Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The U.S. Is a Good Place for Bad People to Stash Their Money
When Viktor Bout—the arms dealer extraordinaire who inspired the 2005 Nicolas Cage movie Lord of War—sought to set up anonymous shell companies, according to a Senate panel, he turned to, of all places, the U.S. So too, court documents indicate, did former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, a man who has landed on Transparency...
How to Know Who Will Let Trump Get Away With Anything
We now know, in part, how the Trump-Russia scandal ends. As McKay Coppins and Rosie Gray pointed out on Tuesday, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically requested dirt on Hillary Clinton despite knowing it was coming from the Russian government has radically changed the argument being deployed by Trump’s defenders. Until this...
Trump’s Campaign Succeeded by Breaking All the Rules—and It’s Catching Up to Him Now
Donald Trump’s campaign for president seemed to vacillate between, to borrow Hunter S. Thompson’s dichotomy, being too weird to live and too rare to die. All the smartest analysts were convinced that it was definitely too weird to live. Stocked with amateurs, retreads, and minor-league washouts suddenly promoted for a cup of coffee,...
What Exactly are ‘Kremlin Ties’?
On its surface, the Donald Trump Jr. affair seems as bizarre as its cast of characters. A Russian corporate lawyer who Trump Jr. believed possessed Russian government kompromat—compromising information—on the Clinton campaign. A Russian-Azerbaijani pop star, Emin Agalarov, whose publicist made the connection with Trump Jr., and who himself is the...
Why Donald Trump’s Russia Denials Can No Longer Be Believed
The most important question that Donald Trump was ever asked in a press conference is suddenly easy to identify: “Can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with Russia during the course of the election?”President Trump’s answer last spring was dubious.He replied that aside from Mike Flynn (who...
The Everybody-Does-It Defense of Collusion
As evidence continues to mount suggesting the Trump campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the president’s allies have shifted to a new defense: Collusion is no big deal. For months, the White House has fervently denied allegations of collusion, with President Trump routinely dismissing Russia stories in the press as...
The G20 Is Obsolete
The optics at the G20 summit in Hamburg were striking. On the one side, the United States. On the other, 18 nations and the European Union. While the dividing issue was climate change, for many, this symbolized something larger. In a video that instantly went viral, Chris Uhlmann of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation put it pithily: “The G20...
Was Donald Trump Jr. Told the Kremlin Was Behind the Leak?
Last week, Donald Trump Jr. wasn’t considered part of the sprawling Russia investigation that has consumed his father’s early presidency. Now he is firmly at its center.The New York Times reported over the weekend that the president’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton....
Will Congress Hold Russia Accountable for the Behavior Trump Excuses?
From the start of the Trump-Russia story, there have been many secrets, but no mysteries.Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. Donald Trump publicly welcomed that help, and integrated the fruits of Russian intervention into his closing campaign argument. (“I love WikiLeaks!”) Since being elected he has...
Trump and Putin’s Rashomon Summit
Updated July 7 at 4 p.m.Pundits eager to analyze the outcome of Friday’s first face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin don’t have much to go on. (Bold prediction: That won’t slow them down.)In the absence of material information, many analysts rushed to read meaning into the...
