PERSPECTIVE: Unanswered questionsJustice Dept. Never Fully Examined Trump’s Ties to Russia, Ex-Officials Say

Published 31 August 2020

As Donald Trump seeks re-election, major questions about his approach to Russia remain unanswered. He has repeatedly shown an unexplained solicitousness toward Russia and deference toward Vladimir Putin, even as Russia, on Putin’s orders, has been systematically trying to subvert American democracy – and the democratic systems of allies of the United States. He has refused to criticize or challenge the Kremlin’s increasing aggressions toward the West, or even raise with Putin the issue of Russia paying bounties to Afghans who kill American soldiers. Michael S. Schmidt writes that one reason we still do not have answers to questions about the scope of Trump’s ties to Russia, and how these ties have influenced his perplexing attitude toward Russia and Putin, is because Rod J. Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, maneuvered to keep investigators from completing an inquiry into whether the president’s personal and financial links to Russia posed a national security threat.

As Donald Trump seeks re-election, major questions about his approach to Russia remain unanswered. He has repeatedly shown an unexplained solicitousness toward Russia and deference toward Vladimir Putin, even as Russia, on Putin’s order, has been systematically trying to subvert American democracy – and the democratic systems of allies of the United States. He has refused to criticize or challenge the Kremlin’s increasing aggressions toward the West, or even raise with Putin the issue of Russia paying bounties to Afghans who kill American soldiers. The president has also rejected the intelligence community’s finding that Russia interfered in 2016 to help him win the election – and he is rejecting the spy agencies’ evidence-based conclusion that Russia is trying to sabotage this year’s election again on his behalf.

Michael S. Schmidt writes in the New York Times that the truth about Trump ties to Russia may not be known any time soon because the Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian 2016 election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump’s decades-long personal and business ties to Russia.

Schmidt adds:

The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured three dozen indictments and convictions of some top Trump advisers, and he produced a report that outlined Russia’s wide-ranging operations to help get Mr. Trump elected and the president’s efforts to impede the inquiry.

But law enforcement officials never fully investigated Mr. Trump’s own relationship with Russia, even though some career F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators thought his ties posed such a national security threat that they took the extraordinary step of opening an inquiry into them. Within days, the former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein curtailed the investigation without telling the bureau, all but ensuring it would go nowhere.

A bipartisan report by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released this month came the closest to an examination of the president’s links to Russia. Senators depicted extensive ties between Trump associates and Russia, identified a close associate of a former Trump campaign chairman as a Russian intelligence officer and outlined how allegations about Mr. Trump’s encounters with women during trips to Moscow could be used to compromise him. But the senators acknowledged they lacked access to the full picture, particularly any insight into Mr. Trump’s finances.