President Donald Trump is facing harsh criticism over concerns that he may hand over a former American diplomat, Michael McFaul, to be interrogated by Russia's brutal dictator, Vladimir Putin. Just ahead of a rebuking 98-0 Senate vote supporting McFaul and other Americans desired by Russia, the White House was forced to walk back its consideration of handing McFaul over to Russia, although it defended Putin by saying he was "sincere" in his intentions.
There were notably two senators, however, both Republicans, who did not participate in that vote. One of them, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, is very sick and almost certainly would have supported the bill if he had not been ill. The other, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, is a bit of a question mark.
"Senator Shelby is fully supportive of S. Res. 584. He does not support sending Americans to Russia to be interrogated," Blair Tyler, Sen. Shelby's communications director, told Salon by email. This explanation does not cover why Shelby was absent in the first place.
His decision not to vote for the bill, whatever motivated it, looks even worse in light of Shelby heading a U.S. congressional delegation for 4th of July celebrations earlier this year, according to The Washington Post. In addition to Shelby, the Republicans going to Moscow included Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, John Thune of South Dakota, as well as Rep. Kay Granger of Texas.
During that event, Shelby made the following statement, according to CBS News, that was uttered to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a meeting between the two politicians:
We come here realizing that we have a strained relationship, but we could have a better relationship between the U.S. and Russia, because we have some common interests around the world that we could hopefully work together on. We could be competitors, we are competitors, but we don't necessarily need to be adversaries.
Shelby also expressed hope that the then-impending Helsinki summit would be the start of a "new day" and added, "We will have to wait and see, and go from there, but we recognize that the world is better off, I believe, if Russia and the U.S. have fewer tensions."
According to TASS, a state news agency in Russia, the nation's prosecutor general's office wanted to question former Ambassador McFaul over his involvement in the so-called "illegal" activities of Bill Browder, a businessman who has been falsely accused of crimes by the Russian government in the hopes that they can punish him for exposing massive fraud from top state officials. Instead of immediately shooting down the idea as an attempt to punish a diplomat for doing his job, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump would meet with his team and decide on what to do with McFaul. While the Senate resolution was being passed, the White House decided against the idea of handing McFaul and other American officials to Russia, although it is unclear if the Senate's actions were responsible for them doing so.
"Let's be clear: What Putin was doing was assigning moral equivalency to a legitimate indictment with lots of evidence against several Russian military intelligence officers for violating American sovereignty in 2016 during the presidential elections, with a completely fabricated, cockamamie story invented by Putin," McFaul told Salon on Thursday. "To even, for a moment, give any kind of dignity to what President Putin proposed was not in America's national interest, from my point of view."
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Browder expressed a similar view to Salon.
"I have no idea what motivates his behavior. All I can say is that the idea that he seemed to entertain for a few days of handing me and 11 Americans over to Vladimir Putin for our work on the Magnitsky Act seemed pretty horrifying," Browder told Salon.
The Senate resolution, which was proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, declared that the United States should refuse to make available any current or former American official who Russia claims has interfered in its domestic affairs, according to NBC News.
"It is the sense of Congress that the United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official, or member of the armed forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin," Schumer read from the proposed resolution.
He added, "This body must agree on the importance of protecting our ambassadors. We should pass it today —not wait, not show any equivocation."
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told NBC News that "it's another sign that this president is very happy making himself a client of Vladimir Putin." Similarly, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said that it was "unbelievable" for the White House to not automatically reject the idea of handing McFaul over to Russia and reiterated that Congress needed to learn what was discussed during Putin's private meeting.
During an interview with Salon last month, McFaul also made it clear to Salon that he does not think Putin is a particularly effective leader.
"I personally don’t think Vladimir Putin is a very strong leader," McFaul told Salon. "He has to repress people the way he does. That doesn’t, to me, exhibit strength. That exhibits weakness. But Trump talks about these kinds of leaders in a consistent pattern. He admires some of them, so maybe that’s the explanation. The other explanation is about some leverage that they have on him and, again, I just honestly don’t know if that’s true yet."
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