Mainstream Stories About Ukrainian "Interference"

All of that puts mainstream Republicans in an awkward position.  On the one hand, they don't want to be caught quoting ridiculous conspiracy theories and make fools of themselves.  On the other hand, if Donald Trump says there was Ukrainian interference in the election, then that is the party line and they must not dissent from it.  So the response of mainstream Republicans has been to take the position that:

[T]hat opinion is based on the premise that either Russia or Ukraine interfered. It could not have been both. And the critics . . . appeared to suggest that Republicans, echoing the Kremlin, are somehow denying the fact of Russian interference. . . . In reality, what Republicans were saying is that it appears that both Russia and Ukraine interfered, although not on the same scale.

The problem here is that, whatever Congressional Republicans may have been saying, Donald Trump has definitely been saying that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that was behind the DNC hack.*  In an effort to stay on the right side of both Trump and reality, Republicans cite five instances of alleged Ukrainian "interference."

One:  The current Ukrainian interior minister and a former prime minister said nasty things about candidate Trump on Facebook (in Ukranian).  The author acknowledges that the Ukrainians' hostility toward Trump was somewhat understandable, given that they were being invaded by Russia and that Trump was running on a pro-Russian platform, even to the extent of allowing Russia to annex Ukrainian territory.  In any event, it is not illegal foreign government officials to say mean things about US candidates on Facebook.  It is illegal to hack servers and distribute private, hacked e-mails.

Two:  The Ukrainian ambassador to the US published an editorial in The Hill strongly critical of Trump's pro-Russian stance.  That is not illegal either.

The Facebook posts and the editorial are examples of white propaganda, i.e., material intended to persuade, with an acknowledged author.  White propaganda is usually considered the least dangerous kind because the author is known, can be exposed as biased, and can be held accountable.  The reason political ads identify who is paying for them is because of campaign finance laws requiring our political advertising to stay in the realm of white propaganda.  And in any event, neither editorials nor Facebook posts are covered by campaign finance laws.

Three:  Ukrainian journalist and member of parliament Serhei Leshchenko published a "black ledger" of payoffs by Ukraine's former pro-Russian government to various persons, including Trump's then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.  Apparently Republicans recognize that it is going a bit far to ask Ukrainians to refrain from publishing a list of payoffs in their own domestic newspapers, lest it affect the US election.  The main argument, therefore, is that the black ledger may  not be genuine.  The main evidence that it is not genuine is that the Mueller investigation did not charge Manafort for the payoffs listed in the ledger.

In any event, if this account of Leshchenko's publications are accurate, that, too, fits in the category of white propaganda.  Leschchenko, it should be noted, disputes this account.  According to Leshchenko, he received and published 22 pages of the black ledger (out of 400 to 800 total), none of which mentioned Manafort.  He first learned that Manafort was named in the black ledger from an August 15, 2016 article in the New York Times.  The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) confirmed the story a few days later, and it is fairly clear from the article that NABU was the source.  So, a Ukrainian government bureau leaked information to the New York Times about payoffs to Manafort.  This fits in the category of "gray propaganda," i.e., material intended to persuade, from an unknown author.  That is somewhat more troubling than white propaganda.  But the use of anonymous leakers is routine in journalism and there are no laws against publishing material from foreign leakers. 

The Russian troll farm, by contrast, was black propaganda, i.e., material that actively conceals its source.

Four:  Leshchenko was reported a source for Fusion GPS doing opposition research on Trump and family's foreign business dealings.  More accurately, Nellie Ohr (wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr) mentioned that her bosses at Fusion GPS mentioned Leshchenko as a source.  Leshchenko has denied any contact with anyone from Fusion GPS and speculates they may have been referring to his public speeches or interviews.  Nellie Ohr also stated that her research was based on open sources, and that there was abundant work by Leshchenko available from open sources.  In short, Leshchenko's work was probably a source for opposition research and might have been incorporated into gray propaganda if Fusion GPS's work ever became public, which it did not.

Five:  Alexandra Chalupa.  This is based mostly on a story in Politico that Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American Democratic consultant, researched Paul Manafort and had extensive sources, some in Ukraine.  In the process, she may have coordinated with both the DNC and the Ukrainian embassy in violation of laws against foreign interference in elections.  So at last we have something that might constitute illegal foreign meddling, although we still know very little about it, and it was certainly nothing so direct as the e-mail Donald Trump, Jr. received telling him that the Russian government was going to share damaging information on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."  Chalupa, for what it is worth, has declared herself eager to testify and clear her name.

