President-elect Trump: "compromised" by alleged Russian hookers ... by gimleteye

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The following link, to this morning's report in BBC: "Trump and "compromising" claims: how and why did we get here?"

The reason this is important is that, if true, the president of the United States is in a position of being blackmailed by Putin. Moreover, even if he can't be blackmailed, Putin has scored a major victory by pitting US intelligence agencies against a president-elect of the United States. It is why I have been writing for weeks, that in Moscow they are drinking vodka and toasting: "Make Америки Great Again!" And moreover, Trump is now indebted to FBI Director Comey, a position no US president has been in, since the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover.

American voters could have considered this problem, of course, before the election. (Instead, Comey chose to "disclose" additional email issues of Hillary Clinton.)

Now that the election is over, Americans don't "have to decide", in BBC's words, "if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow". If there are multiple copies of a tape or audio files, then it will eventually be released. When there is evidence, there will be an impeachment hearing. The problem with an impeachment hearing: Trump has confidently said he could "shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose voters." What, compared to that, is buying sex in Moscow?

If a tape exists, the Russians would hardly give it up, though some hope to encourage a disloyal FSB officer who might want to make some serious money. Before the election, Larry Flynt, publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler, put up a million dollars for incriminating tape of Mr Trump. Penthouse has now followed with its own offer of a million dollars for the Ritz-Carlton tape (if it exists).

It is an extraordinary situation, 10 days before Mr Trump is sworn into office, but it was foreshadowed during the campaign.

During the final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a "puppet" of Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin. "No puppet. No puppet," Mr Trump interjected, talking over Mrs Clinton. "You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet."

In a New York Times op-ed in August, the former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

Agent; puppet - both terms imply some measure of influence or control by Moscow.

Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni durak" - a useful fool.

The background to those statements was information held - at the time - within the intelligence community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration, they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow.