OUR LONG DYSFUNCTION
Wednesday, June 21, 2023, was the longest day of the year.
It was also the day the House of Representatives censured California Rep. Adam Schiff and John Durham testified for six hours before the House Judiciary Committee. The fact that both took place on June 21 is fitting. Because the longest day was host to yet another episode of America's long dysfunction, one that began in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and continues to rear its ugly head even as our better angels fight mightily to rescue us.
House Republicans, themselves a dysfunctional lot on so many levels, decided to censure Schiff for investigating Russia's now proven efforts to elect Donald Trump and for leading the first impeachment inquiry of the former president. Meanwhile, over at the Judiciary Committee, John Durham was ostensibly defending his recently issued 306-page report on the FBI's 2016 investigation of Trump. In both cases, the GOP claimed that there was no basis for any investigation of Trump's ties to Russia during his first presidential campaign.
The claim is borderline frivolous but emblematic of what counts for deep analysis these days by House Republicans.
First, some background.
The evidence that Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians is beyond peradventure.
The dictionary defines collusion as "people working secretly together for dishonest purposes." Hence, when -- as has been proven to be the case -- Trump's then campaign chairman Paul Manafort secretly shared the campaign's polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian Intelligence Services operative, the campaign was colluding with the Russians. Similarly, when Don Jr. took a meeting with a Russian lawyer in order to obtain "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, the campaign was again colluding with Russia. And when George Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy advisor, told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had dirt on Clinton and had hacked her campaign emails, the latter of which it began to release two months later, Papadopoulos at the very least created the impression that either he knew someone in Trump world was colluding with Russia or was doing so himself.
That neither the Kilimnik leak nor Junior's eagerness resulted in a federal conspiracy charge, in the first case because Robert Mueller could not determine what Russia did with the polling data or why Manafort gave it to them and in the second because the lawyer provided no dirt, proves the absence of sufficient evidence of the crime of conspiracy; it does not, however, demonstrate the absence of collusion. And when combined with the fact that Russia undertook a massive (and fraudulent) social media campaign on behalf of Trump, stole 20,000 Clinton campaign emails that it then released in order to embarrass the Democratic nominee, and was literally invited by Trump -- who routinely praised Putin -- to do more to subvert Clinton ("Russia, if you're listening . . ."), the notion that Trump's campaign was not in cahoots with the Russians is laughable.
Now, however, comes the House GOP and John Durham pretending that any investigation into Trump's relationship with Russia was improper from the get go. Durham gets there by splitting hairs. His voluminous report states that the FBI should have started only a "preliminary" assessment or investigation of Trump and then stopped. Why this should be so is unclear. The Papadopoulos tip was passed to the FBI at the time Russia began revealing hacked Clinton campaign emails. The hacking and a Trump operatives apparently prior knowledge of Russia's involvement was the initial basis for the FBI opening an investigation in July 2016 and that investigation, ultimately taken over by Robert Mueller, revealed the Kilimnik leak, the Don Jr. meeting, and the enormous scope of Russia's election interference.
Although Mueller concluded he had insufficient evidence (i.e., evidence that would not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt) to charge a federal conspiracy, he had plenty of evidence of obstruction by Trump world. Papadopoulos lied about the timing of his contacts with and information obtained from apparent Russian operatives; Manafort lied about his contacts and data sharing with Kilimnik; Roger Stone lied about tipping the Trump campaign on Russia’s leaks of Clinton campaign emails; and Trump himself repeatedly gave what Mueller deemed to be “evasive and misleading” answers to written interrogatories. As for Don Jr., he just took the Fifth on many questions, and though perfectly legal, it stymied the quest for relevant information.
We will never know whether the Trump campaign or Trump himself illegally conspired with the Russians in 2016. But there’s no doubt that his campaign “worked secretly for dishonest purposes” or in other words colluded with them.
No American campaign can solicit gifts from foreigners.
Trump’s did that in spades.
From Russia.
A country run by a fascist war criminal . . .
Longing for his Soviet past.
The nation fighting that fascist as we speak is Ukraine. It’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been widely hailed for uniting his countrymen and women, crippling Russia’s initial attempt in 2022 to overrun it and install a puppet regime in Kyiv, and now fighting offensively to retake eastern sections occupied by Russian invaders. In July 2019, Trump tried to bribe him into announcing a fraudulent investigation of Joe Biden by withholding appropriated military aid Ukraine desperately needed. Zelensky, however, would not bite and when Trump’s solicitation became public, the House impeached him for the first time. For being the lead prosecutor in that first impeachment, and for previously saying "there was evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia" (as noted above, there was), the GOP led House has now censured Adam Schiff.
The censure was a farce.
Designed to assuage its MAGA base, and as I put it in this space back then (see "Playing For History", January 17, 2020), the GOP ignored the "mountain of evidence establishing [Trump's guilt of the first impeachment charges] -- witnesses (e.g., Lt. Col. Vindman) who recount[ed] Trump asking Ukraine's Zelensky in a July phone call to investigate Biden; the actual read out of the call produced by the White House; contemporaneous accounts from Ambassadors Sondland, Volker and Yovanovitch confirming that Trump held up aid to get his demanded 'investigations'; other witnesses confirming that Ukraine knew it was being held hostage; and complete stonewalling by the White House in response to subpoenas for documents and witnesses. No witnesses were given permission to testify. Those who did simply defied the White House."
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