Exonerated

by Dan Bongino

  Brennan has some explaining to do and he knows it. The self-appointed anti-Trump cheerleader ever so slightly toned down his act in the wake of the Mueller report. The lack of criminal charges from the special counsel evidently caused a brief moment of reflection about his idiotic tweets. Unfortunately, he didn’t get very far with his introspection.

  “I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was,” Brennan told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on March 25, 2019, one day after Attorney General William Barr announced that Mueller had found no evidence of the Trump campaign’s colluding with Russia.17

  What does Brennan’s mystifying, nonapology mean? Let me try to translate: Brennan was unsure about the factual accuracy of the information he received as head of the CIA regarding Russiagate—even though he used that information to support a crippling investigation against Donald Trump and his team. And the reason he didn’t have any problem cheerleading and slinging mud against Trump on behalf of the election’s sore losers is that he had a hunch that more information would be uncovered that would condemn Trump. Unfortunately for Brennan, his hunch—something commonly known as wishful thinking—was a total bust. So his statement conveyed this without actually admitting he was wrong.

  It is stunning that America’s spy chief had this hunch based on his rogue intelligence operation while others investigating the matter had grave doubts. Even Peter Strzok, the now disgraced FBI counterintelligence guru and self-proclaimed Trump hater, shared his private misgivings about proving allegations of collusion, texting his lover Lisa Page that “my gut sense and concern is there’s no big there there.” Strzok wrote that message on May 18, 2017, as he moved to join the special counsel’s team. As Page later explained at a congressional hearing, Strzok was voicing doubt about what the investigation would uncover. “It still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to connect Trump and Russia, no matter what Mueller or the FBI did.18

  In other words, two of the members of Mueller’s original investigative team, both of whom were familiar with the FBI investigation on a granular level—an investigation that had been ongoing for nine months—were discussing the fact that no misdeeds had been uncovered. These texts essentially exonerated Trump before the Mueller probe was officially set in motion. And yet that investigation went full steam ahead.

  The whole thing is more remarkable when you consider that Strzok despised Trump. Texts he sent Page reveal that he called the future president an “idiot,” an “enormous douche” and “a f***ing idiot.”19 If he had found an iota of evidence that implicated Trump or Trump campaign members, he would have been all over it. Yet, despite his sneering contempt, we know that after leading the FBI investigation for months, he admitted in private that the bureau had turned up nothing tying Trump or his campaign to Russia.

  And that leads us back to Brennan. What could he have possibly learned that Strzok hadn’t? Until the CIA honcho shares those allegations and the sources, we won’t be able to close the case. But given the substantial amount we do know, it seems clear that either he got spun like a top by a Russian disinformation campaign and was led to smear and destabilize the Trump presidency because of it, or he just had it out for the president of the United States and was too emotionally unstable to control his tyrannical impulses.

  FORESHADOWING FLYNN

  Before we wrap up the inventory of this bonfire of inanities—the collection of paranoid whispers, the rebounding smears, the unsubstantiated allegations, the shifting stories, and the conflicting allegiances that coalesced to create the Russiagate panic, I want to provide more details on the previously mentioned use of foreign agents to create and dish out bogus allegations about members of the Trump team. It comes from a Cambridge University postgraduate student—and it involves the very same Stefan Halper, the operative with extensive ties to the CIA who took aim at Carter Page, Sam Clovis and, most infamously, George Papadopoulos.

  In February 2014, Halper and his pals Richard Dearlove and Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge professor and an MI5 historian, were hosts of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, a gathering of former and current members of the intelligence community. During the event, they hosted a dinner that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), attended with Dan O’Brien, a DIA official. Also present at the dinner was Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born academic who had studied with Christopher Andrew.

  According to Lokhova, she talked briefly with Flynn. O’Brien told the Wall Street Journal that he didn’t notice anything unusual about Lokhova and Flynn’s interaction. And Lokhova’s boyfriend, David North, says he picked her up—alone—after the dinner.20

  Fast-forward to 2017, when this innocuous, inconsequential meeting became a flashpoint in the Russiagate narrative, resurfacing soon after Trump took office and appointed Flynn his national security advisor—and a leak revealed that Flynn had called the Russian ambassador. Stories in the mainstream media recounted Flynn’s “connection” to Lokhova. The subtext—no, actually, the main thrust of these stories—was that Lokhova was some kind of honeypot Russian spy who might have compromised Flynn. Where did this story come from?

  Andrew kicked things off with an article in the London Times in February. From there, the story picked up steam with unnamed sources floating a Flynn-was-compromised storyline. Then in a May 2017 article, the New York Times reported on an unnamed FBI informant, who we now know was Halper—the same guy who tried entrap George Papadopoulos by actually luring him to London under the guise of a $3,000 payday—as the source of the rumor. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is how a bogus allegation begins to take a life of its own, shaping public opinion regardless of its veracity. Halper, the Times wrote, “was alarmed by the general’s apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance.”21 Incredible how Halper’s sense of alarm seems to appear only around political opponents of the Obama administration (Flynn was a vocal opponent of Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative, the Iran deal).

