WASHINGTON — While we are on the subject of the Secret Server—and what a fine, if tragic, irony that is—the premier Volga Bagman has put out something that is both an acknowledgement and a considerable threat. From The New York Times:

Two days after the White House released a reconstruction of Mr. Trump’s call with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov was asked if he worried about the confidentiality of the American president’s contacts with Mr. Putin. “We would like to hope that we would not see such situations in our bilateral relations, which already have plenty of quite serious problems,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

He emphasized that accounts of phone conversations between leaders were classified. The release this week was “quite unusual,” he added. Asked if the Kremlin would be ready to agree to release the contents of a phone call with Mr. Trump, Mr. Peskov said that such situations should be treated on a case-by-case basis. “No one has turned to us with such requests,” he said.

Whatever is on the Secret Server must be one doozy of a national security threat. Through his spokesman, Vladimir Putin is saying, don't release these conversations or...I will first. And, if that happens, more than simply this president* may go down.

What else is on that server? BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Getty Images

Remember, for example, this column from the Dallas Morning News? Remember Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and the conversation leaked to the Washington Post, about keeping stuff "all in the family." I mean, have we all forgotten Maria Butina already? Senator Ron Wyden hasn't. From NPR:

Drawing on contemporaneous emails and private interviews, an 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee's Democratic staff found that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin more than previously known — even though the two had declared their ties to the Kremlin.

The report, available here, also describes how closely the gun rights group was involved with organizing a 2015 visit by some of its leaders to Moscow.

Then-NRA vice president Pete Brownell, who would later become NRA president, was enticed to visit Russia with the promise of personal business opportunities — and the NRA covered a portion of the trip's costs.

It is possible that Russian influence-peddling has infected both the entire Republican Party and many of the more prominent conservative interest groups allied with it. (Money in politics is now a matter of national security.) As somebody, and I don't remember who now, said on television this morning, without Ukraine, Russia is just Russia. With Ukraine, Russia is the Soviet Union. If the President* of the United States is involved in any way in that, the roof caves in.

There's no telling what information is contained in the Secret Server and elsewhere in a White House that has been reconfigured to resemble a conspiracy to obstruct justice. This, I promise you, is just getting started.

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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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