Trump, Russia, the Birth Certificate and the Election That Will Not Conclude

July 18, 2017

Tags: Birth Certiticate, election, Putin
Posted in: Democracy, Trump

Too many people, many driven by racism, refused to accept the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

The votes were clear, the will of the people overwhelming, but to minds blocked by disbelief, there had to be another way to prevent Obama from taking office or failing that, from legitimately exercising power.

Enter the birth certificate. What could be more disqualifying than Obama not being an American citizen? Obama had already “admitted” his father was not an American citizen, and there were all those photos of him as a young man in Indonesia. The accusations played to the fear that someone not loyal to the United States (might he be a Muslim, too?!?) would occupy its highest office.

The silliness of the idea that Obama was not an American citizen still lurks in some of the danker corners of the Internet. More significantly, the concept the birth certificate unleashed — maybe the election wasn’t ever going to be over — is now more than background noise. It is a real threat to democracy.

Trump Won

Like the Big Bang, disbelief that Trump actually won has been exploding ever-outward since November 8. The idea that the Russians had somehow “hacked” him into office surfaced even before the final vote tally. But first there were the recounts (the numbers couldn’t be right; they were.) The voter fraud (there wasn’t.) The Electoral College needed to be circumvented (it couldn’t be.) Or maybe actually it was the popular vote which mattered just this one time and Clinton should move into the White House (Nope, people who believe this failed 9th grade civics badly.)

Following the Inauguration (with several prominent Democrats refusing to “normalize” it by attending), action overnight shifted to impeachment; when can things get started? Impeachment would be based on (as the media stumbled to remember 9th grade Civics) the Emoluments Clause, the Hatch Act, the Logan Act, denying the authority of the courts over immigration, nepotism, Chinese trademarks, sweetheart deals with dictators, Mafia money in real estate, firing the FBI director, or obstruction of justice. The 25th Amendment!

Once-cogent pundits like Lawrence Tribe and Robert Reich morphed into human cottage industries proclaiming the impeach-ability of various Tweets, actions, and statements. Spiderman, save us!

But with the apparent lack of traction behind any of those things, the boil burst into a giant pile of… Russia.

Those Taxing Russians

Then there are are demands for The Tax Returns.

Beginning deep back into the campaign and continuing through today, Democrats and the media have created a strawman out of Trump’s taxes, insinuating smoking guns of shady Russian money must abound. Trump’s refusal to release the documents, for whatever reason, is twisted to be further proof of the explosive secrets they must hold (“nothing to fear, nothing to hide!”.)

Unless each of us personally has the chance to comb through Trump’s 1040’s, no one will ever know The Truth.

Left unsaid is that while Democratic politicians, media pundits, and the two of us have not seen Trump’s taxes, the IRS, FBI and Treasury Department have. Trump and his myriad corporate entities have been filing taxes forever, and have been subject to audits on an ongoing basis. Any investigations at the FBI and/or other agencies either have access to or can seek access to Trump’s taxes through subpoena, as well as decades of other financial disclosures and records. The pros have been at work for some time, literally since the 1980s or earlier, and nothing has emerged. That has been left out of the reporting on this issue.

What the media seems to desire is a bit of paper showing Trump conducted some business with someone somewhere in Russia. The value of such a document remains questionable in proving… something bad. It is hard to imagine anyone involved in New York City real estate not working with Russian money at some point. Long before all this was the focus of such intense media attention, the New York Times wrote a non-partisan, deeply researched series of articles on foreign money in general, and Russian money in the specific, flooding the New York market. The Times concluded, without reference to Trump at all, that that “flight of wealth accrued in the chaotic capitalism of post-Soviet Russia has been a powerful force behind the luxury condominium boom reordering New York City’s skyline.” Russian money in New York real estate is, well, sort of normal.

On the political side, contacts between foreign ambassadors and influential Americans happen constantly, sought by both sides. Our American ambassadors and State Department diplomats are specifically charged with building such contacts overseas. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who also met the Russian ambassador, did so at the Republican Convention this summer. The ambassador was attending, along with 80 other foreigners, as a guest of the Obama State Department, which brings foreign diplomats to the conventions to “witness democracy.” And yes, every country weaves its spies into that heady mix. Much has been made of the fact that the Russian ambassador has met with many people connected with the Trump campaign. It’s actually sort of normal.

Or maybe none of this matters — Trump will be impeached for the next thing that happens! Yeah, that one!

So… What Happened?

If we blow away all the smoke, what is left?

A set of more-or-less agreed on facts is nearly non-existent; even the official existence of actual investigation(s) is mostly based on leaks and general statements.

Someone, probably connected in some way to some entity in Russia, exposed emails from inside the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign that reflected badly on how the Committee treated Bernie Sanders. How that did or did not help send Trump into the White House is pretty close to unanswerable.

Separate from that, people connected to Trump had various interactions with Russians. Trump’s initial appointee as national security adviser, Michael Flynn, took money from Russian TV station RT.com, and lied about meeting the Russian ambassador. Neither action is illegal, though most people would agree neither was proper, and both served as grounds for his firing.

Trump’s son(s) had a meeting with Russian persons to talk about what dirt they had on Hillary. They didn’t have any dirt. Not illegal, not smart, but not grounds for impeaching anyone.

Where things get sticky is validating the next step: that some or all of those things and others — the leaked emails, Trump corporate entities doing business with Russia, contacts with Russian officials, Flynn’s lies — add up to the fact that a large number of Americans, arguably almost all of whom did not vote for Trump, believe now in some way Trump was helped into the White House by the Russians, and in fact may be fully under the control of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Decisions in the Oval Office itself are being made, they believe, based on how they can favor the Russians, not the United States. That’s a helluva accusation. It could impeach a president. It could destroy the Republican party. It could negate the 2016 election.

