lion, thank you for tracking down those Lawfare pieces, both v. interesting.
Lawfare/L'Affaire Russe:
I have only had a quick scan, but it is very thought provoking.
Aside from whatever the Oaf knew/did re Russian interference, his rage, insecurity, inability for restraint are constant factors, rooted in his consuming need for self-preservation. And his extreme narcissism means he has none of the normal moral restraints, so, from his pov, using the Russians would be fine if he saw advantage in it, whatever the potential damage for his nation. Admiring autocrats for him is natural, they appear to have what he wants, unmediated power, plus the 'strongman' effect. He would not need to know exactly what the Russians have on him, he knows what he did, so he would fear exposure of sexual/financial misdeeds (not through guilt, self-preservation, again). It seems just possible that there has been an horrific confluence of chancers, malign foreign actors, the insatiably greedy, ruthless power grabbers, the amoral, mixed with some financial jeopardy, corruption and criminality. The Oaf is a chaos agent, so it should be unsurprising there is a maelstrom of crud in his orbit.
It is possible to look at this behavior, in general, as evidence that suggests that the underlying facts of L’Affaire Russe must be very bad—that is, that we must be at the more menacing end of the spectrum (perhaps Theory #6 or #7), not the more innocent end. Who, after all, triggers a major probe into obstruction of justice in order to impede an investigation that’s going nowhere anyway? On the other hand, it’s also possible to look at the obstruction investigation as simply a matter that Trump blundered into and to see his interactions with law enforcement more as a feature of his personality than his actual vulnerability from L’Affaire Russe. Perhaps Trump fired Comey in a fit of rage and insecurity over the legitimacy of his election, and then was unable to restrain himself from attempting to meddle with each subsequent development as Mueller developed his investigation into the initial firing of Comey—resulting in a cascade of obstruction attempts not necessarily connected to any underlying crime.