President Trump wasted no time in firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and appointing a loyalist to replace him the day after the midterm elections. This may be the president’s most serious maneuver yet to impede Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
With the president’s latest effort to disrupt the Mueller investigation and with the Democrats in control of the House of Representatives in January, Washington is on the verge of a legal and political war that is likely to dominate the national consciousness for months and influence the nature of the rule of law in the country into the future.
If unhindered, Mueller undoubtedly will render his findings in coming weeks on the core question of whether Trump campaign operatives cooperated with the Russians to help Trump in the 2016 election.
Despite the president’s constant protests that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt,” publicly available information makes a strong circumstantial case. Trump, in a speech on July 27, 2016, pleaded for Russian help in his presidential campaign. Russia complied. Wikileaks dumped thousands of Hillary Clinton emails into the public arena, and Russian Internet trolls flooded the American social media platforms with pro-Trump anti-Clinton material.
Meanwhile, Trump’s senior staff advisers in the campaign carried on an unprecedented set of meetings with Russian officials and murky characters linked to Russia before and after the election. Those involved included Trump’s selectee for national security adviser, the future attorney general, Trump’s campaign manager, and close members of his family.
Leaked U.S. intelligence reports also suggest that son-in-law Jared Kushner was caught proposing a secret communication channel using Russian diplomatic channels to communicate between Moscow and the Trump transitionteam.TheTrumpTowermeeting with the Russians during the campaign, the president’s yuk-it-up private gathering with senior Russians and Russian reportersintheOvalOfficeinMay2017, and his exclusive one-on-one meetings with Putin all support a compelling circumstantial case for cooperation.
The president’s alleged obstruction of justice seems obvious from the firing of the attorney general and the FBI director, an avalanche of tweets, interviews, threats and actions to discredit the Mueller investigation.
But campaign cooperation and obstruction of justice are secondary to a more critical issue looming over President Trump and the Russians.
The causes of Trump’s skeptical attitude toward Russian attacks on American democracy and his subservience in Putin’s presence remain a mystery. Trump’s overall behavior raises an alarming question related directly to the investigation into the Russia’s assault on American democracy: Was the president of the United States somehow compromised personally or financially by Putin and the Russians?
Vladimir Putin’s autocratic regime is built on corruption and intimidation. For a system as compromised as Putin’s, corrupting foreign officials and using covert Internet propaganda are cost-efficient ways to exert international influence and weaken enemies. The likelihood that Putin’s agents would try to compromise a character like Trump is virtually certain. The searing question is whether Trump took the bait.
In the case of a possible compromise of the president, the imperative from the Watergate investigate applies: Follow the money.
Trump seems unconcerned and unaffected by the public exposure of his sex life. Therefore, a scandal involving Russian recordings of Trump’s private behavior is less likely as a source of compromise. That leaves Trump’s finances and the Russians.
The president adamantly refuses to reveal his tax returns or his financial activities in recent years. But his obsession with money, his refusal to show his tax returns, and the shaky nature of his businesses make a thorough investigation into the possibility of a financial compromise an indispensable element of the Mueller inquiry. The Mueller investigation must evaluate whether Trump’s finances disclose that he was engaged in money laundering, corruption or other compromising relationships with Russians.
Mueller has valuable inside witnesses with the knowledge to enable his investigation to dig deep into any potential arrangements between the Trump organization’s finances and the Russians. Without a thorough inquiry into the possibility that the president was financially compromised by a hostile foreign power, the Special Counsel investigation into the Russian attack on American democracy will not be complete.
James Pardew, a native of Jonesboro, is a former U.S. ambassador in the Clinton and Bush administrations and a former career U.S. Army officer.