ARGUMENT: The Russia connectionPiling Up Incriminating Information about Trump’s Russian Connections

One of the standard warnings attached to U.S. intelligence reports is that the source of a report intends “to influence as well as inform.” The caveat does not mean that the source’s reporting is wrong or should be discounted, but that the source also has an agenda.John Sipher writes in the Washington Post that Craig Unger’s new book, American Kompromat, should be read with a similar understanding, because it is clear about its presumption that former president Donald Trump is, in the words of former CIA director Michael Hayden, “a clear and present danger” Unger starts from the premise that Trump is a Kremlin asset and proceeds to advance the argument with great detail.

Sipher write that “By compiling decades of Trump’s seedy ties, disturbing and consistent patterns of behavior, and unexplained contacts with Russian officials and criminals, Unger makes a strong case that Trump is probably a compromised trusted contact of Kremlin interests.”

That said, Sipher notes, it is not an argument meant to stand up to the scrutiny of a criminal court (that would require evidence hidden in Russian intelligence files). Instead, it is a counterintelligence case, a circumstantial compilation of patterns, relationships and logical inferences.

Even though counterintelligence probes often do not lead to arrests, the stakes of such investigations may be of far more serious consequence. We have learned over the past several years that many of the most important firewalls in our democracy are not necessarily written in the legal code. It may not be a crime for a presidential candidate to seek to make money from a hostile foreign power and lie about it, but it is potentially a far more serious challenge to our system.

In short, Unger alleges that Trump’s long-standing ties to Russian organized crime, his lifestyle and his business practices made him uniquely vulnerable to blackmail and extortion by the country that is unarguably the best in the world at those dark arts. His campaign team — with its own unusual shady ties to Russia — was willing to work with a hostile foreign power and eager to accept material stolen from Americans. None went to the authorities to report the illicit contacts, and many of them were subsequently arrested. When the issue of Russian involvement surfaced publicly, every single one of them lied and covered up their actions. Trump then attacked the very institutions that could hold him to account and sought to obstruct investigations, eventually pardoning anyone who could provide evidence of wrongdoing. Even Trump’s most fervent supporters have been unable to provide an innocent explanation for why a domestic political campaign would need such deep engagement with a hostile foreign power.

Not all counterintelligence investigations lead to arrests, but many such investigations reveal weaknesses and vulnerabilities which may have escaped attention. Sipher writes that Trump’s election in 2016 exposed a previously undetected flaw in our system of protecting national security secrets:

A duly elected president cannot be denied a security clearance, yet the Republican Party nominated a candidate whose greed, lack of morals and relationship with criminal elements should have disqualified him for the lowest-level clearance, much less the highest office in the land. What Unger’s books have shown us is that the evidence was there for anyone willing to look. American Kompromat uncovers no secrets, nor does it reveal much that is new, but it reminds us that there is still much left to learn. We know that Trump was compromised, but we’re not sure exactly how.