Chilli Palmer and Harry Zimm are sitting in the conference room of their adventurous production house, Megalodon Studios, discussing the casting for their next film, The Siberian Candidate. Palmer asks Zimm whom he has in mind for the leads, assuming money is no object, and everyone asked to join in signs on for what will assuredly be roles of a lifetime.

Zimm looks down at his notepad (he’s still analogue even if the rest of the world has gone digital) and he says, well for Hillary, he’d have to cast Meryl Streep. She’s perfect. Then for Vladimir Putin, who else but Ed Harris? And for Barack Obama, why naturally Harry Lennix – not so well known, maybe, but he’s tall, athletic, looks and acts just right for the part. Walter Koenig could be the FSB project team boss, if he’s not too old. It’s a small but critical part, the man who guides the whole complicated hacking attack. Maybe George Takei could even play Xi Jinping in one scene too. And, as for Donald Trump? [Zimm does a quick drum roll with his fingers on the table] “Why who else but Jerry Springer?” Palmer practically falls out of his chair laughing, before he says, “That’s outstanding. Brilliant. Do you think he’d do it?” (Well, actually he was more profane but this is a family website.)

Zimm nods vigorously in the affirmative. Then he adds, “And just imagine, Melania Trump could play herself – not too many words to memorise – and Michelle Obama could do the same in a cameo as well. She was a star on the campaign trail, right? And all those congressmen and senators – and a myriad television talking heads, don’t forget the talking heads – they’ll all do themselves on screen, and they’ll do it just for being listed in the screen credits, just like they always do in the movies.”

Palmer asks him about the script. Zimm starts to laugh and then he says, “No need to worry about it. The Washington Post, The New York Times and the CIA have already written most of it for us. I just need someone to collate it all properly, fill in the blank spots like the Russkies talking about their plans, and then an editor will cut away the repetitions and add the segues to keep it rolling right along. We just have to make sure we footnote the whole thing properly in our original copy, or no one will believe us – or maybe they will and then they’ll try to sue us.”

“Absolutely,” says Palmer. Then Palmer adds, “And are there good, maybe small, but meaty roles for Karen Flores, Bear, and Martin Weir too? Gotta give Flores something – maybe she could be Kellyanne Conway? Way better looking, that Flores is!”

Well, okay, Zimm and Palmer are fictional characters and this is just made up, so far, although such folks are modelled after just the kinds of people one finds these days. And you can just bet the farm, someone, very real, is already beginning to think about how this will all work as a high-quality, made-for-television movie in the mold of Recount, and that it will be in the works by the end of 2017. The only thing missing right now, of course, is an ending. How in the world will this astonishing, amazing, unbelievable story end?

What’s going on here? Perhaps we should review the events in brief. Alert readers may recall that in the midst of the primary campaign and nominating process, large – and unflattering – collections of e-mails from within the Democratic National Committee, as well as a separate cache from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s computer, began making their way into the public eye, courtesy of Wikileaks.

While none of the e-mails spoke to actual dirty tricks, or illegal acts against Clinton’s nomination competitor Senator Bernie Sanders, during his campaign, they did point to a real sense of favouritism on the part of the DNC towards Clinton, as well as giving some very unflattering portrayals of the ways of the Clinton campaign and its personnel. These revelations, together with the continuing issue of Clinton’s own personal e-mails from that privately managed server in her basement – the messages turned over to the FBI, the personal ones that were deleted, and then the ones included in the e-mail cache recovered from her aide, Huma Abedin, and Abedin’s husband’s laptop – all contributed to a growing public sense, even among some nominal supporters and Democratic voters, that the Clinton campaign was up to no good, somehow, somewhere or other.

This e-mail issue was given further impetus when Donald Trump called upon the Russians (in what he insisted was an ironic joke, ex post facto, few found very funny) to locate Clinton’s deleted e-mails, since they were so good at hacking. This came as it was becoming increasingly likely those Russians had been party in some way to the hacking of the DNC’s computers. (Did Trump know even then what we have only now learned about Russia’s engagement with e-mail hacking?)

Along the way, Trump had joked about it further. He insisted that no one really knew if the hackers were Russians, Chinese, or some 400-pound guy eating too many Twinkies and sitting on the side of his bed in New Jersey with his laptop. Funny guy, that Trump.

By the time the actual election rolled around, it was becoming increasingly apparent some really serious hacking had taken place. It became more and more troubling once it became clear to the US intel community that while hacking had also taken place against the Republican National Committee, no RNC e-mails, or from any related campaign offices, had been released to the public. Instead, all the released e-mails were solely those that would embarrass the Democrats, their national committee, or their principal candidate.

