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The Russian hacking scandal, which has dogged Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, refuses to die down. Despite National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s fall from grace for lying about conversation with Russian envoy and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ acceptance that he had misled senators about his meetings with Kremlin envoy, Trump continues to be in denial mode about his campaign link with Russia.
Trump once again accused Democrats of making up allegations that Russia interfered in presidential elections. His tweets came just hours before a hearing in which FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers testified on allegations of Russian hacking and on connections between Moscow and Trump’s campaign.
James Comey confirmed the bureau was conducting a broad inquiry into Moscow’s efforts to ‘interfere’ in the presidential election and into a potential ties between Trump’s associates and Russia during the 2016 campaign. Also in a rebuke to Trump, Comey rubbished his allegation that Obama wire-tapped Trump Tower last year. Comey also rejected some Republicans’ notion that Hillary campaign may have collaborated with Russians. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal was to undermine the former secretary of state’s candidacy while aiding Trump’s, adding Russians wanted to hurt US democracy.
Though Comey refrained from discussing details of what remains a classified probe and urged not to draw conclusions, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer said nothing had changed as a result of the hearing and that officials in Obama’s administration had no evidence of collusion between Trump’s camp and Russia. But the reports suggest otherwise.
Adding another layer to the raging controversy is a new discovery that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to benefit Putin government. In a confidential strategy plan in June 2005, Manafort had proposed that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the US, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit Putin’s government. Manafort confirmed that he had worked for Deripaska but denied his work had been pro-Russian in nature.
The report has the White House spokesman Sean Spicer in a tizzy. Spicer said that President Trump had not been aware of Manafort’s work on behalf of Deripaska. He said Manafort’s work occurred long before he became Trump’s campaign chairman. Spicer maintained that even though Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman, he played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time in the presidential campaign.
But a business records link Manafort more directly to Putin’s interests in the region. He has been always in focus of the US intelligence investigation of Trump’s associates and Russia.
Although Manafort was asked to resign over covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling pro-Russian political party, he and his associates remain in Trump’s orbit. Manafort himself confided in his colleague that he continues to speak with Trump.
The timing of the damning report connecting Manafort and Putin couldn’t have been worse for Trump, who is battling to prop his sinking approval ratings. The White House attempted to downplay the report, but it raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.