Naturally conservative reaction to the Mueller indictment of Russians and Russian businesses is far more muted and pointed in a different direction than everyone else, so I thought it might be interesting to rebut one of their editorials.
In
Russia Launches ‘Information’ War, U.S. Responds with Lawsuit and Self-Destruction conservative National Review columnist Andrew C. McCarthy explains why the Mueller indictment of 13 Russians and 3 Russian businesses is a useless even counterproductive exercise. His essay of excuses is easy to rebut (I don't quote everything McCarthy says - for the full editorial follow the link):
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Mueller’s indictment is an ineffectual response to a provocation by Russia.
Mr. McCarthy, you must be operating under the delusion that Mueller thought Russia would extradite their citizens. The real reason Mueller issued the indictment was to remove all ability of the Trump administration to maintain that Russian interference in our election was a hoax. That it worked is shown by Trump's 13 tweets today that revealed a pathetic, deranged, ego-driven figure.
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That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s cohesion as such. Our response should not be, nor appear to be, the filing of a lawsuit. That is provocatively weak.
Again, the goal of the indictment is not to try Russians in U.S. courts of law. It's to prove the Russia scandal is no hoax.
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The Russia probe has been a counterintelligence investigation, as it should be. That is why I’ve complained from the first that it was inappropriate to put a prosecutor in charge of it.
McCarthy fails to mention Trump's role in making necessary the appointment of the special counsel, and he is wrong about Mueller's role being solely that of a prosecutor.
First, Trump has only himself to blame for the appointment of a special counsel. The Russia probe began as a counterintelligence investigation under the direction of FBI director Comey, but then Trump fired Comey in May of 2017. Attorney General Sessions had to recuse himself because of his failure to disclose two meetings with the Russian ambassador while working for the Trump campaign, and since the FBI's new director would be appointed by Trump who was a subject of the Russia probe, it fell to deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. If Trump hadn't fired Comey, no special counsel.
Second, Mueller's role is not just prosecutor but also investigator. He has the power to direct both FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. The amount of detail in the Russia indictment makes clear that he has a great deal of investigative power at his fingertips. You are dead wrong that Mueller's role is solely that of prosecutor.
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The main thrust of this complaint has been that a prosecutor should not be assigned unless there is first strong evidence of a crime. But that is not the half of it.
You dig yourself a hole with this error that Mueller is just a prosecutor, then your just continue digging yourself deeper:
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A government lawyer is a hammer who sees every problem as the nail of a lawsuit.
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To the contrary, we use counterintelligence rather than criminal investigation to thwart foreign adversaries because prosecution is a woefully inadequate response. The point of counterintelligence is to gather information so we can stop our enemies, through meaningful retaliation and discouragement. Generally, that means diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and, in extreme cases, military means. It could mean deploying our own cyber capabilities. The idea is not to invade every rogue nation. It is to respond to provocations in a manner that hurts our rivals conveying that the prohibitive cost we will exact makes attacking us against their interests.
Repeating a fallacy as you do here doesn't turn it into a truth. Trump demonstrates the failure of repetition to turn lies into truth every day.
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That cannot be accomplished by a mere indictment on which no one will be tried.
Again, the purpose of the indictment was to destroy the credibility of Trump's claims that Russian meddling in the 2016 election was a hoax.
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When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly.
Why repeat your daft charge Mueller thinks he can arrest Russians in Russia?
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That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens...That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia.
Yes, of course. It's time to note that you can't really believe this crap you're peddling. You'rejust doing what all defenders of presidents in trouble do. What you're doing now for Trump was done by plenty of Republicans for Nixon and plenty of Democrats for Bill Clinton. That they had no leg to stand on is made clear by how little sense they made and by how much they focused on irrelevancies. One ploy you have in common with them is casting criticism and blame on the investigators instead of the investigated, a form of misdirection that seems to fail every time, acting as a holding action at best.
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Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument.
In this I think you are correct. Putting a stop's to Trump drumbeat of false claims that Russian meddling was a hoax was important politically.
To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion...the indictment demonstrates that the special counsel has been hard at work.
You start your piece by not getting it, but now suddenly you get it?
Through all the months of public debate over whether there was criminal-collusion evidence against the president, we have stressed that the main focus of the counterintelligence investigation is the Kremlin, not the White House.
