Multiple Sources For Russian Tapes But GOP Senator Says Trump Immune From Blackmail

Kevin Drum notes that BBC reporter Paul Wood has identified four separate sources for the existence of blackmail tapes that the Russians have on Trump. In addition to current FSB agents, Wood also identifies the head of an Eastern European intelligence agency, an intelligence agency of the Baltic states, and CIA sources who believed that there is credible information that there are multiple tapes from multiple sites on multiple dates.

But even if those salacious accusations in the Buzzfeed report turn out to be true, at least one GOP Senator doesn’t think it would matter because Trump is basically unable to be blackmailed. Senator Charles Grassley from Iowa said, “It seems to me that when you go back through the campaign and all the things that Trump said that ought to give him political problems and all the things that were caught on tape  —  that he would probably just as soon not have the world know about it  –  it’s kind of improbable to me that anybody who knows anything about Trump  —  that’s going to end up hurting Trump. And he was elected President of the United States.”

I find this hard to say, but I actually agree with Grassley on this one. It is hard to imagine that there is anything we haven’t already seen or heard from Trump that could shame him into doing anything. Heck, at yesterday’s press conference he practically bragged about trying to be basically bribed by a developer from Dubai. (In typical Trump fashion, he got the name of the “friend of mine, great guy” who offered him the $2 billion deal wrong. Trump called him “Hussein Damac” but the man is actually Hussein Sajwani and he owns the development company DAMAAC that has close ties to the government of Dubai.) One thing I do know for sure is that whatever might come out about Trump from the Russians or elsewhere, Grassley and his Republican sycophants will go right on supporting Trump without any hesitation.