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Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
Russia’s involvement in American politics — aimed at helping Donald Trump and harming Joe Biden — has continued, and Trump has returned the favor.
As we learned last week, Alexander Smirnov, who was indicted for lying to the FBI about President Biden and his son Hunter, was not only an informant for the United States but also a conduit for disinformation from the Russian intelligence service. Smirnov’s indictment came from the same prosecutor who charged Hunter Biden with gun and tax crimes. And the FBI discovered that Smirnov got “new lies” from Russian intelligence to be used to harm Biden and help Trump in this year’s election.
According to the indictment, Smirnov made baseless smears before the 2020 election, claiming that, when he was vice president, Joe Biden received $5 million (with the same sum to Hunter Biden) to help the Ukrainian energy company Burisma by having Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired.
The FBI checked and found Smirnov lied to his handler about where he was and with whom.
Although Smirnov said there were financial records, text messages and recordings proving bribery, there was no proof.
During the Trump administration, Rudy Giuliani laundered similar falsehoods from Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian the Treasury Department later identified as “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who “employ[ed] manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections.”
The Burisma disinformation loomed large in Trump’s first impeachment. As a whistleblower revealed, Trump threatened to withhold arms to Ukraine, asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “do us a favor” by lying about Joe Biden and Burisma.
It was after this that Sen. Susan Collins said she hoped Trump “learned a pretty big lesson” and would be “much more cautious in the future.” Trump learned no lesson.
Rather Trump and his compatriots continued to promote disinformation that Vice President Biden tried to get Prosecutor Shokin fired because Shokin was investigating Burisma and Biden was trying to protect his son. In reality, bipartisan majorities in Congress, the Obama administration and our allies all wanted Shokin removed because he was a corrupt prosecutor who wasn’t probing corrupt enterprises.
After Biden became president, Sen. Chuck Grassley and the House GOP pushed the false bribery story and got the report from FBI informant Smirnov released publicly, even though, as Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican, told CNN last week, “We were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known.”
Indeed, revelations of this Russian plot should end the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, which was already embarrassingly weak. It would be impeachable if Biden took payments for official actions but there’s zero evidence of that. It’s not impeachable for family members to do business overseas; if it was, lots of presidents, including Trump would be in big trouble. None of this troubled House Republicans Jim Jordan or James Comey, who seem immune from shame.
There’s also a broader pattern of Trump getting help from Russia, as described in the Mueller Report and five reports by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee.
Although Mueller concluded there was no proof of direct collusion between Trump and Russia, it’s striking how Trump has buttressed Russia’s goals and strategies.
As NBC journalists Dan De Luce and Kevin Collier recently reported, disinformation about Biden “is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO.”
A few weeks ago Trump recalled telling a world leader that he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to our NATO allies if they didn’t pay enough. Putting aside that NATO countries don’t have dues, but rather pledge to spend a certain percentage on their militaries, undermining this international organization is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s greatest dream.
Trump rallied backers against aiding Ukraine. Trump’s policies would give Putin, an expansionist autocrat, the green light to invade more countries in Europe.
All this is totally bizarre for those of us who grew up seeing a very different Republican Party. Every GOP elected official and candidate should answer for it and every voter should take this Russia-Trump relationship seriously when they go to the voting booth.
