Will Trump-- Should Trump-- Ever Get Out From Under The Cloud Of Illegitimacy?

What does Putin want? He has some very legitimate gripes with Western policy-- especially the way NATO has moved to encircle Russia. Russians are historically touchy about that-- and for good reason. "The West" killed 11 million Russian soldiers and between 7 million and 20 million civilians during World War II. (In comparison, the U.S. lost around 400,000 soldiers in that war.) Weakening the EU and destroying a hostile NATO certainly appears to be in Russia's national interest, irrespective of Putin's penchant for kleptocracy and tyranny.

Putin would be remiss in his job if he weren't supporting right-wing nationalist movements in the West that seek to undermine the EU and NATO. That includes Señor Trumpanzee. And it's working out better than Putin could have ever imagined it would. Over the weekend, Alex Barker, reporting from Brussels for the Financial Times noted that, according to the US ambassador to the EU, members of the Trumpanzee transition team (TTT) have called EU leaders to ask "what country is to leave next" with a tone suggesting the union "is falling apart" this year.

In a pugnacious parting press conference, Anthony Gardner warned of "fringe" voices such as Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence party leader, holding influence in Washington over Mr Trump's team.

Speaking days before leaving office, Mr Gardner said it would be "lunacy" and "the height of folly" for the US to ditch half a century of foreign policy in order to support further EU fragmentation or become a "Brexit cheerleader" in Brussels.

"I was struck in various calls that were going on between the incoming administration and the EU that the first question is: what country is about to leave next after the UK?" he said.

The perceived sense is that 2017 is the year in which the EU is going to fall apart. And I hope that Nigel Farage is not the only voice being listened to because that is a fringe voice... He argued that the next administration needed to be told plainly that the EU "was not falling apart" and was in fact finding more sense of purpose in the wake of Brexit.

Trumpanzee was firmly rebuffed when he tried to strong-arm the British government into naming his neo-fascist crony, Farage, ambassador.

All that said, we still don't have any way of knowing for sure the extent of interference by the Russians in placing Trump into the White House. The Russian and American intelligence services aren't exactly known for veracity or integrity. The Christopher Steele story and his golden showers dossier is still fascinating, regardless of what you believe about it. On Saturday, The Independent revealed the FBI's role in this sordid affair. Steele is a former MI6 agent-- a kind of James Bond character-- who was freaking out about what he claims to have found between Trump and the Russians. He sent his information to both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence services "after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries." It looks like Giuliani and his cronies at the FBI were able to keep the information off the Bureau's front burner.

Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He [and a colleague, a former Wall Street Journal reporter named Glenn Simpson,] came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

...[In July] Steele produced a memo, which went to the  FBI, stating that Mr Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. Four days later Mr Trump stated that he would recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. A month later officials involved in his campaign asked the Republican party’s election platform to remove a pledge for military assistance to the Ukrainian government against separatist rebels in the east of the country.

Mr Steele claimed that the Trump campaign was taking this path because it was aware that the Russians were hacking Democratic Party emails. No evidence of this has been made public, but the same day that Mr Trump spoke about Crimea he called on the Kremlin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.

As the election approached, FBI director James Comey made public his bombshell letter saying that Ms Clinton would face another email investigation. Two days before that Mr Giuliani, then a part of the Trump team, talked about “a surprise or two you’re going to hear about in the next few days. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn things around.”

After the letter was published Mr Giuliani claimed he had heard from current and former agents that “there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI” over the original decision not to charge Ms Clinton and that Mr Comey had been forced by some of his agents to announce the reinvestigation. Democrats demanded an investigation into how Mr Giuliani acquired this knowledge without getting an answer.

In October a frustrated and demoralised Mr Steele, while on a trip to New York, spoke about what he has discovered to David Corn, the Washington editor of the magazine Mother Jones. There was a little flurry of interest that quickly died down.

Mr Trump’s surprise election victory came and the Democrat employers of Mr Steele and Mr Johnson no longer needed them. But the pair continued with their work, hopeful that the wider investigation into Russian hacking in the US would allow the Trump material to be properly examined.

It was against this background that Senator John McCain, who had been hearing with growing alarm reports about Mr Trump and the Kremlin, met Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, who had spent 10 years in Russia and is highly respected for his knowledge of Russian affairs, at a security conference in Halifax, Canada.

Sir Andrew stressed to Senator McCain that he had not read the dossier, but vouched for Mr Steele’s professionalism and integrity. The chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee then sent an emissary to London who picked up the dossier from an intermediary acting on behalf of Mr Steele. The Senator personally took the material to Mr Comey.

Mr Trump and Barack Obama were briefed about the allegations as part of a report into Russian hacking a week ago. Mr Trump remained silent about them until they were published this week and then he angrily denounced them as lies. His spokesperson said he could not recall the briefing.

Mr Steele is now in hiding, under attack from some Tory MPs for supposedly trying to ruin the chances of Theresa May’s Government building a fruitful relationship with the Trump administration. Some of them accuse him of being part of an anti-Brexit conspiracy. A right-wing tabloid has “outed” him as being a “confirmed socialist” while at university.

I wonder how closely Giuliani will be questioned by the various investigatory bodies that are getting ready to take on the task of getting to the bottom of all this. No waterboarding, right?