Trump hired Paul Manafort to run almost the exact same operation he ran against Yulia Tymoshenko. It's hard to make the argument that there's any doubt Trump didn't know.
The abortion issue is largely virtue signaling. If you had an anti-abortion, centrist Democrat on the ballot against a pro-choice Republican, you know they'd still vote Republican. It's almost as if being a Republican is more about cultural identity than specific policy. Who would've guessed?
I don't think the overall goal is to suppress the report and evidence. I think it's more likely that they know a subpoena from the House would get anything they want. So they plan to force the House's hand in issuing the subpoena and fight it. This gives the White House a great deal of time to throw water on the fire. In the meantime, they will have all the findings, grand jury testimony, etc to themselves and they can dribble out the most damning ones to Maggie Haberman at the NYT.
Russia is actually very sensitive to being held accountable. They're bad actors, but the bad actors keep all their wealth offshore. Sanctions (especially internationally unanimous ones) really threaten their whole system. And their economy is dogshit. Just attacking them in terms of the price of their oil exports can fuck with them really badly.
Steele had been an FBI informant for about 20 years and reached out to them (Justice and FBI) directly. He was head of our closest ally's MI6 Russian desk. Not exactly a light-weight that can't be trusted.
The now-indicted Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was the Kremlin's lead in Magnitsky advocacy and defense. The meeting was set up under the pretense of offering "dirt". If there's a quid pro quo, not hard to read between the lines. Unless you're intellectually dishonest, that is.
If only we had modern day nazis to determine if they were left or right wing. I wonder if they'd name their rally "Unite the Left" or "Unite the Right".
Even if you suppose that to be correct, that refers to "direct evidence". There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence which our system of justice gives equal weight.