FBI has been investigating the *president for being a Russian asset because he fired AG Comey as well as many other behaviors– his latest gift to Russia is our government shutdown.

The New York Times yesterday carried a story revealing that the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation of He who must not be named after he fired Attorney General James Comey.  His behavior was so erratic and his statements so sympathetic to the Kremlin that FBI agents suspected he was acting as an agent of Russia.  So His claim that “Comey assured me three times that I was not under investigation” was false on its face.  There should be no surprise among neutral observers at the revelation of the FBI’s investigation.  The only question is how active the counterintelligence investigation is now, under the supervision of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, since Sessions recused himself.

Theoretically, the investigation has continued under the direction of Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor charged with studying the cooperation between the Republican presidential campaign and the Russian government in 2016– and the potential obstruction of justice revealed by His firing of Comey in May 2017.  Mueller has also been authorized to investigate “matters arising” from the central investigation, although he handed off the prosecution of His lawyer, Michael Cohen, to the Southern District of New York’s federal attorney before Cohen’s office and home were searched.

He himself pointed investigators to a gold-mine of information when he stated that looking into his finances would “cross a red line.”  His long-time financial advisers and accountants were quickly immunized and have been cooperating with Mueller.

Since this occurred almost two years ago, we might ask whether the investigation has ended or has been completed.  This is very unlikely, based on the past history of such secret probes.  Counterintelligence investigations can go on for ten years or more and may never end with a public statement, much less an indictment.  Since Mueller has been famously silent after he was tapped to lead the investigation, there are no hints as to whether it continues or how productive it has been.

Still, the indictments and subpoenas issued from Mueller’s office suggest that the investigation has been productive and has not ended.

The partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, is His latest gift to Russia.  National security has been impaired, the government is in chaos, and He is carving out exceptions to the “no-funding” rules that hold during a shutdown.  The latest exception, sought by heavy lobbyists in the financial services industry, allows the IRS to send copies of federal tax returns to companies that are verifying income for people seeking mortgages and other types of secured loans.  IRS employees have been called back to work– with pay– to process requests for copies of returns that allow these financial companies to complete their loans.  Another carve-out has allowed National Park Service employees to return to work, paid by visitor fees for maintenance and cleanup, even though the fees have been legally restricted to other purposes.  These individual exceptions are being processed as favors to lobbyists and to mitigate the public scandal that the shutdown has caused.

The other overlooked gift to Russia is the administration’s attempt to lift sanctions on Oleg Deripaska (only imposed six months ago) that were imposed by Congress because of his interference in the 2016 election.  If the Congress doesn’t object within 30 days, those sanctions will be lifted, allowing Deripaska to resume using the international money-moving systems and doing business as usual.

Former Defense secretary Leon Panetta was recently quoted as saying that the shutdown is hurting our national security and making us increasingly vulnerable to our enemies.

So He has dragged the American government into a shutdown, not because He wants a wall on the Mexican border, but because it damages the country– which is exactly what Putin wants.