Senate Republicans Demonstrate That The Trump-Barr-Guiliani Ukraine Project Is A Lie
Earlier this week, the Republican-controlled Senate released a critically important, two-volume report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.
This report confirms the unanimous findings of the U.S. intelligence community.
It’s a Republican-authored report. Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, Marco Rubio, and Richard Burr are among the Republican members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which put out the report.
The report’s findings, like those of the intelligence community and Robert Mueller, cannot be squared with Attorney General Bill Barr’s conduct weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to prove that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the U.S. election.
To repeat: the evidence is clear and it is confirmed by the Republican Senate that Russia interfered to benefit Donald Trump. Yet Trump, with Barr’s assistance, is embarked on a two-pronged campaign: (i) to discredit and undercut the findings of Russian interference with a false counter-narrative that actually Ukraine interfered to help Hillary Clinton, and that all the U.S. allies who informed the Obama administration about Russian interference were actually part of some secret international plot to hurt Trump, and thus that the entire Russia investigation was illegitimate; and (ii) that former Vice President and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden was engaged in corruption in Ukraine.
The bipartisan report concludes in Vol. 2 (embedded below) unequivocally, that Russia actively interfered in the 2016 election via an unprecedented social media disinformation campaign to assist Donald Trump — both against several of his Republican challengers in the primary, and against Hillary Clinton in the general. African-Americans were targeted more than any other group, with the Russians deploying a team of influencers to generate original, anti-Clinton content to depress turnout for her. Read the report. Ukraine isn’t in there, because it was Russia that sought to, and did, help elect Donald Trump.
Barr’s actions at Trump’s behest, and Trump’s statements and actions trying to gaslight the nation by lying about Ukraine and Joe Biden, are founded in demonstrable lies, and have been undertaken against the national security interest of the United States in having a fair election untainted by foreign interference or influence. Their actions are also in radical contravention of the fundamental principle that the president cannot abuse his power by turning the government into his personal political campaign arm. Their actions are contrary to and fly in the face in the face of overwhelming findings by not only by the entire intelligence community, but by the Republican-led Senate.
Barr’s use of taxpayer funds to try to undermine the conclusive findings of 17 U.S. agencies and the Republican-led Senate, to try to undercut their findings and that of the Mueller report (whose conclusions Trump lied about in a deliberately misleading “summary”, sowing active disinformation across the public), while conveniently and secretly concluding that Trump’s covered-up solicitation of Zelenskyy’s aid while withholding military aid was not illegal, is beyond grotesque. The pretext that Barr has offered for his role in traversing the planet personally to try to undermine the Russia investigation — that he thinks “spying” on the Trump campaign occurred, and the separate pretext that Trump has offered — that he seeks merely to investigate “corruption” in Ukraine generally or to supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election — are both so risible as to be insulting.
That they are risible is confirmed by (i) this Senate report; (ii) the Mueller report; (iii) the intelligence community’s findings; (iv) a wealth of reporting concerning foreign governments’ alarm about the Trump campaign’s now well-documented connections with and meetings with Russian operatives — meetings and connections about which Trump and his team lied repeatedly; (v) a wealth of reporting that long-ago debunked the false accusations about Ukraine/Biden; (vi) the fact that, as Mitt Romney tweeted, there is no other “corruption” that this administration has ever sought to prevent; (vii) the Zelenskyy phone call; (viii) Rudy Guiliani’s admissions on live TV; and (ix) Donald Trump’s consistent lies pretending that Russia did not interfere in the election and falsely claiming investigating that interference — which is critical to protecting our elections and national security — was a hoax, his consistent undermining of U.S. intelligence agencies, along with his opposition to sanctioning Russia or holding it accountable for the interference, which itself has served as an ongoing open invitation to Russia to continue its disinformation campaign on behalf of his re-election.
It has been disgusting to watch Trump embrace Russia’s illegal efforts on his behalf, deny the embrace that we watched on live on TV (“Russia, if you’re listening…”) and saw documented in the Mueller report (“If it’s what you say it is, I love it!”), and then gaslight and lie to the entire nation claiming that what happened did not happen. For him to then have called Ukrainian Prime Minister Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019 and nakedly pressured an ally to manufacture an investigation to hurt a political rival, as a personal “favor”, whether or not in exchange for military aid (though that quid pro quo is repulsive and also illegal), on the very day, no less, that Mueller testified, was equivalent to a declaration that he is above the law, that he will use and abuse every power of his office to entrench himself and damage others.
And in this project of soliciting foreign interference on his behalf, using taxpayer funds and the power of his office, he has enlisted so many other corrupt actors, transforming the White House together with Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rudy Guiliani and certain politically-appointed “diplomats” into a criminal enterprise, an association-in-fact willing to weaponize the U.S. government for Trump’s political benefit and their own financial/political gain against political rivals — without regard to law, truth, U.S. national security, or the integrity of U.S. elections. Indeed, they have actively compromised United States national security and the fundamental tenets of democracy by their actions, which read more like the conduct of a banana republic generalissimo and his henchmen than those of a legitimate president, attorney general, or secretary of state with any respect for the Constitution or the law.
It is a sickening and chilling spectacle.
Somehow, though, lost in all of this, especially in the depressingly anemic press coverage of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report, is the fact that the Republican authors of this report have stood silent and said nothing — not one word — to rebuke Barr or Trump or Pompeo in their efforts to suggest that there was no basis to the Russia investigation or to pressure other governments to manufacture evidence about Biden. They have not trumpeted, or even pointed to, their report to debunk the pretextual basis for Barr’s “investigation”; they have not called on Barr to desist his unethical and transparently politically-motivated actions. They have not called Trump out for his lies about the 2016 election and constant attempts to deploy U.S. resources for his own re-election by fabricating “evidence” of Biden’s “corruption.” They have not issued statements in defense of Biden or explaining that there is not a shred of evidence or legitimacy to the Barr-Trump-Pompeo active disinformation campaign. They have not stood up and said X million dollars and Y thousands of man-hours have been spent by us, Mueller, and the intelligence community examining the 2016 election and the unanimous conclusion based on overwhelming and irrefutable evidence is that the investigation was more than justified and that Russia interfered. And Russia is still interfering. Not Ukraine.
They have allowed Barr, and Guiliani, and Trump, and Lindsey Graham, to repeat lie after lie after lie — lies that take root among a segment of the public, lies that muddy that waters, lies that originated in the fever swamps of rightwing hackery and now are all over Fox News, lies that Trump exploits to his full advantage and then uses to justify his illegality — without regard for truth. Lies that Barr has seized on when even his predecessor, the otherwise-dreadful Jeff Sessions, refused to.
Knowing full well Russia’s actions in 2016, which they described in their own report, these Republican senators nonetheless stand silently by letting Trump lie, letting Barr lie, letting the Department of Justice be illegally politicized for Trump’s benefit and to the injury of the United States. These senators know their own report contradicts everything Trump and Barr are claiming are their motives. (The most Burr would say about the Ukraine “investigation” was “that’s not my lane.”)
The report is not even announced on the Senate Committee website. You have to search in “reports” to even find it.
I don’t understand why Democrats and news organizations are not making more of this.
Barr and Trump are trying to contradict the truth about Russia and turn a lie about Ukraine into a “truth” — so Trump can be re-elected. They are engaged in an active disinformation campaign, aided and abetted by inveterate lying hacks like Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, and Kevin McCarthy. They are using taxpayer resources to do it. They are seeking to manufacture evidence and calling the entire intelligence community and the Republican-led senate liars. And the Republican Senators are just fine with letting them do it.
