Kompromat

‘Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.’

‘Now, I’m a supporter of the president,’ Dirk Goddard continued. ‘He appointed me to the high office, which I now hold. But when I took up my job, I solemnly swore to uphold the Law and Constitution of the United States. So help me God. What we’ve just heard is a clear violation of the Logan Act.’

‘Nobody’s ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act, not for the last two hundred years or more,’ Bud Hollingsworth said.

‘They darn well should have been,’ Dirk Goddard countered. ‘Do you remember, back in 2007, when then-House speaker Lucy Wainwright went to Syria to negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad? Or 2015, when another House speaker, David Draper, invited Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Moses to address Congress without President Matlock’s permission? I would have used the Logan Act then, if I’d been attorney general. But that’s chickenfeed besides the deal that Candidate Craig was trying to set up with the Russians.’

There was a long pause, as the two very senior officials tried to digest the full implications of what the Attorney General was saying.

Wilbur Brown shook his head. ‘You’re a lawyer, Dirk. If you based your case on the evidence of that tape, you’d lose. The president would set the pack on you. They’d ask you where you got the tape. Did the Russians send it to you as their way of signalling that the honeymoon is over? Or if the Chinese sent it, which is another possibility, did they manage to bug the Russian Embassy? The government’s lawyers would query its authenticity every which way. They’d argue that it was in any case inadmissible because it must have resulted from an unauthorized surveillance operation, so the court would have to ignore it.’

There was another long pause. Dirk Goddard, an honest man, looked truly crestfallen. He had always believed that Washington was indeed a “shining city on a hill” and, if what Wilbur Brown said was right, he was going to lose the chance to prove it.

‘Shall we tell him the good news, Wilbur?’ Bud Hollingsworth asked. ‘Will you go first? Or shall I?’

‘You go first, Wilbur.’

Bud Hollingsworth took out a pen and doodled some stick-figures on the yellow legal pad in front of him.

‘Let’s take first things first. In my view, the conversation we just heard actually happened and this is an accurate recording. I can say this with total confidence.’

‘You mean it rings true?’ Dirk Goddard asked.

‘I mean more than that. I mean it is true. We have exactly the same recording ourselves.’

The attorney general looked stunned. ‘You’re not telling me, after all these denials, you actually bugged Ronald Craig, after all?’

Hollingsworth sighed. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

He pushed the pad aside.

‘Let me explain,’ he continued. ‘You may not be familiar, Dirk, with the executive order that President Brandon Matlock signed on May 18th, 2016. President Brandon was worried that Ronald Craig’s personal security could have been compromised. I’ve still got the text on my iPhone. Only half a dozen copies of that executive order were ever produced and I was one of the recipents.

‘Let me read it out: