New report: Current Trump official a “person of interest” in FBI probe of White House-Russia ties
By
Barry Grey
20 May 2017
On Friday, within minutes of President Donald Trump taking off on Air Force One for Saudi Arabia, the first leg of an nine-day overseas trip, new allegations published by the Washington Post and the New York Times added further fuel to the political warfare in Washington.
The conflict is a struggle between two factions of the ruling class and the state apparatus, both deeply reactionary, militaristic and anti-working class. It centers on differences over US imperialist foreign policy. The Democrats have chosen to base their opposition to Trump, who embodies the criminality of the financial oligarchy, on the charge that he is a dupe of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This, in turn, is based on entirely unsubstantiated charges that the Russian government hacked and leaked Democratic emails to tip the 2016 campaign to Trump.
The Democrats express the outlook of forces within the intelligence establishment who believe Trump cannot be trusted to continue and escalate the Obama administration’s confrontation with Russia in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They have virtually nothing to say about the ongoing attacks by Trump on health care, education and the environment, or the war against immigrants.
In Friday’s article, the Post reported that the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, now headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, has identified a current senior administration official as a “person of interest.” The report is the first indication that the investigation is looking not only at former Trump aides, such as one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national…