Last week, we witnessed one of the biggest farces in recent memory with the release of the Nunes Memo. Intended to prove that the Mueller Investigation was compromised because the document that spurred the investigation was a partisan attack, it actually showed the exact opposite.

One continues to see all manner of windbaggery claiming that the entire investigation into the president and his campaign’s ties to Russia is nothing more than a treasonous witch hunt. While it is still remotely possible for it to turn out to be a great “nothingburger”, I have yet to see anyone put forth an alternate explanation for the events of the past year or so.

Anyone trying to claim that the Russian Collusion theory is false needs to answer some questions:

• For at least ten years, why has Trump always spoken highly of Vladimir Putin?
• Why were members of Trump’s campaign team in contact so often with Russian officials during the campaign, and during the transition period?
• Why was Donald Trump Jr. so happy to hear that Russia was willing to share “dirt” on Hillary Clinton with the Trump campaign?
• Why did the GOP suddenly drop a call for more sanctions on Russia in their platform at the Republican National Convention?
• Why, despite evidence of Russia’s attacks on our election systems (presented by the Department of Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, and NSA), and a nearly unanimous passage of a sanctions package by Congress, has Trump steadfastly refused to impose any new sanctions on Russia as punishment for those attacks?
• Why did Trump really fire FBI Director James Comey?

There are plenty more questions that can be asked, but these are the most significant ones. And you can’t pin any of these on a “deep state” smear conspiracy. Nobody forced him to hire Page, Manafort, Flynn, and Papadopoulos. No one is stopping him from imposing sanctions on Russia….

There’s a really great timeline here, with links:
http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/

Now it is entirely within the realm of possibility that there’s another explanation for all this. One could say that thanks to Trump’s frequent business contacts with Russian business and government officials, he has come to see them in a different light. So all of this was just clumsy attempts by political novices to come to a new “rapprochement” with our biggest geopolitical rival, and now that it’s all coming out, Trump is worried that the ineptitude of his associates will reflect badly on him and his family.

True, that’s unlikely to be the case. But I’m not hearing anyone suggest that, or any different explanation, for that matter.

So it comes down to this hypothesis. Trump is badly in debt to Russian oligarchs (or perhaps involved in their money laundering schemes), and even if they aren’t actively controlling him, his fear of losing his aura of wealth and success has made him want to curry favor with them at every opportunity. Even if it means putting the needs and security of the nation at risk.

Seriously, how else can you explain it all?