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WASHINGTON—This was supposed to be quiet-before-the storm day on Capitol Hill. Everybody in the Senate was going to go home early to rest up for the big no-holds-barred cage-match free-for-all over the healthcare aspects of Mitch McConnell's big tax-cut bill next week. The president* was in transit from Paris to Bedminster, so it was unlikely that anything was going to erupt in that quarter. But nobody had reckoned with the folks left behind at Camp Runamuck.

Apparently, according to NBC News, when Junior had his big ratfcking meeting, there were more hands in the pie than we thought.

The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others on the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned. The lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies. He accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr.; Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law; and Paul Manafort, former chairman of the Trump campaign. The Russian-born American lobbyist served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the U.S., where he holds dual citizenship.

I maintain that I believe this whole chewy cluster of fck involves the Trump family's reluctance to reveal how much money they owe to shady oligarchs on the banks of the Volga. I think that was behind the refusal to release his tax returns. I think that was behind the relative ease with which Junior and Jared were able to take the kind of meetings that are biting them on the hindquarters now. And I think it's behind the completely incoherent defense being mustered up now, where we discover day after day that the only Russians not at that meeting last June were Alex Ovechkin and Lenin's corpse. Without Russian money, the evidence suggests, the Trump empire collapses, and the Trumps were willing to do pretty much anything—including get Pops elected president—to keep that from happening.

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Now, though, they're trapped in a wilderness of chaos in which every one of them is little more than a child. I mentioned earlier in the week that, in the world of Manhattan real estate, Trump may be quite the macher. But now, he's wandered into a place full of predators who are way, waaay out of his league. The Russians want what they want, and they know how to get it, and none of the Trumps has a clue how to get out from under. This leaves the whole matter up to the institutions of government, which brings us to Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin.

(Ryan, it should be recalled, had his own dalliance with the Russian ratfcking complex, something that really has vanished down the memory hole.)

A bill that would increase the sanctions on Russia specifically because of its meddling in the election is languishing in the House right at this very moment. It passed the Senate, 98-2. But the denizens of the monkeyhouse are stalling any action because of their tender feelings for the extraction industries. From Bloomberg:

House Republicans are throwing up new roadblocks to a Russia and Iran sanctions bill over concerns from the energy industry that a provision could block U.S. companies from lucrative foreign oil deals. A section of the legislation would prevent U.S. companies from doing business anywhere in the world with Russian interests, causing consternation in the capital-intensive energy industry where foreign partnerships are common. That prompted Republicans to push for a fix to the version passed by the Senate before the bill moves forward in the House.

Of course, energy money is as vital to Putin's economy as Russian investment is to Trump's, so this particular measure would put real teeth in the sanctions regime.

Current sanctions already block oil and gas companies from doing deals in Russia. But the Senate-passed bill would extend the reach of those prohibitions, barring U.S. companies from partnering with sanctioned Russian firms to develop energy projects anywhere around the world. Richard Sawaya, who studies the impact of sanctions for the Washington-based National Foreign Trade Council, estimated the provision may mean U.S. oil and gas firms could be shut out of as much as $100 billion worth of projects over 10 years. Also at risk may be high-earning jobs and lost investment income, he said. His group advocates against unilateral U.S. sanctions in most cases. "In any place where Russian companies have a position -- U.S. companies couldn't be there," Sawaya said.

This, of course, is what sanctions are supposed to do. But because the average American corporation has all the patriotism of the average bacterium, they would rather not do their part, thanks. There is no reason right now for American corporations to deal with Russian corporations until, to coin a phrase, we find out what the hell is going on. This is a time for the private sector to step up, and for Congress to encourage that, because the public sector, especially the federal government, is stumbling around trying to figure out who its actual landlord is.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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