No intelligence agency has accused Trump or his team of doing anything improper, either. They have said that they believe with a high degree of certainty that Russia was the source of the "hacking" of Hillary Clinton's campaign and the CIA and FBI, but not NSA, also believe with a high degree of certainty (NSA isn't as certain), that it was to influence the election because they believed Trump would be better for Russia than Hillary. Of course, that last part is a no-brainer considering that one candidate, Trump, was saying, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had better relations with Russia?" and the other candidate was attempting to show some sort of "resolve" by being wildly anti-Russia.

Of course, this whole "hacking" allegation makes it sound like a sophisticated operation that poured through pages of code to find weak spots in the DNC's computers and exploit them using the most state of the art technology. In reality, as we know from information released, John Podesta got a fake email saying "Someone tried to hack your gmail - please reset your password" and he was stupid enough to fall for it (and so was their IT guy - I don't believe for an instant that someone means to write "that's not a legitimate email" and instead writes "that's a legitimate email" - the IT guy was just being dumb, too). He reset his password (which apparently was "password", so Russia could have gotten in the same way a bored teen could have) and boom - Russia was in. That's not really sophisticated and it's yet another example of bad planning on the Hillary campaign (something that the email leak proved in spades).

Anyway, that's what happened. Did some people in the Trump campaign end up running into people from Russia? Sure, so did people from the Clinton campaign - it's Washington, that happens all the time. Claire McCaskill, who decided to bitch out AG Jeff Sessions about not disclosing a meeting with the Russian ambassador, was shamed on Twitter after saying she never met with the Russian ambassador and would remember if she had, when people posted her asking him questions at a small meeting (not the kind Sessions had, much more direct, the kind of thing you think you'd remember), and then lists of events she went to where she might have met him again. When you meet that many people you don't always remember it. I do, but most people don't.

And my God, but doesn't this whole thing reek of paranoia - "He met a Russian, he must be Trump's secret link to Putin!!!! Set him on fire!" I met the First Assistant Consul at the Russian Consulate here in NY a couple weeks ago - someone even posted a picture of me with the consul at the consulate by tagging me on FB, you can go see it. I've also met some people in the Trump Administration. Does that make ME Trump's secret link to Putin? With enough paranoia I could see people making that argument. Or what about - gasp! - when I went to my friend's wedding in Moscow in July 2015 and interacted with a leading figure in Russia who is good personal friends with Putin?

It's like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon when you meet anyone from Russia in New York, or Washington, or Moscow. One of my clients knew Stalin's daughter. Next thing you know, I'll be accused of complicity in the Great Famine of 1932-1933. Trump's connection to Stalin! I know people who are personal friends of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist Western journalists were warning would be Russia's Hitler back in the 1990s. Who knows? Maybe I met them when I actually attended a Zhirinovsky rally in Rostov-on-Don, Russia in March 1995 and watched him speak. There! Now I'm Steve Bannon's white supremacist connection to Russian neo-Nazis (though Zhirinovsky is half Jewish; maybe I should be Jared Kushner's connection to the Russian Zionist conspiracy instead).

I could go on and on. The point is that this whole circus of a witch hunt is really wearing thin on me. If someone produces evidence that the Trump administration did something wrong, then send it to the Senate and see if it sticks. Otherwise, let's drop this miserable charade and focus on things the administration is actually doing.