Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian agents and three Russian companies accused of an international conspiracy to sabotage the 2016 U.S. presidential election and elect Donald Trump lays out a sinister spy thriller plot against American democracy. The indictments provide detailed evidence of the hostile Russian plot against America despite Trump’s own relentless attempts to obstruct the investigation by intelligence and law enforcement agencies into an illegal foreign attack upon his own nation.
Russian agents used false or stolen identities to visit 10 states pretending to be American political activists organizing pro-Trump, hate-Hillary rallies—one featuring an already locked-up Hillary Clinton look-alike in a cage wearing prison garb. Criminal activity included bank and wire fraud to create accounts under false names to fund dishonest, anti-Clinton attack ads, fake news stories and demonstrations by allegedly “unwitting” Trump supporters acting as Russian tools.
The highly detailed description of real-life Russian sleeper cells modeled after TV’s “The Americans” included an internal email describing the crisis among Russians frantically trying to cover their tracks when the FBI began uncovering their U.S. network. It shatters once and for all the president’s repeated lies that Mueller’s investigation was a groundless “witch hunt” and “a hoax.”
More Bull from Trump
The obsessively self-centered Trump responded not with a plan to protect U.S. elections, but by spewing a stream of angry, derisive tweets (with Trump’s own grammar):
“If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow.”
The anger may stem from the realization that the detailed evidence makes it nearly impossible for Trump to survive firing Mueller as the investigation closes in on his own actions and those of his family and campaign.
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Republican apologists found it harder to brush off Russia’s undercover attack on American democracy. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan—former Trump critic turned fawning Trump sycophant—was forced to take yet another wild spin to separate himself again from Trump. Just days ago, Ryan defended the release of an absurdly distorted House Republican memo trashing Mueller, the FBI and the Justice Department for seeking a court order for surveillance of a Trump campaign operative suspected of acting as a Russian agent. “There may have been malfeasance within the FBI,” Ryan said, and Republicans needed to politically “cleanse” the investigation.
Ryan Flip-Flops Again
But the Russian indictments prompted Ryan to suddenly claim he’d supported Mueller’s investigation all along. “We have known that Russians meddled in the election, but these indictments detail the extent of the subterfuge,” Ryan said. “The Russians engaged in a sinister and systematic attack on our political system. It was a conspiracy to subvert the process and take aim at democracy itself. Today’s announcement underscores why we need to follow the facts and work to protect the integrity of future elections.”
There’s one other little problem making it extremely difficult for Ryan and other prominent Republicans to take really strong measures against Russia’s “sinister and systematic attack” on American democracy. It turns out the tactics employed by those evil Russian enemies of democracy were exactly the same tactics Republicans themselves have employed for years to win elections.
Get this: Russians impersonating Americans not only inflamed issues of race, immigration, same-sex marriage and free access to weapons of mass murder to divide and anger a polarized American electorate, but they also worked to suppress voting by African Americans and other groups likely to vote Democratic. Russian agents secretly plotting to destroy democracy simply adopted the platform of the modern Republican Party.
So an interesting question arises: Who is more un-American? Is it Russian agents who impersonated Americans to support an ignorant, unqualified U.S. presidential candidate they believed they could manipulate to support Russia’s authoritarian government? Or is it home-grown American Republicans who supported the same ignorant, unqualified candidate in hopes of passing Republican legislation to destroy popular programs (such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that benefit all Americans) to give ever more enormous tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy?
The correct answer, of course, is who cares? Both are clearly un-American and dangerous threats to the future of American democracy. Obviously, though, the most insidious danger to America’s long-standing democratic traditions are our own un-American Republicans. We’re fortunate that under Trump’s corrupt administration, American institutions of law enforcement and domestic intelligence so far have remained healthy enough to expose a secret foreign criminal operation within our borders that helped elect a completely unfit, un-American president.
The strongest safeguard we have to protect our own elections from hostile, foreign assault is democracy itself. In this election year, every decent American, regardless of past party affiliation, needs to be actively engaged in supporting candidates committed to preserving America’s fundamental principles of democracy, equal treatment and fairness under the law.