So, mean Facebook posts, a hostile editorial, release of documents damaging to Paul Manafort, and possible assistance in researching Manafort.  Not only is this rather weak tea, it raises an obvious question.  If this is election "interference," just how common is it.  Is Ukraine truly the only government ever to criticize a US candidate for president, or to release possibly damaging information?

And the answer, or course, is that Ukraine's actions are by no means unique.  The most obvious example Binyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minster of Israel who made not secret in 2012 that he wanted Obama to lose.  Netanyahu denounced Obama's Iran policy on Sunday talk shows, warmly welcomed Mitt Romney to Israel, and even ran an ad saying, "The world needs American strength, not apologies."  This looked very much like "interference" in the US election -- albeit legal and limited to white propaganda.  And in fairness to Netanyahu, the US had often returned the favor.

Election "interference" of this kind is perfectly legal and requires no investigation.  It is generally considered ill-advised, for two reasons.  One reason is that most people resent foreign meddling in their elections and too close an association with a foreign leader is more likely to harm than help a candidate.  The other reason is that if a country's favored candidate loses, it puts the country on a bad footing with the winner.

But personal hostility is not usually enough to overcome national interest.  Obama's personal relationship with Netanyahu was frosty after the 2012 election.  Obama continued to pursue a more conciliatory policy toward Iran than Netanyahu cared for, and he continued to pressure Israel on West Bank settlements.  But the basic strategic partnership between the US and Israel remained, and certainly Obama never withheld funding from Israel's Iron Dome defense to protect it from Hamas rockets.**

And plenty of other governments made hostile comments about candidate Trump in 2016, but without the same sort of retaliation.  Fiona Hill's testimony in that regard is revealing:

I also mentioned in my deposition of October 14th that in fact many officials from many countries including Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They believe that Secretary Clinton, former Senator Clinton, former First Lady Clinton was going to win. And many said some pretty disparaging and hurtful thing about President Trump. But I can't blame him for feeling aggrieved about them. And when we were setting up Head of State visits, remember I have a portfolio of 50 plus countries plus NATO and the European Union, we thought it prudent to collect as much as possible about comments that people might have said about the President during the campaign when he was either one of the candidates to be the nominee for the Republican party or when he was actually the candidate running against Hillary Clinton. And I'm sorry to say that awful lot and perhaps I shouldn't name them here because it will have conscience an awful lot of Senior Officials in many Goverance (ph) including our Allied Governments said some pretty hurtful things about The President. 

And I would also personally take offense at some the things that were said if I were The President. Now the difference here however is that that hasn't had any major impact on his feelings towards those countries. Not that I have seen. But I've heard The President say, and he said it in public so I'm not revealing any kind of executive privilege here that Ukraine tried to take me down. What (ph) I have seen is this ill advised Ukrainian Officials, Ambassador Charlie been removed as being the Ambassador from here. Made some pretty unpleasant statements and above all some ill advised opeds. But I could list a whole host of Ambassadors from allied countries who tweeted out, who had public comments about The President as well. And it did not affect security assistance having meetings with them. If it would there been a lot of people he wouldn't have met with.

That is an important point that no one else at the hearings seems to have made, and one that Republicans should answer if they are going to claim Ukrainian "interference."

__________________________________________
*Or, perhaps, that there was no hack, but that Seth Rich stole the e-mails and then Ukraine framed Russia for a non-existent hack.
**That is actually not a bad analogy.  If Obama had withheld funding from Israel's Iron Dome in an effort to pressure a new Israeli government to "investigate" Netanyahu's actions in the 2012 election, that would have been a scandal of the highest order.

Nutty Stories About Ukrainian Interference

Wow!  It's been a long time since I last posted!  OK, on to the impeachment.

I must say that one thing that surprised me during this impeachment saga is talk about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.  I knew that Donald Trump and some conspiracy-minded right wingers denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.  I had just never heard Ukraine mentioned in that regard.

Let's start with the most basic fact that no one disputes because it took place so publicly as to be undeniable.  Wikileaks published e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.  That is beyond dispute.  Also not seriously disputed is that goal of this was to hurt Hillary's campaign.  So, how did Wikileaks get the e-mails?

