only to be forced to resign a few weeks later when it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Pence about some of his Kremlin contacts.
Funds
Without a viable business base, Trump could never have mounted his campaign for the Republican nomination, let alone the election. Because his business career has involved a series of swindles against his investors, lenders, vendors, workers, and customers, Trump in recent years has found it difficult to obtain credit from legitimate financial sources. This has opened questions as of how the Trump empire can remain in business. The solution to this mystery is provided, however, by statements made by Trump’s sons. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia, Donald Trump Jr. explained in 2008. In 2013, this was further clarified by Eric Trump, who told a reporter: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” If such confessions of financial dependency require verification, it can no doubt be found in Trump’s tax returns. However, despite pre-election promises to disclose these documents, the President continues to refuse to make them available.
Black Operations
In early July 2016, GRU (Russian military intelligence) hackers broke into the computers at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, stealing their files. Then, July 22, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, thousands of emails embarrassing to the Clinton camp drawn from these files were publicly released through WikiLeaks with the clear intention of dividing the Democratic Party and electing Donald Trump President.
Asked about this by the press on July 27, Trump openly proclaimed that he favored such Russian hacking, and he hoped that Putin and company would do more of it to help expose Hillary. This remarkable and potentially felonious statement provoked a firestorm of criticism, so much so that Trump subsequently walked it back – a rare event for the Don – saying that he had been speaking “sarcastically.” The fact, however, that the GRU did actually conduct a black operation inside the United States to assist Trump makes it not so easy to dismiss. Furthermore, it must be noted that the channel used for this and subsequent anti-Clinton operations during the campaign, Wikileaks, is a known Kremlin front.
Propaganda
The Russian state owned propaganda agency Russia Today (RT), which broadcasts internationally, including within the US, was unstinting throughout the nomination and election campaigns in its support for Donald Trump. This support has included not only constant favorable coverage, attacks on opponents, and commentary by talking heads, but personal praise of Donald Trump by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself.
Trolls and Thugs
During both the nomination and election campaigns, media websites of all sorts, but most especially conservative ones, were deluged with abusive comments directed against those who refused to adhere to the Trump line. Many of these comments were clearly written by Russian-speaking individuals. Others, perhaps most, were written by American members or adherents of the so-called “Alt-Right,” which also provided critical support for the ground game of the Trump nomination effort. This requires further discussion.
The Alt-Right is part of a Kremlin operation to create pro-Moscow ultranationalist and identarian fifth column movements in the West. The chief composer of the ideological synthesis of communism and fascism that the Kremlin created for this movement, Aleksandr Dugin, endorsed Donald Trump in March 2016. “In Trump we trust,” said Dugin (perhaps proposing the substitution of Trump for God in the American national slogan), as he mobilized the American Alt-Right against Trump’s GOP nomination opponents. It should be noted that the relationship between Dugin and the American Alt-Right is quite direct, as Nina Kouprianova, (pen name “Nina Byzantina”) the former wife of US Alt-Right leader, Richard Spencer, is Dugin’s American translator. Should anyone have further doubts about the Kremlin/Alt-Right links, Spencer and the Alt-Right provided confirmation themselves by holding a rally in Virginia on May 20, in which they chanted “Russia is our friend.”
It should be noted that while Hillary Clinton was the first major Trump opponent to call out the Alt-Right in the course of the campaign, the Alt-Right’s most important effort was directed not so much against her, as Trump’s GOP opponents and NeverTrump dissenters. This was done, as documented by National Review writer David French, through a campaign of terror, including death threats, targeting editors, writers, and others (including French, who at one point contemplated running as a third party conservative candidate against Trump and Clinton, an initiative, which if implemented, could have significantly harmed Trump’s electoral chances). Threats against French also included threats to his wife, which reached such intensity that French found it necessary to post a photograph on Facebook of his wife practicing with an AR-15 to warn off would-be assailants. Other conservatives threatened included NeverTrump supporters Rick Wilson, Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg, Free the Delegates leader Kendal Unruh, and the editor of one conservative publication who informed me he could no longer carry my articles because of the threats he had received.
