After Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t long before the world confronted serious allegations of war crimes being committed by the Russian military. The Biden administration, not surprisingly, launched an investigative effort to compile evidence, with the hopes of holding Russian officials accountable.
The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is engaged in “a concerted effort to undo” those initiatives.
[T]he administration has moved to withdraw from an international group led by the European Union that was created to punish Moscow for violating international law in its invasion of Ukraine. The White House has also reduced the work of the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team. … And in a previously unreported move, it has vacated a coordinator position — mandated by law — to gather intelligence from across the government on Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the vacated coordinator position was created by legislation co-authored by then-Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla.
Waltz is now Trump’s White House national security adviser — who presumably knows that the law he helped write hasn’t been repealed, even if the president he works for no longer sees this as a priority.
Eli Rosenbaum, the former head of the Justice Department war crimes team who retired in January 2024, told the Post, “It’s a very disturbing retreat from the U.S. commitment to holding accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and aggression, particularly in the bloodiest conflict that Europe has seen since World War II.”
That’s true. It’s also disturbing to see just how frequently the Trump administration has taken related steps to help Russia since Inauguration Day.
Indeed, it was just last week Trump’s State Department shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, an office that was responsible for combating disinformation from foreign actors — including the Russian government. This came on the heels of a series of related developments that were likely celebrated in Moscow. Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Putin spoke privately with Trump and provided the American president with a to-do list. Would it look much different than the White House’s agenda from the last few months? This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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