Trump’s Russian issues have layers inside layers

Americans have good reason to ask whether their president and his closest political associates are criminals. But what makes the question so necessary ought to make the answer moot.

For the purposes of determining whether Donald Trump should remain in office, it doesn’t matter whether a crime was committed in his and his associates’ dealings with Russia. It’s damning enough that the question has to be raised.

The point is not that Trump should be impeached because members of his circle are being investigated for one alleged crime or another. Rather, some of the revelations and circumstances surrounding the investigations are on their own so serious and beyond dispute that a politician with any sense of reason or decency would resign.

Of course, a politician with any sense of reason or decency would not have done what Trump has done:

• Trump expressed open

admiration for Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian who invaded Ukraine, during the election campaign.

• Trump publicly requested Russia

hack his political opponent’s email.

• Trump wouldn’t release his tax

returns even in the midst of allegations that he has compromising financial ties to Russia and that the Trump Organization has a private server connection to the largest bank in Russia.

• Trump hired Paul Manafort as

campaign manager, a former business partner of Russian oligarchs and political operatives affiliated with Russian intelligence services who owed $17 million to Russian banks.

• Trump kept on his son-in-law,

Jared Kushner, as senior adviser after Kushner asked to set up a secure communications channel with Russia and had several undisclosed contacts with Russia.

• Trump defended his son, Donald

Jr., for secretly colluding with Russia to damage a political opponent’s electoral chances, even after his son initially falsely denied it.

• Trump defended Putin and

offered him concessions even after American intelligence services determined that Russia tried to damage American elections.

• Trump met with Putin without

any Americans present during an investigation into his administration’s ties to Russia.

• Trump fired the FBI director

because of the agency’s investigation into his administration’s relationship with Russia.

Trump attacks even his own appointees who don’t protect him from the law, admitting he wouldn’t have appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general had he known Sessions wouldn’t stand between the administration and the Russia investigation.

Democracies must not adopt the standards of despotic scam artists.

For now, we must assume that members of Trump’s circle aren’t criminals. None has been convicted of being a traitor, conspirator or obstructor of justice. But they are proven liars, hucksters and snakes, self-regarding bullies who don’t spare a thought for the rule of law, the democratic system or the liberal Western order; so self-interested they can’t even be called partisans, for partisanship requires loyalty to an entity other than oneself; so nihilistic they can’t even be called ideologues, for ideology requires commitment to principle and coherence of thought; and so ignorant of their place in the world and in history their energy is used in service of a foreign power openly hostile to the country they are charged with protecting.

To call their behaviour criminal is premature. It also misses the point. The fact that a man is not in jail doesn’t mean he should be tolerated in public office. Shannon Gormley is an Ottawa Citizen global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.