Who didntit by @BloggersRUs

Who didntit

by Tom Sullivan

Screengrab/YouTube/Washington Post via Daily Kos.

Perhaps the strangest element of the Russian indictment story yesterday was the White House's non-response. The sitting president visiting England found time to cut the knees from under his host, British Prime Minister Theresa May, in a London tabloid. Then he back-peddled when he next saw her in person, claiming he didn't say what he said in the recorded Sun interview. He found time to take high tea with the queen after reportedly keeping her waiting. He found time to blame Barack Obama for the Russian hacks aimed at helping the Trump campaign. What Donald Trump didn't find time for was any criticism of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Robert Mueller's Department of Justice investigators in Washington, D.C. indicted 12 named Russian military intelligence officers over a complex 2016 operation run from Moscow using cryptocurrency, malware, and fake identities to hack computers at the DNC, DCCC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and state election boards. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had briefed Trump on the coming indictments days earlier. All the White House could muster was a series of bullet points on who didntit:

o “There is no allegation in this indictment that Americans knew that they were corresponding with Russians.

o There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.

o There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”

Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along.”

Except the DOJ indictment includes a loudly silent yet to the end of the three bullets above.

After the prosecution and guilty pleas of campaign associates in connection to the investigation, the sitting president found time yesterday, for the nth time, to declare the investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 elections a witch hunt even as his Department of Justice rolled out indictments he knew about in advance against the latest dozen witches.

Yet there was no allegation anyone in a White House charged with defending the United States of America was angry about a documented, coordinated attack on an American election by a hostile foreign power. A Trump accustomed to prompting rally crowds to chant "Lock her up" gave off no hint of condemnation for the alleged Russian crimes. Trump still plans to speak one-on-one, in private, with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki.

Humans are pattern-seeking animals. We want the world to make sense. Over the course of this Russia investigation and even during the Trump campaign, the unanswered question has been why the sitting president is so in thrall to Russia. Speculation has piled upon speculation, but the answer is not forthcoming. Perhaps that is special counsel Robert Mueller's problem. Perhaps the rest of us are approaching this conundrum all wrong.

The problem for protesting thousands in London struggling to express their distaste in words fit to print, and the problem for the United States of America and rest of the world Trump seems bent on destabilizing, is not why Trump behaves as he does, but that he behaves as he does.

What the world wants to know is if the United States has remaining enough integrity and self-respect to stop this administration before the damage to world order is irreparable.

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