‘MAYBE HE’LL BE A FRIEND’
TRUMP HEADS INTO MEETING WITH PUTIN EMPHASIZING COMMON GROUND
He allegedly helped him get elected. He has charmed him and egged him on. And on Monday, when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets President Donald Trump face to face here in Finland’s capital, Trump will see what he gets out of it.
Coming into Monday’s one-on-one summit, Trump faces intense pressure back home to confront Putin over Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, especially in the wake of Friday’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking and releasing Democratic emails.
In Washington and throughout the West, leaders are also pressing Trump to hold firm in countering Putin’s intervention in Syria and Ukraine by refusing to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
But Trump’s weeklong tour through Europe only served to underscore his common ground with Putin more than their differences.
In Belgium and in the United Kingdom, Trump echoed Putin’s ideological world view and his political posture — from decrying immigration patterns that he said were destroying European culture to assaulting the media as “fake news” and blaming the U.S. “deep state” and a “rigged witch hunt” investigation for the poor condition of U.S.-Russian relations.
And Trump’s recent moves to disrupt America’s traditional alliances, both with trade disputes and rhetorical broadsides, enhances Russia’s position as Putin seeks to expand Moscow’s influence around the world.
Trump landed in Helsinki Sunday night with what he said were low expectations and an unusually loose agenda for the kind of high-stakes international meeting that typically is tightly scripted with predetermined outcomes.
But Trump has an uncommon faith in his abilities to wing it on the global stage. In a trio of tweets sent Sunday from aboard Air Force One, he complained that the news media would not give him due credit for the summit.
“Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough — that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition!” Trump tweeted.
When Everett Gottfried, an incumbent candidate in a northern Alberta municipal election, offered to give a free bag of dry moose meat to anyone who voted for him, the responses on Facebook were good-natured.
“Yum!! Where’s the pickup … lol … good luck Everett you have our vote!!!” one person wrote. Another asked him to drop a bag off later. Another called it a “good idea” to “pay ppl back” for their votes with “pansawan,” a Cree word for dry meat.
No one in Wabasca, southwest of Fort McMurray, really seemed to take him seriously. No one, that is, except for John Garry Gullion.
Gullion is Gottfried’s second cousin. He was also running in the election, but lost.
The way he saw it, this was bribery which, under Alberta law, carries potential fines as high as $5,000, two years imprisonment, a forfeit of the elected office, and a two-election ban on running again.
Gullion got in touch with an election official that day, leading to legal action under provincial law, aiming to invalidate the election results for bribery. It is such a rare charge that there has never been a conviction. This is only the second time a judge has even considered it.
When the matter went to trial earlier this month, Gullion testified that “stuff like this shouldn’t happen” and “what are we teaching our children?”
The legal answer to that question, according to the judge, is that sometimes people make poorly considered jokes, and we do not overturn elections or send them to jail for it.
“In retrospect, the wording was clearly inadvisable, leading to these proceedings,” wrote Justice James T. Nielson of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta.
“However, Gottfried testified, and I accept, that he made the post without the intention to induce anyone to vote or not vote in the election. He meant it as a joke, nothing more. There was no dry meat given to any elector.”
Election day was Oct. 16, 2017. Polls opened at 8:30 a.m. Gottfried had not slept well the night before. He did not normally drink, but he was with his cousin Glen Gullion, and they had a few scotches, and got to joking about the moose meat they had dried the day before.
It was just past 8 a.m. when Gottfried posted the fateful message to his 400 followers: “Cant wait for this day to be over so i know the fate of my future. Hoping for the best for our community and people get in for the right reasons,” he wrote. “On a funny note
IN RETROSPECT, THE WORDING WAS CLEARLY INADVISABLE.
Glen Gullion said a bag of dry meat for everyone who votes for me today lol have a good day everyone!”
One tricky aspect of the judge’s decision was that dried wild game meat has no commercial value because its sale is illegal. And the way the bribery law is written, whatever is offered has to be valuable.
Dry meat does, however, have a cultural value, and is traditionally ground and mixed with fat to make pemmican. Gottfried’s lawyer conceded this point.
In the end, the decision came down to Gottfried’s intention and, because it was not serious, the judge decided he did not have the required “guilty mind.”
As a result, he can collect costs of $500.
Joseph Redman, lawyer for Gullion, declined to comment. Gottfried did not immediately respond to an invitation to comment.