After more than a dozen Russians and three companies were indicted on Friday for interfering
in the 2016 elections, President Trump’s first reaction was to claim
personal vindication: “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no
collusion!” he wrote on Twitter.
He
voiced no concern that a foreign power had been trying for nearly four
years to upend American democracy, much less resolve to stop it from
continuing to do so this year.
The
indictment secured by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III,
underscored the broader conclusion by the American government that Russia
is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through
21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda, a conclusion shared
by the president’s own senior advisers and intelligence chiefs. But it
is a war being fought on the American side without a commander in chief.
In
13 months in office, Mr. Trump has made little if any public effort to
rally the nation to confront Moscow for its intrusion or to defend
democratic institutions against continued disruption. His administration
has at times called out Russia or taken action, and even Mr. Trump’s
national security adviser, speaking in Germany on Saturday, called
evidence of Russian meddling “incontrovertible.” But the administration
has been left to respond without the president’s leadership.
“It
is astonishing to me that a president of the United States would take
this so lightly or see it purely through the prism of domestic
partisanship,” said Daniel Fried, a career diplomat under presidents of
both parties who is now at the Atlantic Council. He said it invariably
raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had something to hide. “I have
no evidence that he’s deliberately pulling his punches because he has
to, but I can’t dismiss it. No president has raised those kinds of
questions.”
Rather than condemn Russia for its actions, Mr. Trump in the past has said he accepts the denial offered by President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Trump has not imposed new sanctions
called for in a law passed by Congress last year to retaliate for the
attack on America’s political system, or teamed up with European leaders
to counter a common threat. He has not led a concerted effort to harden
election systems in the United States with midterm congressional
elections on the horizon, or pressed lawmakers to pass legislation
addressing the situation.
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Michael A. McFaul, an ambassador to Moscow under President Barack Obama,
called Mr. Trump’s reaction to the indictments “shockingly weak” and
said he should instead have criticized Mr. Putin for violating American
sovereignty or even announced plans to punish Moscow.
“Instead,
he just focused on his own campaign,” Mr. McFaul said. “America was
attacked, and our commander in chief said nothing in response. He looks
weak, not only in Moscow but throughout the world.”
The
president’s silence has not necessarily stopped lower levels of his
administration from responding to Russian actions, sometimes going
further than Mr. Obama, who was also criticized for not doing enough to
counter Moscow’s threat. The Trump administration has decided to send weapons to Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russian intervention, and recently imposed sanctions on more human rights violators. After Russia ordered the American Embassy in Moscow to shed most of its staff, the administration responded by ordering Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco and diplomatic annexes in New York and Washington.
Likewise, in just the past few days, the Trump administration formally blamed Russia
for an expansive cyberattack last year called NotPetya and threatened
unspecified “international consequences.” The nation’s intelligence
agency directors, including those appointed by Mr. Trump, unanimously warned in congressional testimony that Russia was already meddling in this year’s midterm elections.
Mr.
Trump’s own aides readily acknowledge the reality that he does not.
Besides describing Russian interference as undeniable on Saturday, Lt.
Gen. H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser, speaking at the
Munich Security Conference, said Mr. Mueller’s charges made clear that
Russia had been engaged in a “sophisticated form of espionage” against
the United States.
“With the F.B.I. indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain,” he said.
Late Saturday night, however, Mr. Trump, contradicted General McMaster,
writing on Twitter shortly before midnight that his aide “forgot to say
that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by
the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia” and the
Democrats.
In
a second late-night tweet, Mr. Trump said that the F.B.I. missed
warning signs of the gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida school on
Wednesday because it was too focused on the Russia investigation. “Very
sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida
school shooter,” he wrote. “This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.”
Mr.
Trump has long viewed reports of Russian intrusion as a threat to his
legitimacy, a way for Democrats, the news media or the “deep state” to
question his victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton in 2016. When his Justice Department indicted the 13 Russians and three Russian entities on Friday for trying to “sow discord in the U.S. political system,” the president focused on the fact that no evidence was presented that he or his campaign was knowingly involved.
Indeed,
the indictment made no assertion that the president or anyone
affiliated with him did anything wrong, understandably a relief for Mr.
Trump, given a year of investigation and media reports exploring the
possibility of collaboration with Russia. The “information warfare
against the United States,” as one Russian organization called it,
started as early as 2014, predating Mr. Trump’s entry into the race.
But
the indictment also determined that by 2016 the effort had evolved into
a deliberate attempt to support Mr. Trump and disparage Mrs. Clinton.
And the charges against the Russians are not the end of the
investigation by Mr. Mueller, nor do they mean that there were no
contacts or cooperation that may eventually spell legal trouble for
people in the president’s orbit.
Previous
legal filings and news accounts have documented multiple contacts
between Mr. Trump’s team and Russians in 2016. Among them was a June 2016 meeting
hosted by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, Jared Kushner, his
son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, his campaign chairman, on the promise
that Russian visitors would provide incriminating information about Mrs.
Clinton as part of the Russian government’s support of the elder Mr.
Trump.
The
findings included in Friday’s indictment bolstered the conclusions of
American intelligence agencies, which for more than a year have said
that Russia interfered in the election, a determination that Mr. Trump
has occasionally accepted but more often dismissed as a “hoax.”
Only in a written statement that aides issued in his name after his
tweet on Friday was any concern expressed about the Russian attack
described in the indictment, and then only to urge his critics to stop
questioning him.
“We
cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord and rancor to be
successful,” the statement said. “It’s time we stop the outlandish
partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories,
which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia, and
do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions. We must unite
as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our
elections.”
Mr.
Trump’s position stood in contrast to that of fellow Republicans who
responded to the indictment with calls for tougher action against
Russia. To many, the president’s reaction once again raised the question
of why he would go easy on Moscow. He has spoken about Mr. Putin in
generally flattering or friendly terms and avoided direct criticism even during moments of enormous stress in the relationship between the two countries.
For
the moment, the government is left to act without the president. Jeh C.
Johnson, a secretary of homeland security under Mr. Obama, said the
best way to stop Russia from interfering in the future is the threat of a
powerful response. “When it comes to cyberattacks, it will always be
easier to be on offense than defense,” he said. “But when it comes to
cyberattacks between nation-states, the most effective defense is to
simply make the offensive behavior cost-prohibitive.”
But
the best way to do that, experts said, is for the president to lead the
way. “The U.S. government cannot mobilize an effective strategy without
White House leadership and prioritization,” said Heather A. Conley, a
State Department official under President George W. Bush who testified at a Senate hearing in the past week on defending against Russian interference.
Despite
the warnings by the intelligence chiefs and the threat detailed in the
indictment, she said, “there continues to be no policy message or
response, leaving our country unprotected and vulnerable.”
John
P. Carlin, a former assistant attorney general for national security
and chief of staff to Mr. Mueller when he was F.B.I. director, said the
president’s silence sent a message to Russia and the world.
“I
think it does have consequences,” he said. The American government can
warn against further interference, but “it would be better if it gets
driven by the commander in chief. The goal is to drive a clear message
that says the United States and our allies throughout the world that
share our values are drawing a line that says ‘stop, this is
unacceptable.’”
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