After 14 Months of Russia Probe, Justice is Going to Study What to Do

If I seem a bit skeptical, that is because I am.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced yesterday that the Justice Department  is going to form a committee to study the subject.

Last week the leaders of several of the branches of the Intelligence Community testified before Congress saying, publicly, that the Russians did interfere with the 2016 elections and are already interfering with the upcoming 2018 election,

Given that testimony, the Executive Branch likely felt they had to do something or get blamed when the inevitable does happen this summer and fall.

So, they have formed a team of people inside the Justice Department – the same department that did not do anything to protect the integrity of the 2016 elections, both federal and local.

Some security experts say that the committee lacks focus and a clear mission.

The task force has to deliver its report in June – after many of the primaries are over and only a few months before the general election.

And the problem is not a single problem.  You have fake social media posts, identity theft, election fraud, hacking voting systems and voter rolls, illegal campaign funding and many other issues.

If they started  looking into this last February and reported out last June, that might have given them time to do something before this election, but these are hard problems – distributed problems that are the responsibility of 50 states and 3,500 plus local governments.  There is no way this can realistically fixed between June and, well, last year.

And then, of course, there is the issue of how do we pay for it.

Stay tuned for a report in June.  Are there some things Justice can do without Congress acting?  Likely.  After all, Mueller indicted 13 people, so there are existing laws that are likely being broken.  Probably the number of people that did illegal things is many times that number.

I hope I am wrong and this committee does some good.  We will just have to wait.

Information for this post came from Reuters.

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