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Dysfunctions Last Updated: Jun 25, 2018 - 12:15:37 PM


Trump’s Afraid Of The Obstruction Case
By Nicholas Grossman, ARC 23/6/18
Jun 24, 2018 - 9:14:16 AM

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That’s why he focuses on collusion

Conflated in the public mind are three Trump-Russia investigations: election interference, collusion, and obstruction.

These are best understood as related but different inquiries. However, political partisans have incentives to treat them as a single investigation — with anti-Trumpers looking to discredit the president in the hope of ultimately removing him from office, and Trump supporters looking to discredit any of these investigations in the hope of protecting Trump from all of them.

Of the three, Trump is most worried about obstruction of justice, because it’s the only one that can be tied to him directly. And the case for obstruction just got stronger.

 

Election Interference

Russian influence operations aimed at the 2016 election are well known at this point: Bots, trolls, paid advertisements (on Facebook and elsewhere), along with stolen DNC and Clinton campaign emails strategically released by WikiLeaks. Additionally, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released on May 8, Russian government-affiliated operatives targeted electoral systems in at least 18 states. None of the hackers were in a position to change votes, but they could have altered voter registration data.

These “active measures” aim to exacerbate societal divisions and undermine confidence in the political system. And they’re still going, exploiting social media to spread conspiracy theories, misinformation, and Russia-friendly spin, enhanced by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik. This will continue for the indefinite future. Electoral systems remain vulnerable.

In February, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies — all connected to the troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency — on charges of violating campaign finance laws, identity theft, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. It’s unlikely the indicted Russians come to the U.S. to stand trial, but the indictments establish a baseline for Russian electoral interference.

There’s some disagreement over the intent and effect of Russia’s efforts, but few Americans dispute the existence of influence operations targeting the United States — a rarity in this bitterly divided era. With bipartisan, veto-proof super-majorities in both houses, Congress imposed sanctions against Russia for election interference.

That bipartisanship falls apart when the question shifts to Russia’s intentions. In 2016, the intelligence community determined that Russia aimed to help Trump and hurt Clinton. Two weeks ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Republican Richard Burr, concurred. However, the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, which collapsed into partisan fighting, ended with a Republican-only report claiming Russia aimed to undermine public confidence in the political system, not help nor hurt any specific candidate.

And the most divisive question is whether the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia in these efforts.

Collusion

Internet conspiracy theorists, such as Louise Mensch and Seth Abramson, allege that Trump and Putin have been working together since at least 2013, when Trump traveled to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. Trump and his supporters insist the whole thing’s made up by the president’s political enemies.

The truth is surely somewhere in the middle.

The public already knows of many contacts between Team Trump and Russian government representatives, during both the 2016 campaign and subsequent presidential transition. Trump officials have been caught lying about these contacts many times. According to Donald Trump Jr.’s published emails, the president’s son eagerly agreed to meet with someone identified as a representative of the Russian government looking to share “very high level and sensitive information” on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Jared Kushner and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort joined their meeting in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016.

The pro-Trump account of this meeting shifted multiple times before settling on the claim that the Russians they met did not actually have dirt on Hillary to share. Basically, they wanted to collude with Russia, and tried to, but failed, and this is perfectly okay, but they still lied about it, for reasons.

But the Trump Tower meeting casts doubt on theories of a grand conspiracy. So do subsequent contacts — such as Jared Kushner’s efforts to set up backchannel communications via Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 — which they also lied about. But if Trump and Putin had been working together since 2013, why would they need to set up these lines of communication?

A common mistake regarding collusion is to assume it’s about Trump himself. The president did not attend Don Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting, and there’s no publicly-known evidence of the president communicating directly with Russian government representatives during the campaign. As a result, his supporters claim the investigation’s “got nothing.”

However, Mueller’s mandate is to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” (emphasis added), as well as the more open ended mandate to explore “any matters that arose or may arise from the investigation.” Even if we assume Trump did not commit any crimes, many individuals associated with the Trump campaign did.

Most notably, Paul Manafort has been indicted for conspiracy, money laundering, failing to disclose foreign assets, and fraud. And five others have already plead guilty to breaking federal laws:

  • Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor (false statements)
  • Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy (conspiracy against the United States, false statements)
  • George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the campaign (false statements)
  • Richard Pinedo, an American who did not work for the campaign, but created bank accounts with identities stolen from American citizens and sold them to foreign entities (identity theft)
  • Alexander van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer (false statements regarding Gates’ contacts with Ukraine)

Flynn, Gates, Papadopoulos, and Manafort were all part of the Trump campaign. It’s widely assumed the five guilty pleas are part of deals to provide prosecutors with information on crimes committed by others, perhaps including Kushner and Don Jr.

Additionally, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is conducting a related investigation into Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen could face charges related to money laundering, bribery, and undisclosed lobbying for foreign governments, involving not just Kremlin-connected Russians, but Qatar and other countries as well.

We know top Trump officials tried to collude with Russia, and we know Mueller found evidence of crimes involving “individuals associated with the campaign.” But the special counsel’s office has not alleged that Trump himself colluded with Russia or broke the law. Nor has the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There’s a decent chance they never do.

Obstruction

It’s hard to believe Trump had no idea what his family members and top officials were up to, but it’s also hard to prove he knew. Team Trump likely insulated the boss from any attempts to collude or other criminal activity during the campaign. For example, Trump did not join his son, son-in-law, and campaign chair at the meeting where they expected to receive Russian dirt on Hillary.

