Clinton’s ties to Russia are also disturbing

We must have missed the memo stipulating that only Republicans are capable of colluding with Russian officials to influence an election or of having financial ties with shady Russian deal-makers or of conversing with Russian spies.

And yet that point seems to be the attitude of Democrats who dismiss as meaningless the news that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee financed the infamous Trump-Russia dossier that exploded into public view early this year.

Or by those who are nonplussed by reports uncovered by The Hill showing a top Russian spy came dangerously close to infiltrating the secretary of state’s inner circle in 2010, even as her husband was doing business with an American law firm that was also lobbying Hillary Clinton and other Cabinet members for approval of a huge uranium deal.

Bill Clinton also accepted $500,000 in speaking fees from a Kremlin-based bank with financial ties to the deal.

Some have plausible excuses for all of this behavior; we’re less inclined to view these as mere coincidences.

Clinton and DNC officials claim they weren’t aware that their middlemen, the Perkins Coie law firm and GPS Fusion, contracted with a British intelligence officer who had been head of MI6’s Russia desk to explore Trump’s ties to Russia and dig up dirt — and that this ex-spy relied on Russian government sources for much of his trove.

No one knows the role Clinton played in ushering the Uranium One deal without any opposition through the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment, but now would be a good time for Congress to demand that this information be disclosed given the closeness of Clinton’s team to a Russian spy at the time and the financial ties between the Clintons and Russian businesses involved in the deal.

This isn’t about doubting the word of an unimpeachable saint. Trump may be a worldclass prevaricator, but Clinton has an impressive record of dissimulation herself that must be taken into account.

Clinton’s press release response to the Russian spy ring in 2010 was a blatant lie. Her office wrote there was “no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring.” In fact, Clinton and her family were a key target.

Even Clinton’s former press aide Brian Fallow doesn’t seem to be buying the innocence story about the dossier saying he was sure knowledge of the work was kept to a select group.

In July we lambasted Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son-in-law Jared Kusher, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort for meeting with Russians in 2016 after being told they might get damaging information on Clinton.

Nothing apparently came of the meeting except confirmation of their atrocious judgment.

Trump and his campaign are hardly in the clear, of course — a fact underlined by the indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller.

And Trump himself seems to recognize the peril to his presidency from Mueller’s probe given the almost hysterical nature of presidential tweets.

Still, hostility toward the Trump presidency shouldn’t blind us to despicable behavior by his opponents, and especially when it mirrors the sort of activity everyone has anticipated with great indignation regarding Trump.

Solving the problem of Russian interference in our nation depends on clear thinking.

So yes, it does matter that the Clinton campaign financed the Trump Russia dossier, and that the Clintons had cozy relationships with Russians as a major uranium contract was being approved, and that Clinton lied about being the target of spy operations.

And it’s time for all fairminded people to say so.

— The Denver Post, Digital First Media