'Russiagate'

The prospect of a formal meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been floating around for some time, but due to suspicions of Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election by Trump’s political opponents, that hasn’t been allowed to manifest, as of yet. However, Trump says he wants to meet with Putin, and Putin has said repeatedly that he’s open to such a meeting. Trump has stated that he thinks he could meet with the Russian President this summer, and the Austrian capital of Vienna could potentially be the host.

Russiagate refuses to lay down and die just yet.
Even as President Trump begins to more openly discuss the need to bring Russia back into the G8 nations and as he discusses feeling vindicated by the Justice Department’s Inspector General report on the Hillary Clinton / FBI e-mail probe, Paul Manafort had his bail revoked by a federal judge. He is now to be sent to jail while awaiting separate trials on money laundering and fraud charges. These charges followed allegations that he sought to obstruct the Russia inquiry whilst being under house arrest.

Submitted by author, via Strategic Culture
That’s why the analyst’s gut instinct rebels at any indication that things overall may be moving in a positive direction, however haltingly or indirectly.
But consider:

Originally appeared at OffGuardian
By Tony Kevin, from a talk given to ANU Business students, June 7
Two and a half years ago, in Jan-Feb 2016, I visited Russia for a month. The result was this published book, a literary travel memoir,  Return to Moscow.  I returned  in January-February this year, 2018. I gave a public lecture in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Russian History.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 1st, that the White House is making plans for a potential summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such a meeting would bring one of the world’s most enigmatic relationships to front and center.
According to the Journal:

The media narrative on the pro-Trump side of things is that the RussiaGate investigation is on its last legs and that it is falling apart. The anti-Trump side of this matter says quite the opposite, and keeps promising that the damning evidence is ‘just around the corner’ and that the media sources involved are committed to ‘bringing the truth to the American people’, and so on.

Alex Christoforou with Peter Lavelle discuss how the Democrat Party’s “Russia Russia Russia” narrative is about to cost them the midterm elections.
Via Consortium News…

“Instead of addressing demands for social progress, such as single-payer insurance, Democratic leaders find it much easier and more comfortable to denounce Trump. But it’s not working, as Norman Solomon explains.”

For the last seventeen months now, the daily serving of American political news has included a generous helping of Robert Mueller, the Russiagate investigation that has morphed into an “is there any way possible we can get rid of Trump?” investigation, and a never changing but frothy lack of evidence to show that anything dishonest or disingenuous happened in Donald Trump’s campaign to be President of the United States.

Oleg Deripaska…the Russian oligarch that Robert Mueller has been chasing after for a decade.
In 2009, according to John Solomon of The Hill, when now special counsel investigator Robert Mueller ran the FBI, he asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to bankroll an FBI-supervised operation to rescue retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who is a captive of Iran for ten years now.
In 2017 Robert Mueller “connected” Deripaska to Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Christopher Wylie, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, declares that Russian fingerprints are all over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
He said that he thinks that the Russians had access to the data that Cambridge Analytica illicitly collected on millions of Americans, and that the company was paid by Russians to perform some projects.
Additionally, Wylie says that Cambridge Analytica used Russians to harvest data on Americans that was then shared with companies which had active links to the FSB.