Should we throw people in prison for Russiagate?

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Well, I’m not usually in the habit of proposing “solutions,” because sometimes there just aren’t any, but even so, I’d have thought a no-brainer would’ve been to establish some kind of big-league Congressional inquiry, modeled on the landmark Church Committee of the mid-1970s — which despite its imperfections, did unearth a great deal of hitherto hidden information about the dark inner-workings of the Security State complex, which till then had been cloaked in almost impenetrable secrecy since it was regrettably created after WWII.

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Maybe because Donald Trump has no interest in actually curbing the powers of the “Deep State.” His singular grievance has only ever been that those powers were once marshaled to his own detriment, and yes, he was often substantively correct in his complaints. But now, in Term Two, he’s got thoroughly consolidated control of the Executive Branch. No longer are there any bureaucratic holdovers maneuvering against him, as in the First Term, hiding away in their little ideological silos to plot and connive. Indeed, Trump has now comprehensively imposed his own ideology on the Security State structures, and we all know the main feature of Trump’s ideology is personal allegiance to him. That being the case, he’s all in favor of exerting audacious state power, so long as it serves his own interests — rather than getting him caught up in another open-ended Special Counsel fiasco, as bedeviled him the last time both politically and practically, having constricted his latitude to govern. No such nuisance bedevils him in 2026. Russiagate? Schmussagate.

Look no further than his current unbridled enthusiasm for renewing FISA, the very warrantless surveillance law once notoriously used against him in 2016! Pay no mind — that’s all ancient history in Trump 2.0. (He actually supported FISA renewal in his first term too, when the contradictions were even more pronounced.) And while he continues to superficially grouse about FISA here and there, the kicker came during the 2024 campaign season, when he and “MAGA Mike” Johnson huddled at Mar-a-Lago and jointly endorsed that year’s FISA renewal package, because, as Trump would explain, he was ahead in the polls! And accordingly, he would soon be the one exercising the relevant powers again, and doing with them as he pleased — so why get rid of them now? That’d just be shooting himself in the foot. President Donald J. Trump is many things, but he’s never been somebody who seems particularly inclined to diminish his own power.

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So there you have it — the key legal architecture underpinning Russiagate is still in effect, today and for the foreseeable future, thanks to the boisterous personal advocacy of Trump, who now claims it’s “desperately needed” for his “little excursion” in Iran:
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For this and other reasons, expecting some Revelatory Russiagate Reckoning through the ad hoc deployment of vindictive law enforcement power — it’s just pure folly. It solves none of the underlying political problems that caused Russiagate in the first place, such as the semi-autonomous ability of Security State agents to meddle in domestic political events. It does drastically accelerate the trend of American political conflict giving way to tit-for-tat prosecutorial warfare, whereby the conflicts are adjudicated not by standard political means, but through the criminal justice system — an absolutely horrible venue for adjudicating political conflict. And yes, I say this as someone who was loudly critical of all four Trump prosecutions when he was out of office. Go check the record if you want. So I’m well aware that this trend I’m bemoaning was likewise accelerated by retributive Democrat zeal against Trump. But that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to start celebrating another great leap into Mutually Assured Destruction, just because it’s Trump’s turn again to punish his rivals. The whole dynamic is woeful. It corrodes the larger political culture in a very foundational way, and sends us hurtling into Banana Republic territory even faster than we already were. The unhinged reaction to Trump by blithering liberals and their Security State companions was a sure sign of Banana Republic degeneration over a decade ago. Trump pouring another gigantic can of fuel on the fire is not something to be welcomed for its own sake, or because it activates some nerve in your cranium that chemically induces you to crave carceral punishment for people you dislike. (Although if you’re just a pure partisan simpleton, I can see why your lizard-brain would be lighting up at the thought.)

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