You err again. The investigation began when suspicious Trump campaign activities came to the attention of the FBI. While obviously the main suspicion is that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, it was Trump campaign activities that caused an investigation to be opened. Mueller's mandate is wide ranging, giving him the right to pursue any wrongdoing he finds.
Also interesting is your reference to the "main focus of the counterintelligence investigation." You begin your piece expressing the opinion that we don't need a prosecutor but an investigator, but now you suddenly seem to understand that Mueller has considerable investigative authority.
It is good, then, that Russia has gotten so much of the special counsel’s attention.
You must be only pretending to believe what you just wrote, because you can hardly have forgotten the indictments of Mannfort, Gates and Popadopoulos, nor the many meetings between members of the Trump campaign and Russians, especially the Trump Tower meeting by Donald Jr. and Kushner with Russians peddling Clinton dirt. Given the dramatic difference between what we thought Mueller knew before versus after the indictment, I'd say a number of people in the Trump campaign are likely in big trouble, but you give that possibility not even so much as a nod.
What is not good is that he is a special counsel as opposed to, say, a high-ranking intelligence or defense official. It is only natural that a prosecutor sees his job as making a criminal case, but that is not really what is called for under the circumstances.
And, just like that, you're back once again to the position you just finished pounding into dust, that Mueller is nothing but a prosecutor.
Obviously, if there were strong evidence that Americans had aided and abetted our foreign adversaries in their hostile acts, it would be essential to prosecute them. My objection has been that a special counsel was assigned despite the absence of strong evidence that crimes were committed by Trump-campaign figures.
As explained earlier, there was no choice but to appoint a special counsel. There was already an ongoing investigation that with the firing of Comey was leaderless. Sessions had to recuse himself, a new head of the FBI would be nominated by a potential target of the investigation, so there was no choice but to appoint a special counsel to take over the ongoing investigation.
It is freely conceded that I do not favor special-counsel appointments except when a severe Justice Department conflict of interest leaves no other option.
Precisely the case here, but you seem blind to what is right in front of your face.
Thus, I do not see why a special counsel would have been needed for any Russia case involving suspects unconnected to the Trump campaign.
You again misrepresent reality by saying that election meddling was "unconnected to the Trump campaign." Suspicions about illegalities involving the Trump campaign were why Comey originally opened the investigation.
But all that said, I have never contended that the assignment of a Justice Department prosecutor would be inappropriate if there were concrete grounds to believe Americans were guilty of crimes.
You're attempting to leave yourself a safety net, but one doesn't open an investigation when there are "concrete grounds to believe Americans were guilty of crimes." With "concrete grounds" one simply issues arrest warrants, but when there is only suspicion or suggestions of crimes one opens an investigation. Which is what Comey did.
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein suggested on Friday that, with formal charges now filed, the Justice Department will turn to the next step in the legal process: seeking the defendants’ extradition. Once the Russians stop laughing, I imagine they’ll send us a curt note in Cyrillic or maybe they’ll just flip us the bird, the universal language.
This is true that the U.S. will follow the standard legal process after an indictment and seek extradition, but there is no extradition agreement between the U.S. and Russia, and Rosenstein gave no indication that the U.S. expects Russia would honor any extradition requests.
There are reasons besides ineffectiveness to be concerned about turning this diplomatic dispute into a criminal-justice issue.
Really. And what, pray tell Mr. McCarthy, are those reasons?
This is a dangerous game to play. Our government, American organizations, and individual Americans regularly take actions and engage in political expression (including pseudonymous expression) with the intention of affecting foreign political campaigns or that could be understood that way regardless of American intent. In its lead story on Mueller’s indictment, the New York Times observes that for decades, the CIA has work[ed] covertly to influence political outcomes abroad. The Obama administration, on the American taxpayer’s dime, tried to get Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu defeated and agitated against Brexit. The Bush administration tried to democratize the Middle East. It is de rigueur to tut-tut that such meddling is unseemly, but it is what governments do and have always done. They have interests, and those interests can be profoundly affected by who is governing other countries.
Oh, Mr. McCarthy, great reason! Election meddling is just something governments do, so why should there be any legal action?
Moreover, it is the proud boast of the United States that we promote the virtues and benefits of liberty throughout the world and encourage oppressed peoples to stand up against tyrants. Our government funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty precisely to expose people to news and ideas that their despotic governments censor. Do we really want to signal that we see such agitation-by-information as an indictable crime, in response to which the affected government should issue arrest warrants that will inevitably make it risky for Americans to travel outside the U.S.?
