A prominent former U.S. State Department official who worked to fight Russian disinformation has labeled the Trump presidential campaign an “influence operation,” with several experts echoing his assessment.

Richard Stengel, an NBC News/MSNBC analyst who spent seven years as TIME magazine managing editor and served as the chief executive of the National Constitution Center, on Thursday shared his evaluation.

“The Trump candidacy is not so much a political campaign as what intelligence services call an influence operation, a coordinated effort to use mis-and-disinformation to undermine democratic institutions and processes,” declared Stengel.

Stengel, who served as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is the author of the 2019 memoir, “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”

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Stengel’s comment received hundreds of thousands of views on social media, and garnered responses from experts.

“This is correct,” replied Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the well-known professor of history and an expert on fascism, authoritarians, propaganda, and democracy.

“True,” asserted Eric Chenoweth, Director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, adding, “it is correlated with Russian influence operations.”

“The Trump effort has the support of his BFF Putin, who has paid agents in the US as social ‘influencers’ to help promote Russia’s pro-Trump narrative,” noted former U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo, Greg Delawie.

Indeed, early last month the U.S. Dept. of Justice announced it had seized “32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns,” which “used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.”

Days later, MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reported, “MAGA influencers are scrambling after the DOJ’s Russia indictment,” and mentioned “an unsealed affidavit … alleging a Kremlin-backed agency had nearly 600 U.S.-based influencers in its sights as it waged an online-based election manipulation operation in the United States.”

The Washington Spectator’s Dave Troy, an investigative journalist and tech entrepreneur who has written extensively on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Stengel’s post: “Yes. And this would have been a very cool thing for the Obama administration to say in 2015-2016.”

Dr. Joanne Freeman, a professor of American history and of American studies, replied to Stengel’s post with a simple “YUP.”

Stengel’s pronouncement wasn’t so much a revelation as a reminder.

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Earlier this week, David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief and co-author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” penned an important piece titled: “Trump Is Running a Disinformation Campaign, Not a Political Campaign.”

“He’s not just lying. He’s creating an alternative reality,” Corn states. “His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties that Trump can then exploit to collect votes. And the political media world has yet to come to terms with the fact that Trump is heading a disinformation crusade more likely to be found in an authoritarian state than a vibrant democracy. This is unlike other presidential campaigns in modern American history—other than his own previous efforts.”

Even before Donald Trump left the White House in disgrace in January of 2021, experts were busy analyzing just how damaging his time on office then had been.

The day after the November 2020 election which Trump ultimately lost but falsely had declared victory, The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz wrote: “Trump has attacked democracy’s institutions, but never so blatantly as he did overnight.”

“For four years, President Trump has sought to undermine the institutions of a democratic society, but never so blatantly as in the early morning hours of Wednesday. His attempt to falsely claim victory and to subvert the election itself by calling for a halt to vote-counting represents the gravest of threats to the stability of the country,” Balz wrote. “A president who respected the Constitution would let things play out. But Trump has shown once again he cares not about the Constitution or the stability and well-being of the country or anything like that. He cares only about himself and retaining the powers he now holds. And so he cries “fraud” when there is no evidence whatsoever of any such thing.”

The Niskanen Center, a D.C. think tank, one week before the violent and deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection Trump allegedly incited, asked: “How Much Did Trump Undermine U.S. Democracy?”

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Last year, when Donald Trump’s attorneys declared he had “total immunity” from prosecution, many in the legal community scoffed. No president in all of American history had ever proclaimed they could not be convicted for serious violations of law—most infamously, President Richard Nixon had to have been keenly aware he might be criminally prosecuted.

Just eleven days after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, TIME reported, “Nixon’s new status as a private citizen puts him in grave peril.”

In fact, TIME continued, “the Watergate grand jury had vigorously wanted to indict Nixon while he was President.”

The American public is aware presidents can be prosecuted for certain crimes, and there is a foundational expectation of that possibility. In February of 2021, after the Democratic House impeached Donald Trump, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the ex-president should face criminal prosecution rather than impeachment.

“Donald Trump’s legal troubles are far from over, despite his acquittal in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial that ended on Saturday,” Reuters reported on February 16, 2021. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted this just moments after voting to acquit Trump, saying the courts are the proper forum for holding the former president accountable for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.”

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We now know that after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the claim of “presidential immunity” by Trump’s attorneys, it refused, waiting for a lower court to weigh in. Chief Justice John Roberts sent a “scathing critique of [that] lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule,” The New York Times reported last month.

“Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate,” according to The Times’ reporting.

“’I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently’ from the appeals court, he wrote,” The Times reported, offering this interpretation for the Chief Justice’s message: “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, had literally argued a president could order a coup and be protected by immunity because it was an “official act” of the presidency.

Kagan: How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?

Sauer: If one adopted the test we advanced, that might well be an official act pic.twitter.com/aABeWLxbyy

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 25, 2024

Sauer also argued a president could order the assassination of a political rival and still have immunity from prosecution.

Chief Justice Roberts responded to the “momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases…by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.”

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In short, the Chief Justice used his powers to intervene and craft an opinion that some experts have said creates new law—certainly nothing that is found in the U.S. Constitution.

“There’s no legal authority for it,” remarked CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen back in December.

There’s no legal authority for the absolute immunity Trump is claiming

It’s just a delaying tactic—& it likely won’t work

I joined @CNN @jessicadean to discuss pic.twitter.com/smh7dgbLHL

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) December 26, 2023

Nor, as the “originalist” far-right justices on the bench have adopted, does Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling lie in the “history and tradition” of the United States.

