This BBC article which went up 3 hours ago looks at any potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russians:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36862749And yes, he did say outright that he hopes the Russian hackers can get more American emails.
Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, has spent decades as a political adviser in eastern Europe.
Mr Manafort worked closely with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted from power in 2014 and is a known ally of Vladimir Putin.
According to Josh Marshall, one of the most vocal journalists questioning Mr Trump's Russian ties, his foreign policy advisor Carter Page has "deep and continuing financial and employment ties" to Gazprom, Russia's trillion dollar energy company.
"It is no exaggeration to say that you cannot be involved with Gazprom at the very high level which Page has been without being wholly in alignment with Putin's policies," Marshall writes.
But in a critical response to Marshall, author Jeffery Carr notes that Mr Page "left Gazprom in 2007 and has made very little money from Russia ever since".
The Republican National Committee shifted their stance on Russia under pressure from Trump staff in the days leading up to the convention in Cleveland last week.
One delegate proposed an amendment calling for the US to provide eastern Ukraine with "lethal defensive weapons" in their ongoing struggle with Russian-backed rebels in the region.
According to the Washington Post, Trump's allies pushed to weaken the statement, committing instead to providing "appropriate assistance".
It was the only substantial change to the platform that Mr Trump's team requested, and it came as he told the New York Times that he might not honour Nato commitments should Russia invade Baltic states.
All the
direct links between Trump and Russia fall flat. What do not fall flat, are links between a number of Trump's senior staff and Russian entities aligned with Putin.
It's worth checking out who exactly Trump's campaign advisor Paul Manafort actually is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_ManafortManafort has also acted on behalf of a number of dictators in the past, including -
- Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines
- Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire
- Siad Barre of Somalia
- The miltary junta in Nigeria in the 1990s
- Kenya, back in the time when there was one party rule and massive oppression
These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturer's Lobby"
Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Edouard Balladur in the 1995 elections, and admitted to having been paid under the table[17] (at least $200,000). The money was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi Affair.
Association with Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency
Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency as part of a "false flag" operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation. While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.
Maybe Trump is a puppet, and Manafort is his Dick Cheney.
Author
Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1352977 times)