But as president, he’s exposed.

Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the investigation into Russian electoral interference and Trump campaign collusion. Comey claims Trump asked him for personal loyalty and pressured him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn. And Trump said on television he fired Comey because “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” Comey’s firing led Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller.

And now, adding fuel to the fire, the New York Times reports that Trump tried to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take control of the Mueller investigation. Sessions appropriately recused himself, because he worked on the Trump campaign. Trump reportedly wants a loyalist to oversee the investigation, and is furious Sessions abdicated the role. Sessions refused the president’s request, and Trump subsequently attacked the Attorney General in public and private, likely trying to get him to resign.

There’s no way Trump can claim these efforts to influence the investigation were the work of freelancing underlings. And, while there’s a decent argument a sitting president cannot be indicted for criminal obstruction of justice, obstruction — along with abuse of power — formed the basis of the impeachment cases against Nixon and Clinton.

Trump’s Defense

Recognizing that the president faces more danger from an impeachment trial in Congress than a criminal trial in the courts, Trump’s counter-strategy is more political than legal. No matter how strong the case for obstruction — and even if, to my surprise, Mueller finds strong evidence of collusion — Congress could decide to do nothing.

Because Congress is sensitive to public opinion, Trump’s running the OJ Simpson defense: aiming to discredit the investigators.

A similar strategy worked for Bill Clinton. Clinton lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and got Monica to lie under oath, which led the Republican-controlled House to impeach for perjury and obstruction. However, Clinton and his supporters argued it was a politically-motivated “witch hunt” — yes, they used that phrase — and the Senate declined to remove him from office.

Trump denounces the Russia investigation as a witch hunt, and his defenders argue it began illegitimately as an Obama administration effort to discredit Trump’s campaign.

Their rationale shifts frequently:

Trump claimed Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in 2016. But no one could produce any evidence.

Trump, along with his allies in Congress and the media, claimed that Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice illegally “unmasked” Trump campaign officials, revealing the names of American citizens who participated in legally-monitored communications with foreigners. Reviews led to a bipartisan conclusion that Rice acted appropriately.

Then they tried claiming the Russia investigation began with a dossier of opposition research conducted by former British spy Christopher Steele. House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes wrote a memo calling this a scandal, because the FBI used some of Steele’s findings to get a warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page without revealing that the information came from a political source.

But the FBI had multiple reasons to suspect Page might be working for Russia, Nunes admitted the warrant application acknowledged the political origins of Steele’s info, and his memo said information unrelated to Steele involving George Papadopoulos “triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.”

Now that those three allegations have fallen apart — at least outside of Trump diehards’ information bubble — their new claim is that Obama placed a spy within the Trump campaign. In 2016, as part of the counterintelligence investigation, the FBI asked a retired professor in Britain named Stefan Halper to meet with some Trump advisers suspected of working with the Russian government. Like the other supposed malfeasance, this action was appropriate.

Fox News announced it “knows of no evidence to support the president’s claim.” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, who chaired the largest Benghazi investigation, left a classified briefing on Halper’s activities saying:

I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

As Gowdy recognizes, the arguments against a counterintelligence investigation into some members of the Trump campaign are incredibly weak. Starting in 2015 and continuing into 2016, U.S. intelligence received tips from the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Australia, all of whom separately collected signals intelligence (intercepted communications) raising suspicions Russia was trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Ignoring that would have been a dereliction of duty.

On March 21, 2016, Trump listed his campaign’s foreign policy advisers. One was George Papadopoulos. Another was Carter Page, who had been on the FBI’s radar as a potential Russian asset since 2013.

On March 29, 2016, Trump made Paul Manafort his new campaign chair. Manafort spent the last decade earning money from Russia to advance Russian national interests, primarily in Ukraine.

Trump defenders are trying to argue that, faced with all these reasons to be suspicious, the FBI should have done nothing. Not that the investigation should ultimately clear Trump and his campaign of wrongdoing — which, with the exception of the guilty pleas, is still possible — but that the Americans tasked with countering foreign intelligence operations shouldn’t have even looked into it. It’s ridiculous.

But it’s working.

A recent poll found strong partisan splits on the question of the Mueller investigation’s legitimacy. Seventy-six percent of Democrats say yes, while 75 percent of Republicans say no. A plurality of independents think it’s legitimate, but it’s close.
(The Economist/YouGov poll, conducted May 6–8, 2018)

The numbers have grown more favorable for Trump. As recently as December, 61 percent of Americans believed Russian interference “should be fully investigated,” while 34 percent said it was “mainly an effort to discredit Donald Trump’s presidency.” That compares to 43 percent legitimate, 37 percent witch hunt in May 2018.
(CNN poll, conducted December 14–17, 2017)

The polling questions aren’t identical, but they’re close enough to indicate a big shift among independents. While Democrats and Republicans’ opinions haven’t changed much, independents went from 60 percent legitimate-34 percent illegitimate to 37 percent-33 percent.

As Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani admitted this week, Trump defenders’ claims about the counterintelligence investigation are part of a political strategy:

It is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. Members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. So, our jury is the American — as it should be — is the American people.

Maybe it wasn’t savvy to say it in public, but Rudy’s right. The intelligence community will respond to Russia’s active measures. The criminal justice system will prosecute Manafort, Cohen, and others. But the questions surrounding Trump will be decided politically, with the first big contest the 2018 midterms.


Source:Ocnus.net 2018

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