  The Times continued: “The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter.”22

  Frankly, this reporting raises more questions than it solves. Who exactly is “another person”? If Halper was an FBI informant, wouldn’t he inform American authorities? Or, since Halper is based in England, was “another person” tied to MI6 or some other organization? The article doesn’t say when Halper decided to voice his alarm. Was this back in 2014? Or was it more recent—say, around the time the FBI started to probe the Trump campaign and administration? That, in retrospect, seems far likelier.

  The story behind the allegation is far more disturbing than the allegation itself, which is based purely on one brief public encounter. Without any further substantiation, it amounts to a hit job, an obvious smear, something that should never have even seen the light of day. Instead, I’m writing about it in a book!

  “What Halper staged is a textbook ‘black-op’ to dirty up the reputation of a political opponent. He needed an innocuous social event to place Flynn in a room with a woman who was ethnically Russian. I was unlucky he picked me,” said Lokhova, who filed a multimillion-dollar suit against Halper, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets in May 2019.23

  There’s more to this story—and we’ll unfold it when we get to Plan B. But even without any additional shocking details, this fabricated allegation is important. It’s yet another case of government agencies’ using foreign operatives and far-flung events to create a confluence of swirling rumors around Trump and his team to incite paranoia and distrust.

  “A” IS FOR ASPERSIONS

  I could go on for days documenting the whirlpool of misinformation, innuendo, conflicts of interest, and foreign “intelligence” that has prove
n to be nothing more than stupidity. Peter Strzok, of all people, wasn’t kidding when he said, “There’s no big there there.” Those five words summarize the hysteria around Russiagate as clearly as anything that’s been said. That was Strzok’s verdict before Mueller even took over. And you know what? That was Mueller’s conclusion 675 days after he was appointed to investigate the collusion fantasy.

  Why did it take so long? What the hell was going on here? Simply put, the faulty, warped, hostile, unsubstantiated aspersions that amassed into Plan A backfired. All the powerful ingredients of the plan—which had been gathered and consumed by senior members of the FBI, DOJ, and Robert Mueller’s “dream team” of investigators—exploded.

  Even without Glenn Simpson’s calculated opposition “research” and plug-and-play plan, the conditions for this explosion had been gestating; restrictions on the ability for U.S. intelligence to share intel with foreign counterparts had been relaxed. A presidential candidate was rocking the long-established thinking regarding relations with Russia. When that candidate upset the heavily favored Democratic nominee, and reports surfaced of Russian attempts to influence and interfere in the election, the apparent optics of collusion gained unearned legitimacy in some quarters—especially among senior members of the Obama administration.

  At the beginning of this chapter, I said Plan A didn’t begin as a fully mapped-out strategy, but rather solidified into a war to smear Trump, emerging from the heavily politicized, power-crazed swamp that Washington has become. I still stand by that, although we may learn more as Attorney General William Barr investigates the origins of the FBI investigation.24 But I want to include the muck manufacturing of foreign intelligence agencies, too. It turns out that the anti-Trump forces inside our intelligence community were using foreign spies to launder allegations—indeed, connections to two of America’s “Five Eyes” brethren, Australia and England, have figured heavily in Russiagate. For example, the Telegraph reported on May 19, 2019, that British prime minister Theresa May’s intelligence chiefs were briefed on Steele’s information before Donald Trump was briefed,25 and CNN reported back on April 14, 2017, that “British intelligence passed Trump associates communications with Russians on to U.S. counterparts.”26 When I think about the timeline and the double-talk from the likes of Brennan, Comey, Rosenstein, and others about what spurred the investigation—the dossier, Papadopoulos and Mifsud, or other “intelligence”—it’s still hard to identify which communiqué or exchange was the pebble that turned Plan A into an avalanche of aspersions.

  None of those aspersions have been proven true. But that didn’t matter on July 31, 2016, as operation Crossfire Hurricane unfurled. Or three months later on October 31, when liberal editor David Corn delivered a Halloween horror story, reporting the uncorroborated allegations of the Steele dossier as if the “information” were legitimate. Or as Obama administration members began leaking sinister-sounding Russia-related stories about Michael Flynn and others on the Trump team. All of these tales, some beyond salacious and ridiculous, were repeated breathlessly by the anti-Trump mainstream media and retweeted and reposted. Papadopoulos didn’t spread the virus that Mifsud apparently had planted on him, but the swamp’s thirst for scandal and the media’s thirst for clicks made sure it spread.

  And the avalanche of aspersions worked. On May 17, 2017, acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed his old friend and colleague Robert Mueller as special counsel. His responsibility: to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump and any matters that arose or may arise from the investigation.” If there was any doubt about the end game related to what Mueller was authorized to do, the appointment memo added some teeth: “The Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute Federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.”27

  Plan A was now complete. With the unleashing of the special counsel and his team of mad-dog Clinton-loving lawyers, the avalanche of aspersions would be thoroughly investigated. Trump and all his campaign team were now officially under assault.