And yet, despite decades of history starting with Richard Nixon, and despite the scathing dissenting opinion from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, CNN reports on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.”

“The Roberts Court has been in sync with the GOP political agenda largely because of decisions the chief justice has authored: For Trump and other Republicans. Against voting rights and racial affirmative action. Against federal regulations over environmental, public health and consumer affairs,” CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported. “Roberts, joined by his five fellow conservatives, found that the former president was entitled to presumptive, if not absolute, immunity for actions related to his official acts. Roberts’ view of official acts, as opposed to private ones, was vast.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion on Trump’s immunity blasted Roberts and the far-right justices, famously declaring:

“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.  It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

She also wrote:

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Special Counsel Jack Smith’s explosive 165-page filing alleging that Donald Trump knew his claims were false and his efforts to cling to power were illegal is the most damning evidence yet against the ex-president, but some legal experts argue it also serves as an indictment of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smith filed his brief, “the most comprehensive look at the evidence federal prosecutors have amassed in their case,” CBS News reports, last week under seal. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference and subversion case against Trump and was directed by the Supreme Court to determine which of Trump’s actions were “official acts” not subject to prosecution, released the motion on Wednesday. Smith’s filing contains “damning evidence against Trump,” as MSNBC reported, never before seen by the American public.

“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” Smith’s filing reads. “With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.”

Some legal experts are angered at the Supreme Court’s actions which have delayed the trial, and, should Trump win re-election, they say, have effectively killed it.

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“The unsealed evidence in the January 6 case underscores how outrageous it was that the Supreme Court blocked Donald Trump’s criminal trial this year. It amounts to a judicially executed cover up,” charges Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice. Waldman was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021 to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, which issued a report on court reforms.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, knowing Donald Trump’s claims of “presidential immunity” ultimately would be adjudicated by the Supreme Court, had asked the Court on December 11, 2023 to rule on the ex-president’s assertions. In making what he acknowledged was “an extraordinary request,” as SCOTUSblog reported, the Special Counsel “contended that it ‘is of paramount importance’ that Trump’s claims of immunity ‘be resolved as expeditiously as possible.'”

Urging “a cautious, deliberative manner,” and not a resolution at “breakneck speed,” Trump’s lawyers told the Court they opposed expedited review. “Haste makes waste,” they said, according to SCOTUSblog.

One day later Smith replied, writing that the “public interest in a prompt resolution of this case favors an immediate, definitive decision by this Court.”

On December 22, the Court refused.

It wasn’t until April 18, 2024, that the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. The Court heard oral arguments one week later, on April 25, but waited until the last day of its session, July 1, to release what became its landmark 6-3 ruling on presidential immunity. From the point where Smith first asked the Court to resolve the issue to the date it handed down its decision was more than six months.

Marcy Wheeler, who writes about civil rights and national security, dug into the 165-page filing and slammed the Chief Justice.

“John Roberts not only rewrote the Constitution to protect Donald Trump,” Wheeler charges. “He forced prosecutors to spend 14 pages arguing that it is not among the job duties of the President of the United States to attack Republicans who’ve crossed him on Twitter.”

“This is what the Chief Justice wants to protect. This is the all-powerful President John Roberts wants to have. Someone who can sit in his dining room siccing mobs on fellow Republicans.”

Professor of law Richard “Rick” Hasen, an internationally-recognized expert in election law and campaign finance, on Wednesday blasted the Supreme Court.

“Jack Smith’s Big New Jan. 6 Brief Is a Major Indictment of the Supreme Court,” is Hasen’s headline at Slate. In it, he explains his “anger is at the Supreme Court for depriving the American people of the chance for a full public airing of Donald Trump’s attempt to use fraud and trickery to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory before voters consider whether to put Trump back in office beginning January 2025.”

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He warns, “there is about an even chance that this will be the last evidence produced by the federal government of this nefarious plot. If Donald Trump wins election next month, the end of this prosecution is certain and the risks of future election subversion heightened.”

“And now,” Hasen laments, “perhaps the most important case in American history may never get to a jury and the American public will never get a chance to learn about this evidence and a jury’s judgment of this evidence before they consider returning Donald Trump to office.”

Hasen blames “then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to support Donald Trump’s conviction in the Senate after the House impeached him for these activities,” and “Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, who dragged his feet for well over a year before taking decisive action against the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War of the 1860s. His timidity is inexplicable and disappointing.”

“But worst of all is the United States Supreme Court,” Hasen charges, before also pointing to the actions of Chief Justice John Roberts:

“The New York Times recently reported on the internal Supreme Court deliberations, and they paint Chief Justice John Roberts, author of the Trump immunity decision, as having turned from a justice known for seeking common ground and minimalist outcomes to one set out to protect the office of the presidency at all costs. The opinion was so focused on the risks to the vigorousness of the activities of future presidents that could come from the threat of future prosecutions that it was willing to ignore the current threat to democracy today from Trump’s actions in 2020, not to mention his continued insistence that he won the last election.”

With damning charges Hasen concludes: “The fact that no jury may pass on the deadly serious allegations in Smith’s complaint will do more than simply let Trump and others off the hooks for their potential crimes. It will make future criminal activity related to American elections much more likely. And it all could have been avoided if McConnell, Garland, and especially the Supreme Court had done the right thing.”

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Image: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States