Perspective: The Russia connectionDear Dems: Make Mueller’s Testimony About 2020, Not 2016
If Congressional Democrats focus their questions of Robert Mueller on the past would be a big mistake. Democrats should make the 2020 election, not the 2016 election, the emphasis of their questions to Mueller and thus of his testimony. Democrats should focus in particular on two sets of questions that remain unaddressed by Mueller’s written report—and remain urgently important. First is the possible counterintelligence threat that Donald Trump represents. Mueller’s work addressed only one aspect of Trump’s Russia connection: possible criminal activity. But his report notes that his “investigation could identify foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information relevant to the FBI’s broader national security mission,” and further indicates that Mueller in fact uncovered such “information derived from the investigation, not all of which is contained in this Volume.” The second set of questions revolves around the threat to America’s 2020 election. Mueller’s investigation and assessment of a wide range of election-related issues surely yielded for him a detailed sense of the gaps in U.S. law and policy that were exploited by the Russians in 2016 and that remain ripe for exploitation by Moscow—and other hostile foreign actors—in the run-up to 2020.
Congressional Democrats are champing at the bit to have Robert Mueller recite, on live television, the past indiscretions of Donald Trump that Mueller documented at length in his written report. But focusing on the past would be a big mistake; and Democrats should make the 2020 election, not the 2016 election, the emphasis of their questions to Mueller and thus of his testimony.
Joshua Geltzer writes in Just Security that Democrats should focus in particular on two sets of questions that remain unaddressed by Mueller’s written report—and remain urgently important.
First is the counterintelligence threat that Donald Trump represents. Mueller’s work continued a counterintelligence investigation he inherited, and his written report addresses one aspect of that investigation: possible criminal activity. But his reportalso notes his awareness from the outset that his “investigation could identify foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information relevant to the FBI’s broader national security mission,” and further indicates that Mueller in fact uncovered such “information derived from the investigation, not all of which is contained in this Volume.”
Think about this aspect of Mueller’s work as addressing the crucial question of whether Trump represents a stooge of the Kremlin now occupying the Oval Office and advancing Russian interests—whether wittingly or unwittingly.
The House Intelligence Committee Chair recently indicated that—astonishingly—he hadn’t been briefed in a year and a half on this serious counterintelligence threat to American national security. Democrats should press Mueller for everything he can share in an unclassified setting about this vital but under-explored angle of his work. This line of questioning would begin by exploring how Mueller sees that threat and extends to whether he believes the Justice Department and FBI have, especially in the face of pressure from Trump himself, taken it seriously by continuing to investigate and analyze it.
This questioning would also reach the likely nature of Vladimir Putin’s apparent influence on Trump and how that might be contributing to otherwise puzzling aspects of U.S. foreign policy, such as Trump ignoring and at times outright denying Russian aggression, Trump taking Putin’s word over his own intelligence officials’ assessments, and Trump abruptly announcing U.S. withdrawal from Syria to the detriment of U.S. counterterrorism efforts and to the benefit of Russian influence there.
Moreover, this angle of questioning would cover what more detailed questions Congress should be asking in classified settings to understand what’s been uncovered by Mueller and by others with whom he worked.
The second set of questions revolves around the threat to America’s 2020 election. Mueller’s investigation and assessment of a wide range of election-related issues surely yielded for him a detailed sense of the gaps in U.S. law and policy that were exploited by the Russians in 2016 and that remain ripe for exploitation by Moscow—and other hostile foreign actors—in the run-up to 2020.What’s more, Mueller’s multiyear investigation must have produced key insights into how that threat to American democracy is evolving. None of that—no assessment of legislative gaps, no proposals for new legislation, no analysis of the maturing threat—made it into Mueller’s written report.
