On September 24, 2019, it was quite clear: flipping the House blue in those critical midterms in 2018 gave us an opportunity to save our democracy.

In this excellent archival story by @chaunceydevega for @Salon, author @craigunger explains the backstory. https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/investigative-reporter-craig-unger-trump-has-had-contacts-with-the-russian-mafia-for-35-years/

1/ “I’ve always been reluctant to use words like ‘treason’ or ‘fascism’ to discuss Trump. But I think we’ve entered a very dark time in American history. We can't turn this around and save the country unless the Democrats win Congress in the midterms.”- @craigunger Oct. 2018

2/ “When John Brennan lost his security clearance the contrast was so stark—there is no way in the world Donald Trump would have received a security clearance and he is president* of the United States.”- @craigunger

3/ “Donald Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia are connected to Russian intelligence. They’re living and have been working in Trump's building. Trump has even partnered with them.”- @craigunger

4/ “There are so many ways in which he’s compromised. The Republicans are also implicated. As I explain in my new book, the Russians didn't just go after Donald Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party.”— @craigunger to @chaunceydevega 10/2018, Salon

5/ “There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly.”- @craigunger

6/ “News media is so fractured and factionalized. Therefore there is no shared national narrative..let’s say MSNBC gets it right at times. But that still leaves hundreds of millions of Americans who are not getting the message..The news almost never offers the deep background”-CU

7/ “Putin uses the Russian mafia as a weapon. This is part of the geopolitical conflict. This is many ways goes back to the ending of the Cold War. It wasn’t really over. Most Americans do not understand that fact.”- @craigunger

8/ ”Yes, the Soviet Union crumbled but Russia didn’t give up. The KGB sat there and waited. They started various companies. You have at least four billionaires with those connections who ended up partnering with Donald Trump 25 years later.”- @craigunger

9/ “At the end of the Soviet Union, you have trillions of dollars that have to be laundered..Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed..He came back thanks to the Russians.”-CU

10/ “When Trump visited Russia in 1987, he came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, Boston Globe and WaPo. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance..It is almost as if Trump was channeling those ideas and serving the KGB's aims way back in 1988.”-CU

11/ “1984—when Putin was still in the KGB—Trump started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, they had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was a key figure under mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him but he was actually in Trump Tower”-CU

12/ “Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.”- @craigunger to @chaunceydevega @Salon 10/2018

13/ “By 2002, a company called Bayrock..moved into 24th floor of Trump Tower. They began partnering with him. They made Trump an offer that he could not refuse..Trump started dealing with cash and he couldn’t get bank loans except some from Deutsche Bank. He was so bankrupt..”-CU

14/ “They could sell condos through the shell companies, limited liability corporations and so forth. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with the Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin.”-CU

15/ “One Eastern bloc nation after another began tilting towards the West and joining NATO. When Putin came to power, he wanted to fight back, to regain some of that ground..With Trump, Vladimir Putin found one of the few Americans who wants to destroy the Western alliance.”-CU

16/ “The degree to which the United States intelligence community has spoken out very strongly against Trump is very unusual and unprecedented.”- @craigunger

17/ “Manafort is especially important..Manafort and Roger Stone were known as the obvious choice for tyrants all over the world.”- @craigunger

18/ ”When Manafort started working for Putin in Ukraine, he helped elect Viktor Yanukovych, very much a Putin puppet, as the president of Ukraine. In many ways, I see that as a dry run for what Manafort did 10 years later in 2016 in helping elect Trump as president.”- @craigunger

19/ ”Donald Trump is Putin's puppet. If you look at how Manafort was paid, he was paid nothing by Trump. He was getting money from the Russians.”- @craigunger to @chaunceydevega 10/2018

20/ “We need to have a shared national spectacle. Everyone needs to see the same thing. That’s not happening right now. A couple of weeks ago, there was one of these spectacular news days surrounding the Russia investigation..I wanted to see how Fox was covering it.”- @craigunger

21/ ”Fox had an item on whether a giraffe is actually a mutant horse. Huge parts of the country are in the dark. Fox News has been incredibly successful in dumbing down a large part of the American electorate. That is something we’re going to have to change.”- @craigunger

22/ “This goes to the heart of whether or not we’re a democracy. I believe that Putin selected and chose the president of the United States to do his bidding. That is an existential crisis for the U.S. Americans better wake up, because our democracy is at risk.”- @craigunger

23/ “I believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset.”- @craigunger in an interview with @chaunceydevega @Salon 10/2018

24/ CODA: For more from author @craigunger chk out his book on all this: https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1128051436216930304?s=21

25/ APPENDIX: For the true wonks our there, a page by page refresher on the Mueller Report: it’s komprocated. https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1121689602782183425?s=21