PROBE TRUMP ROLE AS RUSSIAN ASSET, ANALYST TELLS MEDIA, GOV’T

In a commentary on Raw Story, analyst Ray Hartmann has urged the incoming Biden government and the press to investigate defeated President Donald Trump for being a Russian asset, saying it is a secret hidden in plain sight.

“One need not dabble in conspiracy theories to ask a simple question today: What should be done about Donald Trump having served as a Russian asset for the past four years? In the wake of the recently revealed Russian cyberattack on the U.S. -- apparently unprecedented in its danger to national security -- it's time for Congress, the media and the incoming Biden administration to move beyond the question of ‘if’ Trump was helping his overt ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The relevant questions are why and how,” Hartmann wrote. He noted that Putin's hackers managed to pull off one of the greatest espionage coups in history, at US expense, under Donald Trump's watch. And Trump, it turns out, is the only one in the US unfazed by it all as he focuses instead on staying in office by military coup.If all those dots cannot be connected, someone needs a new Sharpie.

Hartmann argued that the Trump has mounted -- and maintains -- a vicious attack on the legitimacy of American democracy and the integrity of its elections. That has topped Putin's anti-American wish list beyond his wildest imagination.

Russia also has launched possibly the most damaging cyber-attack in American history, an act of war that might prove lasting in its damage. He has seriously degraded America's NATO alliances -- arguably Putin's top international priority -- by feuding with the organization over dues and petty differences and weakening its resolve to treat Russia as a threat.

Trump handed Putin undeserved international legitimacy at a Helsinki summit by publicly siding with him over the unanimous US intelligence community with regard to his denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.

Trump held foreign aid to Ukraine hostage -- aid it needed to defend itself against Russia -- as part of a failed extortion scheme to muddy Joe Biden. Trump failed to raise a whimper of protest when it was revealed the Russia had placed bounties on the heads of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Trump pulled the US from the Paris Climate Accord, isolating the nation from the world community and creating a void for Russia and others to fill. Trump pulled the US out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Trump pulled the US out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Trump pulled US troops from Syria, a major strategic victory for Putin and his client, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Trump weakened the European Union -- as he did with NATO -- by supporting Brexit and sending Steve Bannon to Europe to support anti-government movements.

Trump supported Putin with silence over the poisoning of Russian Alexei Navalny with the same nerve agent used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018. Trump stayed silent for as long as possible on that one as well. Trump shared highly classified intelligence information about ISIS with two top Russian officials in an infamous Oval Office meeting.

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