A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist raised troubling question about President Donald Trump and his associations with Russia.
James Risen, a former New York Times and Los Angeles Times reporter now with The Intercept, wrote Friday that Americans can't be sure "whether Trump has the best interests of the United States or those of Russia at heart."
"One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power," Risen wrote. "Just step back and think about that for a moment."
He warned that Trump, whom he described as an "unstable egomaniac" and "unrelenting liar," presents the greatest threat to U.S. national security in modern history, and the possible crimes currently being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller were deadly serious.
"If a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election, that is almost a textbook definition of treason," Risen wrote.
Risen said evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf was "already compelling, and it grows stronger by the day" -- and he said there were four important threads to follow in the narrative.
"First, we must determine whether there is credible evidence for the underlying premise that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win," he wrote. "Second, we must figure out whether Trump or people around him worked with the Russians to try to win the election. Next, we must scrutinize the evidence to understand whether Trump and his associates have sought to obstruct justice by impeding a federal investigation into whether Trump and Russia colluded."
"A fourth track concerns whether Republican leaders are now engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice through their intense and ongoing efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe," Risen added.
