It was a frightening cover interview in the Financial Times more than halfway through Donald J. Trump’s single presidential term, published June 27, 2019. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s authoritarian leader since 1999 declared “liberalism,” the “dominant western ideology since the end of the second World War in 1945,” had “outlived its purpose.”
This was three years after Russia meddled in our presidential election with the goal of damaging Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s chances, while helping Trump’s chances and stirring up distrust in our democratic system, according to U.S. intelligence.
As if to drive his point home, Putin signed a law last year that allows him to run for two more presidential terms and remain in office until 2036.
Trump must be envious. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection is looking into a plan driven by the Big Lie that would have had certain co-operative members of the Defense Department “potentially seize voting machines in the country and utilize Department of Defense assets to make that happen,” as the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said on CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday.
Meanwhile, Putin has similar plans in mind for Ukraine, according to a communique issued by the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Saturday, which named four members of a pro-Russian political party in the country who are potential leaders of a puppet government the Kremlin plans to install there.
The New York Times’ Sunday news story on the communique buried this connection deep into the jump page: All four of the intended puppet-leaders once were clients of Paul Manafort, who also was a campaign manager for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump pardoned Manafort during his last days in the White House, just before Christmas 2020, for a conviction connected to the Mueller Investigation into the Russian meddling of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Thompson also revealed on Face the Nation that Trump’s attorney general up until Christmas 2020, William Barr -- the AG who had falsely characterized The Mueller Report as exonerating Trump even though Special Counsel Robert Mueller said the report does not exonerate him -- has had “conversations” with the 1/6 panel.
We should find out more about Barr’s pre-January 6 actions, and ultimately whether he pushed back against the reported plan to seize voting machines and whether he has “turned” now to rescue what’s left of his legacy, when the committee holds public hearings this spring.
—Todd Lassa