President Trump vented at great length in a recent 46-minute Facebook video that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s long-awaited report on the spying on his 2016 campaign had failed to arrive before Election Day. He may have a point — the airing of what happened could have made a difference in what proved to be a very close-run election, decided by about 45,000 votes in three states.
“They can go after me before the election as much as they want,” Trump said, referring to the FBI and intelligence officials involved in the spying. “But unfortunately, Mr. Durham didn’t want to go after these people or have anything to do with going after them before the election. So, who knows if he’s ever going to even do a report?”
The occasion for Trump’s comment last week was Durham’s appointment as special counsel by Attorney General William Barr. But Barr has, characteristically, done the right thing in appointing him. The investigation should be allowed to run its course without the clock ticking down to Inauguration Day and the installation of a new attorney general by Joe Biden. The public needs to know the full story of how and who blighted the Trump presidency with a false story that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. It is necessary governmental hygiene and should not be prevented by the switch to an administration less disposed for partisan reasons to want the truth out.
This issue is much bigger than Trump.
Not long ago, liberals were the first to object when they saw the Intelligence Community participating in domestic spying or the FBI lying to judges in order to spy on friends and close colleagues of political candidates. In 1975, the Church Committee (named after Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church) excoriated the CIA for, among other things, domestic spying on civilians. Another issue that arose was the use of blackmail and other illegal conduct by the FBI toward Martin Luther King Jr., among others.
This sort of rogue activity by law enforcement and intelligence does not become meaningless just because it is happening to someone liberals hate. Indeed, the idea of law enforcement and intelligence officials taking political sides in an election is an extremely grave one, far more threatening to the values of a free society than anything Trump ever did or attempted in office.
A thorough investigation and explanation will be required to preserve the nation’s republican values against an entrenched and (by design) highly secretive segment of the federal bureaucracy.
Democrats are upset about Durham’s appointment because they don’t want their partisan officials exposed. Trump is upset because he thinks the whole thing is moot because the culprits are not being prosecuted and were not exposed in time to help him win reelection. But they are both wrong. The public deserves to see Durham’s final report and to know exactly what happened. Only transparency can restore the trust that is destroyed by covert wrongdoing and point the way to reforms that will prevent it in the future. A public airing of everything that went wrong is much more important than any individual prosecutions that might arise.
