Putin is very smart and very savvy (he came up through the KGB). He may well have had Trump provide some juicy details but if he had him give all the best stuff up front the US intelligence agencies would likely notice and ruin future intel.
So, handle lightly and then, when his stooge is about to be done for anyway, grab the crown jewels and run.
I guess Putin knows that the information Trump gets might be tailor made to disinform him (Putin), but I guess he knows that what you have is in your hand, what you are promised to get is in the stars. The more you get soon, the better.
The Soviets made chess mandatory for school children. There is a reason the KGB was one of the most feared and successful intelligence agencies. They play a long game.
They definitely won’t do a smash and grab if they think they can get years of intelligence out of someone.
Do the smash and grab when that source is played out.
And Trump might be tempted to argue that what he revealed as president was legal, he has the autority to declassify it. But what he reveals afterward is treason (well, technically perhaps only spying, but still inexcusable, no matter the BS level)
Feared the KGB was, due to their ruthlessness. But successful? Then why did the Soviet Union collapse? Why did they lose in Afghanistan? Why did they lose Eastern Europe? Etc. etc.
Chess is overrated. A computer can play chess better than Putin.
Yup. I am pretty sure it is. There is no law stopping Trump from handing any intel to Russia that he wants. Only impeachment and we know that won’t happen.
That said, even if the president could not be prosecuted the intel agencies would almost certainly work to pollute the intel to make it less useful. Better for Putin to work his bitch slowly and then have him go all in when the gig is up.
The Soviets had lots of problems. Their intelligence service, no matter how good, can only do so much. It remains that the KGB was one of the best intelligence agencies in history. As I understand it in no small part because they were aces at corrupting people and making them spies for them. The CIA got more into signal intelligence and was a bit lazy at turning people into spies.
Also, is the US winning the war in Afghanistan?
Complex issues.
We’re getting off a tangent, let’s leave at that, OK? Otherwise they will accuse us of highjacking 
Sure…suffice it to say Trump is Putin’s bitch and I am really worried what Trump might do to make Putin happy:
What’s going to happen is this:
Two days after the elections, one of Biden’s top people is going to sit down for a cup of coffee with one of Trump’s top people, and make his boss the following offer: concede, don’t contest the elections and don’t screw up the transition period, and you’ll never see the inside of a prison cell. Trump will accept, and both sides will hold up their end of the deal. We’ll all be amazed how Trump folded so easily, then we’ll be dismayed he won’t be punished for his crimes, and the world will move on.
I have no right to enter Canada. And, right now, they won’t let me do it, or at least won’t let me do it unless I agree to conditions that would be unacceptable to me (quarantine).
What I have a right to do is to leave the United States for any country, we are not at war with, that will take me. .
As for taking away that right, it doesn’t require a jury trial, but it is regulated by law, including those concerning flight risk. In a democracy, whether I can leave is not determined by an elected supremo who issues orders against persons he has a feud with.
As a former moderate Republican, my number one concern with Donald Trump is that he talks like a dictator. And if, in his second term, he appoints fully compliant Justice Department leadership, he will be a dictator, That’s why I am very pleased at Joe Biden’s repeated pledge of non-interference with any Trump prosecution. Compare and contrast how a democratic leader talks with Trump’s lock him/her up.
If you are looking for a President who will try to get his predecessor locked up, I don’t think Joe Biden is your man. That sounds like something Donald Trump, or a communist, would do.
I am not looking for a President Biden who locks up tanTrump (that’s for the DAs to decide, I believe, and that I would salute). I am only contesting your believe in the “fundamental freedom” to leave your country. That you have not, there is no such absolute right, nowhere. Neither does tanTrump have that right, at least not after he loses the election (which I hope he will!).
What international law recognizes is a Right to Return to your own country. You may not be made stateless and may not be left stranded between borders, both sides refusing you entry.
What about state-level prosecutions, especially in New York? Do you predict that the Biden administration can shut that down?
I I think they could put some significant pressure on them - especially if part of the deal is that Trump testify against, well, everyone. Which he would.
What happens IF he leaves office – particularly IF he leaves the country (>> maybe TO a non-extradition nation) – and credible evidence surfaces that indicates that the MF actually looted the Treasury in one way or another ?
Damm. The first time the Trumpster threw one of his hissy fits, the Secret Service agents should have videotaped his tirade, beaten the holy fuck out of him, cuffed the bastard, and charged him with treason. Release the video to the public as evidence that Trump is a Russian pawn. There is no reason to have Putin’s bitch pretending to be president.
Here is an example:
The President — and attorney general — need to stop interfering with due process of law. They can concern themselves with staffing levels, construction, high-level departmental organization, and policy matters like improving prison conditions. Not which internal enemy we should prosecute. The latter should be the province of career civil servants.
I don’t care if Trump is still in the news after January 2021…as long as the news is about the investigations by various state AGs into his financial and other shenanigans.
Gerald Ford may have thought he was doing the country a favor by pardoning Nixon, but if he could have foreseen the bad precedent it set, I think he’d reconsider. “Sorry, Dick, you’re on your own. Find a good lawyer. Or ten.”
But taking away your passport is not the same as taking away your right to emigrate. As far as the US is concerned, you don’t need a passport to emigrate. True, some other countries might not let you in without one, but that’s due to their laws, not America’s.