Trump-Russia investigation is picking up steam. Cable news just isn’t talking much about it this week.
In the four days since Donald Trump began blowing things up in Syria, most (not all) of the people on cable news have ceased focusing on his Russian election collusion scandal, in favor of the new shiny object. But that doesn’t mean the Trump-Russia investigation has slowed down. In fact some key developments over the past few days have made clear that the investigation is picking up steam.
In fairness to cable news, Congress went on recess today and won’t be back in session until April 24th. That means there’s no noise coming out of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigations into Trump-Russia this week, and thus nothing new to bump the Syria attack from the lead. But the public hearings held by those two committees are largely a matter of show and tell. The real investigation, as it were, is the one being carried out behind the scenes by the FBI and partnering federal agencies. And it appears they’re busy at work as we speak.
Last night a Russian hacker named Pyotr Levashov (“Peter Severa”) was arrested in Spain on a U.S. warrant. The Feds haven’t yet disclosed whether he’s suspected of hacking the U.S. election, but for some reason the Kremlin is suddenly fingering him as the culprit in the election hacking (source: France24). And Levashov does have a documented history of having used fake news to rig the 2012 Russian election in Vladimir Putin’s favor (source: NY Times). So it appears the Feds are now at a point where they’re arresting people on the bottom rungs of the scandal to try to get them flip on people higher up the chain.
And then there’s the report today confirming that Russia was in on the Syrian chemical gas attack (source:Associated Press), which prompted the White House to panic and take a Russia briefing off the record just as it was starting (source: ShareBlue). This suggests, as I posited four days ago (link), that the Syria bombing story will end up circling back into the existing Trump-Russia scandal in the end.
In the mean time, you may not hear all that much about the Trump-Russia investigation on cable news until Congress is back in session, or something new leaks, or one of the players in the scandal makes a move (credit goes out to Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow and a few others for dutifully covering Trump-Russia this week while it’s not trendy). Congress is back in session in two weeks, and their hearings will force Trump-Russia back to the media forefront. In the mean time, rest assured, the investigation is still playing out in the background. Contribute to Palmer Report
