Re: “A Shadowy Finger Points to Trump as Russian Agent, Roiling Social Media. Former top CIA officials are wary of a charge by a former KGB official saying Trump was officially recruited in 1987, but Trump’s pro-Moscow pivot makes it irrelevant now anyway.” https://substack.com/home/post/p-158886513they say.
Agonizing over whether Trump was ever formally recruited by Russian intel becomes idle self-pleasure alongside the overwhelming evidence that he is a de facto agent of influence for Putin, an apologist for his excesses and an active enabler of them, particularly in Ukraine.
Moreover, the recruitment issue becomes in many ways academic if Russians hold a blackmail card against Trump’s hand, some acutely embarrassing information about his investments, his dalliances or a possible bargain he made to deliver Ukraine to Putin in exchange for electoral help in 2016, or later.
The Mueller people adopted such a crimped definition of collusion – predicated on the idea that it could exist only if there were a written agreement between the two parties — that there was no legal way to sanction what happened, a fully understood, implicitly coordinated confluence of mutual interests.
Finally, given that Paul Manafort’s right hand man was a well-connected Russian agent, according to the Senate intelligence report — and given that Manafort himself was extremely well plugged into Trump’s inner circle (and remains so), it really wouldn’t have mattered if Trump himself were recruited or knowing asset of Putin’s or in legalistically definable collusion with him.
The upshot was the Russians had hidden strings attached to the puppet they could use to make him jump, and – even better — insider insight into what made Trump tick and how to twang that string to elicit the desired response. It would be fair to assume that their understanding of the man is even better today, and even more likely to facilitate deft manipulation.