Donald Trump’s new shame

| 3:15 pm EDT July 14, 2018
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Robert Mueller unleased another wave of indictments against twelve Russians yesterday, which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced to the press. Mueller’s office notified Donald Trump ahead of his trip abroad, so he would not be blindsided in the midst of his meeting with Putin when the news was announced. The indictment lists in detail how officers in the Russian government were grouped in various units, each unit tasked with their own goals.

Every unit targeted a different faction of politics, for example, several units were solely dedicated to attacking the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mueller’s office outlined the charges in detail, explaining how the Russian Military Intelligence known as GRU, used spear phishing and hacking followed by installation of malware to obtain stolen information from the Democratic Party. They used bitcoin to make detection more difficult. To work around blockchain technology, which is basically a virtual ledger of transactions, they purchased thousands of email addresses, sometimes using only one before discarding it. The hackers also stole the identities of those known to be non-Russian hackers to cover up the origin of the attacks. All in all, the indictment lists eleven criminal charges, among which are identify theft, conspiracy and money laundering. The money laundering, of course, was used to finance the hacking enterprise.

Trump will find himself to be hard pressed if he continues to use the term “witch hunt” to describe Mueller’s investigation. It should be quite obvious now to Trump and his base that he is fighting a losing battle. It is possible Donald Trump used the media to signal to Russian Military Intelligence that he wanted them to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails, because they in fact did so within hours after receiving that cue from Donald Trump.

It is past time for Americans to wake up to the fact that Donald Trump is not innocent. He does not play by the rules, oftentimes referred to as laws, and his substitutions for the rule of law do little to nothing for our country’s well being. Despite Trump, knowing ahead of time of these indictments, has not cancelled his upcoming meeting with Putin. Trump is putting our country in danger as he fumbles forward in his march from the United Kingdom to Russia. If nothing else, we now know without a doubt that Trump’s instincts are to protect himself and his ego, no matter the cost.