How
likely would impeachment proceedings be if the Russia investigation
uncovers obstruction of justice? Could the inquiry unveil President
Trump’s tax returns? Why are anonymous sources necessary to our
investigative work?
Mark
Mazzetti, The Times’s Washington investigations editor, will be
discussing the Russia inquiry in New York on Tuesday evening with fellow
Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Scott Shane, and Nina Khrushcheva, a
professor of international affairs at The New School. To join the
conversation, tune in to the live stream below at 7 p.m.
Last month, in preparation of the event, we asked
readers to send us their questions for Mark about the Russia
investigation. More than 300 readers wrote in. Here are Mark’s responses
to a selection of the questions, which were lightly edited for clarity.
_____
If
President Trump is interviewed, does that signal that the investigation
is nearing its end, or could it still be years before we know what will
happen?— Daniel Kritz in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Exactly
where Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the
investigation, is in his inquiry is speculation, largely because he and
his team have been very effective in keeping a lid on the details.
During these types of investigations, an interview
with someone at the top is usually a signal that the inquiry is
beginning to wrap up. By this logic, Mr. Mueller would want to have as
much evidence as possible before speaking to the president, because the
expectation is that he and his team would have only one shot at an
interview.
However,
I said “usually,” and almost everything about this episode is unusual.
It would be foolish to try to make predictions with any certainty. The
expectation is that Mr. Mueller will deliver his findings to Rod
Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who will then decide how to
proceed from there.
Will
Mr. Mueller be able to access Mr. Trump’s taxes, and will he be able to
bring charges should there prove to be any impropriety in them?— Michael in New York City
Yes,
I would assume that Mr. Mueller has access to any financial documents
he wants, including the president’s tax returns. As for “bringing
charges,” it is generally assumed that the special counsel won’t bring
criminal charges against the president if he finds anything criminal,
whether it’s financial crimes or something else. The current Justice
Department guidance is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and
most legal experts believe that Mr. Mueller will follow that guidance.
Instead,
it’s generally assumed that Mr. Mueller would make recommendations to
Mr. Rosenstein, who would then pass them along to Congress.
As
I read The Times’s coverage of the Russia investigation, I sometimes
wonder if the paper has lost its way. I’ve subscribed to it for decades,
and I haven’t had this issue so much in the past. I am a Democrat and
voted twice for President Obama, but I just can’t understand why you put
so much emphasis on Russia, helping to stir up even more of this
unhealthy Cold War rhetoric. I am currently abroad, and I feel a growing
frustration with the U.S., and it’s not just Mr. Trump. Will we soon
have some facts that justify such a big investigation, or will this be
going until doomsday?— Uschi Schueller in Zurich
I
think your frustration is natural, especially because The Times and
other news outlets have been covering an investigation that doesn’t have
a clear end. And I agree with you that there is a real danger of
creating an anti-Russia hysteria that would be dangerous not only in
this country but also overseas.
At
the same time, I’ll defend the amount of attention that The Times has
paid to the Russia story and to Mr. Mueller’s investigation. It is an
extraordinary moment: Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia
took active steps to disrupt an American presidential election, and the
Justice Department is investigating whether President Trump or his
advisers helped assist that campaign. The investigation has already
brought the indictment of the former Trump campaign chairman — albeit on
charges unrelated to Russian collusion — and Mr. Trump’s former
national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
during the course of the investigation. These are very significant
developments, and reason to keep digging on the story.
_____
If the president is found guilty of obstruction, do you believe the Republican House will initiate impeachment proceedings?— Diogenes in Florida
It’s
still difficult to imagine the circumstances under which the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives would move to impeach the
president. If Mr. Mueller’s report to Mr. Rosenstein contains evidence
of obstruction of justice — or lays out an argument for why President
Trump has broken the law in another way — then that would certainly
increase the pressure on Congress to act in some fashion. If such a
report goes to Congress, in theory the House Judiciary Committee could
begin impeachment proceedings. Again, that’s very difficult to imagine
in the current Congress.
If
the Democrats retake the House in the November election, then obviously
the odds of impeachment proceedings would go up significantly.
Who’s paying the lawyer fees for Mr. Trump’s defense in the Russia investigation?— Joe Henson in Dallas
The
president’s personal lawyers said in November that Mr. Trump had begun
to cover his own legal costs. Before then, the Republican National
Committee had spent several hundred thousand dollars footing the legal
bills.
Mr.
Trump’s presidential campaign has used some of its cash to cover the
legal fees for Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. According to campaign
finance filings, the campaign paid nearly $238,000 in July and August to
the office of Alan S. Futerfas, the lawyer for Donald Trump Jr.
