First was a piece he wrote for the New York Times (link here) about how, contrary to popular belief, the FBI was never able to investigate Donald Trump’s decades-long personal and business links to Russia.
It has long been believed the Kremlin holds some kind of kompromat it uses to control him to a certain degree (details here). How else to explain Trump's slavish obsequience and outright fawning over Vladimir Putin?
There is some evidence that Putin holds sexually compromising material on Trump it can use to blackmail him. Alternatively or additionally, Trump may be seriously indebted to Russian oligarchs who've loaned him hundreds of millions of laundered Russian organized crime money — why else has he fought so hard to keep his tax returns secret?
Maddeningly, as Schmidt's Times piece reveals, there's no indication when, if ever, the FBI can fully investigate Trump. If he loses the election, hopefully it can happen then. While it might not involve any criminality on his part, knowing whether he was compromised by Russia which was then extorting him would answer a lot of questions.
The second Schmidt item in the news yesterday was an excerpt published from his forthcoming book investigating the Trump administration that reveals a leaked memo about how Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is clearly a national security risk but nonetheless was given the highest level of secret clearance over strong objections after Trump himself overruled security officials and ordered the access granted (details here).
Kushner is widely believed to have some kind of connection to both Russian and Chinese intelligence officials and himself may be vulnerable to extortion because of foreign loans worth hundreds of millions. One might surmise that if his father-in-law President was compromised by Russian intelligence, he would have no concerns about another family member also being compromised in his own right.
Schmidt's new book, Donald Trump v. The United States, goes on sale tomorrow.
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