Now, couple these observations with Donald Trump’s vigorous expressions of admiration of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule over Russia, his aggressive (and deadly) support for Bashir al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and Trump’s own repeated statements that he wanted to get along with Russia, in stark comparison with his denunciations of China. From this, a picture was beginning to emerge of a Russia doing rather more than simply hacking American political party offices for the heck of it. Instead, the image that was coming into view was that of one where the Russians – perhaps through a few cutouts and other intermediaries – were actively trying to interfere with the American election itself, nudging the outcome towards Trump’s side of things, rather than simply promoting the idea that the entire American political process was rigged, disreputable and corrupt.

Not too surprisingly, the American intelligence community had begun investigations into this whole unseemly business. If it actually were true the Russians were trying to skew the 2016 election towards Donald Trump as their favoured candidate through the use of willing pawns such as Wikileaks (once damaging information had been winnowed out of the e-mail servers by organisations working on behalf of the FSB and GRU – the two main Russian intel services), this would represent an extraordinarily grave interference with American politics. One would have to look back almost to the beginnings of the American polity for something remotely comparable. The only real examples would be the attempted political interference by revolutionary France in the X, Y, Z and Citizen Genet affairs, back in those pre-Internet days, in trying to gain support for America’s involvement in the ongoing French-English struggles, post-1789, on behalf of France.

Then, by the end of last week, the news broke that a CIA evaluation of these hacks and leaks had determined it was the Russians and their “captive” hackers who had carried out these raids. Moreover, the only rational explanation was that beyond delegitimising the electoral process generally, the effort had been carried out to help Donald Trump’s electoral chances. Observers have speculated that the impetus for this effort – besides the Trump-Putin bromance – was Vladimir Putin’s continuing belief that all those grassroots, anti-Putin, pro-democracy demonstrations and related efforts by NGOs in Russia in 2011-12 had been aided, abetted or manufactured by American agents provocateur operating on behalf of then-Secretary of State Clinton. By that logic, for the Russians, turnabout was fair play.

Following the reporting on the congressional briefing of those CIA findings (findings that had the concurrence of most of the intel community, although the FBI appeared less certain of actual motives and methods), there has been a growing sense of astonishment, then outrage in many quarters in official Washington. Numerous members of Congress – even Republicans such as Senator John McCain, for example – have now called for full congressional investigations, as well as much more thorough disclosure of all the evidence. This has led President Obama, a man who is now in the final month-plus of his presidency, to call for a full review of evidence and findings by the intel community, as well as for answers to the usual, “what did we know, when did we know it, and what can we do about it” questions.

The twiterratti, naturally enough, have been having a field day with these disclosures. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker and CNN wrote, “We are in an unprecedented situation: a president that 54% of voters opposed, elected with the help of a Russian intelligence operation” while Democratic strategist David Axelrod couldn’t restrain himself, writing, “I knew @realDonaldTrump had an appeal to Red states, but apparently that extended beyond our borders.”

In a recent comment, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul argued, “We know some facts, and they are disturbing. For instance, we know that Russian actors stole data from people working at the Democratic National Committee. We know that another foreign actor, WikiLeaks, published data stolen from the DNC to adversely affect Clinton. We also know that WikiLeaks and others published data stolen from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, in order to try to damage further the Democratic candidate. We also know that WikiLeaks did not publish similar kinds of data from the Trump campaign or the Republican Party….

“In addition, we know that Russian-government-controlled ‘media’ outlets such as RT and Sputnik campaigned openly for one candidate, Donald Trump. Sputnik even tweeted the hashtag #CrookedHillary. We have laws preventing foreign governments from contributing financial support to candidates. Should we have similar laws about in-kind support? Such regulation seems hard, in tension with our First Amendment, but shouldn’t our lawmakers wrestle with the issue? Should Sputnik and RT employees be accredited as journalists or as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? I don’t know. But we need to know….

“Stories also have circulated about Russian and other foreign actors involved in the production of fake news, as well as collaboration between Russian (and other foreign) and American leaders and movements regarding common political agendas, that is, a new ‘Illiberal International’ to replace the old Communist International. What was the full scope of these activities? Did any of these actions influence the election outcome? I don’t know, but we need to know.”

Meanwhile, The Economist, asking why all the fuss now rather than months or even years earlier, given that the hacking had been going on for some time, noted,

“After all, the basic allegation being debated has been out there for months: namely, that in 2015 and again in 2016 at least two groups of hackers with known links to Russian intelligence broke into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee, as that party’s national headquarters is known, and into the private e-mail system of such figures as John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, then released a slew of embarrassing e-mails to Wikileaks. Before the election a joint public statement by the director of national intelligence and secretary of homeland security saying that intelligence agencies are ‘confident’ that the Russian government directed the hacking – a statement that did little to sway supporters of Donald Trump, who heard their candidate cast doubt on that intelligence finding, and instead revel in the contents of the stolen e-mails as they hit the press. This, Mr Trump, was just more evidence that his opponent deserved the soubriquet ‘Crooked Hillary’.”

