Russian Breadcrumbs

Follow the breadcrumb trail...

• In September 2016 there was a warning by the FBI that the election had been hacked, and IP addresses related to the hack had been traced back to Russia.
• In October 2016, the Dept of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security warned before the election that there was evidence of an effort by Russia to affect our election, including emails that were hacked and stolen from the DNC.
• In December 2016 the CIA released a report claiming that they have evidence that Russia interfered with our election process.
• In January 2017, a Joint Intelligence Report was released with allegations that Russia, and Putin himself, conspired to influence our election and prevent Hillary Clinton from being elected.
• A well-respected British Op, Christopher Steele, gathers info on Trump and releases the dossier to BuzzFeed, claiming that Russia has dirt on Trump. Then Steele promptly goes to ground, apparently fearing for his life. He is said to have obtained his information from Russian entities.
• Now Rex Tillerson, who is a close ally to Putin, is pegged to be our next Secretary of State.
• It came out today that Sergey Yuryevich Mikhailov, deputy director of the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation), was in a meeting when he suddenly had a bag thrown over his head and was dragged from the building, never to be seen again. It's been reported that he has been arrested for "treason". (http://www.prevendra.com/russias-fsb-cybersecurity-team-im…/) So the question is "whether the government that he's charged with aiding and abetting is our foreign government." (Rachel Maddow) The non-state controlled Russian press is reporting he was arrested for tipping off the US to what Russia was doing to influence our election.
• And today the Trump administration purged the State Department of many high-level career diplomats, who have been with the department for 30 or 40 years (no replacements have been selected to fill their positions).

Laura Kennedy (@AmbKennedy_ret) tweeted today:
"As a career diplomat, I experienced many transitions & never saw anything like this dangerous purge of public servants now underway at State"

• In their urgency to vacate the offices, well-respected long-timer Tom Countryman was on a plane to Rome for a meeting when he was ordered to turn back and unceremoniously let go. He was told today to leave his position by tomorrow. He's been serving since 1982.
• Susan Glasser of Politico has now reported in a tweet:

"update: several sources reporting the proposed order would unilaterally lift sanctions."

This has become real life.

UPDATE 2/11/17:  Since this list was compiled, there have been a few other developments:

• In an interview with Bill O'Reilly released on 2/4/17, Trump defended Putin by saying that America is a killer, too.

"There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"

• Putin's good friend Rex Tillerson was confirmed as our new Secretary of State.
• It has been learned that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on 12/29/17, the same day that President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Russia's hacking. It is believed that Flynn may have spoken with the ambassador about the impending sanctions and reassured him that Trump would back off on the sanctions once he was in office.
• It was announced that Russia was considering handing over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to Trump.
• And, though it isn't related to the Trump-Russia connection, it bears noting that Putin seems to have done it once again and has poisoned another "enemy". Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza fell ill a couple of weeks ago after being poisoned by an unknown substance. The thing is, this is the second time he was poisoned, having narrowly survived a poisoning in 2015.

UPDATE 2/15/17: Michael Flynn resigned on 2/13/17 amid allegations that not only had he spoken to Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but he had indeed implied that the Trump administration would back off on sanctions against Russia, and the call was recorded by intelligence offices. Putin then backed off on his threats of retaliation, and Trump tweeted how smart Putin was for not retaliating. Flynn also put Pence in a bad position by lying to him about the nature of his phone call with the ambassador, causing Pence to lie to the American public about it. Then apparently Trump knew about the phone call for weeks before telling Pence.