The biggest story from this weekend is Trump’s acknowledgement of Richard Engel’s interview/report with Natalia Veselnitskaya (broadcast on Rachel Maddow’s show and downloadable from her podcast page). He made a specific reference to the ‘Russian lawyer’ and had a fumbling explanation/excuse where he admitted that she works for Putin and that Putin green lit her remarks to Engel. He tried to spin it as Putin taking revenge because Trump ‘has been so tough on the Russians’. It didn’t work and even his audience was a bit lost by the train of thought.
But the key here is that Trump is reading it precisely as a rebuke by Putin. Veselnitskaya met Engel in Estonia. She could’ve gone to RT or Fox, but she went (effectively) to Rachel Maddow’s program. I don’t think she was prepared for the tough questioning by Engel but she was ordered by Putin to give up her identity as a Russian agent if pressed. You could see her say it through clenched teeth and with a lot of anger and defensiveness, because her cover is now blown. She is now in legal jeopardy in the US (obstruction of justice in the Prevezon case; possible (if not likely) conspiracy to violate the federal election campaign act). Her career outside of Russia is basically dead. That means her value to the Kremlin is now diminished and she’ll have to go back to being just a regular Russian lawyer operating in the Russian legal system.
Now that Trump has acknowledged what people were suspecting, we need to ask the question, "Why did Vladimir out Veselnitskaya in order to hurt Trump?’ The effect of that outing was to throw cold water on Devin Nunes’ cover up and to refocus attention on the Trump Tower meeting as one of the many key points of this conspiracy.
Did Vlad do this just because he likes domination games? Or, was it something more significant? Was it a sign that Vlad thinks Trump is done and he is in the process of cutting his losses? Does he think the Cohen case has permanently shifted the winds against Trump? Does Vladimir think he needs to do something to distance himself from Trump and attempt a peace offering for Europe in advance of the World Cup? As it stands, many European businesses and political leaders are not going to attend the World Cup to protest Russia’s interference in democracies everywhere, particularly after the poisoning in the UK. That’s a significant lost business opportunity for Russia and its community of oligarchs which feel more embattled every day as a result of getting mixed up in the Putin-Trump relationship. They all would’ve been much better off with Clinton as President and they all know it.
I find this development fascinating and I’m looking for other signs as to whether Putin plans to step up his distancing from Trump and essentially burn him as an asset.