Asterisk (*) Inauguration

In sports, an asterisk designates a questioned or tarnished record. America's new president enters the history books tainted by an asterisk that will never disappear.

When cyclist Lance Armstrong was caught cheating, he was stripped of all his titles and endorsements.

When Olympic athletes are caught doping, they are stripped of their medals, and new medals are awarded to others. When the Kremlin was caught operating a vast, state-sponsored doping program, the International Olympic Committee banned over a hundred Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.

Such are the universally accepted, expected and respected consequences of cheating.

Nobody blames the second-place finisher, or complains that they raced too slow. Nobody expects other competitors to prove they wouldn't have lost anyway. These are the accepted unwritten standards that govern fair play.

On Friday a man was sworn in as president* of the United States, and the asterisk next to his name will never be erased.

A hostile foreign power cheated in order to install the new president* as its puppet and defeat Hillary Clinton, whose policies it feared. That power, Russia, stands to gain hundreds of billions of dollars a year if the new president* lifts sanctions, an intention he's already signaled.

Those sanctions were imposed by the international community after Russia invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea, contrary to international law. Russia also hopes to weaken NATO, an alliance now joined by many former Soviet captive states who seek its protection.

By a hair, Russia's candidate won in three states that mattered, which delivered the Electoral College majority to him. Leave aside the popular vote margin of 2.1 per cent. In raw votes, Hillary Clinton received 4.5 per cent more votes than he did. It wasn't even close.

All that is history now. Let history record and never forget it.

This president* was inaugurated because, stunningly, the American electoral system has no mechanism to disqualify cheating, or to cope with intervention by hostile foreign governments. It has no system that actually required vetting and disclosure for candidates.

This president's* campaign team is currently under major investigation by his own intelligence agencies and has been for months.

The New York Times reports that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications involving the Kremlin and its intermediaries and the new president's* campaign team and close associates. They are also examining Russian financial transactions for links to the election.

Indeed, this investigation was first reported by the writer and former British Conservative MP Louise Mensch, the day before the U.S. election. According to Mensch, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant includes authorizing an investigation into a private server located in Trump Tower for connections between the campaign and two Russian banks.

The new president* has the power to halt those investigations. He does not have the power to halt the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into collusion between his team and the Kremlin.

He does not have the power to halt investigations or intelligence-gathering by U.S. allies, all of whom (including Canada) are now at risk of Kremlin access to shared intelligence. He does not have the power to halt leaks by those allies, or by other interested parties, foreign and domestic, that may have come into possession of that intelligence.

Nothing will ever render the new president's* inauguration as legitimate. It is the fruit of the poisoned tree, and the poison has entered the bloodstream.

The die is cast. Now we wait.