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In the Manafort Indictment, An Ethical Test for the Trump Administration

Robert Mueller speaking during an Oval Office meeting.

On October 30, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner, Robert Gates, were indicted on 12 counts, including money laundering, conspiracy against the United States, false and misleading statements, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The issue becomes more complex when considering the direct relation that the Manafort and Gates indictments have to the Trump campaign, which have not pointed to any verifiable collusion.  

Right-wing media instantly took up arms to help the Trump campaign defer and deflect the allegations.  These efforts include redirecting blame to the Clinton campaign’s “Steele Dossier” and the wholly unsubstantiated “Uranium One” claims. Attempts at deflecting Russian collusion from the Trump campaign to the Clinton campaign has involved a strategic attempt made by right-wing media sources to sidetrack the Mueller indictments of Manafort, Gates, and George Papadopoulos.

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Trump’s Russia and Putin’s America

President-elect Donald Trump’s comments on Russian President Vladimir Putin have been a hot topic of discussion for months now. Trump has praised the Russian president’s leadership skills, noting that a renewed US-Russian cooperative relationship would be beneficial to both countries and to the world, specifically when it came to fighting ISIS. A Russian hack on the Democratic National Committee that resulted in thousands of leaked internal e-mails may have also influenced the election in Trump’s favor, leading to questions about the Putin-Trump relationship and concerns over election ballot hacking. Now that Trump stands to assume the presidency in a little less than two months, many Americans wonder what our future relationship with Russia will be. In order to understand what may come in the future, it is important to understand the beginnings of the Russian Federation – and how the United States may have had something to do with Russia turning from the West in the early 1990s.

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Santos and Putin: A Tale of Two Peace Awards

Back in 2006, then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made headlines with his speech at a United Nations summit, calling George W. Bush “the devil,” for his aggressive militaristic policies. Chavez made great efforts to demonize Bush as a warmonger, while at the same time presenting himself as a promoter of peace. Chavez also appreciated a golden opportunity to achieve this goal, by attempting to bring peace to neighboring Colombia.

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