Congressman Eric Swalwell vs President Trump

I happened to turn on the Congressional hearings with FBI Director Comey when a Congressman from California named Eric Swalwell was questioning the Director. I was quite stunned by not only how many more connections Trump had with Russia than I was previously aware, but also by just how fearlessly and aggressively this fellow was in hammering Comey with them and the obvious conclusion any objective, sentient being would deduce from them, let alone someone supposedly impartial, conducting an official government investigation into the matter. (An excerpt from the transcript Swalwell's questioning, as well as a video link, are supplied below).

It turns out the Congressman Swalwell has a special interest in this subject, to the degree that he's actually linked his congressional web site to his research on Trump's Russia connection called: Russia: Trump and His Team's Ties.

Here's a bit of a teaser:

"Despite Russia's harmful national interests against the U.S., and its human rights violations around the world, President Trump and his team are directly and indirectly tied to Russia.

Throughout the 2016 presidential election, President Trump not only refused to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, but was even friendly and accommodating in his remarks. In his own words, President Trump called President Putin "highly respected." More recently, President Trump put the U.S. on equal moral footing with Russia when responding to Bill O'Reilly's question about Putin being a "killer," saying "We've got a lot of killers... you think our country's so innocent?" This is absolutely false moral equivalence, and unheard of for the President of the United States to insult and demean the country he leads. President Trump has harshly criticized NATO, and exclaimed that only the NATO allies that paid equally to the alliance deserved protection from the United States. Though these remarks were softened by British Prime Minister Theresa May, who claims that President Trump fully supports the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it's still unclear how supportive he will be of NATO allies like the Baltic states in light of his relationship with Russia. President Trump has also surrounded himself with people who do business with and are sympathetic to Russia. The New York Times reported that members of Trump's 2016 campaign and other Trump associates had frequent contact with senior Russian intelligence officials throughout the campaign. In addition to these questionable communications, here are a few other associates with ties to Moscow:

• Donald Trump: Not only does his past and current team have ties to Russia, but the President himself also does. He has traveled to Russia extensively, done business there often, and has ties to Russian interests. For example, in 2008 he made a real estate sale to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Trump bought a Palm Beach mansion in 2004 during a bankruptcy sale for $41 million, and less than four years later, without ever having moved in, Trump sold the mansion to Rybolovlev for $95 million."

Swalwell then goes on to detail, individually, how each associate of Trump is tied with Russia.

Here is the official transcript of most of Swalwell's line of questioning at the hearing itself (if you'd like to see Swalwell's interrogation of Comey for yourself, just click this link to the video:Swalwell vs. Comey):

SWALWELL: Thank you to our ranking member.

And thank you again to -- to our director and Admiral Rogers. Director, would you agree that the FBI, when it's considering the counterintelligence investigation, views contacts between U.S. persons and say Russia differently than it would view contacts between U.S. persons and the U.K. or France or Germans?

COMEY: Yes, very much so.

SWALWELL: And that's because they're a foreign adversary? COMEY: Correct.

SWALWELL: And so to land on Russia's radar as somebody that they may want to recruit, would you agree that being a businessperson, a prominent business person is something that would be attractive to them?

COMEY: Could be. Might depend upon what industry you're in.

SWALWELL: Could it also -- could also being a politician be something that would be attractive to them?

COMEY: Sure.

SWALWELL: And how about somebody who does business with Russians, would that be attractive to them?

COMEY: Could be. It would depend upon other things as well though.

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