The presidency could crash and burn over Russia links

DONALD Trump’s alleged links to Russia could see his presidency ‘crashing and burning’, Ambassador Darroch said in one memo.

In a controversial briefing note written two years ago, Sir Kim Darroch warned his bosses in London that of all the President’s troubles, allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia – since largely disproved – had the greatest potential to finish him.

At the time, evidence was mounting that his campaign team had conspired with Vladimir Putin’s regime to beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. There were also unproven claims his son-in-law Jared Kushner may have been indebted to shady Russian money men. The British Ambassador feared they might be true. ‘The worst cannot be ruled out,’ he said, in a letter written for the UK’s National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill in June 2017 marked ‘Official Sensitive’.

‘There could have been active collusion between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, especially over the timing of release of hacked emails from inside the Clinton camp. Dodgy Russian financiers may have bailed out the Trump and Kushner enterprises when both were at risk of bankruptcy in previous decades,’ he declared. A month earlier, in May 2017, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller had launched an i nvesti gat i o n. Trump was accused of trying to stop a probe into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Once again, Sir Kim was uneasy. ‘Trump’s attempts to close down the FBI investigation... might amount to obstruction of justice,’ he said. This would be a criminal offence. He warned Sedwill that Trump could win a second term, but ‘we can’t rule out his crashing and burning either’.

For all his misgivings, Sir Kim also told Sedwill he ‘wouldn’t bet’ on any of it bringing the President down. ‘Trump has been mired in scandal pretty much all his life, and has come through it. He seems indestructible,’ he wrote.