We thus see that Kremlin support for Trump’s election was been quite extensive. This support has been reciprocated. Trump has called the Russian dictator “a real leader” and dismissed his many murders of journalists and political opponents at home and abroad as “unproven.” Last January, a British court found that Putin had ordered the murder by Polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who revealed that the 1999 apartment buildings bombings in Moscow that Putin used to seize dictatorial power were the work of Putin’s FSB itself. Disturbingly, the billionaire appears be fine with that too. In May 2017, Trump went so far as to invite Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the White House, where, on his own initiative, he shared top secret classified information.
Donald Trump has also expressed support for Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who in alliance with Russian and Iranian military forces, is flooding Europe with refugees, thereby stoking the fortunes of the Kremlin-allied ultraright parties operating as part of Dugin’s fascist international. These include the anti-NATO French National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, also endorsed Trump. The National Front’s current leader, Marine Le Pen also supported the Russian takeover of Crimea, and is being openly bankrolled out of Moscow. In November 2016, Marine Le Pen traveled to New York to visit Trump Tower. According to Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, she did not meet with Trump. Subsequently, however, Trump openly supported her failed attempt to win the French presidency.
In line with his support of Le Pen, during the campaign, Trump supported the gutting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an objective that has been Moscow’s number one foreign policy priority since the beginning of the Cold War. He denounced NATO as being “obsolete,” and called for sharply reducing US commitments to the alliance that has been the bulwark of American security since World War II. Not only that, Donald Trump stated that as President, he would not necessarily honor the United States treaty commitment to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia. Trump’s frequent statements during the campaign that the United States should confront China also coheres with Kremlin desires, as Russia’s masters have no fonder wish than to see their two major global rivals take each other down.
Finally, it cannot reasonably be asserted that the combination of Kremlin support for Trump and Trump support for the Kremlin was coincidental. In fact, it has now been documented that, despite repeated false statements made by Trump camp spokesmen, there were at least 18 unreported contacts during the campaign between the Kremlin and Trump agents or representatives.
So, in summary, here was the deal: In exchange for Russian-supplied staff, funds, propaganda, trolls, thugs, and black operations support for his nomination and election, Donald Trump aligned himself with an effort to break the western alliance and deliver Europe to Kremlin domination.
Starting as a near-bankrupt dark-horse candidate with three-percent backing, Trump clearly could not have won the GOP nomination without the support of the Kremlin, its organized crime funding networks, and its Alt-Right foot soldiers. As for the election, it is probably true that Hillary Clinton could have beaten him regardless, had her campaign been run competently and had she not embraced the anti-industrial platform that cost her much of the labor vote in what had previously been the Democrats’ “blue wall’ midwestern stronghold.
Be that as it may, it is also true that the Nazis could almost certainly have conquered Norway in 1940 without the help of the treasonous Norwegian Defense Minister Vidkun Quisling. But the fact remains: Quisling was still a traitor.
Anyone who collaborates with a foreign adversary to seize power in the United States would be equally guilty. Republicans should stop trying to pretend that there is no evidence for such collusion, and instead demonstrate their patriotism by helping the nation’s security agencies get to the bottom of this sordid matter.
Here’s a hint to the GOP members of Congress: Vote with the Democrats to subpoena Trump’s tax returns. The truth will set you free.
Published in Politics
This is the biggest pile of supposition and agitprop I have ever read. There is nothing here. Nothing at all. Evidence? Not a single scrap. Nothing. Nada, Nil.
Good try, Zubrin. I’m not biting.
Did I accidentally blunder on to the MSNBC web site?
Dr Zubrin, I respect you and your efforts and work on extra-terrestial affairs. This is not your best work, and confusing ‘collusion’ with ‘unseemly behavior with regards to’ diminishes both you and the topic you are obviously so passionate about. Even taking the worst implications or interpretations of the issues you cite there is no actual evidence of ‘collusion’. The one action you describe, not done by Trump himself, was to remove a controversial plank from a party platform. By comparison the previous administration dismissed defense arrangements with our allies to please Putin, approved sale of a large fraction of our domestic uranium supply to Russian interests, and refused to take meaningful steps to defend this country against Russian interference. If there’s evidence that elected politicians were serving Russian interests, it doesn’t point at this time towards Donald Trump.
