The question remains: Is Trump a Russian asset?

As Trump pressures Ukraine to basically surrender to Russia, it is worth noting that the so-called "28 Point Plan" resembles the one Paul Manafort was pursuing back in 2016. Heather Cox Richardson explains:

According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, in summer 2016, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort discussed with his business partner, Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, “a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, the plan was for Trump to say he wanted peace in Ukraine and for him to appoint Manafort to be a “special representative” to manage the process. With the cooperation of Russian and Russian-backed Ukrainian officials, Manafort would help create “an autonomous republic” in Ukraine’s industrialized eastern region and would work to have Russian-backed Yanukovych, for whom Manafort had worked previously, “elected to head that republic.”

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018. Putin has been determined to control that land ever since. And now it appears Russia is pushing Trump to deliver it.

I want to zero in on that last sentence: Russia is pushing Trump to deliver control of eastern Ukraine to Putin - something he's been working towards since he first invaded Ukraine in 2014.

We've seen it happen over and over again. There have been interludes where Trump has hinted at holding Putin accountable. But he always caves and does the dictator's bidding. That's why, for almost a decade now, the question of whether or not Trump is a Russian asset remains on the table. 

MAGA has been trying desperately to discredit that question lately. That is precisely why, back in July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents claiming that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

To understand what's going on here, it is helpful to remember that, when it comes to Trump and Putin, there have been several questions raised since the summer of 2016.

1. Did Russia hack and leak DNC and Clinton campaign emails? Yes
2. Did Russia attempt to hack into state election machinery to change vote totals? No
3. Did Russia attempt to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump? Yes
4. Did the Trump campaign conspire with the Russian attempt to influence the election? Unknown (the Mueller report couldn't prove a legal conspiracy case, but that was because of the answer to question #5)
5. Did the Trump campaign obstruct justice during the Mueller investigation? Yes

The answers I've listed to those questions have been addressed by both the Mueller report and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. DNI Gabbard and other MAGA influences are intent on discrediting what those reports documented about question #3 (and, by extension, 4 and 5). As a refresher, here's what the Mueller report summarized about that question:

“[T]he Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents.”

What's interesting is that Gabbard and others completely ignore both the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Instead, they are going after an Intelligence Community Assessment  (ICA) that was released by the Obama administration on January 6, 2017 which stated the following:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

What we know from reporting by the Washington Post back in 2017 is that five months prior to that assessment, the CIA sent a "bombshell" report to President Obama.

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

Initially, President Obama was primarily concerned about the possibility that Russians would hack into state voting infrastructure (question #2 above). Over the course of September 2016, the intelligence community produced several reports stating that they had "no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

So on December 7, 2016, Obama instructed the intelligence community to pull together the information they had on the tools Moscow used, the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, and an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities.” That led to the ICA that was released in January 2017.

Gabbard and others are trying desperately to undermine that assessment in order to prove that Putin didn't interfere to help Trump. They claim that Obama set up the whole "Russia hoax" by ordering the assessment, while Brennan, Clapper, and Comey conspired to use Hillary Clinton's Steele dossier as the source of their claims. 

None of that is true. As just one example, when Brennan sent the "intelligence bombshell" to Obama in August 2016, the Steele dossier was languishing inside an organized crime unit at the FBI’s New York field office. The FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team didn't even see it until September. According to everyone's sworn testimony, it was not used as a basis for the January ICA. But it was included in the classified annex because Comey insisted that - even though the dossier hadn't been verified - the president had asked for all of the information they had on Moscow's activities. 

This all might seem to be too much "in the weeds" for a lot of folks. But keep in mind that the current Director of National Intelligence - Tulsi Gabbard - actually accused President Obama and his cabinet officials of treason, claiming they initiated a years-long coup against Trump. And now, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones is leading an investigation into these claims. Apparently it's going about as well as the prosecution of Comey by Lindsey Halligan. 

All of this is designed to allow Trump and his enablers to claim that the president is a victim of the so-called "Russia hoax." But as he continues to do Putin's bidding by pressuring Ukraine to surrender to Russia, the question remains: Is Trump a Russian asset?