Are you sure you still want to call it fake news, Mr. President?
For the past year, Donald Trump has repeatedly denied
the existence of a profound national security threat: Russia’s attempt
to interfere in the 2016 election on his behalf. He dismissed the
Russian subversion effort as a hoax by his opponents and the media
despite voluminous evidence to the contrary — including the consensus of
the American intelligence community — that it did in fact happen, and
is sure to happen again.
Now come the indictments. On Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 election, filed criminal charges
of fraud and identity theft against 13 Russian citizens and three
Russian organizations, all alleged to have operated a sophisticated
influence campaign intended to “sow discord in the U.S. political
system.”
One organization, the Internet Research Agency — which the indictment says is funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin,
the “go-to oligarch” of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin — began its
efforts as early as 2014, according to the indictment. Its staffers,
known as “specialists,” posed as Americans and created false identities
to set up social media pages and groups aimed at attracting American
audiences. The broad outlines of this interference have been known
publicly for a while, but the sheer scope of the deception detailed in
Friday’s indictments is breathtaking.
By
the spring of 2016, the operation had zeroed in on supporting Mr. Trump
and disparaging Hillary Clinton. The Internet Research Agency alone had
a staff of 80 and a monthly budget of $1.25 million. On the advice of a
real, unnamed grass-roots activist from Texas, it had focused its
efforts on swing states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.
Staffers
bought ads with messages like “Hillary is a Satan,” “Ohio Wants Hillary
4 Prison” and “Vote Republican, Vote Trump, and support the Second
Amendment!”
They
created hundreds of social media accounts on YouTube, Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and other sites to confuse and anger people about
sensitive issues like immigration, religion and the Black Lives Matter
movement — in some cases gaining hundreds of thousands of followers.
They
staged rallies while pretending to be American grass-roots
organizations. A poster at one “pro-Clinton” rally in July 2016 read
“Support Hillary. Save American Muslims,” along with a fabricated quote
attributed to Mrs. Clinton: “I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new
direction of freedom.”
As
the election drew nearer, they tried to suppress minority turnout and
promoted false allegations of Democratic voter fraud. The specialist
running one of the organization’s Facebook accounts, called “Secured
Borders,” was criticized for not publishing enough posts and was told
that “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton.”
After
the election, they continued to spread confusion and chaos, staging
rallies both for and against Mr. Trump, in one case on the same day and
in the same city.
All
along they took steps to cover their tracks by stealing the identities
of real Americans, opening accounts on American-based servers and lying
about what their money was being used for. Last September, after
Facebook turned over information about Russian ad purchases to the
special counsel, a specialist named Irina Kaverzina emailed a family
member: “We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our
activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks
together with the colleagues.” Ms. Kaverzina continued, “I created all
these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written
by their people.”
Fake news, indeed.
Mr.
Trump’s defenders, desperate to exculpate him, seized on a single word —
“unwitting” — that the indictment used to describe certain “members,
volunteers and supporters of the Trump campaign involved in local
community outreach” who had interacted with the Russians.
In
other words, as the White House subtly put it in a statement on Friday,
“NO COLLUSION.” The president repeated the claim himself in a tweet,
grudgingly acknowledging Russia’s “anti-US campaign,” but emphasizing
that it had started “long before I announced that I would run for
President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump
campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!”
It’s
true that, as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in an
announcement, these particular indictments do not allege that any
American knew about the influence campaign, nor that the campaign had
changed the outcome of the election. But that’s quite different from
saying that there was no collusion or impact on the election. As Mr.
Rosenstein also said, the special counsel’s investigation is continuing,
and there are many strands the public still knows little or nothing
about.
Remember,
Mr. Mueller has already secured two guilty pleas, one from Mr. Trump’s
former national security adviser and another from a former campaign
adviser, for lying to federal authorities about their connections to
Russian government officials. He’s also charged Mr. Trump’s former
campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his top aide, Rick Gates, with
crimes including money laundering. Mr. Gates appears to be nearing a
plea deal himself.
Then there were Russian cyberattacks on the elections systems of at least 39 states. And the hacking of emails sent among the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign — which Mr. Trump openly encouraged.
This is all going to happen again. Intelligence and law enforcement authorities have made that clear.
The question now is whether Mr. Trump will at last accept the fact of
Russian interference and take aggressive measures to protect American
democracy. For starters, he could impose the sanctions on Russia that
Congress overwhelmingly passed, and he signed into law, last summer. Of
course, this would require him to overcome his mysterious resistance to
acting against Russia and focus on protecting his own country.
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1 comment:
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