While too many headlines last week seemingly rocked the pillars of American democracy, two of our three branches of government – legislative and judicial – stood firm against each other and an executive branch bent on muddying, if not trampling our Constitution.
The sun first broke through the clouds Tuesday when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., released the full transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. That would be the probe labeled as the “Russia ruse” by President Donald Trump, the man who would be king.
The glow of justice brightened when, later Tuesday, a federal court deemed North Carolina’s gerrymandered 2016 congressional map was unconstitutional on the grounds that it was drawn to discriminate against Democratic voters – marking the first time a U.S. District Court has struck down a redistricting plan for partisan gerrymandering.
Unlinked by anything other than partisan politics, both of those events represent a victory for all Americans. Indeed, a victory for democracy.
North Carolina’s challenged congressional map, like many in southern states, was drawn to result in a skewed majority for Republicans. North Carolina’s skew is 10-3 – meaning the plan was designed to give Republicans victories in 10 of the state’s 13 districts – despite the fact that North Carolina listed 2.6 million registered Democrats, 1.9 million registered Republicans, and 1.8 million unaffiliated registered voters.
The three-judge panel, two appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by a Republican president, found that North Carolina lawmakers unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts to ensure GOP “domination of the state’s congressional delegation.” According to the ruling, the current map violates three tenets of the U.S. Constitution – the Equal Protection Clause, the First Amendment and Article 1’s right of “the people” to choose their representatives. The court voided the map and ordered the General Assembly to come up with a substitute by Jan. 24. Naturally, North Carolina’s GOP leaders vowed to appeal.
Like the court’s action in North Carolina, Feinstein’s move offers more power to the people, in the form of transparency – a giver of knowledge.
There had long been talk among our lawmakers that hearings intended to get to the bottom of Russian election meddling should be public. Republican Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had early on agreed to release the Fusion GPS testimony, but then he backtracked.
Instead, Grassley joined with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to impugn, with a criminal referral, the reputation of Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who was part of the Fusion GPS research and who authored the “Trump dossier” – a series of memos written between June and October of 2016. The memos were based on Steele’s conversations with Russian sources.
For the GOP, it was a classic case of shoot the messenger: Denigrate the British public servant who was trying to help an ally, America, when he saw potential national security problems.
Fusion GPS was started by former Wall Street Journal reporters, notably investigative reporter Simpson, to offer research and strategic intelligence to corporations, law firms and investors. The firm was hired in 2015 to investigate Trump for the Washington Free Beacon – a conservative website funded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer.
Fusion’s right-wing assignment ended when Trump became the expected winner of the GOP nomination. Conservatives found it easier to use him than to worry about his warts. But in April 2016, Fusion was retained to continue the research by Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Convention.
The initial probe had uncovered murky international money trails, and in early June, Fusion hired Steele, with intelligence expertise on Russia, to examine Trump’s myriad Russian ties.
On June 14, The Washington Post reported that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the DNC. A day later, some of those files began to leak. Five days later, on June 20, Steele finished his first memo.
“Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years,” began the memo. “Aim, endorsed by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, has been to encourage splits in division in western alliance.”
Trump and “his inner circle” had accepted “a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin,” the memo continued, adding that Russia already had enough compromising material to blackmail Trump.
The rest is history. Steele has said he was so alarmed by what Russian sources told him that he sought out an FBI contact in Rome who, as a former British intelligence officer, he’d come to know.
Thanks to federal documents, testimony, plea agreements and solid reporting – much of Fusion’s and Steele’s research has been borne out. Trump campaign aides were indeed making contact with Russian intermediaries and Wikileaks, which was posting Clinton and DNC emails. Intelligence agents from a second U.S. ally, Australia, told American authorities about a drunken conversation with Trump aide George Papadopoulos who claimed the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton. Papadopoulos and Trump’s national security adviser Mike Flynn have pleaded guilty in connection with the Russia probe. Two other aides are under indictment. Each day brings new revelations.
Now more than ever, our Constitution’s separation of powers must serve us. Our freedoms depend on our founders’ intended checks and balances that ensure no one branch of government becomes too powerful. We saw it in action last week.