IN VINO VERITAS

It had not been clear to me why Donald Trump and his surrogate in Congress, Devin Nunes, were so obsessed with discrediting the Steele Dossier, so I was grateful for the recent New York Times article that helped me understand their strategy, and in the process also pulled the rug out from under this particular effort to derail efforts to learn the truth about what really happened in the 2016 presidential campaign.    

As we might have suspected, this was another instance of Republicans playing Calvinball, making up rules as they go along, in an effort to shut down the investigations into the Trump-Russia scandal.  In the case of the Steele Dossier, they ignored the only important question, which is whether the information in it is accurate.  Instead, they made an ad hominem argument – the Dossier must be bogus because it was funded by the Democratic National Committee. 

The Republican conspiracy theory goes like this.  The Steele Dossier was the thing that persuaded the FBI to launch the investigation into collaboration between Russia and the Trump campaign.  Since the Dossier was produced by Democrats, that makes the entire investigation a Democratic witch hunt.  Therefore, the investigation should focus on Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, who surely orchestrated the whole plot.  With Republicans, everything comes back to Hillary Clinton eventually.  

There are a couple of major non-sequiturs in this theory, but its biggest flaw is that the premise upon which everything else follows is simply incorrect.  The Times article revealed that the Steele Dossier was NOT, in fact, the impetus for the FBI’s investigation.  Instead, it came from a land Down Under.

The truth is that one of Trump’s own campaign advisors triggered the investigation.  George Papadopoulos, foreign policy advisor to the man who would be king, was in London, schmoozing with various diplomats.  After several glasses of wine, he bragged to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had offered the Trump campaign some dirt on Hillary Clinton, in the form of hacked emails. 

Downer grasped the import of what he was hearing, so naturally he shared the details of the conversation with Australian intelligence.  They, in turn, passed the information along to their counterparts in America when Wikileaks released the hacked DNC emails.  That’s when the FBI began its investigation.  No Steele Dossier involved, no Democrats, no Hillary Clinton, no deep state coup.  It was just another clown from Trump’s circus, running his mouth when he should have kept quiet.  Loose lips sink ships, as the saying goes.

The whole incident is yet further proof that Trump and his crew are incompetent – for which we should be grateful.  They’ve done serious damage in their first year in power, and they’ll certainly do more before we can get rid of them, but their arrogance and stupidity will eventually bring them down.  

Let’s pray that it happens in 2018.  Actually, let’s do more than pray.  We’re now in an election year.  Let’s do everything in our power to throw the rascals out and replace them with Democrats who will impeach Donald Trump’s sorry ass.