Human rights experts dispute Rep. Glenn Grothman's reason for voting against Russia sanction

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman was one of just eight U.S. House members last week to vote against a measure to suspend normal trade relations with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, but human rights experts say his justification doesn’t make sense.

In a statement and telephone interview, the Sheboygan County Republican said the vote had nothing to do with suspending trade relations itself. Indeed, he added, he co-sponsored a separate bill, H.R. 7014, that would suspend normal trade relations with Russia.

Rather, Grothman said, his objections were to a provision in the bill to amend an existing law that allows the administration to impose sanctions on foreign actors who engage in corruption or human rights violations. The trade bill would expand that to anyone who is “responsible for or complicit in, or has directly or indirectly engaged in, serious human rights abuse,” something Grothman said he feared could be used to punish foreign officials who support laws in their home countries opposing abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

The revised law, Grothman said, would give the president “the ability to threaten other countries to turn on their Christian heritage and change their laws to align with the views of the current White House.”

But that amendment is identical to wording then-President Donald Trump, whom Grothman supported, used to broaden the law in an executive order. And experts in human rights law say the wording is aimed at combating crimes carried out by particular officials, such as arbitrary detention and murder, not broad social policies.

The bill Grothman voted against would replace language in a law first passed in 2012 calling for the U.S. government to sanction Russian citizens “who are responsible for gross violations of human rights.” In 2016, the law was expanded to apply to all countries.

The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act authorized the president to sanction and deny U.S. entry to people identified as having engaged in human rights violations or corruption.

The Magnitsky Act gained global attention in 2017 after it was revealed that a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, lobbied against the law in a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others from the Trump campaign at Trump Tower. The meeting was set up ostensibly to share compromising information the Russian government said it had on Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. After failing to produce evidence against Clinton, the lawyer turned to a critique of the Magnitsky Act and asked the campaign for help getting it removed, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

That meeting was not unique. According to official documents, from the Mueller report to U.S. Senate reports, the Russian government had long tried to find ways to eliminate the law.

Grothman said he was unaware that Russians were lobbying against the Magnitsky Act and said nobody had lobbied him to oppose it. His opposition, he said, is to broadening the law, not the law itself.

Originated with Trump

The 2016 measure included a provision saying the punitive measures could extend to people “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals in any foreign country” seeking to blow the whistle on government officials. It also extended to individuals trying to “obtain, exercise, defend, or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms.”

In amendments to the trade bill, the ability to seek sanctions was extended to anyone “engaged in serious human rights abuse” either directly or indirectly. That would permit the president to “threaten foreign officials that hold traditional views on life or marriage,” Grothman said.

But those terms were first used in an executive order Trump signed in 2017 to expand the Magnitsky Act — an order Trump continued to renew. Grothman said he didn’t agree with the change now, or then. “It makes it awkward for us, but Trump shouldn’t have done it,” he said.

The recently proposed amendments are just a means to codify Trump’s order, said Marquette University assistant political science professor Mark Berlin, who studies international law, domestic law and human rights.

Grothman — who in 2011 told a reporter for Isthmus that he regarded homosexuality as a sin — said he and his colleagues have heard from foreign diplomats in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa that they feel pressured by President Joe Biden’s administration to adapt to liberal Americans’ views on abortion and transgender rights.

Grothman would not identify any of his sources, saying they feared retaliation for speaking out against the United States. Nor did he say whether their concerns relate specifically to Magnitsky Act sanctions. At one point, he said a bishop in the Dominican Republic told him the United States was pressuring the country over an LGBTQ+ law, but he couldn’t recall the bishop’s name or the law.

“I don’t like the U.S. using its economic force to force other countries to be more pro-abortion,” Grothman said. “And this opens up the ability to say, ‘We want you to legalize abortion or legalize late-term abortion in your country.’”

Aimed at individuals

Berlin said it wouldn’t be plausible for a president to sanction another country because of its prohibitions on same-sex marriage or abortions. Moreover, the Magnitsky Act only allows the president to sanction individuals, not countries.

While “serious human rights abuse” isn’t defined in the bill, “it’s generally believed that it’s bound by common understandings of what are accepted international human rights, or what would be recognized in international law,” Berlin said. “And the right to abortion or the right to gay marriage aren’t recognized in international human rights law.”

Amanda Strayer, an associate attorney at Human Rights First, said there have been around 420 sanction designations under the Magnitsky Act, about 140 of which have been for serious human rights abuses. All of those, Strayer said, were for violence or arbitrary detention.

Because the program is aimed at individuals and because the U.S. Treasury Department has interpreted serious human rights abuses to mean violence or arbitrary detention, Strayer said, the United States could not use the law to target an entire country over its abortion laws or prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and it almost certainly wouldn’t target an individual proposing those laws.

“It really is focused on going after the most serious forms of human rights abuses and violence against individuals,” she said.

Had Grothman known that before he voted, he said, he would “maybe” have changed his vote, he said.

“We don’t usually talk to lawyers before we take votes,” added Grothman, who has a law degree from the University of Wisconsin.

The seven other House members voting against the bill were Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona; Dan Bishop, R-North Carolina; Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado; Matt Gaetz, R-Florida; Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia; Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky; and Chip Roy, R-Texas.