The Senate can perform an important national service by conducting its own investigations into Russia’s intervention in the 2016 presidential elections. The Senate Judiciary Committee is authorizing subpoenas for documents and testimony from key Obama officials to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe in the 2016 elections. By detailing how individuals inside and outside government wittingly or inadvertently aided the Kremlin campaign to undermine the American election, the country will be better prepared for Moscow’s interference in the November 2020 elections.
The Senate subpoenas will include documents, communications, and witness testimony, preferably in a public setting, and must include both the investigators and subjects of counterintelligence inquiries as well as the content of their communications with Russian operatives. The investigations can reveal important data on how politicians, officials, media, and business people were manipulated to serve foreign interests.
The Senate and the Justice Department, which is conducting its own inquiry into FBI investigations of ties between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, have an opportunity to dig deeper than special counsel Robert Muller. The Obama administration would have been derelict in its duty if it had not conducted surveillance of senior advisers to a presidential candidate whom it strongly suspected of collaborating with Russia. According to the National Security Strategy issued by the Trump White House in December 2017, Russia is one of America’s two major global adversaries. Any administration is thereby obligated to scrutinize whether American politicians and advisers have been bribed or blackmailed by Russian services.
The new investigation also needs to dissect the entire Steele dossier, which claimed President Trump was a Russian asset, and determine whether the accusations are real or manufactured. Ideally, it should unearth any officials who have been compromised by Russian intelligence. It must also disclose private financial transactions between American officials and Russian banks, oligarchs, and middlemen. If conducted thoroughly and impartially, the dual investigations will uncover the sources of “collusion” charges against the Trump campaign. This could help to vindicate Trump, but it may also disclose that Moscow’s intelligence services are more devious than congressional investigators and FBI agents have estimated.
The simplistic explanation is that Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump win the elections. More credibly, Russian intelligence services sought to exacerbate America’s partisan polarization and nurtured conspiracy theories to undermine both presidential candidates. Although the Kremlin focused on discrediting Hillary Clinton, convinced that she would win the elections, it also devised a parallel plan in case Trump was victorious. Logically, Russian services would have manufactured a “Trump collusion” narrative to disrupt U.S. politics, especially if the new president proved unable to lift economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The Steele dossier, which chronicled alleged Trump-Moscow connections, could be a deliberate plant by Russian operatives. The investigator, a former British intelligence officer, acquired access to supposedly classified information and may have become an unwitting conduit for Moscow’s influence operations. The dossier itself, as with most Russian kompromat, is probably a combination of fact and fiction manufactured to implicate the target. Kremlin surrogates also arranged numerous traceable “Russian contacts” with the Trump campaign, including the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. The goal was to establish a record for U.S. investigators and for the media in case Moscow needed to discredit Trump by embroiling him in potential collaboration with a foreign power.
By openly appealing for information about his election opponent from Moscow and not disclosing all his campaign contacts, Trump fell into the trap of appearing to collaborate with Russia in order to enhance his political ambitions. This sowed the seeds of his illegitimacy in the eyes of many. Conversely, Trump’s attacks on Democrats for allegedly manufacturing the ”Russia hoax” also played into Moscow’s hands by deepening partisan divisions.
To be effective, the Justice Department and Senate investigations must uncover how extensively the 2016 election campaign was exploited by Russian intelligence services. This can provide valuable pointers on how the Kremlin plans to profit from the upcoming elections by manipulating both sides of the partisan divide. If Trump is indeed seeking retribution for the Mueller investigation, he should turn his ire on the key culprit in the Kremlin.
Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. His recent book, co-authored with Margarita Assenova, is entitled Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, published by the Jamestown Foundation.
