{"id":12298,"date":"2017-03-21T19:21:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T13:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=12298"},"modified":"2017-03-22T10:23:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T04:53:48","slug":"fbi-probe-trumps-russia-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/india-news\/fbi-probe-trumps-russia-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI to probe Trump\u2019s Russia connection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<em>Director confirms agency will probe Moscow\u2019s involvement and influence in the last US election<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>By Sujit Bhar<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Donald J Trump is in a spot of trouble; a rather large and messy spot, actually. With his allegation of a Barack Obama-instigated wiretap in Trump Towers falling right through his presidential lie-hole, and with his second travel ban, too, being blocked by the courts, he wasn\u2019t a happy man. And now FBI director James B Comey has come out and confirmed that the agency is actually going to investigate whether Trump\u2019s campaign club members had a deal going with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Comey\u2019s admission came during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, say media reports, running in the face of Trump\u2019s defence that this Russia-link had been fabricated by the media and his political rivals, that it was \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The more weighty situation is that this will be a criminal investigation and that the investigation would go on \u201cno matter how long that takes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Comey\u2019s words came back resoundingly to haunt Trump as even the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael S Rogers, pooh-poohed Trump\u2019s wiretapping claim.<\/p>\n<p>The media in the US\u2014including leading ones such as <em>The New York Times<\/em>\u2014maintain that this wiretapping claim was a ruse, to draw attention away from evidences that point to Russian involvement and influence in the American election process.<\/p>\n<p>Comey\u2019s and Rogers\u2019 words add to the media\u2019s assertion.<\/p>\n<p>What would the FBI be doing? According to Comey, the agency was \u201cinvestigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia\u2019s efforts,\u201d media reports have said. This is a direct indication that there was more than what meets the eye in the election process and that this should and is being investigated.<\/p>\n<p>While it must be admitted that such \u201cinvestigations\u201d rarely prove conclusive and rarely, if at all, has anybody been indicted as a result of such investigations, that isn\u2019t the reason behind the US media\u2019s elation at this news. It is a justification of its firm belief, and as a result such a potentially damning investigation hanging like a dark cloud over any administration adds little credibility to the top office.<\/p>\n<p>It has also to be remembered that Trump is a duck-back case and water or allegations roll off quite easily. If one expects Trump to be worried about what Comey said, one is being wishful. Trump is not somebody who believes there is a world beyond reality TV, and within reality TV, he is the only one authorized to fore anybody.<\/p>\n<p>It is an intellectual victory for the media and for the right thinking masses in the US; not that it really matters to Trump and his acolytes and millions of obtuse minds that have sided with him.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, this is a beginning, no doubt. Hopefully, a beginning of the end.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Director confirms agency will probe Moscow\u2019s involvement and influence in the last US election By Sujit Bhar Donald J Trump is in a spot of trouble; a rather large and messy spot, actually. With his allegation of a Barack Obama-instigated wiretap in Trump Towers falling right through his presidential lie-hole, and with his second travel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,2046],"tags":[911,1558,2722,636,1878],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2017\/03\/20160208-7FEB3r.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12298"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12298"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=12298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->