How long can Rex Tillerson remain in the shadows of the accelerating Trump-Putin investigations?

"Power", Henry Kissinger once remarked, "is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

To which one might add, "It is also highly addictive."

No more is this being illustrated than in the tortuous manner in which Republican members of both the US Senate and US Congress are almost deperately trying to protect US President, Donald Trump, as yet another avalanche of his misdemenours descends upon their heads.

If the recent sudden, and suspicious, dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, nor the entertaining of Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak in the Oval office, and divulging to them top-secret information, was not enough cause Republican Senators and Congress members to pause in their daily fix of that powerful aphrodisiac, power, then surely yesterday's revelation that Donald Trump may be guilty of obstructing justice may make them realise that they are in the Senate and the House of Congress to represent the people that elected them, rather than simply to protect Donald Trump.

As I stated in my last blog entry,

"The victory that both Trump and Putin are now celebrating may yet turn out to be a Phyrric victory.

The scarlet thread of Maidan that binds them both is not so easily undone." (blog entry 11/5/2017)

The very foundation of Putin's meddling in the US presidential elections can be traced back to Putin's illegal annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, and his ongoing war with Ukraine in the Donbas, that led to the US-EU sanctions against him, and that is having devastating consequences on the Russian economy and, consequently, the growing impoverishment of the Russian people themselves.  

Emily Cashen (left) succinctly sums up the effect of the US-EU sanctions on the Russian economy.

" ... Since the sanctions came into place some three years ago, Russia’s economy has struggled. Between 2014 and 2015, the country’s GDP growth contracted by 3.8 percent (see Fig 1), while inflation accelerated to 15.5 percent. Now more isolated than at any point since the end of the Cold War, the nation has seen an increase in its budget deficit, wide-ranging budget cuts and even noticeable food shortages." (World Finance : April 20, 2017) (my emphasis)

And now, the scarlet thread of Maidan that indelibly binds both Trump and Putin together has once again raised its head into the headlines in the US. 

As Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reports,

Part 1

 

Part 2

The near inexplicable degree to which Trump will go in trying to protect Putin by attempting to shackle the Senate, Congress, and FBI (amongst others) investigations into Putin's assistance in getting him into the White House once again brings the "dossier" to the fore.

"On January 10, 2017, the media reported on the existence of a private intelligence dossier containing unverified allegations of misconduct and ties between Donald Trump, then President-elect, and the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the period preceding the election. The dossier was written by a former British MI6 intelligence officer, Christopher Steele (left), who went into hiding after the release of the dossier, but reappeared on March 7, 2017" (Wikipedia)

Critical parts of this dossier have, since its release, been verified, to the utter consternation of Donald Trump himself.

And as reported by Robert Mendick and  Robert Verkaik (right),

"An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed.

Oleg Erovinkin (left), a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances.

Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier." (The Telegraph :27 January 2017) (my emphasis)

The $64 question is,

"Did Tillerson (right), former CEO of Exxon Mobil and now US Secretary of State, and who has had copious dealings with Igor Sechin in the past, know at the time about this 'mysterious' death of Oleg Erovinkin linked, as it is, to a dossier of Trump's misconduct in Russia and his ties to Putin, the very Trump who gave him his present job?"

Tillerson has hidden himself in the shadows as Intelligence Committees of  the Senate and Congress, as well as the FBI and sundry other financial investigations, continue to unravel the Trump-Putin connection.

How long can he continue to remain in the shadows before he also becomes embroiled in the unfolding of the Trump-Putin connection?

(to be continued)