Well, okay, the voting is over, and this is now just some messy and unsatisfactory history for many. The magazine went on to note, however,

“All that has changed materially in recent days is that – thanks to reporting by the Washington Post and New York Times – we now know that the CIA briefed senior members of Congress before and after the election that, in the consensus view of intelligence analysts, the Russians’ motive was not just to undermine confidence in American democracy generally, but actively to seek Mrs Clinton’s defeat.” Meanwhile, “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” a senior American official, briefed on an intelligence presentation told senators, according to The Washington Post.

While these disclosures haven’t changed many partisan minds, The Economist added,

“Russian interference in elections across the Western world is like a nasty virus, attacking the body politic. Normally, America is protected by powerful, bipartisan immune responses against such a menace. It also boasts some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence and cyber-defences, and when spooks tell the Republicans and Democrats who lead Congress and sit on the House and Senate intelligence committees of hostile acts by a foreign power, love of country generates a unified response. That immune response is not kicking in this time.”

After the briefing, McCaul had told the media, “We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy,” and Senator John McCain had said, “Everybody that I know, unclassified, has said that the Russians interfered in this election. They hacked into my campaign in 2008; is it a surprise to anyone?”

But some Republicans are trying to shift blame to the Obama administration for not tackling Russian hacking more vigorously, earlier, and these Republicans have been reluctant to accept the more incendiary idea that the Russian government actively wanted a Trump victory. Meanwhile, Trump and his nascent administration-to-be is still insisting that no one really knows where the hacking came from – and they are continuing to blame that 400-pound New Jersey guy, overdosing on Twinkies. The Washington Post, in its reporting on the briefing, said that some Republicans improbably even tried to argue Russian hacking really meant Moscow would be more likely to want Mr Trump defeated than the victor because he had promised to beef up the nation’s armed forces.

Meanwhile, Trump himself has insisted the reports could be dismissed because the US intel community was at fault since they had given the Bush administration those false reports of weapons of mass destruction in pre-invasion Iraq. As a result, there was every reason to mistrust their evidence this time around. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the transition office’s statement reads. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again’.” Of course this is the same Trump who has been waving off the daily intel briefings accorded to presidents-elect for decades, arguing that he is smart enough to understand things without all this confusing information and analysis.

At this juncture, there are three important conundrums arising out of these revelations (assuming they are largely correct). First is the really vexed question of what happens to the legitimacy of the election results, once the evidence shows a major effort by a foreign government to affect the outcome of the US election in favour of one candidate. Still, there is no way for anyone to order a national do-over of this past election, or even to declare the results a mistake and award the prize to Hillary Clinton, but this will eat away still further at the nation’s acceptance of the outcome.

Second is the problematic situation for the Republican congressional majority. Many of them acknowledge their president-elect is espousing a litany of issues and solutions that belie traditional party values and policies. Instead they have a nativist-populist president-elect with a miraculous ability to speak to white working-class voters, even though his mercantilist, big-spending, expand entitlements positions run cross-grain to the party’s long-held views. As The Economist adds, “Many elements of Mr Trump’s policies make thoughtful Republicans queasy to the point of misery, from his fondness for Mr Putin to his willingness to pick up the telephone and bully company bosses into keeping specific factory jobs in America, as if he were a Gaullist French president rather than leader of a free-market democracy.”

Third, is Trump’s obvious willingness to do a deal with the Russians that means backing secular autocrats in the Middle East, in tandem with Putin’s ambitions in order to tackle ISIS and other extreme groups. But such an accommodation might also involve lifting sanctions on Russia over its Ukraine incursions, and agreeing to lessen the stance of Nato in Europe towards confronting Russian involvement in its increasingly nervous “near abroad”.

Given what has happened so far with all this, the increasingly likely nomination of oil giant Exxon-Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, as secretary of state, may just add fuel to this fire of the hacking and meddling issue. Tillerson is also a clear Russophile, and he is buddy-buddy, like National Security Advisor retired General Michael Flynn, with Putin and his clique.

While Flynn took up an invitation to get a little love from Putin and RT, the agitprop international television broadcaster, Tillerson’s company has been doing deals with Russian oil and gas companies. Tillerson himself has even been the recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship, the highest award that nation gives to foreigners.

When Tillerson’s confirmation hearing in the US Senate takes place, assuming he is actually the nominee, expect some rather harsh questions about his views on Russia, his relationship with Putin, and the whole pitch of the Trump administration’s eagerness to embrace Russia – and just perhaps the new president’s ire towards China, just to make things interesting. And such questions may well not be coming only from Democrats. There are many Republicans who, unlike their president-elect, have something less than love in their hearts towards Vladimir Putin and his kind. DM

Photo: A matryoshka doll with the face of US President-elect Donald Trump surrounded by other matryoshkas is displayed on the table of the street souvenir vendor in the Andriyivskyy Descent in downtown Kiev, Ukraine, 10 November 2016. Americans on 08 November chose Republican candidate Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America, to serve from 2017 through 2020. EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY