Mueller Hints at a National-Security Nightmare
By Joshua A. Geltzer and Ryan Goodman
April 19, 2019
The missing piece of the report is a counterintelligence investigation that should set off alarm bells about our democracy and security.
President Trump with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, left, and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, in 2017. Russian Foreign Ministry, via Associated Press
The Mueller report isn’t actually close to a full account of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. That’s not just because of the redactions. When he was hired, Mr. Mueller inherited supervision of an F.B.I.
counterintelligenceinvestigation. That is the
missing piece of the Mueller report.
President Trump may claim “exoneration” on a narrowly defined criminal coordination charge. But a counterintelligence investigation can yield something even more important: an intelligence assessment of how likely it is that someone — in this case, the president — is acting, wittingly or unwittingly, under the influence of or in collaboration with a foreign power. Was Donald Trump a knowing or unknowing Russian asset, used in some capacity to undermine our democracy and national security?
The public Mueller report alone provides enough evidence to worry that America’s own national security interests may not be guiding American foreign policy.
The counterintelligence investigation is not necessarily complete, but from the glimpses we see in the Mueller report, it should set off very serious national security alarm bells.
An intelligence assessment makes two determinations: a conclusion about the type of influence a foreign power may have over an individual and the degree of confidence in that conclusion. For example, when Mr. Trump boasted to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office that he had fired the F.B.I. director, it raised only the possibility — a “circumstantial inference,” as it’s called in counterintelligence — that the president was wittingly working on behalf of the Russians.
This apparent desire to please these officials indicates a high level of Russian influence and, in the context of other actions that pleased Mr. Putin, like his sudden decision to withdraw American troops from Syria — could support a modest to high level of confidence in that conclusion.
But reaching very high confidence that Mr. Trump is wittingly doing Moscow’s bidding would require something we don't have and would not expect to have, like an email from Vladimir Putin ordering Mr. Trump to fire the F.B.I. director James Comey.
Similarly, there is no "smoking gun" order in the incidents below. They indicate a strong influence by the Russians, but only low to moderate confidence that he acted at Russia’s behest. There’s simply no clear sign that Mr. Trump was following directions of acting under pressure from the Kremlin.
- The former Trump adviser Roger Stone directly communicates with the Russia-linked actor Guccifer 2.0 and coordinates with WikiLeaks to get Mr. Trump elected — and he is likely aware that one is a Russian front organization and the other is working with the Russians.
- A Trump campaign national security adviser is informed by a Russian intelligence operative that the Kremlin has stolen Hillary Clinton-related emails and could assist the Trump campaign through “anonymous release” of derogatory information; the campaign then works on setting up backdoor meetings with senior Russian government officials (though the meetings do not materialize).
- Members of the Trump transition team conduct secretive, back channel meetings with Putin operatives.
- Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin speak alone in Helsinki, then Mr. Trump accepts Mr. Putin’s claim that he didn’t meddle in the 2016 election and repudiates the intelligence community’s assessments to the contrary.
Those incidents raise the
possibility that Mr. Trump has wittingly sought to advance Russian interests, but the evidence is merely circumstantial and consequently suggests low to moderate confidence in that assessment. In many but not all respects, witting assets can be more dangerous because they have deliberately entered into some sort of understanding or agreement to work on behalf of the foreign power’s interests.
But unwitting assets pose their own dangers. They have significant vulnerabilities that can be exploited with minimal actual coordination. In other words, they look and act more like puppets.
In the following examples, Mr. Trump appears a potentially unwitting but responsive asset for Moscow, a finding in which there seems greater confidence:
- Mr. Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn reassures Russia that United States sanctions for election interference will be reversed, then lies about his conversation to the F.B.I. Mr. Trump publicly applauds Mr. Putin’s lack of retaliation for the sanctions.
- Mr. Trump pursues a potentially lucrative Trump Tower Moscow project through the end of the campaign and at least implicitly encourages his lawyer to lie to Congress about the timing of the deal.
The stark reality is that one might have a moderate to high confidence that decisions are being made by an American president who, in the process of getting elected and after assuming office, has acted with the interests of an often-hostile foreign power influencing him.
And that conclusion is deeply worrisome as a national security matter.
A failure by political leaders to condemn the activities of a Trump campaign that openly welcomed Russian hacking and privately encouraged timely releases of damaging information about the campaign’s opponent would put our nation at further risk.
As president, Mr. Trump has taken a series of steps at home and abroad that advance Russian policy interests. At home, he has weakened American democracy, all but paralyzed our ability to act through legislation and vilified key institutions — particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community. Abroad, Mr. Trump has weakened NATO, given Russia an increasingly free hand in Syria, minimized sanctions against Russian actors, questioned America’s commitment to protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression and defended Mr. Putin on the world stage.
It’s hard to look toward the 2020 election with anything but concern — we have not come far enough to protect the democratic process from the threat of foreign election interference, and one reason may well be that the man in the Oval Office has been compromised and continues to be influenced, wittingly or otherwise, by a Kremlin eager to see the United States remain vulnerable.
Joshua A. Geltzer, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 2015 to 2017. Ryan Goodman is a professor of law at New York University and editor in chief of the blog Just Security.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
sure