Saving Democracy by Destroying It

And so a frothy mix of Democrats and a media that by and large favored Candidate Clinton has emerged to prove that the president of the United States was helped into office by a hostile foreign government and/or is controlled in office by that government, claims unprecedented in American history. Maybe any nation’s history.

First tries were offered to the intelligence agencies to “save” American democracy by unearthing information so unambiguous underlying a number of ambiguous acts that it would lead to a swift impeachment. Early in Trump’s tenure many on the left looked to the NSA or CIA to reveal intercepts that would take Trump down with his own words. Hopes were raised when some information almost certainly from intel sources was leaked to the Washington Post, and led directly to Flynn’s firing. A murky foreign intelligence service-connected “dossier” implying the Trump campaign interacted with Russian spies, flavored with some salacious details of golden showers, appeared, but was never shown to be valid and quickly faded from view.

Hope shifted to the FBI, who allegedly had been conducting some form of old-school G-man style investigation since July 2016. The FBI would never confirm even the existence of such an investigation into Trump himself, but his firing Comey seems to have poisoned in the minds of Democrats any investigation that might exist. FBI Director James Comey, last seen by many Democrats as one of two individuals (Putin is the other, of course) who caused their candidate to lose to Trump in the first place, was reborn as Washington’s Last Honest Man.

Enter the Special Prosecutor

So with the FBI no longer trustworthy enough to help impeach Trump, enter a special prosecutor. Robert Mueller will impeach Trump.

A special prosecutor is a lawyer appointed to investigate and possibly prosecute a specific potential wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest exists for the usual authority. So, Comey’s replacement, even though he would not be doing the prosecuting (and neither would have Comey) can’t be seen as independent enough to do the job. You need someone special.

The people now strongly favoring a special prosecutor do have a few wires crossed. No matter who is in charge, the FBI only gathers evidence and does not determine whether a crime appears to have been committed. That decision rests with a prosecutor going to a Grand Jury, typically the Attorney General or someone below him in the Department of Justice. The desire of Democrats is a special prosecutor would do much more in this case, actually lead the FBI and others’ investigation. They would be “independent,” except that the system does not actually create a fully free-standing judicial system, and the special prosecutor in fact still reports to the Attorney General, the nation’s chief law enforcement official, in this case Jeff Sessions, who has himself recused himself from all matters Russia.

That means a Special Prosecutor would instead report to Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General who helped fire Comey, and a Trump appointee himself. Rosenstein is able to veto the special counsel on decisions he doesn’t agree with, as well as request explanations “for any investigative or prosecutorial step.” Rosenstein would also be able to fire the special prosecutor.

A Congressional Commission

So even a special prosecutor would be under the authority of a Trump appointee. So maybe what’s needed, one hears some muttering, is not the NSA, CIA, FBI or a special prosecutor, but a Congressional commission. A commission like the ones Congress created to investigate the Kennedy assassination, or 9/11.

Unlike the NSA and CIA, who look for espionage and full-on treason, or the FBI and a (special) prosecutor who look for actual crimes, a Congressional commission can just… look. And that seems to be the whole point, to set in motion a process that will keep questions about Russia and Trump in the news through at least the 2018 midterm elections, maybe beyond, freed from the complexities of legal standards of guilt and innocence.

In the words of one prominent proponent of such a commission:

A special prosecutor… seeks crimes. The criminal law is a heavy tool, and for that reason it is thickly encased in protections for accused persons.

A select committee of Congress or an independent commission of nonpartisan experts established by Congress can ask the broad question: What happened? A select committee or an independent commission can organize its inquiry according to priority, leaving the secondary and tertiary issues to the historians. A select committee or an independent commission is not barred from looking at events in earlier years statutes of limitations. A select committee or an independent commission seeks truth.

This is an intelligence question with policy implications, not a prosecutorial question with legal implications. For example, if Russia preferred Trump because Putin liked Trump’s pro-Russia campaign policies — well, policies can be changed. But if Russia preferred Trump because Russian entities have some financial or other hold upon him — that’s something the country would need to know now, even if no crimes were involved.

There is No Smoking Birth Certificate

Trump has been a public figure for decades, his actions as a real estate developer documented and reviewed by his enemies, opponents, and creditors. America’s intelligence agencies have always monitored transactions with Russia, Trump’s and everyone else’s, in detail. The New York Times and the Washington Post haven’t seen Trump’s taxes, but the IRS has, for decades. So even though Congress hasn’t passed judgement on them, law enforcement has. Meanwhile, if the FBI wants to arrest Mike Flynn or any other Trump associate for espionage they can that today, or could have in November, and implying that has not or will not happen because Comey was or is not the director is nonsense.

Unless or until something fully unexpected emerges, there is no “birth certificate.”

Instead, Democrats, assisted by a media that appears to have stepped over the line from watchdog to abetting conspiracy, are trying to undo an election. Their efforts are unlikely to succeed, as they did not succeed with Obama, but if you think this process won’t be used again against whoever wins in 2020, well, you’re being foolish. The clumsiness of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy, is nothing compared to the approach being tried with Trump-Russia. We’ve moved in a few months from Jill Stein demanding crowd-funded vote recounts to leaks of intelligence intercepts used to get the sitting national security advisor fired.


People are getting more skillful at the game, learning more about the tools available. Stirring up the crowd, creating a yearning, setting a precedent that there is no need to accept the results of an election. A new political weapon has been unsheathed. America is playing with fire.

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.