On July 7-8, 2017, leaders of the G20 met in Hamburg, Germany.

The G20 (or Group of Twenty) is an international forum for the governments from 19 countries and the European Union. 

Among those attending: American President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

After the meeting, Trump tweeted on July 9: “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.”

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee reacted: “If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.”

Even some Republicans strongly disagreed. Florida United States Senator Marco Rubio tweeted: “While reality & pragmatism requires that we engage Vladimir Putin, he will never be a trusted ally or a reliable constructive partner.”

Among those who followed Trump’s “I trust Russia” example:

• George Papadopoulos, a member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russians.
• Former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn also pleaded guilty to the same.
• Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted for money-laundering relating to his work for the government of the Putin-supported  president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych. 

In July, 2018, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller charged 12 officers of the GRU, Russia’s military Intelligence agency, with crimes committed to the high-profile hacking and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.

Robert S. Mueller III

On numerous occasions, Donald Trump has fiercely denied any Russian connections. For example:  

July 27, 2016: “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”

October 24, 2016: “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks, I’ll give you a written statement.” 

January 11, 2017: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” 

February 7, 2017: “I don’t know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy.”

In fact, Trump had a highly profitable relationship with Russia—as his two sons, Donald, Jr., and Eric, unintentionally revealed.

In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. said at a New York real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.  Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Donald Trump, Jr.

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

And Trump’s son, Eric, has been quoted as saying in 2014: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”

So any statement Trump gave—oral or written—on that relationship was a lie.

TREASON EXAMPLE #5: Trump has repeatedly praised and defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

Vladimir Putin

On December 18, 2015, Trump appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Its host, Joe Scarborough, was upset by Trump’s praise for Putin: 

SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, [he’s] also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?

TRUMP: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country.

SCARBOROUGH: But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.

TRUMP: I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is.

On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement blaming the Russian government for the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Its motive: “To interfere with the US election process.”

Two days later, Trump publicly stated: “But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are—Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia.”

On December 16, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House. 

Trump, however, steadfastly denied any such role by Russia: “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”

Clinton Watts, a consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division, is an expert on cyberwarfare. 

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 30, 2017, Watts outlined cyberwarfare measures that Russia used to subvert the 2016 Presidential campaign. 

This pattern of Russian falsehoods and social media manipulation of the American electorate continued through Election Day and persists today.

Many of the accounts we watched push the false Incirlik story in July now focus their efforts on shaping the upcoming European elections, promoting fears of immigration or false claims of refugee criminality.  

“There is no doubt that [Donald] Trump has betrayed the country time and time again. It is a matter of public record that he encouraged our Russian adversaries to become involved in the 2016 election. When the intelligence community provided evidence of the threat posed by Russia, we saw Trump dismiss it, ignore it, fail in his duty to ‘preserve, protect and defend.'”

So charged David Rothkopf, an opinion columnist for USA Today, on October 27, 2020.

Donald Trump took office as the 45th President of the United States on a promise to “make America great again.”  

Yet the chief beneficiary of his treasonous reign turned out to be the former Soviet Union.

TREASON EXAMPLE #2: On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Early reports traced the leak to Russian hackers. 

On July 27, 2016, during his campaign for President, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.

Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts. 

Clinton Watts is a consultant and researcher on cyberwarfare. He has served as:

• An FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF);
• The Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC); and
• A consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB). 

In a statement he prepared for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Watts outlined cyberwarfare measures that Russia used to subvert the 2016 Presidential campaign. 

He delivered this on March 30. 2017. Part of this reads as follows: 

Through the end of 2015 and start of 2016, the Russian influence system….began pushing themes and messages seeking to influence the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election.

Russia’s overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views toward the Kremlin. The final months leading up to the election have been the predominate focus of Russian influence discussions to date.

Clinton Watts

However, Russian Active Measures were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed. 

The final piece of Russia’s modern Active Measures surfaced in the summer of 2016 as hacked materials from previous months were strategically leaked.

On 22 July 2016, Wikileaks released troves of stolen communications from the Democratic National Committee and later batches of campaign emails. Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks revealed hacked information from a host of former U.S. government officials throughout July and August 2016.

For the remainder of the campaign season, this compromising material powered the influence system Russia successfully constructed in the previous two years.

TREASON EXAMPLE #3: Many of those Trump appointed to office had strong ties to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Rex Tillerson

One of these was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In 2013, as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he was presented with Russia’s Order of Friendship award. He had just signed deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. Its chief, Igor Sechin, is a loyal Putin lieutenant.   

Another was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. During the 2016 campaign, Sessions—then serving as a surrogate for Trump’s campaign—twice spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But during his Senate nomination hearings, Sessions denied that he had had “communications with the Russians” during the campaign.

