Indictment fever is hitting Washington D.C. but will it affect Helsinki?

Yesterday on Friday the 13th, the United States Justice Department dropped indictments down on 12 Russian Nationals. This move added something else to talk about on Monday in Finland for the summit meeting of President Donald Trump and Russain leader Vladimir Putin.

Congressional Democrats are thinking “not so fast”.

According to CNN

The top Democrats in Congress on Friday called for President Donald Trump to cancel his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the Justice Department announced indictments against 12 Russian nationals, that accused them of engaging in a “sustained effort” to hack Democrats’ emails and computer networks.

“President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections. Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

The top Democrat in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, tweeted, “@realDonaldTrump must immediately cancel his meeting with Putin.”

Sen. Schumer might be blowing some smoke here. I’m sure he knows that in many shapes and forms the Russians have been interfering in American elections since the early 40’s. They actually succeeded in their infiltration methods if you count Hollywood movies, primarily Ghostbusters 2016 version.

So when the good Senator says that the American President should not meet until ” Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections.” what exactly is he looking for?

Written assurances? Entailing what? The Russians are already lying that they did it.

The return of Edwin Snowden?

A promise not to make a Ghostbusters 2 with the cast from the 2016 movie?

I would think that leading Democrats would be calling for Trump to look Putin in the eye and press the issue, not cancel and go home.

The real clincher here is that some Democrats are worried that Trump should not meet alone with Putin.

Once again from CNN

In an interview on Capitol Hill, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is concerned that the President’s “ad-hoc” style of going into meetings and “winging it” is not appropriate and that the meeting should be called off with Putin.

Warner said he’s concerned the US “President can be taken advantage of” by Putin, and that if a meeting cannot have additional attendees it should be scrapped.

“There should be no one-on-one meeting between this President and Mr. Putin,” Warner told reporters Friday.

Maybe Sen. Warner missed that whole incident of President Obama telling former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to let Putin know that once he was past the 2012 election “after my election, I have more flexibility.”

This was not a yoga reference.

That also was a one on one meeting and this comment was not supposed to be picked up.

Trump and Putin will be meeting alone WITH interpreters. While this might not be the best scenario it is also not unusual. Most of our past Presidents have met with their Russian counterparts in one on one sessions with no issue.

So we have the Democrats not wanting Trump to meet with Putin because of the indictments and we also have Democrats not wanting Trump to meet with Vladimir alone if he meets with him at all.

This gets confusing and is one of the reasons why people hate politics.

Ghostbusters 2016 is why I hate Russian influence in America and I wish the Democrats would care about that part also.

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