According to various GOP spin meisters the reason Jared Kushner, while still a private citizen, proposed communicating with the Kremlin and the VneshEconomBank (VEB), using Russian encryption tools in a Russian facility, was to establish back channel communications without fear of interference by U.S. intelligence services that were viewed as agents of President Barak Obama.

Because back channel communications have been used to establish and facilitate diplomatic relations, GOP spin meisters have tried to normalize Kushner’s unusual activities as an example of diplomatic back channel communication rather than what they were: an attempt to establish covert communications with Russia.   When Henry Kissinger, as a government official, made secretive calls and visits to the Russians, he informed J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, about the meetings and their content. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who also secretly communicated with the Russians, also notified the FBI.  As another example, the Obama team used back channel communication to re-establish normalization of communication with Cuba.  These meetings were held secretly to limit interference from press and other agencies but were made by government officials who had the authority and security clearances and represented the US government – not when there was another President still in office.  Back channel communications are used by government officials to facilitate communication between their respective governments.  When Jared Kushner, a private citizen proposed secret communications with Russia, a US adversary, he was suggesting the establishment of what is referred to in espionage as a covert communication channel

​The safest bet to make right now is that Donald Trump will finish out his first term.  Though we hate to start our letter to you with such a bleak statement, we’re sticking with reality here.  Since becoming President, Donald Trump has been so overt about subverting justice and enriching his family that he has shown his intellectual and psychological unfitness to be President. Nonetheless, the Constitutional provisions for removing a President through impeachment or incapacitation (25th Amendment) all start with the Republican leadership deciding to move against Trump.
 
Given Republican intransigence to recognize any circumstances surrounding the election or subsequent clumsy efforts by Trump to derail the investigations, there is almost no chance that impeachment or incapacitation can happen.   Some Democrats continue to believe that the  daily revelations of ineptitude, criminality and unethical behavior will eventually convince enough Congressional Republicans to seriously consider impeachment.  But, Republican recognition that  high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, the Constitutional standard for impeachment,  is a political action that could destroy the Republican Party. As Paul Krugman argues, Republicans are now not so much statesmen as they are apparatchiks who show their loyalty to the billionaires funding their party. They show their blind and binding loyalty to the oligarchic system.  The “brave” Republicans make occasional veiled remarks to show they understand how corrupt Trump is, but then show no patriotism or responsibility when voting.  As long as the Republicans hold the House we are almost certainly not going to see an impeachment and even less likely to see two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict.

Donald Trump is a serial liar.  There's really no other explanation for his behavior.  He starts with a statement that's been proven false; then claims that he did not say it, someone else said it and he's merely repeating it, or unknown persons confirmed it, and thus, it cannot be false.  And, as an excuse for any minor inaccuracy, he maintains that he had to say it to avoid political correctness.
 
During the campaign, for example, Trump claimed that he saw Arab Americans in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11.  Faced with numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary, as well as videos that disputed him, he retracted this claim and said he might have seen celebrations in other countries on television.  Nonetheless, he continued to maintain that hundreds of people told him that they saw the New Jersey celebrations.

Donald Trump doubled down on the science-phobic themes from his fellow-Republicans as he represses all other sources devoted to information exploration and truth (judicial, academic, and free press).  Many hold that he is psychologically impaired.  Others believe that Trump’s passionate support of Republican dogma is payback for Republican’s refrain from impeaching him for corruption and abuse of power.  In either case, concerned citizens are resisting his science-phobic themes.
​
Over the last two weekends, hundreds of thousands of people have marched in Washington DC and many other cities across the world to express concern about how scientific research and activities are being trashed by the Trump Administration.  In the April 22 March for Science and in the April 29 People’s Climate March people marched, rallied, and attended teach-ins.  Scientists and others who affirm science are reacting to the many assaults to science and more broadly to the irrational thought that the Republican Party and Donald Trump are using to harm the US and the world.  While many of the protesters’ signs and chants were focused on intellectually vacuous Donald Trump, the more disturbing horror is that as President, he is activating plans, wishes and beliefs held by many Republicans.  They are hurting science directly by abolishing laws and programs, and indirectly by weakening many threads that nurture scientific thought and dialogue as they curtail international travel.  

