On Friday - three days before today's summit meeting between President Trump and Russian President Putin - the boss of Team Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, announced that a dozen Russian intelligence officers had been indicted on charges relating to Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.
If the Friday indictments were a serious pursuit of Russian wrongdoers they would have been handed up by the grand jury, sealed from public disclosure, and one or more of the people indicted lured to some jurisdiction where they could have been arrested and brought to the U.S. for trial.
Shortly after the announcement, Senate Minority Leader Chuckie Schumer said, "President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won't interfere in future elections. Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy."
It does mean that the president should threaten Putin with appropriate responses that go far beyond Mueller's Potemkin indictments for Russia's future cyberattacks and interference with our elections.
Is Trump too easy on Putin's aggression? As I wrote in March, U.S. airpower killed more than two hundred Russian mercenaries trying to cross a bridge near Deir-Ezzor in Syria to attack U.S. allies there.
Trump criticizes Russia regularly but - with few exceptions such as the Skripal poisoning and Putin's support for Assad's chemical attacks - never criticizes Putin by name.
Whether he does will determine his credibility with both Putin and NATO. The Friday indictments publicized by Rod Rosenstein were an attempt to constrain the president's maneuvers in today's meeting.
https://spectator.org/more-potemkin-indictments-from-helsinkis-would-be-saboteurs/
If the Friday indictments were a serious pursuit of Russian wrongdoers they would have been handed up by the grand jury, sealed from public disclosure, and one or more of the people indicted lured to some jurisdiction where they could have been arrested and brought to the U.S. for trial.
Shortly after the announcement, Senate Minority Leader Chuckie Schumer said, "President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won't interfere in future elections. Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy."
It does mean that the president should threaten Putin with appropriate responses that go far beyond Mueller's Potemkin indictments for Russia's future cyberattacks and interference with our elections.
Is Trump too easy on Putin's aggression? As I wrote in March, U.S. airpower killed more than two hundred Russian mercenaries trying to cross a bridge near Deir-Ezzor in Syria to attack U.S. allies there.
Trump criticizes Russia regularly but - with few exceptions such as the Skripal poisoning and Putin's support for Assad's chemical attacks - never criticizes Putin by name.
Whether he does will determine his credibility with both Putin and NATO. The Friday indictments publicized by Rod Rosenstein were an attempt to constrain the president's maneuvers in today's meeting.
https://spectator.org/more-potemkin-indictments-from-helsinkis-would-be-saboteurs/
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