28 United States The EconomistNovember 2nd 2019
2 already looking into roughly the same
thing (possible surveillance abuses by the
dojand fbiagainst the Trump campaign)
and is expected to issue a full report soon.
How that inquiry fits with Mr Durham’s is
unclear. Michael Horowitz, the ig, has ad-
mitted to “hav[ing] had communications”
with Mr Durham, which is unusual, be-
cause ig’s offices tend to operate indepen-
dently from their agencies.
Mr Barr has taken an active role in this
investigation. He accompanied Mr Dur-
ham to Rome in late September, where they
reportedly received a taped deposition
from Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor
who in April 2016 told George Papadopou-
los, a low-level foreign-policy aide to the
Trump campaign, that Russia had Mrs
Clinton’s stolen emails. (Mr Mifsud has
since gone to ground.) Attorneys-general
do not do that sort of thing. As one former
federal prosecutor put it, “that’s what
agents are for.”
What Mr Durham is investigating re-
mains unclear. After saying he thought the
Trump campaign was spied on, Mr Barr
said he wanted to “explore” whether the
surveillance was justified. But criminal in-
quiries tend to require better grounding
than this. Perhaps Mr Durham or Mr Horo-
witz has found evidence of illegal activity;
if so, they have said nothing.
Opening a criminal investigation into
people Mr Trump has cast as his political
enemies—but who appear to have followed
genuine leads and uncovered evidence of
Russian electoral interference that has led
to dozens of indictments and several con-
victions—could signal a worrying erosion
of the doj’s independence. Mr Barr, who
has been a longtime proponent of execu-
tive power, may believe that independence
only extends as far as the president allows.But such a position, as Jerry Nadler and
Adam Schiff, Democratic congressmen
leading the impeachment inquiry, agreed
in a joint statement, risks making the doj
into “a vehicle for President Trump’s politi-
cal revenge” and doing “irreparable dam-
age” to the rule of law.
The impeachment inquiry, of course, is
still in early days. And the dojinvestiga-
tion may yield indictments. Even if it does
not, it gives Republicans something other
than impeachment to talk about. It blunts
charges of corruption and self-dealing
hurled at Mr Trump, and validates to him
and his supporters his feelings of persecu-tion. In 2016 Hillary Clinton’s polling lead
plummeted following an announcement,
11 days before the election, that the fbihad
reopened an investigation into her emails.
Mr Trump wanted Ukraine’s president, Vo-
lodymyr Zelensky, “in a public box,” an-
nouncing an investigation of Joe Biden, a
potential rival for the presidency.
And it may last a while. A former federal
prosecutor praised Mr Durham for being
“very methodical, [meaning] slow.” His in-
quiry could drag on well into next year, let-
ting Mr Trump contend from the hustings
that he is investigating the “deep state” and
needs one more term to defeat it. 7Who wants an investigation?F
orarmenian-americans, it wasa
moment of vindication. After decades
of campaigning for their country to
acknowledge their forebears’ agonies,
news came that the House of Repre-
sentatives had voted by 405 to 11 to recog-
nise as genocide the persecution of the
Armenians launched by the Ottoman
empire in 1915. “I’m so happy, I can’t get
over it,” said Aram Garabedian, an 84-
year-old activist from Rhode island.
Since at least the 1970s, Congressional
battles over how to characterise the
Armenians’ suffering have been a peren-
nial feature of American politics. The
House passed a similar resolution in 1984
but successive administrations have
laboured to dissuade legislators from
using the g-word for fear of alienating
Turkey, an American strategic partner.
Yet when relations with Turkey are at
a low ebb because of its incursion into
Syria, the energy needed to push back
seems to have sapped. House Resolution
296 asserted that America had already,
through a series of officially supported
gestures and initiatives over the past
century, recognised the genocidal nature
of the Ottoman Turkish actions.
What is not in doubt is that in spring
1915, as they were locked in war with
Britain, France and Russia, the Ottoman
authorities ordered the relocation of
hundreds of thousands of Armenians in
conditions that many were doomed not
to survive. Some victims were killed by
Turkish and Kurdish armed bands while
some perished as they were marched in
horrific conditions.
Most historians of mass killing, in-
cluding the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, agreed that this
episode amply meets the criterion laid
down by the unconvention on genocideof1948.Thisdefinestheultimatecrime
as “acts committed with intent to de-
stroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group”
whether through outright killing of
“inflicting...conditions of life” designed
to bring about their destruction.
Some Western governments share the
official Turkish view that the intention to
bring about death on a huge scale re-
mains unproven, or that the context of
terrible suffering on all sides should be
factored in. Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan denounced the vote as
the “biggest insult” to his people.
In the short term, the vote looks very
likely to play into Mr Erdogan’s hands, as
he drums up defensive feelings among
his compatriots and stokes their suspi-
cion of a Western world whose inten-
tions, he says, have always been malign.
“This is a resolution which is doomed to
be misused,” predicted Brady Kiesling, a
former American diplomat who has
served in Armenia.A long march
US-Turkish relationsThe House votes to recognise the persecution of Armenians as genocidePainful memories in Yerevan