Instead of congratulating Trump for becoming the president-elect, we should congratulate Putin for cleverly engineering our presidential election. The former KGB agent made sure that his operatives were advising the Trump team, and that they released incriminating information about the Democratic Party’s inner circle and Hillary Clinton in particular. The FBI was aware of their involvement, but only the candidates were privy to this information, and of course Trump denied this fact.

We should ask ourselves what kind of information Putin and company are holding in store for us in the future with which to control U.S. policies. If they had just released Trump’s tax records and Russian business connections before the election — they certainly have them on file — we might have gotten an idea of what is in store for us.

Lore Ferguson

Vassalboro