I was well acquainted with stories (many of the originating with Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks), that the e-mails were provided by Seth Rich, a murdered DNC staffer.  Such claims invariably hint, without quite saying, that Hillary then had Rich killed to silence him.* Realizing that their e-mails had been stolen, and guessing they would be revealed, the DNC then hired Crowdstrike (a cyber security firm) to fake evidence pinning the theft on a Russian hack.  Central to this claim was that the Democrats did not turn over their server to the FBI.**  In fact, there were some 140 DNC servers, and turning them over to the FBI would mean suspending operations.  Making an electronic image of the hard drives is actually superior to taking them into evidence, because the contents of the hard drives are constantly changing.  This is long-standing and accepted practice.***

So I was familiar with all this well before Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came out.  But I had never heard so much as a hint of Ukrainian involvement.  Where did that come in.  Apparently there is belief that the servers were taken to Ukraine.  The only evidence for such a belief appears to be that the founder of Crowdstrike has a Slavic name that might sound Ukrainian.  (Actually, it is Russian and he is a naturalized citizen).

I have seen many articles since the phone call came out debunking the theory.  The articles generally begin with the bizarre belief that Ukraine hid the server, explaining where the story might come from, and why it was not true.  All agree that the purpose of the theory was to clear Russia of hacking the DNC and claim that Ukraine framed Russia.  None of them address how, under this theory, Wikileaks came into possession of the DNC e-mails.  Given that Wikileaks deployed the e-mails so as to do maximum damage to the Clinton campaign, it seems reasonable to assume that someone stole the DNC e-mails and turned them over to Wikileaks.****

I could see two alternative theories here.  One is that there was no hack.  Seth Rich stole the e-mails and turned them over to Wikileaks.  The DNC, learning of the theft and fearing the stolen e-mails would come out, hired Crowdstrike to fake a hack.  And Ukraine somehow ended up with the server.  The alternate theory that I see suggested more than stated, is that Ukraine conducted the hack and then forged evidence blaming it on Russia.  But that makes no sense at all.  Since everyone agrees that the Ukrainians wanted Hillary Clinton to win, why would they turn over the e-mails to Wikileaks to deploy against her?

___________________________________________
*I used to think that was for fear that claiming Hillary had Seth Rich murdered was so over-the-top that proponents of the theories refrained from saying so for fear of looking ridiculous.  Now I am starting to suspect another motive.  US libel law makes it very difficult for a public figure (which Hillary obviously is) to sue.  But falsely accusing her of murdering a DNC staffer just might be enough.
**I was once so naive as to think that, while any evidence the FBI turned up could be dismissed as a "deep state" plot, the involvement of a private company would strengthen the DNC argument, but that ignores how the conspiracist mindset works.  If a private company found evidence of Russian hacking, the private company must be part of the conspiracy.
***This source is an article dated July 17, 2018 addressing the issue of the "missing" server.  The article makes no mention of Ukraine -- or Seth Rich, for that matter.
****I would take "handed over" to include handed over through an intermediary.  I suppose one could argue that someone stole the e-mails from the original e-mail thief and handed them over to Wikileaks, or that Wikileaks used the e-mails in a manner the thief did not intend.  But it seems most implausible.

Why Impeachment is Worth Doing Even if it Gets us Mike Pence.

Some people have asked what is the point in impeaching Donald Trump if you will just get Mike Pence for President. 

Others have asked what legal justification there can be for impeaching Trump only when Pence to all appearances seems to have been involved in the Ukraine scheme (along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr).

The answer to that is simple.  In the end, impeachment is political, not legal.  Politically speaking, it just is not possible to impeach the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General.  The idea is simply too absurd to consider, especially since that would make Nancy Pelosi President.

Donald Trump is clearly the evil genius behind the whole Ukraine scheme. 

Donald Trump has also given us more than grounds to remove him under the 25th Amendment (for removing a President unfit for office).  Mike Pence has not.  Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unglued under stress and may burn the whole thing down.  Mike Pence inspires no such fears.

And finally, I will quote Matthew Yglesias on why everyone across the spectrum should vote for Hillary Clinton, with just a few nouns and pronouns changed:

[Mike Pence], for all [his] flaws, has demonstrated a basic level of competence. [He] understands how policy and government work. [He's] not openly racist; [he] hasn't encouraged street violence. There's no risk that [he] would disrupt the international order or cause an economic crisis out of pique. 

That's a really, really low bar. But it's the only bar [he] has to clear in this contest.

And a Brief Comment on Elizabeth Warren's Campaign

Donald Trump has so many faults, and is such a master of projection, that almost anything he accuses his opponent of, he is guilty of by a factor of many.

