Cartoon by Nick Anderson

White House Weighs Allowing Russia to Question Ex-U.S. Envoy

Wall Street Journal: The White House is reviewing a request by Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow Russian investigators to question a number of Americans they say are implicated in criminal activity, including a former U.S. ambassador, a spokeswoman said.

The White House decision to weigh the proposal rather than dismiss it outright prompted alarm among former diplomats and on Capitol Hill.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed Wednesday that Mr. Putin and President Donald Trump discussed a desire by Russian authorities to question a number of U.S. citizens, including Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama who now lectures at Stanford University.

Asked at Wednesday’s daily briefing whether Mr. Trump was “open to having U.S. officials questioned by Russia” including Mr. McFaul, Ms. Sanders replied, “There was some conversation about it but there wasn’t a commitment made on behalf of the United States. The president will work with his team, and we’ll let you know if there’s an announcement on that front.”

As ambassador, Mr. McFaul was an architect of Mr. Obama’s attempted reset with Moscow, but was sometimes critical of the Kremlin, a posture which brought intrusive Russian media scrutiny and official accusations that his mission was to undermine the country’s leadership.

Mr. McFaul told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday he was “deeply disappointed that the White House had the chance to denounce this crazy invented tale about U.S. government officials being somehow involved in breaking Russian laws and decided not to do so.”

Other former U.S. officials also reacted with chagrin.

“Those who serve the U.S. government must know that they will not be put in jeopardy, or offered up as bargaining chips to authoritarian dictators,” said Dan Shapiro, who was ambassador to Israel under the Obama administration. “President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and the administration need to shut this travesty down immediately.”

Democratic senators also pressed the White House to reject Mr. Putin’s proposal.

“We’re not turning @McFaul or any other American public servant over to Russia to be prosecuted for nonexistent crimes,” tweeted Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The White House should make that clear immediately.”

In a separate briefing Wednesday afternoon, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert was asked about Ms. Sanders’s comments. She said she hadn’t seen the remarks and couldn’t address them, but dismissed as “absurd” the allegations that Russia was making about U.S. citizens.

“We do not stand by those assertions that the Russian government makes,” said Ms. Nauert. “I will be sure to look into it and understand that it would be a grave concern to our former colleagues here.”

The new White House comments came two days after the idea of allowing Russian officials access to Americans was first publicly broached at the press conference held by Messrs. Trump and Putin in Helsinki.

On Monday, Mr. Putin cited the case of William Browder, a U.S.-born investment-fund manager and thorn in the Putin government’s side, as a potential area of cooperation between Russian and U.S. investigators. Mr. Putin said he would be willing to give the U.S. access to Russians, such as the 12 intelligence officials recently indicted in the U.S. election meddling case, if the U.S. were willing to give Russia access to its targets.

Mr. Browder led a campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials whom he blamed for the 2009 death of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The U.S. subsequently passed the Magnitsky Act, which put sanctions on Russian officials for alleged human-rights abuses. That act has been a point of contention between the U.S. and Russia, and Moscow convicted Mr. Browder in absentia of financial crimes last year. Mr. Browder has maintained his innocence and called the trial a farce.

Mr. Putin said Monday that Russia wanted to question U.S. officials in the Browder matter. Alexander Kurennoi, a spokesman for the Russian attorney general’s office, told the Interfax news agency on Tuesday that Mr. McFaul is one of the Americans suspected of involvement in Mr. Browder’s purported illegal activities.

“I am not an ‘associate’ of Bill Browder,” Mr. McFaul wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “I am the former US ambassador to Russia. Putin is seeking to arrest a former Ambassador. Please understand how outrageous this act is, discussed no less between our two presidents.”

Mr. McFaul was denied a Russian visa in June 2014 and subsequently banned from entering the country, in what he says was a response to U.S. sanctions and his service in the Obama administration.

Speaking late Wednesday at a security conference in Aspen, Colo., Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray was dismissive of Mr. Putin’s suggestion that Russia and U.S investigators could jointly look into allegations that Moscow meddled in the U.S. election.

Mr. Wray said as far as the FBI is concerned, “I never want to say never, but it’s certainly not high on our list of investigative techniques.”