  1Austin Wright, “Nunes Claims Some Trump Transition Messages Were Intercepted,” Politico, March 22, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/devin-nunes-donald-trump-surveillance-obama-236366.

  2Alain Kredo, “Former U.N. Amb. Power Unmasked ‘Hundreds’ in Final Year of Obama Admin,” Washington Free Beacon, August 2, 2017, https://freebeacon.com/national-security/former-u-n-amb-power-unmasked-hundreds-last-year-obama-admin/.

  3Manu Raju, “Exclusive: Rice Told House investigators Why She Unmasked Senior Trump Officials,” CNN, September 18, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/.09/13/politics/susan-rice-house-investigators-unmasked-trump-officials/index.html.

  4Eric Holder, “Government’s Submission of Amendments to Standard Minimization for FBI Electronic Surveillance Minimization Procedures…” Office of U.S. Attorney General, April 23, 2012, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/0315/Motion%20for%20Amendments%20to%20Standard%20Minimization%20Procedures%20April%2023%202012.pdf.

  5Ibid.

  6Luke Rosiak, “FISA Motion Allowed FBI to Share US Citizens’ Info with Foreign Agencies. Here’s How That May Have Played into the Russia Probe,” The Daily Caller, May 3, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/03/fbi-fisa-motion-trump-russia/.

  7Papadopoulos, Deep State Target, 60.

  8Ibid., 76–77.

  9Ibid., 87.

  10Solomon, “What Professor Really Told FBI about Trump, Russia and Papadopoulos,” The Hill, August 29, 2018, https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/404275-what-professor-really-told-fbi-about-trump-russia-and-papadopoulo.

  11Harding, Kirchgaessner, and Hopkins, “British Spies Were First to Spot Trump Team’s Links with Russia.”

  12Dan Bongino, “The George Papadopoulos Interview You’ve Been Waiting For,” The Dan Bongino Show, November 2, 2018, https://bongino.com/the-george-papadopoulos-interview-youve-been-waiting-for/.

  13T. A. Frank, “The Surreal Life of George Papadopoulos,” The Washington Post Magazine, May 20, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/05/20/feature/the-surreal-life-of-george-papadopoulos/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a2b89c94ea0d.

  14Raphael Satter, “Malta Academic in Trump Probe Has History of Vanishing Acts,” Associated Press, October 22, 2018, https://www.apnews.com/800354d636af47f3afbd19338a377887.

  15Ivan Pentchoukov, “Spy Operation on Trump Campaign Started as Early as December 2015, New Texts Suggest,” Epoch Times, June 6, 2018, https://www.theepochtimes.com/spy-operation-on-trump-campaign-started-as-early-as-december-2015-new-texts-suggest_2551831.html.

  16Michael Kranz, “British Intelligence Reportedly Told the CIA Months Before the Election That Trump’s Campaign Had Illicit Contacts with Russia,” Business Insider, March 5, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-told-cia-about-trump-russia-contacts-before-election-2018-3.

  17Brennan Interview on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC, March 25, 2019.

  18Catherine Herridge and Cyd Upson, “Lisa Page Testimony: Collusion Still Unproven by Time of Mueller’s Special Counsel Appointment,” Fox News, September 16, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lisa-page-testimony-collusion-still-unproven-by-time-of-muellers-special-counsel-appointment.

  19“Read FBI’s Strzok, Page Texts About Trump,” Fox News, January 21, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/read-fbis-strzok-page-texts-about-trump.

  20Chuck Ross, “Cambridge Academic Reflects on Interactions with ‘Spygate’ Figure,” The Daily Caller, April 4, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/cambridge-halper-flynn-spygate/.

  21Adam Goldman, Mazzetti, and Matthew Rosenberg, “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims,” The New York Times, May 18, 2018, https://www
.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/us/politics/trump-fbi-informant-russia-investigation.html.

  22Ibid.

  23Ross, “Cambridge Academic Reflects on Interactions With ‘Spygate’ Figure.”

  24Laura Jarrett, “CIA, FBI, Director of National Intelligence Working with Attorney General Barr to Review Russia Probe Origins,” CNN, May 14, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/politics/russia-investigation-origin-barr-haspel-coats-wray/index.html.

  25Ben Riley-Smith and Robert Mendick, “Theresa May’s Spy Chiefs Were Briefed on Explosive Christopher Steele Dossier Before Donald Trump,” The Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/19/theresa-mays-spy-chiefs-briefed-explosive-chistopher-steele/.

  26Jim Sciutto,Pamela Brown, and Eric Bradner, “British Intelligence Passed Trump Associates’ Communications with Russians on to US Counterparts,” CNN, April 14, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/trump-russia-british-intelligence/index.html.

  27Rosenstein, “Order No. 3915-2017 Appointment of Special Counsel to Investigate Russian Interference With the 2016 Presidential Election and Related Matters,” May 7, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/967231/download.

  CHAPTER 4

  Plan B: The Road Map for Trashing the Trump Campaign