WITCH HUNTS ARE A FUNCTION OF WITCHES:

[A]s Trump prepares to end his first year in office, the witch hunt narrative may have outlived its usefulness. Mueller's investigation has expanded and gained serious traction: The president's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's chief deputy, Rick Gates, have been indicted. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty and is now a cooperating witness. So too is a former foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, who has admitted lying to the FBI about repeated contacts with alleged Russian cutouts who had offered the Trump campaign "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." [...]

In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.

In what is potentially another ominous sign for the White House, the lawyer for Jared Kushner, the president's son in law and senior adviser who was in charge of the campaign's digital operation, recently began searching for a crisis public relations firm to handle press inquiries -- a step frequently taken by people who believe they may be facing criminal charges. [...]Back in January, when the issue first starting getting political traction, the president and his top aides denied that he and his campaign had any connections to Moscow. "I have nothing to do with Russia," Trump tweeted at the time.

Since then, Mueller's team and congressional investigators have detailed numerous contacts, meetings and email exchanges between Trump's campaign and Russian-connected operatives and officials that were unknown to the public when voters went to the polls in November 2016. Jeff Sessions, the Trump campaign's chief national security adviser, met with the Russian ambassador at a hotel reception and later in his Senate office. Papadopoulos met with a Russia-connected professor and a woman introduced as "Putin's niece" in an effort to set up a summit between Trump and the Russian president. And most famously, Donald Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort all met in Trump Tower with a delegation of Russians who they believed had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton -- including "official documents" -- that came straight from the highest levels of the Kremlin.

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