WASHINGTON – President Trump’s critics are now complaining that he asked the Australian prime minister to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe and that Attorney General William Barr has traveled overseas to ask foreign intelligence officials to cooperate with that investigation. The New York Times called it another example of “the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.”
No, it’s not. The president’s critics are conflating two different things: the investigation by Trump’s private lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and the official inquiry by U.S. Attorney John Durham into the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. The former is opposition research activity; the latter is a criminal justice matter.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking foreign heads of state or intelligence officials to cooperate with an official Justice Department investigation. As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley explains, “It is not uncommon for an attorney general, or even a president, to ask foreign leaders to assist with ongoing investigations. Such calls can shortcut bureaucratic red tape, particularly if the evidence is held, as in this case, by national security or justice officials.”
Americans support the Durham probe. For two years, they were told by Trump’s opponents that the president was “working on behalf of the Russians” and had committed “treasonous” acts that were of “a size and scope probably beyond Watergate.” Those were serious accusations, and Americans took them seriously. They waited for special counsel Robert Mueller to tell them whether the president had indeed betrayed the country.
Then Mueller issued his report, and the public found out that none of it was true. They understandably wanted answers. How did it come to pass that our government was paralyzed for two years and spent tens of millions of their tax dollars, chasing a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory? A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll following the Mueller report’s public release found that 53% of Americans said that “bias against President Trump in the FBI played a role in launching investigations against him,” and 62% supported appointing a special counsel to investigate the investigation of Trump.