The Trump critics seem to have stretched their critiques a little thin when it comes to the Russian bounty scandal, and it’s been bugging me since yesterday. Here’s Steve Benen:
There are a few relevant angles to this. Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing by Donald Trump’s reasoning, there are no leakers to uncover because, as the president put it last week, the entire story was “made up” by journalists as part of an elaborate conspiracy to “damage” his re-election campaign and his party. The “secret source” behind the reporting, Trump added, “probably does not even exist, just like the story itself.” The president concluded that the entire matter is “just another hoax.”
If Trump were right, then why would the White House seek out a leaker who doesn’t exist? How could officials “narrow down the universe of suspects to fewer than 10 people” if the underlying claim was manufactured by nefarious reporters? It would seem the investigation itself debunks the president’s claims.
I don’t agree. What if the story was made up, not by the newspapers, but by someone in the Trump Administration? That hypothesis would certainly justify an investigation.
And while it might seem vengeful, the Obama Administration was also known for going after leakers. No Administration likes them, so this is no surprise.
And while Benen says, “Soon after, most of the nation’s leading news agencies confirmed the story …“, I would prefer corroborating information on a story like this by something stronger: a senior intelligence official speaking in public, perhaps. Or an ambassador admitting to it after a fair bit of prodding … or have we used that plot device too many times already?
All that said, I’m not twisting myself into a pretzel to be fair to a President who hardly deserves it. No, being scrupulously honest when evaluating situations is a way to keep yourself from being trapped by gambit by an adversary. Just as taking that apparently wayward knight will cost you your queen two moves later in chess, this apparent leak could be a trap waiting for credulous reporters to stumble into, making the press vulnerable to charges of bias and thus discrediting them.
Sure, maybe I don’t know enough about this particular scandal – but, from here, I’d like to see a bit more evidence that there’s really a bounty before I’d get too het up about how the Administration is dealing with it.