Clearly. Or maybe not. We’d actually have to look at the hard and soft money spent on the primary, and where it came from, to make a claim like that. And we’d have to kind of close our eyes to the preposterously excessive media coverage of Trump, coverage that dwarfed by huge multiples the coverage other Republican contenders received — unless you want to claim that the Russians were responsible for that, as well.
More to the point, the word collusion in the context of the 2016 election has a pretty specific meaning: that Trump or his campaign instigated, facilitated, or otherwise assisted Russian hacking, subversion, or meddling in our election.
That’s a higher bar than Trump likes Russians and Russians like Trump. That’s a higher bar than Russian investors put a lot of money into some of Trump’s properties. And meeting that bar takes more than snarky language and innuendo. It takes more, even, than evidence of conversations and business dealings, reported or otherwise.
It takes evidence of, well, of collusion. Evidence that Trump’s campaign suggested, requested, assisted, or otherwise facilitated Russian hacking of the election.
What I see is evidence of a man who chases business wherever he can, and doesn’t mind dealing with scoundrels — hardly surprising, as he’s a bit of a scoundrel himself — but doesn’t really want to admit it when he does.
What I don’t see in what you’ve written and cited is any evidence of collusion. In fact, no one has yet reported any actual evidence of collusion anywhere. None. Even extraordinarily partisan political figures in positions of power and access to information admit that they don’t have evidence of collusion. Lots of rumors, lots of innuendo — but no evidence.
Hey, for some folks it’s innuendo and out the other.
As an aside, aren’t fruitcake conspiracy theories frowned upon in the CoC? The word fruitcake is actually mentioned in the policy. Let’s save the fruitcakes for the holidays.
You really think this is a good try?
I really loved that you linked to your own article as support for this howler: The Alt-Right is part of a Kremlin operation to create pro-Moscow ultranationalist and identarian fifth column movements in the West.
It’s a good thing, though–if you can’t believe yourself, it’s probably time to pack it in.
I was listening to comments from some Democratic female senator the other day — one of the interchangeable banshees of the hard left, though I forget which one — and she admitted that, while in her position on one of the investigatory committees she had not, as yet, seen any actual evidence of collusion, there are “a lot of rumors and news stories that, while not exactly evidence…” (emphasis mine).
Not exactly evidence.
I admire Mr. Zubrin’s tenacity.
After a year of intense investigation on Trump/Russia collusion, I’m seeing 12 months of smoke and no fire. Manafort, Page, and Flynn all seem dirty, but they’re off Team Trump. At this point, it’s hard for me not to tune out the latest “blockbuster” scoops dropping daily at 5pm Eastern.
If a smoking gun was to be found connecting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, we would have known about it a long time ago, especially considering the unprecedented leaking from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
A major sign that there’s no “there” there, is that the media and Democrats are dropping claims of “collusion” for “obstruction of justice.” (Byron York writes about this at length.)
I don’t disagree with any of the evidence you’ve posted, but I believe it is circumstantial, not direct.
I edited this piece and saw the OP as being thoroughly researched and well documented.
Zooooooooobrinnnnnnnnnn!!!
You need to look up the definition of collusion. I have a neighbor who does business with the Russians and quite legitimately. People with conspiracy theories apparently are unaware that many American citizens in this country travel to Russia as tourists or sell services to Russian businesses and vice versa. They are no longer behind the iron curtain. It’s a big world out there.
I’m appalled. This is just shoddy.
Ricochet has a “like” button so we can express approval of a post. I use it frequently.
But this is the first time that I have really wanted a “dislike” button.
I also appreciated the clear section headings and reasonable use of paragraph breaks — though I probably would have preferred a bulleted list.
When I had dinner with James of England and his charming wife last August, he mentioned that Trump led the Republican race from the beginning. It doesn’t sound like he needed Putin’s support. Why he would support a person who would open up pipelines and crash oil prices further, which hurts the Russians severely, is unexplained.
