Election Interference by a Foreign Leader Is Now OK.

The Biden-Harris administration facilitates Zelensky's attempt to influence our election.

Democrats and Republicans alike have regarded foreign attempts to influence our elections as improper. And attempts by U.S. politicians to promote such election in interference is worse. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s foolish partisanship when he attempted to sway Americans voters to vote for Harris and Walz, combines both improprieties.

Foreign leaders have a right to serve their own countries’ interests by discussing their views on U.S. policies. They may even take what many would consider a partisan stance, favoring one U.S. political party or candidate over another. It may be both unwise and unhelpful for them to do so, but they have a right to attempt to serve their own countries’ interest by speaking out.

The dynamic changes, however, when foreigners speak out on U.S. elections or other political issues, either during or as a prelude to a trip here. This is especially true if they take action to support one candidate or another while on U.S. soil. Such support for one party over the other by a foreign leader while visiting our country may sometimes be welcomed by some but condemned by others. That is true even if it is not illegal. Such “election interference” need not be illegal to be considered improper.

President Zelensky’s recent foray into U.S. partisan politics is a clear example of such improper attempted influence. It is made worse by the Biden-Harris’ facilitation and support of his election interference.

Zelensky’s partisan politics and attempts to influence our election.

So how did Zelensky cross the line? Well, for starters, just days before voting began in a contentious Presidential election, he criticized both Republican candidates by name.

In an interview with The New Yorker on the eve of his trip to the U.S., the interviewer began to ask him about J.D. Vance. Without even waiting for the question, Zelensky immediately interjected, “He is too radical.” He added that Vance’s statements were “dangerous signals” and that, “I don’t take Vance’s words seriously.”

In the same interview when asked about Trump’s statement in his “debate” with Harris that he wanted to end the war, Zelensky portrayed Trump as naïve to the point of cluelessness:

Trump makes political statements in his election campaign. He says he wants the war to stop. Well, we do, too…. My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how. With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand.

The point here is not whether Zelensky was right or wrong in criticizing either Trump or Vance. It is that he has no business weighing in on U.S. political candidates, especially at the outset of a U.S. election and more especially when he then combines that criticism with a follow-up trip to a hotly contested swing state.

Reasonable people may disagree over whether Putin is right to be concerned about NATO expansion to the Russian border and his attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine that have historically been Russian in culture and language. Many well-informed voters also disagree over whether a compromise over the sovereignty of these disputed territories will lead to a World War as Zelensky predicts. Others are understandably skeptical of continuing our open-ended support for the protection of Ukraine’s border, given the Biden-Harris administration’s intentional dissolution of our southern border. I am not taking a position on those disputes here. Instead, I note only that in this country disagreement over such issues are properly decided by the voters when they cast their ballots, not by the blathering of any foreign leader.

Zelensky supports the administration on these issues. As noted above, he is critical of the Trump-Vance skepticism about U.S. funding for the continuation of the war. He came to the U.S. to campaign for our continued support for his position. To support his campaign Zelensky also took a trip to tour a factory that manufactures 155-millimeter artillery shells in, of all places, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

155 mm artillery shells are manufactured in several locations, including Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania. But as voting was just beginning, Zelensky or someone guiding him decided that he should take his campaign and his support for Harris and Biden to a key swing state that many observers say will be decide the election. Whose idea was that?

The government gave Zelensky a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster for his trip to Scranton. Contrast that with the reception given to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in July when Harris boycotted his address to Congress so that she could attend a sorority function. Netanyahu had received the same snub when he addressed a joint session of Congress in 2015, and Obama refused to meet with him. Interestingly enough, Obama’s excuse was, “We have a practice of not meeting with leaders right before their elections.”

Having Zelensky take his campaign for the continuation of Ukraine’s fight against Russia and to make his pro-administration case from Joe Biden’s hometown, was a clear effort to sway Pennsylvania voters in favor of Biden and now Harris. Combined with his public criticism of both Trump and Vance, it was a clear effort to use his platform to meddle in a U.S. election as it was just beginning.

Democrat leaders’ previous condemnation of foreign influence and interference in our elections.

Whenever a foreign leader or government speaks out on a political issue, they are serving the interest of that foreign government, not our own. This is true of allies and adversaries alike. That is one of the reasons why foreign support for one side or the other in U.S. elections historically has been condemned by all sides and is affirmatively illegal in some cases.

It is for that very reason that in 2020, when the shoe was on the other foot, Senator Chuck Schumer supported legislation to “safeguard our elections against foreign interference” saying,

[T]he threat of foreign interference in our elections dates back to the founding days of the country. George Washington warned: “foreign interference is one of the most baneful foes of Republican government.” Adams wrote that “as long as elections happen, the danger of foreign influence recurs.”

Similarly, as recently as this past July, the Biden-Harris Director of National Intelligence, Avril Hanes, cautioned warned us against “foreign actors who seek to exploit our debate for their own purposes.”

The DNI gave us that warning precisely because foreign actors, whether they are from Russia, China, India, Ukraine, or anywhere else, are always serving their “own purposes,” not ours, when they try to influence our elections. Our politicians know this and should neither promote nor tolerate it.

Joe Biden agrees — or at least he used to. In his Statement of Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections, Biden said,

Foreign interference in the U.S. electoral process represents an assault on the American people and their constitutional right to vote.

Finally, let us not forget that in their first Articles of Impeachment against President Trump, the Democrats tried to remove him from office because he supposedly

solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage.

Although the facts underlying this first impeachment effort obviously differ from those now involving the Biden & Harris/Zelensky attempt to influence the election, the general principles are the same: The Biden-Harris administration “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the Presidential election; and Zelensky’s comments and actions were intended to influence the 2024 election and “harm the election prospects of a political opponent.”

In short, the Democrats attempted to take down President Trump for allegedly seeking foreign influence over a Presidential election. They are pursuing the same strategy now that they previously condemned throughout Trump’s presidency.