Dangerous Foreign Influence

Recently much concern has been expressed about the possibility of an improper, perhaps illegal, relationship between the Trump campaign organization during the 2016 presidential campaign (and thereafter the Trump administration) and the Russian Government, including its intelligence services.

It is widely known that Russian hackers targeted the Democratic party and its campaign organization, subsequently releasing thousands of emails to WikiLeaks in a alleged effort to interfere with the 2016 election and aid then candidate Trump. Nicholas Kristoff, in his column in the New York Times on March 9, 2017 noted that “the most towering suspicion of all (is): that Trump’s Team colluded in some way with Russia to interfere with the US election. This is the central issue that we must remain focused on.”

In an earlier column on March 6th, Charles Blow reported that a strong majority of the American people wanted a Congressional investigation of the Russia issue and indicated that this matter potentially has the “profoundest of consequences” and could be “nearly unfathomable in its ability to injure our democracy.”

On March 20, 2017, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation told the House Intelligence Committee in public session that the agency is conducting an ongoing investigation into whether members of  the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. When asked by one of the members of the committee to explain to the American people why they should care about this, Director Comey said in part, “One of the things we radiate to the world is the importance of our wonderful, often messy, free and fair democratic system and the elections that undergird it. So when there is an effort by a foreign nation – state to mess with that, to destroy that, to corrupt that, it is very, very serious. It threatens what is America. And if any Americans are part of that effort it is a very serious matter. And so you would expect the F.B.I. to want to understand, is that so? And, if so, who did what?”

Comey’s words seem inspired by a passage by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers #68, written in 1787, in addressing the question of the care and importance invested in developing the provisions in the Constitution providing for the choosing of the President: “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practical obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally be expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union.”

As indicated by Hamilton this concern is not a new one.

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.”
– Samuel Adams, 1775

“(The people) have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.”
– John Adams, 1765

“Foreign intrigues and machinations, are among the most formidable enemies which republics have to encounter. These however narrowed or watched, are always likely to have too much influence upon their affairs. If it should be permitted to the agents of foreign powers to insert themselves in popular societies-to mingle openly and directly in the parties, which will never fail, more or less, to divide a free country, the fruits cannot fail to be dissension, commotion, and in the end, loss of liberty.”
– Alexander Hamilton , 1793

“We should be unfaithful to ourselves, if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties, if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that, can be procured by a party, through artifice or corruption, the government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not the nation, for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or violence, by terror, intrigue or venality, the government may not be the choice of the American people but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not We The People who govern ourselves.”
– John Adams, 1797

“There is a danger from all men, the only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
– John Adams, 1772

John Jay

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