By Kimberley Strassel, Wall St. Journal – September 5, 2024
Which is more likely to influence a U.S. election? A dribble of Russian propaganda in an ocean of online electioneering, or a federal law-enforcement campaign against one of the candidates?
You decide. Bear that choice in mind when analyzing the Justice Department’s decision this week to jump again into the election fray with another round of warnings over “Russian disinformation”—even as the first mail-in ballots go out.
The most striking part of the Wednesday press conference in which the department unveiled indictments against covert Russian actors was its lack of self-awareness. As if this weren’t the same government agency that fed us the Trump-Russia collusion lies of 2016 (and 2017 and 2018 and 2019), an ally of an intelligence community that four years ago falsely branded reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop “disinformation.” Whatever the merits of this week’s actions against Russians—they look legit—the Justice Department’s failure to acknowledge it has an enormous credibility problem is almost comical.
That credibility gap comes not only from past whoppers, but from a continued mishandling of the “disinformation” question. Somewhere buried in special counsel Robert Mueller’s voluminous report was some useful information about Russian shenanigans in the 2016 cycle. But the partisan need to magnify that threat and tie it to Donald Trump produced a much more consequential propaganda campaign.
What the news of recent years shows is that bad guys everywhere (not only Russia) are seeking to influence Americans always (not only at election time) and for their own malevolent purposes (not to help one U.S. political party or another). The Chinese Communist Party is using online trolls to stoke U.S. division on hot button topics ranging from the Israel-Hamas conflict to racial inequality via an operation known as “Spamouflage.” It’s also backing operatives who have fueled U.S. street protests and infiltrated universities, think tanks and even—we learned this week—the office of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation only last month said the Iranian government was behind a hack-and-leak operation against the Trump campaign. Federal investigators are looking into whether Turkey funneled money into New York Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign. Former Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of bribery and other charges for providing favors to Egypt and Qatar, while Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar stands accused of accepting bribes from a government-owned Azerbaijani entity. It’s far easier to name a country that isn’t trying to influence us than one that is.
Contrary to many press accounts, these operations usually aren’t focused on putting a candidate in office. As Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged this week, the recent Russian operation—backed by the state media operation RT—worked to amplify “U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests,” most notably support for Ukraine. Foreign actors devote most of their efforts to setting Americans against each other, undermining faith in elections and in institutions.
The Justice Department and its media pack also do a grave disservice in overstating these destabilization efforts—and in the process, aiding them. The Russian ops are nasty and criminal, but also a drop of content in the vast, heaving universe of political commentary. They hardly compare to the many red-blooded Americans who don’t need foreign help to spread nut-job theories. The Justice Department should absolutely be shutting down foreign operations as they are found and making Americans aware of risks. But the grandiose press conferences and alarmed warnings of a “flood” of disinformation breed far more anxiety over the integrity of elections than anything Vladimir Putin is hoping for.
Don’t forget the power of that pulpit. In the universe of “influence,” the federal government has a megaphone to make Mr. Putin’s and Iran’s bots weep with envy. The Biden administration is highly aware. For the first time in history its prosecutors obtained an indictment against a former president and used its power to press a meaty thumb on the scale of this election with accusations against Mr. Trump that include conspiracy, corruption and obstruction.
Who has more influence with Americans? The unknown Russian functionary slinging a video into the black hole of YouTube? Or a prosecutor backed by the Justice Department’s seal, press cameras flashing, using a superseding indictment 10 weeks before an election to sway Americans to the claim that the Republican presidential nominee is a criminal?
There was a time when the department sought to avoid politically charged prosecutions before elections—the better to preserve its reputation for impartiality. It managed to foil or disrupt decades of Soviet propaganda campaigns without roiling the civic debate. The department today is as much a part of the news cycle as the candidates themselves. If it wants to cut down on improper “influence” in elections, it could do no greater good than to go quiet until Nov. 6.
