Monday, April 22, 2019

Stefanik's Response to Mueller Report


I first want to mention Rep. Stefanik's bizarre legislation requiring the FBI to notify Congress if candidates were under investigation. It would've been a footrace among Republicans on the Hill to see who could inform candidate Trump first. His campaign was warned that foreign actors, including Russia, would try to infiltrate it and that they should, wait for it, tell the FBI.

In the wake of the Mueller report, Rep. Stefanik put out a statement noting "no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign." She's going to focus on "interference in our elections by Russia and other foreign adversaries." It would've been nice to see some mention of obstruction to balance that no collusion mantra. Mueller seemed to say that the only thing preventing those charges were OLC guidelines against indicting a sitting president and Trump's staff saving him by not following orders.

A group of writers at Lawfare blog posted that Trump's campaign, "were aware the Russians sought to help him win. They welcomed that assistance. Instead of warning the American public, they instead devised a public relations and campaign strategy that sought to capitalize on Russia's illicit assistance. In other words, the Russians and the Trump campaign shared a common goal, and each side worked to achieve that goal with basic knowledge of the other side's intention. They just didn't agree to work toward that goal together."

Rudy Guiliani said this weekend, "There's nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians." It kind of sounds like our congresswoman agrees with that. They didn't help Donald Trump in order to MAGA. That's a given. Maybe finding why they did is something she could focus on.