It was the discovery of those contacts by the news media that forced Sessions to recuse himself from any Justice Department cases involving Trump and Russia.

All of these—including the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III—would now be handled by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

The Moscow Project is an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Its objective: “Analyzing the facts behind Trump’s collusion with Russia and communicating the findings to the public.”

According to its March 21, 2018 report (updated on July 10): “In total, we have learned of 80 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives, including at least 23 meetings.

“And we know that at least 24 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them….

“The Trump campaign issued at least 15 blanket denials of contacts with Russia, all of which have been proven false.”   

Members of the Trump team who had contacts with Russians during the campaign or transition included:

• Michael Cohen
• Roger Stone
• Donald Trump Jr.
• Jeff Sessions
• Paul Manafort
• Jared Kushner
• Carter Page
• Michael Flynn
• Erik Prince
• George Papadopoulos
• Anthony Scaramucci
• Rick Gates 

Who has not known men who discovered the truth about themselves only to be tortured by it for the rest of their lives? Is a man worse when he doesn’t know who he is or when he learns he is truly a coward? When he is ignorant of his true nature or when he knows he is a traitor at heart? Not that I pity cowards or traitors. To the contrary: In a just world, they would all be made to face the hard truth about themselves before they died.
—James Carlos Blake, The Friends of Pancho Villa

Donald Trump’s reign as President of the United States—and unofficial spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin—ended on January 20, 2021.

Yet his propagandists continue to deny what millions of Americans witnessed during the four years of his tenure in the White House.

One of these propagandists is Gregg Jarrett, author of The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump (2018) and Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History (2019). 

Jarrett is a Right-wing news commentator, author and attorney. He joined Fox News in 2002.  

“How did a small group of powerful intelligence officials convince tens of millions of Americans that the president is a traitor, without a shred of evidence?” he provocatively demands in the book’s dust jacket. 

One need only read that dust jacket to answer the question—as Jarrett sees it:

“No marks have ever been as gullible as distraught Democrats in 2016. Washington insiders broke rule after rule investigating the president, chasing a conspiracy that turned out not to exist. Somehow this was spun into Donald Trump having something to hide. 

“People associated with the president were pushed into plea deals that had nothing to do with Russian “collusion” or discouraged from serving by the threat of huge legal bills. Somehow this was spun into Trump’s lawyers being bullies.

“The president complained that the investigation was a waste of time, but he allowed it to continue unimpeded to the end. Somehow this was spun into obstruction of justice.

“In Witch Hunt, Gregg Jarrett uncovers the bureaucratic malfeasance and malicious politicization of our country’s justice system. The law was weaponized for partisan purposes.” 

Gregg Jarrett  

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

[NOTE: Trump’s Justice Department secretly seized phone data from House Intelligence Committee Democrats, along with their staff and family members. The committee was investigating links between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.

[The department’s Inspector General is now investigating those seizures.

[It was Trump—not Democrats—who weaponized the law for partisan purposes.]

“Even though it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that collected and disseminated a trove of lies about Trump from a former British spy and Russian operatives, Democrats and the media spun this into a claim that Trump was working for the Russians.

“Senior officials at the FBI, blinded by their political bias and hatred of Trump, went after the wrong person. At the DOJ, the deputy attorney general discussed secretly recording the president and recruiting members of the cabinet to depose Trump.” 

[NOTE: This occurred after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey for investigating reports that there had been close contacts between members of Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.]

“…What about the pundits who concocted wild narratives in real time on television, or the newspapers which covered the fact that rumors were being investigated without investigating the facts themselves?” 

[NOTE: When the press did investigate Trump’s connections to Vladimir Putin, he retaliated with cries of “Fake news!” and secret Justice Department investigations of reporters.]

So much for Jarrett’s fraudulent claims on Trump’s behalf. 

On June 28, 2019, President Donald Trump demonstrated how seriously he took American election security. 

It came during a meeting with Putin in Osaka, Japan—their first since the March 22 release of the Mueller Report, which documented Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.

An NBC News reporter asked: Would you tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 Presidential election?

“Yes, of course I will,” replied Trump, grinning. “Don’t meddle in the election, please.”

And he jokingly wagged his finger at Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election.” 

Putin grinned back.

Donald Trump

Trump has repeatedly claimed that there was “no collusion” between him and members of Russia’s Intelligence community. But the damning facts speak otherwise.  

TREASON EXAMPLE #1: On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists who had ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:

• Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
• His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
• His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort; 
• Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and 
• Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.

The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

Trump originally claimed that the meeting was “about the adoption of Russian children.” Eventually he admitted that it had been “a meeting to get information on an opponent.” 

[NOTE: So much for Gregg Jarrett’s claim: “Somehow this was spun into Donald Trump having something to hide.”]