_____
When
using an anonymous source in reporting on the Russia investigation,
“U.S. official” or something similar, what methods does The Times employ
to ensure its reporting is not advancing a potential hidden agenda of
the source? What investigations are undertaken to evaluate the source’s
possible motivations? And shouldn’t this back story also be included to
allow readers to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information?— Kathryn Locatell in Placerville, Calif.
Many
readers raise concerns about the use of anonymous sources, and not just
on stories about the Russia investigation. Anonymous sources are not
ideal, and we should always try to make available as much information as
possible about any motivations or rationale the sources have for
remaining anonymous.
That
said, stories about the Russia investigation — or any sensitive
national security issue — would not be possible without the use of
anonymous sources. During an ongoing federal investigation, much of it
involving classified information, sources often will only speak to
reporters if they are assured that their names won’t be used. We believe
it’s important to get the information they have in order to write
stories that get to the facts underlying all the facets of this
investigation: from Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, to
the contacts between President Trump’s advisers and Russians, to Mr.
Trump’s efforts to undermine Mr. Mueller’s inquiry.
But
this doesn’t mean we accept any information, grant anonymity and
publish it. We always have to assess the motivations and potential
biases of sources, and judge the information they provide against
information we get from other sources. Readers need to trust that we
don’t publish stories that blindly advance the agenda of anonymous
people, and it’s up to us to earn that trust.
_____
If it is proved that Trump campaign officials received information from Russians and used it in the campaign, is that a crime?— Ed Surette in Wakefield, Mass.
Not
necessarily. Most legal experts say that colluding — or working
together — with a foreign power during an election is not illegal in and
of itself. Where campaign officials could get into trouble is if they
were coordinating with Russia to do something that violates American
law. If, for example, campaign officials told Russians to break into the
Democratic National Committee’s servers, then the officials could be in
legal jeopardy.
I’m
concerned that the National Rifle Association may have been a weak spot
for the United States since it’s so conservative (and pro-Trump). Did
Russia perhaps find a way to donate to Mr. Trump via the N.R.A.?— Pete Lindner in New York City
It’s an interesting question that has been explored a bit, although there’s certainly more work to do. McClatchy had a good story
on this question, and reported that money to the N.R.A. is one of the
issues that Mr. Mueller is examining. In November, The Times reported
about a strange overture
during the campaign by Alexander Torshin, a top Russian official and
longtime N.R.A. member, who was trying to broker a meeting between Mr.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump campaign received
the overture before the N.R.A.’s annual convention in 2016 in
Louisville, Ky.
_____
A
friend of mine says, “Well, the C.I.A. has participated in interfering
with elections, destabilizing governments and installing puppet regimes,
so what’s the big deal if Russia does it?” (He cites Central and South
American countries.)— Michael Waterhouse in Sydney, Australia
Your
friend is right. The C.I.A. has a long history of so-called influence
operations to help favored candidates in foreign elections with money or
propaganda, and on a few occasions even helping overthrow elected
leaders seen as hostile to the United States. Such operations were more
common during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was often assisting a
leftist candidate, and frequently involved open assistance as well as
espionage. Election meddling by Americans appears to have become rarer
in recent decades, though such covert operations sometimes don’t come to
light for years.
But that does not mean the Russian meddling in 2016, which used hacking and social media fraud,
was not a big deal. Americans understandably do not want the Kremlin to
have a covert role in determining who becomes the American president.
Why
is there so little reporting or investigation relative to attempts by
Russians to “hack” into actual voting systems in multiple states?— Jerry Wortzman in Natick, Mass.
One
reason is in your word “attempts.” According to government agencies,
there is no evidence that Russian hackers have managed to change vote
totals or otherwise undermine the integrity of the actual vote. And
there has been a good bit of reporting
on the attempted hacking. But you’re right that so much media attention
has been focused on what Russia successfully did in 2016 — stealing and
leaking emails and hijacking Facebook and Twitter — that the danger
posed by future attacks on voting software has received too little
attention.
_____
Does
the administration have a plan to prevent outside interference in our
elections, whether it’s from Russia or China or another country? So far,
I have read many news reports about the investigation, but very little
about preventing a recurrence.— Dorothy Signal in Foster City, Calif.
You’re
right, there has been vastly more attention paid to what happened in
2016 than what could happen in future elections. That’s true of the
media, Congress and most of the rest of the government. Occasionally,
members of Congress will speak out about how there needs to be a
coordinated focus to prevent the same thing from happening in the
November elections and, of course, the next presidential election in
2020, but there doesn’t seem to be any comprehensive plan to deal with
the problem yet. American law enforcement and intelligence officials
have already warned that Russian operations are underway to try to
disrupt the 2018 campaign, though it’s unclear exactly what they are
seeing at this point.
View the live stream of our sold-out panel “Russia and the 2016 Election: What Lines Were Crossed?” here on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
