Annals of the Trump Administration

There’s been a lot of bad news for the Trump team this week. Shocking revelations regarding a meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort and someone they believed to be a representative of the Russian government currently dominate headlines.

Most of the speculation about possible crimes that might have been committed has centered on possible violations of campaign finance law. But another recent story highlights a different possible form of criminal liability: violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

During an October 2016 presidential debate, then-candidate Donald Trump rejected the joint Department of Homeland Security-Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment that the Russian government conducted and encouraged activities intended to influence the 2016 election.

There’s a lot of reason to be cheered this evening by the decision of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to name a special counsel to investigate L’Affaire Russe, and there’s even more reason to be cheered that the individual he selected is Robert Mueller.

The aftermath of the 2016 election has spun off yet another divisive issue: Whether White House officials inappropriately requested the identities of Trump transition aides whose names had been “masked” in classified intelligence reports. The kerfuffle over unmasking adds even more to the already heaping plates of congressional investigators currently probing Russian “active measures” and leaks of U.S.-person information collected under FISA.