MSNBC host Rachel Maddow thoroughly explained Vice-President Mike Pence’s shocking connection to Russian spy Maria Butina on Thursday night, demonstrating that President Donald Trump’s Russia scandal is far from over.
It certainly appears that no one in this administration is untouched by the scandal and is not beholden to the Russians in some way, including Pence, whose own former national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, failed to disclose her own ties to Butina during her Senate confirmation to become an undersecretary of state, ties that the Trump administration were likely aware of.
“Josh Rogin at the Washington Post reports tonight that Maria Butina also turned up at the wedding of Mike Pence’s national security adviser,” Maddow began. “Mike Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, got married that summer of 2017, first summer of the Trump Administration. She’s got that awesome new job. Getting married and Maria Butina was at the wedding. Why was she at the wedding? U.S. Person One, her boyfriend, Paul Erickson, was officiating the wedding. Oh. It also turns out that the man who Mike Pence’s national security adviser, the man who Andrea Thompson was marrying at the wedding that day, he had recently given Paul Erickson $100,000.”
Seriously. As you may recall, Butina infiltrated the National Rife Association and some right-wing religious groups and established ties between them and the Russian government to help Trump win the 2016 Election. She even asked Trump about Russian sanctions during a question and answer session during the campaign.
“Just a looky loo at the timeline,” Maddow continued. “Trump Administration comes into office the beginning of 2017. The summer, Mike Pence’s security adviser gets married and her wedding is officiated by Maria Butina’s boyfriend. By the end of 2017, there is news reports about Maria Butina and her boyfriend, including her boyfriend offering to be the Kremlin connection setting up secret backchannel meetings for Trump with people from Putin’s office. This news is like the front page of The New York Times in December 2017.”
“Thereafter, in the spring of 2018, Mike Pence’s national security adviser gets put up for a big new job,” Maddow explained. “So the Senate holds confirmation hearings to decide whether Andrea Thompson will be the Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. She goes through that confirmation process in the spring of 2018, knowing that her new husband had given $100,000 to Maria Butina’s boyfriend and Maria Butina’s boyfriend officiated their wedding, and had been one of the people setting up the back channels between Putin and Trump, which were widely known to be the subject of an FBI inquiry and a country having its hair on fire. She knew all of that when she was put up for this top job at the department of state. Going up for Senate confirmation. Apparently none of it came up. Did not mention it.”
Basically, Thompson is compromised, yet she is nominated to the position anyway, which directly benefits the Russians.
“You want to know what you do when you have that job?” Maddow asked. “You negotiate with Russia. You negotiate with the Russians on arms control treaties. When the person who marries you gets into trouble with the Russians, and your job is to negotiate with the Russians, you have to disclose that. Everybody with an intelligence clearance knows that.”
But Thompson did not disclose. She kept it under wraps and so did the Trump administration.
“This is like a plot you would invent in an airport spy novel,” Maddow concluded. “High-level U.S. government negotiator secretly linked to Russia’s undercover agent. Russia knows it. But the American public doesn’t. What can Russia do with the information now that they have the top official over a barrel, as they head into arms negotiations and they know that she knows? It’s just insane.”
Here’s the video via YouTube:
Indeed, Trump recently withdrew the United States from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty that former President Ronald Reagan negotiated. Thompson is still in her position at the State Department and is still the person who would negotiate a new treaty. She’s a national security liability who can’t be trusted to negotiate on behalf of the United States, and she should resign along with everyone else in that White House. The whole lot of them are compromised by Russia and this bombshell report makes that very clear.
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