CNN reported on Wednesday that the FBI has information to suggest that the Trump campaign "communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign." Suggestions of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election appear to line up with the timeline of claims made in an explosive but unverified dossier presented by top US intelligence officials to President Donald Trump and senior lawmakers in January that is being increasingly substantiated.The document includes details about an alleged quid-pro-quo in which Russia agreed to leak the hacked Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks in exchange for the Trump campaign sidelining Russian aggression in Ukraine as a campaign issue. It also alleges that Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, managed the communication between Russia and the campaign.Recent revelations about Manafort's ties to Russia placed him at the center of a media firestorm last Wednesday, when the AP reported that he was paid $10 million in the mid-2000's to lobby on behalf of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in a way that would "greatly benefit" Russian President Vladimir Putin.At least five other Trump associates — Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Carter Page, and JD Gordon — are now reported to have met with Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, in the latter half of 2016 as Russia was allegedly attempting to sway the outcome of the election in Trump's favor. They have been asked to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and preserve any relevant documents, about contact they may have made with Russians during the election. Flynn, Page, and Kislyak were named in the dossier as being complicit in the alleged collusion. On Friday, Page, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone volunteered to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into Russia's election-related meddling.
The senate will fly the bird, and there better be some very smart 'secure elements' in our glitter sticks when it happens.
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