Russian Buddies Abound in the Trump Administration

It's no secret that President Trump is a fan of the Russian government. It seems that at least one member of the Russian government is a fan of his.

Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Sessions, after being reported to have met with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, twice during the presidential campaign and transition, announced that he would recuse himself from any investigation of Trump team ties to Russian hacking in the 2016 election or afterwards.

Friday morning, President Trump Tweeted support for Sessions:

Source: Twitter

Trump's last Tweet was sent at 6:38 pm Thursday evening. Just a few hours later, Reuters published the following:

Roughly 11 hours after protesting that criticism of Sessions was "a total witch hunt!", Foreign Minister Lavrov was reported as having used the same phrase to describe the situation.

Tweets are public, so it is entirely possible (perhaps even probable) that Lavrov follows President Trump on Twitter. Still, it is a curious coincidence for a new administration and a Russian official to characterize a situation with the same distinctive words, especially since there is clearly no "witch hunt" occurring. Sessions was caught in a misstatement that he made under oath (since lying signifies intent, there is not enough evidence to call it a lie). He has agreed to recuse himself from an investigation that would presumably involve himself. That is reasonable. A reasonable question to ask is: Why did he wait so long to recuse himself? He certainly knew that he was one of the Trump team members who had spoken to a Russian official during the time period in question.

Source: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
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In related news, it was reported yesterday by the New York Times that Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner met with Ambassador Kislyak at Trump Tower in December. The Daily Mail reported that, for that meeting, all three sneaked in a back entrance to avoid being seen by the large group of reporters and photographers at the front of the building.​

Source: Jan Kruger/Getty Images

It was also reported today that, contrary to Trump's repeated claims that he had nothing to do with it, he ordered the changes to the Republican platform positions on Ukraine and Russia. Trump's former campaign adviser J.D. Gordon, who no longer works for the campaign, stated to CNN's Jim Acosta that he Gordon advocated at the RNC to change the platform's stance on arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels, because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.

Trump has denied repeatedly that he had anything to do with the party platform changes.

The CNN interview with J.D. Gordon can be found here.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/03/02/trump-fmr-adviser-met-with-russian-ambassador-rnc-acosta-tsr-sot.cnn/video/playlists/donald-trump-and-russia/

An article from Business Insider describing the interview with J.D. Gordon can be found here.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jd-gordon-trump-adviser-ukraine-rnc-2017-3​

The Daily Mail article about sneaking in the back way at Trump Tower can be found here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4276780/Jared-met-Russian-ambassador-too.html

The New York Times article about Kushner and Flynn meeting with Kislyak can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/us/politics/kushner-flynn-sessions-russia.html?_r=0