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What Trump did this week: Jerusalem sparks ire as Mueller follows the money
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(25 days later)
As the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches, the president seems keen to get points on the board in ways that don’t involve the interminable compromises and reversals of Congress – last week’s tax vote in the Senate notwithstanding. This week, he outraged liberals on a number of fronts where he has unilateral power, with moves on national monuments and the status of Jerusalem and full-throated backing for controversial Senate candidate Roy Moore.
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Last weekend
Following his former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea in the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling with the 2016 election, Trump went on a Twitter tear. The president lashed out at a San Francisco court’s “miscarriage of justice”; the FBI (“its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!”); an agent who was removed from Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team because of anti-Trump texts (“Now it all starts to make sense!”); a suspended ABC News reporter (“False and Dishonest”); and of course perennial targets Hillary Clinton and “the ‘Justice’ Department”.
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Britain’s spy agency GCHQ becomes aware of suspicious “interactions” between people with Trump ties and Russian intelligence operatives. In late 2015, GCHQ warns US intelligence.
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The first phishing emails begin to hit Democratic individuals (the Democratic National Committee having been hacked months earlier). Hundreds or thousands of impostor accounts appear on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
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Trump is told about the Russian contacts of at least one aide, and Jeff Sessions shoots down a possible Trump-Putin meeting, according to multiple people present. Later Trump and Sessions repeatedly deny there had ever been such contacts by anyone in the campaign with Russian operatives.
Top Trump campaign advisers including Donald Trump Jr meet at Trump Tower with Russian operatives, having been promised "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary." A Russian present says sanctions were discussed.
The convention convenes in Cleveland, Ohio. Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak attends. Top Trump campaign aides vociferously deny contacts with Russian operatives. WikiLeaks releases 44,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Across the Fall, outlets including WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks publish tens of thousands of emails stolen from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As Russian impostor accounts spread divisive propaganda throughout social media over the Fall, the Trump campaign experiments aggressively with micro-targeting on Facebook, making on an "average day" 50,000-60,000 ads, according to former digital director Brad Parscale
Top Trump campaign aides Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and others have dozens of contacts with Russian operatives that are repeatedly denied in public across the Fall. "It never happened," a campaign spokeswoman said two days after the election. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign."
Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.
Trump aides keep up contacts with Russian operatives on matters of policy and appear to hide those conversations from the US government and public. Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about the conversations, then later admitted that Jared Kushner had directed him to seek certain policy commitments from the Russian ambassador.
Trump fires the FBI director. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story'," Trump tells an interviewer two days later.
But it was his tweets about Flynn that landed him in trouble. A claim that “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI” opened the president to accusations that Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI (a crime) when he asked former FBI director James Comey to go easy on him, something that would strengthen any case of obstruction of justice. The next day, Trump renewed his denial that he ever made that request of Comey and his lawyer John Dowd claimed – to some scepticism – that he had been the one who wrote the offending tweet.
Whether or not that was true, on Sunday Trump suffered a blow in his recent reported attempts to cast doubt on the authenticity of the notorious 2005 Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” tape that nearly derailed his campaign. Writing in the New York Times, Billy Bush, the other voice on the tape, stated bluntly: “Of course he said it.”
Monday
Trump made it crystal clear he was endorsing Moore in next week’s Alabama Senate election, presenting a vote for the Republican – who denies accusations of sexual harassment including one involving a 14-year-old girl – as crucial for the GOP agenda. He then phoned Moore to tell him: “Go get ’em, Roy!” Trump has also been accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women, and also denies the accusations.
The same day, the president travelled to Utah to announce the dramatic shrinking of two national monuments – the biggest elimination of public lands protection in US history.
Tuesday
It emerged that Deutsche Bank has provided special counsel Mueller with bank records of Trump affiliates. In July, Trump said he would consider it a red line if Mueller started examining his or his family’s finances. “I think that’s a violation,” he said.
Wednesday
In the teeth of vociferous opposition around the globe, Trump announced US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. International critics said the status of the city – half of which is claimed by the Palestinians as their own capital – should be left to peace negotiations. Trump pledged to make the change on the campaign trail, pleasing pro-Israel conservatives, evangelical Christians whose theological beliefs involve backing the Jewish state, and some parts of the US Jewish community, including Sheldon Adelson, a donor who gave Trump millions in 2016.
An attempt by some Democrats to start impeachment proceedings against Trump was voted down in the House. Despite pressure from liberal activists for congressional Democrats to push for impeachment, they are reluctant to do so before Mueller finishes his investigation, for fear of jumping the gun, and are also conscious that any impeachment process might actually bolster support for Trump, as it seemed to with Bill Clinton. Impeachment requires a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate to pass – something vanishingly unlikely while Republicans are in charge of both.
Thursday
A fairly quiet day for Trump saw him mark the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack that led to the US’s entry into the second world war, celebrate his Jerusalem decision at the White House Hanukkah party … and make one of his occasional forays into arts criticism. “Go get the new book on Andrew Jackson by Brian Kilmeade … Really good,” he tweeted, adding, presumably to indicate his source: “@foxandfriends”.
Friday
CNN was forced into an embarrassing climbdown after getting a key date wrong in a story reporting that an encryption key to unlock hacked material was emailed to Trump and his son two months before the presidential election. Donald Trump Jr was quick to demand a retraction, which he got. It must have been satisfying for the first son after he attracted ridicule earlier in the week, when he cited attorney-client privilege in refusing to discuss with lawmakers conversations he had with his father regarding his controversial 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
“If you’re Bob Mueller and you get an interview of Donald Trump Jr, this is going to be one of the three or four main topics in your outline,” said Andy Wright, a former White House associate counsel under Barack Obama. “Like at the Roman numeral level.”