During the last election, he accused Hillary Clinton of mishandling classified information, evading disclosure laws, and using her foundation as a slush fund.  Meanwhile, he had a longstanding history of using his foundation as a slush fund and evading disclosures of all kinds.  The only reason he had never mishandle classified information was that no one was so crazy as to allow him access to it.*  Conor Friedersdorf wisely commented:

Absurdly, many seem to have convinced themselves that Trump, who won’t release his tax returns, as every presidential candidate has for decades, will be better on transparency; that a man whose finances we don’t even know, who used his charitable foundation to illegally funnel money to an attorney general investigating him for fraud, will be better on conflicts of interest; that an erratic man who blurts all manner of things out on Twitter and has shady ties to Vladimir Putin will somehow be a more trustworthy guardian of classified information.

He denounced Hillary Clinton as "Crooked Hillary."  At the same time that Trump University was facing a multi-million dollar fraud lawsuit.  Any number of investigations into Trump Enterprises has raised evidence that it was based on fraud.  He has also run a series of resorts and steered business to then while serving as President, abused classification procedures to hide politically embarrassing phone calls, intervened to obtain security clearances for cronies, and blurted out code-word level information to Russian delegates.  Also, the latest scandal has revealed that State Department employees involved were sending messages on private servers, which the last election established as the most heinous offense and American can commit.

In the current election, Joe Biden, the current front runner, has been accused of having retrograde attitudes on race and being too touchy-feely with women.  Somehow this is supposed to make us prefer an open race-baiter who brags about routine sexual assault.  And now Trump is denouncing Joe Biden because his son used his family name to obtain business opportunities. 

Kamala Harris has been denounces as an overzealous prosecutor.  Amy Klobuchar has been denounced as an abusive boss. 

But of Elizabeth Warren, Team Trump has finally come up with accusations that can't be turned against him.

It seems a safe assumption that Trump has never sought to benefit from affirmative action by claiming to be anything other than white, and that he has never alleged (truly or falsely) that he lost a job for being pregnant.

________________________________________
*Some wag commented that Trump was such an obvious security risk that the only way he could ever get clearance was to be elected President.

Why Impeachment is Still Going to Be Partisan

Wow!  Developments on the impeachment have been happening very fast, faster than I could keep up.  My first thought on hearing that a whistle blower had something very inflammatory to report, on someone who was not part of the intelligence community was that it had to be either Donald Trump or William Barr.  Either Trump had done something wildly corrupt, or Barr was doing something abusive in his investigation of the Russia investigation.

The next report was that it was about a phone call with a foreign leader.  The Washington Post listed five known communications with foreign leaders in the five weeks before the whistle blower letter.  The only one that was a phone call was with Vladimir Putin, purportedly about wildfires in Siberia.  So I guessed that it was yet another discussion about how Russia could evade sanctions. 

And just to be clear, plotting with Putin to evade sanctions would be impeachable.  The sanctions were a law passed by Congress.  While agitating for the repeal of a law passed by Congress, or challenging it in court as unconstitutional are perfectly legitimate partisan politics, secretly plotting to evade such a law is as clear and impeachable offense as one could ask for.*  Impeachment in such a case would not look partisan.  The sanctions were passed with the overwhelming support of both parties.  And I thought even Republicans might be persuaded to support impeachment, partly because it was their law as much as the Democrats', and partly because, while Republicans might be willing to tolerate Trump shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, I did not expect them to tolerate an insufficiently aggressive foreign policy.

But all that is moot.  The phone call turned out to be with the President of Ukraine, seeking evidence of dirty dealing by Joe Biden.  And to Democrats this was a bridge too far.  Up till then, Democrats had held out the hope of getting rid of Trump in the next election.  But that presupposed that the next election would be free and fair.  If Trump was plotting with a foreign government to subvert the next election, suddenly events took an altogether different shape.

But it can't possibly look that way to Republicans.  To Republicans, impeaching Donald Trump for looking for foreign dirty on his Democratic rival -- even fake foreign dirt -- is bound to look partisan.  And impeaching him for efforts to win the next election -- even dishonest efforts -- is not going to hold much appeal.

___________________________________
*And, yes, I do think this means that GWB's policies of indefinite detention, torture, and warrantless surveillance were impeachable.

In Defense of the Foregoing

That being said, I can see some defenses of our general ideas about what is and is not impeachable.

First of all, every country in the world does sordid and bloody things in foreign policy.  That are so many sordid and bloody things happening in the world that doing sordid and bloody things is unavoidable.  Civil wars -- even most international wars -- are not fought between good guys and bad guys.  They are fought between bad guys and other bad guys.  The most clear-cut ones are fought between bad guys and worse guys.   No matter what side you take, you will have unsavory allies.  And staying out means passively allowing the worst to happen.

