Fundamentally, yes, except the Steele memo also alleged that there were/are financial elements of leverage. EDIT: The book that this Guardian article is written about does touch on some of the financial ties between Trump & Russia, sorry. Which would surprise almost no one, but we've always thought of it as an explicitly understood two-way arrangement. It may have been that Trump only found out that he was 90% (or whatever) owned by Putin/Russia in Helsinki, or on a Very Special Oval Office Phone Call in early 2017. But I doubt the Trumps were totally in the dark on the financial side of things. Sadly, the public perception of the Steele Dossier is pretty binary, it's either "hurr durr pee tape" or "hoax witch hunt hit job". There was undoubtedly some mis/disinformation fed to Steele that got sprinkled in, which made it easier to discredit the whole of the dossier, but anyone still screaming "no collusion!" never deserved a microphone. Who fucking cares if there's a pee tape? The slew of Trump's dictator coddlings and attempts to become one himself isn't bad enough? Can a nationalist fascist be too stupid to know they're a foreign asset? Well, now we know the answer is almost definitely "hell yes".
I think back on that book quite often these days. The thing I keep coming back to is Haseltine's assertion that since Russia never faces any consequences for their hijinks, they never stop. He describes KGB guys stabbing knives through the grates as they pulled out an antenna that violated the shit out of treaties and nothing happened. But then, Legacy of Ashes has a whole section on the thousands of ex-pats we dropped behind the Iron Curtain with a vague mission of 'spy on stuff' who all got rolled up and shot within hours or days. We blew up their pipeline backintheday. We probably blew up their death star. They pwn3d our embassy and, most recently, pwn3d our entire computer ecosystem. From that perspective, kissing up to a New York loudmouth isn't even espionage. It's barely soft power. Fuckin' remember when we thought a pee pee tape would ruin Donald Trump's career?
They knew. Don Jr. even presented on how much money was coming from Russia back in 2008 at a conference... "...In September 2008, Donald Trump Jr. gave the following statement to the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan: “[I]n terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump’s many deals with Bayrock unravels Donald Jr’s comments. He refers specifically to the Soho venture in which Trump partnered with the Russian-connected Bayrock group..."
Yepperz. The Trump "real estate empire" makes so much more sense if we assume that the goal was never to profit, but instead to shuffle around dirty money. Dunno exactly why we haven't seen the paper trail yet, surely it exists. I mean, you just copy-pasted a bit of it, and almost no one bats an eye.
That is sort of the metaphysical, underlying question we all need to ask, isn't it? Sure, there are the nogoodniks who are in on the con and spreading the money around between their shell businesses. But it really comes down to greed. People cozy up to money with the hopes some will rub off on them. For a few it is the pathological search for power, but honestly, I think 99% of these people would go away and live in Tahiti for the rest of their lives if you gave them $250m in cash and said, "Vanish." The power is just the tool they use to get to the money, unless it is filling a pathological void. I don't want to go all Godwin's Law on this, but I honestly think Americans over the next 18 months will be going through some of the soul-searching and self-reflection that the general populace of Nazi Germany went through after WWII. "How did I not see this?" "How did I allow this." "I didn't really believe it at the time... I was just going along with everyone else..." "Didn't want to make waves/risk anything..." If we can be diligent, hold those enablers to account, then maybe we can grow as a country and learn from this experience as Germany has. Everything has their limits, and when you tell every single person they are entitled to the whole shebang, there will be prices to pay down the road when they don't get what they were told they were entitled to. Let's hope we get some true progressive reform in place and everyone - mostly Trumpsters - benefit from the prosperity, and come around to this way of being/thinking. Yeah. I know. Eternal optimist... :-)