That is an excellent point. and could explain the dynamics we are seeing.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/1...l-scandal-trump-russia-watergate-iran-contra/
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How to Kill a Presidential ScandalRepublicans smothered the Iran-Contra affair. The same might happen with Trump and Russia.
BY*ZACH DORFMAN*|*AUGUST 10, 2018, 9:23 AM
WASHINGTON, :
This isn’t entirely surprising. For decades, Watergate has been the touchstone whenever a scandal wafts through Washington. There’s been Chinagate and Plamegate, Bridgegate and Emailgate, and many others besides. But these comparisons have become particularly fervid lately. Historians of the Richard Nixon era and former Watergate prosecutors and protagonists are again cable news mainstays. Discussions about potential impeachment proceedings, should the Democrats retake the House in November, inevitably glance backward to the dark final days of the Nixon administration.
But the lessons of Watergate, through real, are overstated. And its persistence in our collective imagination reveals a particularly American tendency: our bedrock optimism, and—even in this era of cynicism—trust in the equalizing force of our political institutions. In Watergate, “the American system worked,” as Carl Bernstein said. Americans stared down an unprecedented modern threat to their democracy and won.
But this is an overly optimistic scenario. In truth, the*other*great political scandal of the last half-century—the complex set of crimes known as Iran-Contra—parallels President Donald Trump’s alleged coordination with Russia to skew the 2016 presidential election much more closely and offers us greater insight into how the scandal will likely unfold in the future. And if Iran-Contra’s lessons have been oddly forgotten, we might want to consider why. Because there, the perpetrators succeeded.
“The bottom line in Iran-Contra is: Cover-ups can work,” James*Brosnahan, a prosecutor in the independent counsel’s Iran-Contra investigation, told me in a phone interview. “And that’s what we should be worried about here.”
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https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-russia-henry-kissinger-center-national-interest-1070675
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RELATIONSHIP WITH RUSSIA-LINKED ORGANIZATION FOLLOWING MEETING WITH HENRY KISSINGER, REPORTS REVEAL
BY*CRISTINA MAZA*
Jared Kushner’s Many Conflicts Of Interest
WORLDINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
President*Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner started working with an organization with suspected ties to the Kremlin after attending an event with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, according*to reports.
Kushner attended a talk Kissinger gave on U.S.-Russia relations at the Center for the National Interest in 2016, according to*Bloomberg. Shortly thereafter, Kushner began a relationship with the center’s Russian-born CEO and President Dimitri Simes, who helped shape Kushner’s foreign policy platform and the Trump campaign's position towards Russia.*
The Center for the National Interest, established by former President Richard Nixon,*has worked to establish itself in Washington as "a leading proponent of foreign policy realism." The center claims to be a “voice for strategic realism in U.S. foreign policy,” and its website quotes Nixon’s claim that “the United States has won the Cold War but it has not yet won the peace.” It hosts a variety of*events on*national security issues and geopolitics, including discussions with congressmen like Senator Rand Paul and diplomats such as the current Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov.
But the center has also come under scrutiny for its alleged ties to the Kremlin and its advocacy on behalf of Russia. Over the years, the center has been tied to numerous Russian*government-funded initiatives. Most recently, it was linked to Maria Butina,*a Russian woman*studying in Washington, D.C., who has been charged with conspiracy and accused of using the National Rifle Association to infiltrate Republican political circles on behalf of Moscow. The center helped Butina and her mentor Alexander Torshin, the deputy head of the Russian central bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to organize meetings with U.S. government officials,*according to reports.
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