They would love it on MSNBC. I’m embarrassed to see this on Ricochet.
Conspiracy theorists are always able to marshal some facts that relate to the topic at hand. Indeed, they often have mountains of documented facts.
The absence of facts is not what distinguishes conspiracy theories from valid inferences from the data. It is the dubious connections between the facts, the extrapolation of the facts into speculation, and the interpolation of conjectures that makes a conspiracy theory.
How many shooters were there at Dealey Plaza? Did the humans really land on the moon or was it all staged in Hollywood? Is the Earth really a sphere or is NASA fabricating those curved-Earth pictures? Advocates of conspiracy theories in these domains are chock-full of well-researched facts. They are still fruitcakes.
I like this comment. Russia is an important nation as part of the global economy and I fail to understand how a person doing business with Russia is accused of some kind of traitorous collusion.
So you dislike Trump you and many others.
Where’s the crime? Even if this dark spinning of the truth is fact, none of it is illegal.
It is legal to do business with Russia, it is legal to say nice things about Russia, it is common for candidates to have policies that are different from the administration before them. It’s common for campaigns to talk to other countries, and certainly it would be direliction of duty for a transition not to talk to other countries!
Your “villainous” connections are nothing more than speculation. Putting the worst spin possible on normal behavior. Normal behavior, that is lawful.
If you took this same position about Hillary’s connections it would be far far more significant behavior than anything anyone associated with Trump did.
In fact, Fusion GPS, who Hillary’s campaign paid $50,000 dollars to, for dirt on Trump? They turned out to be actual Russian agents! So Hillary, probably without knowing it, colluded with Russian agents directly to get “dirt” on Trump! Notice I didn’t demonize her, as you do to Trump, for things she likely didn’t know?
Trump’s campaign was under surveillance all through the election, if there was anything to find they would have used it against him before the vote.
No crime, only gossip.
Sorry, but I don’t think a lot of notes indicates an article is well researched. Annie Jacobsen’s books have a lot of notes, but she’s been criticized at length by aerospace experts. Her book on DARPA had three pages on GPS, the subject of my book, and she managed to get almost everything wrong. It looks to me like Zubrin started with a conclusion, and marshaled a weak case for it.
Whoa! First I’ve heard about this.
Can you point me to a definitive YouTube video on this, so I know it’s trustworthy?
This is daily stormer level nonsense and it should be pulled immediately.
Sure, I see true things too… it’s the demonizing that’s the problem. Perfectly understandable actions and some of them years ago, are made to seem like some long term plan to betray America!
If one wanted to, they could certainly “prove” the same of Hillary Clinton! With facts put together in such a way to make it look undeniable. But I do not believe that either Trump or Clinton plan to betray our country for a Russian take over.
Conspiracy theories all look exactly like this… did you know that aliens helped build the pyramids? I saw proof on TV!!!! They had lots of “facts” marshalled, yet somehow, it left me an unbeliever.
Also, the whole collusion thing is colluding to do what? Did Trump want to beat Hillary? Yes, Did Russia seem to want someone to beat Hillary? Yes. That is not collusion. I wanted someone to beat Hillary too! I wish it wasn’t Trump, but I am not sad that she lost the election. Am I also a colluder with Trump and Russia? No.
Besides where’s the crime. Being Donald Trump is not against the law.
Unless this is a deliberate attempt to insult Ricochet members, I highly recommend pulling this piece.
Just wait. We’re working on that….
Oh… and you used the Nazi reference the first person to do that loses… it’s the rules.
I made that rule about whether someone can be trusted, if you have to use Nazis… you can’t possibly have any kind of case.
Yes. He even sent him 59 Tomahawk missiles free of charge.
You know who else colluded with Russia? Ronald Reagan. First he met with Brezhnev. Then he met with Chernenko. Then it was Andropov and finally Gorbachev. It was a regular revolving door of access to the highest levels of government for all these Soviet leaders. I doubt he’d have beaten Mondale in ’84 without their help.