The Economist Asia - 03.02.2018

The EconomistFebruary 3rd 2018 United States 31

1

Q

UITE often, the peddling of a conspira-

cy theory is a form of confession: a

window into how a suspicious mind

thinks that the world works. President Do-

nald Trump says that federal probes into

Russian attacks on the presidential elec-

tion of 2016 are a “hoax” confected by

Democrats to explain Hillary Clinton’s de-

feat, and are now kept alive by what he

calls the “Deep State Justice Department”.

These are heady days for believers in

that plot. On January 29th a Trump bogey-

man, the deputy director of the FBI, An-

drew McCabe, abruptly quit his post and

went on leave pending his formal retire-

ment. Mr McCabe’s wife, the conspiracy-

minded note, is a Democrat who ran un-

successfully in 2015 for a state Senate seat in

Virginia, helped by six-figure campaign

contributions from a close Clinton ally. In-

credibly, at least to Mr Trump and his sup-

porters, in early 2016 Mr McCabe was al-

lowed to oversee a probe into Mrs

Clinton’s improper handling of secret gov-

ernment e-mails on a private computer

server when she wassecretary of state.

Mr McCabe’s defenders note, in vain,

that he flagged up his wife’s candidacy and

was cleared of a conflict of interest. His crit-

ics feel vindicated by press reports that an

internal review into the Clinton e-mail in-

vestigation, led by the Justice Depart-

ment’s inspector-general, Michael Horo-

witz, has zeroed in on decisions made by

Mr McCabe which some colleagues saw as

politicised. Even before that internal re-

view is published, Mr McCabe’s exit must

delight Mr Trump. The president spent

months rubbishing the FBIdeputy head on

Twitter, demanding to know why his attor-

ney-general, Jeff Sessions, had not re-

moved him. Mr Trump attacked Mr

McCabe as both a Clinton stooge and as a

friend of James Comey, the FBIdirector he

fired in May 2017, after Mr Comey rebuffed

a presidential demand to swear loyalty.

Among Republicans, and on the Fox

NewsTVshows that the president devours

for hours each week, Mr McCabe is ri-

valled in infamy by two other senior offi-

cials at the FBI, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

Mr Strzok was removed from the Russia in-

vestigation being run by Robert Mueller,

the special counsel, after they were found

to have exchanged text messages express-

ing disdain for then-Candidate Trump (“an

utter idiot”) and apparently arguing—at a

time when opinion pollssuggested that

Mrs Clinton would win easily—that a

probe into alleged collusion between Rus-

sia and the Trump campaign, was a vital

“insurance policy”. Mr Trump has called

those text exchanges “treasonous”. A Re-

publican senator, Ron Johnson of Wiscon-

sin, fulminated about other Strzok-Page

texts that talked about a “secret society”

before conceding that the texts may have

been a joke.

If the din of claims and counter-claims

seems confusing, here is one bleak obser-

vation. Mr Trump seems unable to believe

that public servants are capable of putting

country ahead of personal beliefs or inter-

ests. The president seems to divide aides

into two groups: those loyal to their mas-

ters, and ingrates. In December Mr Trump

shared with the New York Timeshis belief

that Eric Holder, attorney-general for most

of Barack Obama’s time in office, “totally

protected” his president from serious scan-

dals, and added: “I’ll be honest, I have great

respect for that.”

Mr Trump’s worldview may be further

confirmed by a memo commissioned by a

loyalist who chairs the House Intelligence

Committee, Representative Devin Nunes

of California. Republican committee

members voted to make the memo public

against the urging of the FBI, which ex-

pressed “grave concerns aboutthe materi-

al omissions of fact that fundamentally im-

pact the memo’s accuracy’’. The Nunes

memo reportedly sketches out a case that

officials, including the deputy attorney-

general, Rod Rosenstein, misled a secret

court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

Court, when seeking a warrant to spy on

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign as-

sociate. Specifically, it contends that the

government did not spell out that evidence

against Mr Page came from a dossier drawn

up by ChristopherSteele, a former British

spy, with funding from Democrats and the

Clinton campaign.

Sean Hannity, a Trump cheerleader on

Fox News, has called the memo proof that

Mr Mueller “and his band of Democratic

witch-hunters” should be disbanded and

that Mr Rosenstein, who oversees Mr

Mueller, should be fired. Paul Ryan, the Re-

publican House Speaker, is more squea-

mish. He wants possible FBI “malfea-

sance” investigated, while claiming that

the Nunes memo is “completely separate”

from the Mueller inquiry. If that puzzles

some, Mr Trump need not care. For him,

sowing distrust and confusion is a win. 7

Institutional warfare

GOP v FBI

WASHINGTON, DC

The self-described party of law and

order takes on the G-Men

Burn after reading

O

DDLY little is known about President

Donald Trump’s readiness to use mas-

sive force against adversaries. An isolation-

ist on the campaign trail, at times Mr

Trump has sounded quite the hawk. What

is known is his desire to bargain from a po-

sition of strength, whether calling for more

defence spending or a new nuclear arsenal

that is “so strong and powerful”.

The same model applies to Team

Trump’s approach to human rights and

corruption. The president has sent mixed

signals about global torturers and klepto-

crats, chiding some while praising others

as “tremendous” allies. Yet with little fan-

fare, he signed Executive Order 13818 a few

days before Christmas last year. A remark-

ably broad sanctions instrument, one hu-

man rights expert calls it a cross between a

scalpel and “a tactical nuclear weapon”.

Human rights

Narrative

violation

WASHINGTON, DC

This White House has more power to

constrain bad guys than its predecessor