When the Senate failed to confirm Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as a federal judge in 1986, many white supremacists believed it was important to control blacks in order to more fully exploit their labor.  Exploiting labor requires close proximity and, according to the mythology of the white South about blacks, rigid control.  As a son of Alabama, Sessions bought into this myth and as the U.S. attorney for Alabama, Sessions did his best to help maintain the traditional control that thwarted blacks in the South.

Sessions was not confirmed because witnesses testified that as an U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions had regularly used racist and demeaning language to address a black colleague and used his office to suppress black voting through a questionable prosecution.  After his confirmation had been defeated in the Senate Judiciary Committee by a bi-partisan vote of 10 to 8, Sessions used his office to retaliate against two of the witnesses against him. 
​
But, as Sessions was failing to win Senate confirmation in 1986, white supremacists also were changing their focus from control of nonwhites to separation from nonwhites.  Noticing the increased number of nonwhite documented and undocumented immigrants, white supremacists and their supporters once again fixed more of their ethnic resentment on immigrants than they had since the early part of the twentieth century.  Even the use of police power, always used to control black behavior, changed from a labor exploitation mechanism to an incarceration, removal, and stigmatizing strategy.  Unlike earlier times in which ethnic and black resentment was accepted, however, white supremacists now felt the need to clothe their animosity in various forms of justification.  

On Saturday, April 15, thousands marched in over 150 cities to use their voices and their presence to demonstrate how strongly they believe that the President of the United States should release his tax returns.  Contrary to Donald Trump’s insulting tweets that the protesters were paid, the streets were filled with Americans who marched for truth, not for money.  The principal idea is that Americans need to know what are the influences on any president, but especially on this president who prides himself on his vast dealings.

The idea that people would work from conviction rather than payment probably does seem absurd to Donald Trump, who appears to consider money as the motivation for his actions and the measure of each person’s worth.  He lies as he claims that he hides his returns because he is under audit.  We know that he can share his returns with no penalty from the IRS.  People know that he is lying, but do not know if he is lying because the tax returns will reveal that he is also lying about how wealthy he is, or reveal to whom he is indebted.  And, they know that the tax reform legislation he intends to introduce will benefit him and his family more than the vast majority of Americans.

In the past Trump has said he’d release his taxes if Obama released his birth certificate.  He repeatedly called on Mitt Romney to release his taxes as the responsible thing to do.   Before running for office, he promised that if he ran, he would “absolutely” release his taxes.  Ever acting the game-show host, he also held up the returns as barter during the 2016 election, claiming he’d release his taxes if Hillary released missing emails. 

In each of the next two weekends, marches are scheduled so that protesters can work in mass to speak to Donald Trump and other Americans.  On April 22nd, the March for Science will be held in over 500 cities across the world.   The organizers say that standing up for science is essential because science protects families, communities and the future, and that currently science is under aggressive attack. 

On April 29th, the People’s Climate Movement which has lead rallies in the past several years will coordinate marches on DC and other cities, again because the current Trump administration, overtly denying science and the threat of climate change, is destroying programs intended to address this earth-threatening crisis.  
​
Trump’s tweets claim that those who march and those who challenge their Congressional leaders in Town Hall meetings don’t understand that he (and Vladimir Putin) beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.   Of course, Trump, who projects his faults onto others, would assume that others would be like him and deny defeat when it occurred.   However, the marchers understand what happened in 2016, and understand what is happening in 2017.  They are showing that they treasure the American right to free speech (while it lasts), and they are showing that they will continue to resist the slow dismantling of their country.  

​The election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. has been characterized as illegitimate because of Russia’s interference in the election.  In fact, Trump’s election has uncovered a morass of treasonous, criminal, and corrupt activities.  These activities are based on five distinct legs – Russian interference in an U.S. election; the hollowing out of the federal government; the Russian crime state; Trump corruption and conflicts of interest; and the planned ethnic cleansing and fascist overthrow of the American democracy.  And, of course, some of Trump’s behavior is driven by an unstable personality.
 
Delineating these five areas is important for fully understanding the extent and depth of Trump’s evil morass.   In some instances, the connections between areas may add to others’ venality.   In some instances, the players in one area may help the players in another area.  For example, Russian mobsters seemed to help bail Trump out of financial difficulties.   In other instances, Trumps corruption and conflicts of interest may be undermining his efforts to hollow out government. Also, as more evidence is uncovered, it is important that we properly categorize it.  Evidence of criminal wrong doing may not be evidence of treason.  

