I think the sooner questions are resolved about ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign, the sooner he can get on with the business of making America great again.
Questions about Russian interference in the U.S. election won’t go away. Intelligence agencies and Congress are investigating how Russia is using cyber warfare to influence public opinion in America, Europe and elsewhere.
President Trump and Republicans who control Congress will have a harder time convincing Americans of the need to repeal and replace the health care law, cut taxes and advance other parts of their domestic agenda when stories about Russia keep dominating the news cycle.
This week, Trump and Republicans enjoyed a brief surge in popularity. He was praised for appearing presidential during his Tuesday night address to Congress. For about 24 hours, there was a sense that Trump’s record-low approval ratings might have hit bottom.
There was talk he hit the “pivot.” His address, though devoid of facts and specifics, sounded optimistic. For a day, Trump’s ability to unite the American people seemed almost feasible. That was nice while it lasted.
Then on Wednesday night, The New York Times reported aides to President Barack Obama left a trail of intelligence “bread crumbs” for investigators exploring connections between Trump and Russia.
Also Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice with the Russian ambassador during the election campaign and failed to disclose those conversations during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing.
The goodwill and positive momentum generated by Trump’s speech to Congress quickly evaporated. Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, called on Sessions to resign, saying he committed perjury by lying to Congress.
Sessions campaigned for Trump. The White House on Thursday described the revelations of Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador as a partisan attack by Democrats. Sessions was acting in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the White House told Fox News, not as a representative of Trump’s campaign.
Thursday morning, Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, called for Sessions to recuse himself from the Justice Department investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Thursday afternoon, Sessions said he would recuse himself “from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.”
Pressure is mounting on congressional Republicans to agree to an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Democrats continue to insist on a 9/11-style commission, while Republicans thus far have permitted only queries by committees subject to partisan influence.
Democrats, loose-lipped intelligence agents, the press and other “enemies of the people” will not drop the issue. Until the questions are sufficiently resolved, there will be a steady stream of stories leaked to the media from intelligence sources and American allies, followed by more calls for independent investigations and resignations.
The constant negative coverage will continue to depress Trump’s approval ratings and distract from Republican efforts to keep the focus on creating jobs and growing the economy.
I think it’s in the best interests of Trump supporters and congressional Republicans to support thorough, independent investigations of Trump’s connections with Russia. Until the air is cleared, questions about potential conflicts will continue to nag the administration. GOP legislators might pay a political price for placing party before country by dragging their feet.
No one knows what the investigations might reveal. “We don’t know what we don’t know,” newsman Dan Rather wrote on Facebook Thursday. Usually, it’s not so much the crime as the cover-up that damages political careers.
Michael Flynn, for example, resigned as national security advisor after it was revealed he “misled” Vice President Mike Pence about his conversation with the Russian ambassador.
Americans will tire of the relentless drip of stories about Trump and Russia. Watch what happens when I write, “Hillary Clinton’s emails.” Do you feel a twinge of nausea in your stomach? Do you want to just forget the topic and move on to something else? I bet you do.
I think the “nothing to see here” response by Trump and Republicans is an ineffective political strategy. Questions will continue to dog the party in power about what Trump knew and when he knew it, and conflicts over his business dealings.
The threads between Trump and Russia are numerous. There’s Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who worked for pro-Russia Ukranian politician Viktor Yanukovych. Recent revelations of hacked text messages between Manafort and his daughter raise questions about whether Russians were trying to blackmail Manafort, Politico reported on Feb. 23.
There’s Wilbur Ross, newly confirmed Secretary of Commerce, who served as vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus. The bank is part owned by Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” reported Monday night.
Rybolovlev, the “King of Fertilizer,” paid Trump $100 million in 2008 for a Florida house that Trump bought for $40 million two years earlier, Maddow reported. The Bank of Cyprus chairman is former head of Deutsch Bank, which paid a $630 million fine for laundering illegal Russian money, according to Maddow.
Then there’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil. The company stands to earn billions of dollars by producing oil from 63 million acres on which it bought drilling rights in Russia and the Arctic, if U.S. sanctions against Russia are lifted, The New York Times and others have reported.
There’s that Feb. 19 New York Times report about Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, hand-delivering a proposal to Flynn in his office a week before he resigned as national security adviser.
The Times report said the proposal outlined how Russia wanted to use “compromising material” to remove the current Ukraine leadership and install a government more friendly to Russia. Ukraine voters would then be asked to approve a referendum to allow Russia to lease Crimea, the territory seized by Russia in 2014, thus clearing the way to lift U.S. sanctions.
Any one of these threads deserves independent and thorough investigation by Congress and intelligence agencies. The implications are potentially more serious than the 2012 Benghazi attack. Congress should devote at least as much time and resources investigating all the ties between Trump and Russia as it did scrutinizing Benghazi.
If Trump were to make public his tax returns, he might dispel some of the questions about potential conflicts and his campaign’s ties to Russia. But he’s not legally obligated to release them, so questions remain.
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, coauthored a piece in the magazine’s latest issue titled, “Trump, Putin and the New Cold War.” His magazine’s reporting provides historical context about Putin’s motives for wanting to disrupt free democracies.
The report cites a 2013 “doctrine” spelled out by Valery Gerasimov, Russian chief of general staff, who explained the use of tactics that “include efforts to shape the political and social landscape of the adversary through subversion, espionage, propaganda, and cyberattacks.”
This mounting body of evidence helps paint a clearer picture of ties between Trump and Russia. I believe additional revelations by the press, intelligence agencies and U.S. allies are forthcoming.
Republicans and Trump supporters face a choice. They can support independent, thorough investigations that will put to rest questions about Trump’s connections to Russia. If there is nothing improper in the relationships, Trump and his supporters should have no reason to object to calls for transparency.
If, on the other hand, Trump and Republicans resist efforts to get to the bottom of Russian efforts to interfere in America’s 2016 election, I think they’ll continue to have to respond to damaging revelations and accusations of obstruction.
Those who choose that path risk paying a political price for placing their party before country.
Twitter @tedslowik
