FBI Russia, Trump probe only part of what U.S. has to fear

When FBI Director James Comey confirmed at Monday’s House intelligence committee hearing that his agency’s probe into the Russian government’s “efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election” includes “whether there was any coordination” between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign, it was a low point for the new president. As The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson wrote on Monday, the trail may lead somewhere or nowhere, but “it will be followed to the end.”

A more immediately relevant concern is that Comey sees Russia’s attempted interference via hacking, leaking and planting disinformation as unsurprising and likely to continue, part of a de facto new Cold War between Moscow and Washington that operates in high-tech realms as well as old-school surveillance and diplomatic fencing. The public may not have internalized this threat yet. But a bigger problem is that President Trump doesn’t seem to have either. This greatly adds to the reasons to worry about the rift between Trump and his intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

This rift was evident again at Monday’s hearing when Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers rejected the president’s claim that the Obama administration had spied on him; when Rogers denied Trump’s claim that Obama had asked British intelligence agencies to spy on Trump; and when Comey debunked Trump’s Twitter assertion that in Comey’s earlier House testimony, the FBI chief had said Russia did not influence the election. These responses won’t please the president — and if Trump is more upset with the FBI and NSA than with Vladimir Putin, America is at risk.

That’s underscored by the brazenness of Putin’s attempts to interfere with other nations. Long before the daily leaks seeking to undermine Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Russia had been throwing its weight around the cyber world. In 2007, Estonia accused hackers using Russian IP addresses of shutting down the internet in Estonia and attacking websites operated by the Estonian government, banks and a newspaper. Then a Russia-linked group hacked NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2013; there were Russia-linked cyberattacks on Ukraine’s Central Election Commission, Poland’s stock exchange and a French TV network in 2014, and there were allegations of Russia-linked attacks on computers of 15 German federal lawmakers and Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission in 2015. This year, French authorities believe Russia-linked groups are launching cyberattacks and planting fake stories to try to manipulate the nation’s pending presidential election. Former Soviet and Russian diplomat Alexander Melnik told PBS that Putin’s goal is to respond to national humiliations of the past 30 years — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the expansion of NATO — by targeting Western democracy.

Against this backdrop, it’s dismaying to read the transcript of the Comey-Rogers session with the House committee. Intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, and other Republicans kept trying to get Comey and Rogers to share their indignation over “illegal leaks” that have embarrassed the president by showing the ridiculousness of some of his claims. That strategy will only encourage Trump to make more false and outrageous comments, which will be contradicted by new leaks, which will lead to new Trump attacks.

This would be a brutal rut for national politics to be stuck in at any point in U.S. history. But in these unsettled, divisive times, being in such a rut would be a distraction from too many other important issues and problems that government should focus on while the FBI’s Russia probe runs its course.

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