The FBI and intelligence community are uncovering evidence daily about each of these five legs; and observers of Trump’s behavior become more convinced each day of his personality disorders.  Much of the evidence and observations that are becoming known, however, is being conflated with Russian interference in the Presidential election rather than being assigned to one of the other legs.  By mixing the evidence together it becomes very difficult to weigh the seriousness of the crimes and to see who the guilty parties are.  

These areas interconnected by association key figures in each area by Trump or his associates with key figures in other areas.  These interconnections are important because the absence of Trump or some of the other players from one area should not absolve them from being players in other areas. 

And, the main point about the five areas of Trump’s mess is how it affects the nature of investigative process.  Like all investigations this one has the tendency to expand into related areas, especially in high profile cases.  Because of the national security connections this is being investigated by the intelligence agencies and they may be less prone to political control than agencies or parts of agencies focusing on law enforcement.  Unfortunately, Attorney General Sessions has only recused himself the investigation of the Russian election interference.  He remains in charge of the investigations being conducted of the other areas. 

Still, as national security expert Malcolm Nance points out, because of the role of Russian intelligence in these two of these areas, and their connections to the other areas, these investigations are being carried out as an intelligence investigation or more precisely, spy hunt.  Thus, many of the prohibitions and Constitutional protections that would normally apply have been removed by the Patriotic Act and practice.
​
If Democrats and Progressives are a forceful in connecting Trump’s mess to the Republican Party and in playing it up as the Republican Party was in connecting Benghazi to the Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, then the American people will be able to recover their democracy.  If they hesitate in pushing this investigation or rely on the media to explain it to the voters, then we almost certainly will wind up as a fascist state like Putin’s Russia or one of the other increasing number of fascist states.

The question about Donald Trump’s airstrike against Syria is whether it was prompted by an awakening of his love of humanity or a theatrical performance intended to sever the perceived link between him and Vladimir Putin. On Friday, April 7 Donald Trump reversed his earlier positions about how the US should handle Syria as he sent 59 Tomahawk missiles screaming into a Syrian airport, minimally disrupting it.  Before running for President, he was strongly critical of President Obama for contemplating a response to Assad’s chemical attacks by bombing Syria.   During Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign he REPEATEDLY railed that Syria’s problems are Syria’s problems – not ours.  In his first week in office, he worked to operationalize his isolationist views about Syria into his “Muslim ban”.  Just days before the bombing, Trump’s Secretary of State explained that we would stay hands-off and let the Syrians determine the fate of their leader and country. 

Donald Trump admits that he “plays to people’s fantasies” (lies) and that he uses the press to advance his interests.   He meets every definition of a con artist.  Supporters and critics agree that you cannot believe anything that he says.   How can the American public learn any truth about him?  

Many, hoping to get to some truth, continue to demand that Trump release his tax returns, as every other modern day President or Presidential candidate has done.  Recently,  the White House urgently released Donald Trump’s 2005 2-page tax summary - to beat Rachel Maddow who was about to reveal the same tax summary  on her MSNBC show.  Her source was David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times reporter who has recently started a website, DCReport.org, focused on revealing the activities of the Donald Trump administration.  Mr. Johnston received the summary in his mailbox without any indication of who had sent it...
​
In this 2005 summary, Donald and newly married Melania Trump report an income of $150 million and a tax payment of $38 million (25%).   The White House confirmed the authenticity of the summary,  using their usual bluster to denounce the its “theft”.  

President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan lost bigly as their bill to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka ObamaCare) failed.   While both Trump and Ryan tried to emphasize how very close they’d come to passing this cruel bill, they were not able to recast the attempt as anything other than a critical failure.

The three reasons why they failed to pass were incompetence (shown by Trump and his White House and by Ryan and the Republican Congress), the effectiveness of the country-wide resistance movement by voters, and the egregious provisions of the bill, especially the proposed cancellation of insurance for 24 million people.  At a time when so little seems logical, it is reassuring that a resistance movement by voters can make a difference, even if the bill was bad and ineptly handled.