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Asking the most important question about Russia
SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies
Published: March 23, 2018
The most important question to be answered about Russian interference in the 2016 election is the one getting the least attention. After a weekend of threats and recriminations about the ongoing investigations, it’s time to spotlight that question.
The most important question is not who in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign knew about Russian interference or whether they colluded with Russian nationals.
And to my friends on the right, I would gently suggest that the most important question is definitely not who paid for the Steele dossier or how many Democrats are working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The most important question is how the United States will safeguard the integrity of future elections.
Our government is not asking questions about the next election because of the time and energy it takes to protect the president from question about the last election.
The recent announcement that the House Intelligence Committee is ending its investigation of Russian interference is the arguably the most egregious example of this dynamic.
Investigative journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff, in the course of discussing their new book about the 2016 election, have noted that Mueller’s investigation is purely criminal. That is, he is charged with determining if laws were broken and if so, by whom.
That means that he is not charged with determining what vulnerabilities exist in our political and electoral system and recommend countermeasures. That would be the purview of intelligence agencies (which the president undercuts whenever they mention Russia) or Congressional committees.
It’s easy to forget against the immediate memory of committee investigations being used to score political points off the likes of the tragedy in Benghazi, but when Congress investigates something, it’s supposed to be doing so with an eye toward passing legislation.
Republicans on The House Intelligence Committee loudly announced that they were ending their investigation of Russian meddling upon their finding that the Trump campaign did not coordinate activities with the Russians.
As dubious as that finding is, it should have been the beginning of the committee’s work, not the end. The committee’s statement did not say that the Russians did nothing, only that they don’t believe that the Trump campaign was in on it. If the committee was properly investigating the matter, it would turn its focus onto protecting the country, not taking a victory lap on behalf of the president.
That Russia interfered is so well established that the president now admits it. In his attempts to minimize the import of the investigation, he has evolved from describing Russian meddling as a “made up story” (as he described it in his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt) to braying that there was no collusion (as he regularly does on Twitter, USUALLY IN ALL CAPS).
The efforts of the administration and its congressional allies to obstruct the investigation matter most for how they prevent a comprehensive response to the threat posed to American elections.
When the question of the president’s possible obstruction of justice is litigated, the sentinel question will likely be “What did the President tweet and when did he tweet it?” Following each action that may have either an innocent or corrupt motive, he invariably launches a torrent of tweets that leaves no doubt that all roads lead back to investigation.
It happened again last weekend after the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe was ostensibly fired because of “lack of candor” when interviewed by the Inspector General investigating information given to a reporter in 2016 about the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The Friday night of McCabe’s dismissal, a Trump tweet crowing about it linked him to ousted FBI Director James Comey and “the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI.”
The next day he inveighed against the Fake News, reiterated allegations agains McCabe’s wife (a Trumpian fever dream not worth unpacking), and concluding “Comey knew it all, and much more!” Seven hours later he responded to that tweet, claiming that “the Mueller probe should never have been started,” then resetting each of his talking points against the investigation.
Within 24 hours, the president took a disciplinary action supposed predicated on incidents entirely separate from the Mueller probe and drew the lines right back to Russia.
Through it all, he refuses to acknowledge the threat posed by future Russian interference. He won’t even spend the money appropriated to counter it.
Even the president’s defenders must admit that the government expends an outsized amount of effort shielding the president from the investigation. It’s easy to miss how little we are doing to protect ourselves from an adversary as a result.