It is also true that every country shows more concerns for its own citizens than for foreign nationals.  And that the U.S. cannot possibly admit everyone who wants to come here.  It is also true that most people assume that in a democratic country, and leader who harms fellow-citizens will be punished by losing the next election.

There is also the matter of upholding the rule of law.  The law is not always clear.  The executive has some, but not unlimited, discretion in interpretation and enforcement.  Donald Trump's Muslim ban was vile.  But it was not expressly illegal until the courts held that it was, and even then it was salvageable with some modification.  A lot of his other actions to limit immigration are dubious at best and have been challenged in court.  If a court holds any of these actions illegal and Trump persists, then his actions will be impeachable.  The same goes for challenges to Obamacare. It is clearly legal to attempt to pass legislation repealing Obamacare.  The penalty will be paid at the ballot box.  (That is why the attempt ultimately failed).  It is also legal to challenge legislation in court, even if the challenge is so weak as to be frivolous. 

Challenging or stretching the law is one thing.  Openly breaking it is another.  Trump almost certainly committed an impeachable offense in telling border security officials to break the law (seizing property to build the wall, automatically denying all asylum requests without hearing) and promising a pardon if they are prosecuted.  But it may be difficult to persuade the officials in question to testify against Trump, and any impeachment action will look like an attempt to criminalize policy differences. 

And finally, how the elite treat each other has a tremendous impact on the general population.

To take an extreme example, a country in which deposed rulers are killed will give rules an incentive to hold onto power at all costs.  It will lead the ruler to spend immense amounts on internal security at the expense of everything else.  It will lead to civil war any time the leader sees his power as threatened.

A country that routinely exiles deposed rulers will create a strong incentive for leaders to loot the treasure and spend a lot of money on foreign real estate to prepare for a future exile.

To move into more realistic territory, a country in which elections are rigged to ensure that the same party always wins is bound to become corrupt and sclerotic, in the manner of Mexico in the heyday of the PRI.  Parties that find themselves systematically shut out of power lose their respect for the democratic process become radicalized in dangerous ways.

A country that is able to subvert freedom of the press is one that destroys an important method for holding leaders accountable and allows corruption to flourish.

A country that makes economic success depend on political favor becomes systematically corrupt -- crony capitalism.  A leader who treats his office as an opportunity to make money is one who has no regard for the public good.

All of these lead to serious problems.  But, it would appear, these problems do not arise overnight.  I feared the results of a Trump presidency, but there is simply no denying that nothing disastrous has happened, at least not to U.S. citizens.  But the integrity of our governing institutions is being undermined, and sooner or later, things will start going down hill for the rest of us.

A Disturbing Thought on Impeachment

I whole-heartedly agree with people who say that any impeachment of Donald Trump must be on narrow grounds.  We should stick to clearly illegal or unconstitutional behavior and not impeach over mere policy differences.

And yet, the thought of what is an impeachable offense and what is a mere policy difference is disturbing.  Consider:


Mere policy differences, not impeachable:

• Precipitously withdrawing our troops in Syria and leaving the Kurds to be slaughtered.
• Supporting Saudi Arabia's murderous war on Yemen.
• The Muslim travel ban.
• Pressing for a no-deal Brexit with all resultant damage to the British economy.
• Separating parents and children at the border, and detaining asylum seekers until hearing.
• Requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their applications are processed.
• Attempts to role back protections for Dreamers.
• Gross incompetence in responding to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
• Supporting a repeal of Obamacare that could have stripped tens of millions of people of their health insurance.
• Arguing for the courts to declare Obamacare unconstitutional, strip millions of their health insurance, and take protections from people with pre-existing conditions.
• Seeking to precipitate a fiscal crisis that will force massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
• Ending environmental regulations and raising the likelihood that the planet will cook.
• Nor would it have been impeachable if Trump had blundered into a war with North Korea and ended up with West Coast cities being nuked.

Things that might be impeachable:

• Diverting funds from military projects to build the border wall.
• Telling immigration officials to disregard laws and he would pardon them.
• Abuse of anti-trust laws to punish media companies that criticize him.  
• Attempts to fire Robert Mueller and other officials investigating Trump's ties to Russia.

Impeachable offenses:

• Use of federal office the profit Trump Enterprises.
• Possible foreign (and domestic) policy decisions based on personal financial interests.
• Basing foreign policy on other countries' willingness to assist him against political rivals.
• Stonewalling all attempts at Congressional investigation.

Is it overly cynical to say that what our ruling elites do to ordinary citizens, and especially to foreigners, is a mere matter of policy, while what our ruling elites do to each other is impeachable?