Six federal agencies jointly investigating Kremlin funding of Donald Trump campaign
What do the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the DOJ, the Director of National Intelligence and the Treasury Department have in common? They’ve all been working together to investigate Russian funding of the Donald Trump campaign for president. The nearly unheard of level of coordination between the federal agencies, some of whom view each other as turf rivals, represents the most definitive effort to date to get to the bottom of how Russia installed Trump.
The accusations involve the Russian government allegedly funneling money indirectly to the Trump campaign through what was supposed to have been a pension fund for Russian-Americans in the United States. Remarkably, while the news of this joint investigation is just coming to light this week, it’s not new. In fact McClatchy DC believes that the investigation has been secretly ongoing for months, raising questions as to what was known before the election, and why the public is just now finding out about this probe.
It also sets up an interesting upcoming scenario. Once he assumes the office of the president on Friday, Donald Trump will become the boss of all of the above federal agencies. Will he try to bring an end to their investigation? Since the agencies banded together on this, does he have the political muscle to stop all of these agencies? And did the agencies leak this now, in order to make it more difficult for Trump to scuttle the probe?