Oh, Mr. McCarthy, another great reason. If we criminalize foreign interference in our democratic processes, then foreign countries might criminalize Radio Free Europe?
Remember, we are talking here about a case in which Russia’s campaign, despite its energy and funding, was a drop in the ocean of American campaign spending and messaging. It barely registered. It had no impact.
Oh, Russian meddling had an impact. While Russian spending on their meddling efforts was a "drop in the ocean", so were the 70,000 votes responsible for Trump's victory.
And, again, the indictment that has been filed is a gesture that will result in no prosecutions. Is it really worth opening this can of worms?
As pointed out above, of course it was worth "opening this can of worms." Just look at much it riled up Trump, 13 angry and error-filled tweets over the weekend. Obviously he's hiding something. I guess we also have to allow the possibility that his ego is so large that he's willing to destroy our democratic institutions in order to protect his belief that he won the election with no help from Russia. But whatever the reason, Trump has likely pushed over the boundaries of responsible opposition and into obstruction.
I know what you’re going to tell me: It’s not the same thing because we don’t do what they do: When we meddle, it is not through the kind of fraudulent activities that Mueller alleges the Russians engaged in including bank fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft. But don’t kid yourself: What we are green-lighting here is criminal prosecution as a response to interference by alleged agents of a foreign power in another country’s elections and public debates. Once that is the rule of the road, we are not going to be able to control decision-making in other countries about what kind of conduct constitutes actionable interference.
It is greatly doubtful that this indictment will have any impact on out ability to control decision-making in other countries.
Finally, since the indictment is a political document, we should evaluate its political impact at home.
Since you recognize that the indictment is a political document and perhaps even understand that it likely wouldn't have been made public were it not for Trump's attempts at obstruction, why did you write all that crap about the reaction of Russia and other foreign despotic governments?
On balance, it is good for President Trump.
You think it's good for Trump? I think Trump might disagree with you, as his 13 weekend tweets clearly attest.
The Russian election-meddling scheme stretches back to the years before he became a political candidate.
You're kidding. You're uttering this obvious fallacy? Nobody had declared their candidacy for president in 2014.
To the extent there was Russian outreach to the Trump campaign, the indictment makes clear that the campaign acted unwittingly. Not only does that mean there was no collusion on the face of things; it means there was almost surely no collusion at all
Mr. McCarthy, it means no such thing. This is just one indictment. Mueller's investigation is not through. To mention just one recent development, Gates is in the process of agreeing to a plea deal. Publicly there is a great deal of smoke regarding collusion, and given how Mueller's indictment just surprised everyone with how much he knows, if you're a betting man I very much doubt that you'd bet Mueller knows nothing about possible collusion.
Had there been an established framework of Trump—Russia coordination, there would have been no need for Russians to reach out to unwitting Trump-campaign officials.
The use of the word "unwitting" in the indictment refers generally to politically active Americans who didn't know they were interacting with Russians. The members of the Trump campaign who met with Russians knew they were meeting with Russians and were not unwitting.
All that said, the indictment perhaps unwittingly, if I may say so tells an unflattering story about the state of our country.
I'm more focused on what your opinion piece says about you, Mr. McCarthy.
Thus, we get nonsense like, The Kremlin wanted Trump to win and Putin was motivated by his fear and loathing of Hillary Clinton, etc., etc.
If the Kremlin didn't want Trump to win, why is the indictment full of evidence of Russians trying to influence the election in favor of Trump? Will you not even try to make sense.
In reality, what happened here could not be more patent: The Kremlin hoped to sow discord in our society and thus paralyze our government’s capacity to pursue American interests. The Russian strategy was to stir up the resentments of sizable losing factions. It is not that Putin wanted Trump to win; it is that Putin figured Trump was going to lose. That is why the Kremlin tried to galvanize Trump supporters against Clinton, just as it tried to galvanize Sanders supporters against Clinton, and Trump supporters against Cruz and Rubio, during the primaries. It is why the Russians suddenly choreographed anti-Trump rallies after Trump won. The palpable goal was to promote dysfunction: Cripple a likely President Clinton before she could even get started, wound President Trump from the get-go when he unexpectedly won, and otherwise set American against American whenever possible.
This is actually a good statement of the Kremlin's high level goals.
--Percy
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