by Dan Bongino
All these actions contributed to the narrative that Trump was compromised. They led to more aspersions and more suspicious news reports about the Trump team. They once again promoted the appearance of possible wrongdoing without actually proving that anything untoward happened. But it was nothing more than hype. Christopher Steele was just piling on, thanks in part to David Kramer’s distributing the dossier to the media.
Of course, it was all old news at the FBI, where the investigation was already ongoing—and much of it was in the FISA warrant.
Christopher Steele had done his job. The chaos of Plan A had coalesced into Plan B. The investigators had the justification they needed to investigate collusion, cooperation, and conspiracy.
There was just one problem.
That justification, as we’ve just seen time and again, was total fiction. It wasn’t even worth the paper it was printed on.
1George Neumayr, “John Brennan’s ‘Exceptionally Sensitive’ Issue,” The Spectator, January 15, 2019, https://spectator.org/john-brennans-exceptionally-sensitive-issue/.
2Sharon LaFraniere, Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo, “How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt,” The New York Times, December 30, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html.
3Eric Felten, “FBI Man’s Testimony Points to Wrongdoing Well Beyond Spying,” Real Clear Investigations, April 12, 2019, https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/04/11/fbi_mans_testimony_points_to_significant_wrongdoing_beyond_spying.html.
4Ibid.
5Nolan D. McCaskill, “Meadows: Papadopoulos’ House Interview Shows Weakness of Mueller’s Probe,” Politico, October 25, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/25/papadopoulos-mueller-house-interview-941110.
6Papadopoulos, Deep State Target, 187-188.
7Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 “FISA,” 50 U.S.C. § 702.
8“In Re Carter W. Page, a U.S. person,” FISA Surveillance Court Orders and Applications, FBI, October, 2016, https://vault.fbi.gov/d1-release/d1-release/view.
9Julian Borger, “John McCain Passes Dossier Alleging Secret Trump-Russia Contacts to FBI,” The Guardian, January 11, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts.
10Ibid.
11Clara Fitts and Scott F. Mann, “Fact Sheet: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, February 27, 2014 https://www.csis.org/analysis/fact-sheet-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court.
12“Upstream vs. Prism,” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/pages/upstream-prism.
13“Memorandum Opinion and Order,” United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, April 26, 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FISC_Memo_Opin_Order_Apr_2017.pdf.
14Ibid.
15Jeff Carlson, “The Uncovering—Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI,” The Markets Work, April 15, 2018, https://themarketswork.com/2018/04/05/the-uncovering-mike-rogers-investigation-section-702-fisa-abuse-the-fbi/.
16“Intelligence Branch,” The FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/intelligence-branch.
17Jerry Dunleavy, “Justice Department Worried About ‘Bias’ of Confidential Source in FISA Application Based on Christopher Steele Dossier,” The Washington Examiner, March 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice-department-worried-about-bias-of-confidential-source-in-fisa-application-based-on-chiristopher-steele-dossier.
18Solomon, “Nellie Ohr’s ‘Hi Honey’ Emails to DOJ About Russia Collusion Should Alarm Us All,” The Hill, May 1, 2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/441580-nellie-ohrs-hi-honey-emails-to-doj-about-russia-collusion-should-alarm-us.
19Ibid.
20“Interview of Bruce Ohr,” Committee on The Judiciary, Joint with the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, August 28, 2018, https://dougcollins.house.gov/sites/dougcollins.house.gov/files/Ohr%20Interview%20Transcript%208.28.18.pdf
21Ibid.
22Steele, “The Steele Dossier.”
23Ibid.
24Mark Tran, “WikiLeaks to publish more Hillary Clinton emails - Julian Assange,” The Guardian, June 12, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/12/wikileaks-to-publish-more-hillary-clinton-emails-julian-assange.
25Apuzzo and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected,’” The New York Times, August 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html.
26Steele, “The Steele Dossier.”
27Maremont, “Key Claims in Trump Dossier.”
28“In Re Carter W. Page, a U.S. Person,” FISA Surveillance Court Orders and Applications, FBI, October, 2016, https://vault.fbi.gov/d1-release/d1-release/view.
29Michael Isikoff, “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin,” Yahoo! News, September 23, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html.
30Scarborough, “Michael Isikoff: Dossier’s Trump-Russia Collusion Claims ‘Likely False,’” AP News, December 30, 2018, https://www.apnews.com/b40bb54f4bc829849daaa98624dba031.
31“In Re Carter W. Page, a U.S. Person,” FISA Surveillance Court Orders and Applications, FBI, January, 2017, https://vault.fbi.gov/d1-release/d1-release/view.
32Ibid. January Application 2017.
33Ibid.
34FISA, April Application 2017.
35Simpson and Jacoby, “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington.”
36Carter, “Here’s the Russian Influence Controversy that John McCain Doesn’t Want You to Know About.”
37Simpson and Jacoby, “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington.”
38Birnbaum and Solomon, “Aide Helped Controversial Russian Meet McCain.”
39Maza, “Here’s Where Paul Manafort Did Business with Corrupt Dictators,” Newsweek, August 7, 2018, https://www.newsweek.com/heres-where-paul-manafort-did-business-corrupt-dictators-1061470.
40Carter, “Here’s the Russian Influence Controversy that John McCain Doesn’t Want You to Know About.”
41Ibid.
42“Deposition of David Kramer,” United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, December 13, 2017, https://www.scribd.com/document/401932342/Kramer-Depositioin#from_embed?campaign=VigLink&ad_group=xxc1xx&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate.
43Ibid.
44John McCain and Mark Salter, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 241.
CHAPTER 5
The Run-Up
Now the aspersions had all been cast. The dossier had been manufactured. The FISA warrant application—which relied on the duplicate dossier reports that Steele fed to the FBI—had been issued.
What was the next step in bringing down the Trump campaign?
The answer was simple: the FBI management cabal targeting Trump now had to make good on its investigation.
To do that, presumably, all it had to do was follow the road map provided by Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, and their magical, FISA-court-fooling dossier. If anything in the dossier was verifiable regarding a Trump-Russia conspiracy, the FBI agents were just the guys to find the incontrovertible evidence needed to bring charges. The FBI is America’s premier law enforcement agency. Al
l agents had to do was find proof that the Russians had kompromat on Trump. Or that Carter Page was a spy. Or that Russia was trading information on Clinton to help the campaign. Find proof of one of those things and they would be on their way to the most explosive, frightening, critical investigation this side of Watergate, Monicagate, and all the other -gates put together.
I’m not joking here. If there was illegal influence, if a foreign power blackmailed a presidential candidate, if candidates were relying on outside support to cheat and steal in an election—all or any of that would be huge news. It would throw the nation into turmoil. It would destabilize the government, send tremors through Wall Street, and rattle the very bedrock of our country.
But, again, there’s one important point, one key word in all these disturbing scenarios: “if.”
The opposite of “if” is “if not.” But that phrase doesn’t appear in any of the FBI’s thinking or the mainstream media’s thinking.
But it should have appeared. Because the road map wasn’t reliable; it was scarred with bogus directions and dead ends. Getting “there”—that is, arriving at hard, factual, verifiable, conviction-worthy evidence with no ifs, ands, or buts—wasn’t going to be easy.
In fact, by the time the FISA warrant was issued, a lynchpin of the Russiagate myth was already imploding.
THINGS FALL APART
Once again, the story here relies on timing. So let’s put the dossier and the FISA warrant to the side for a moment and revisit the tale of George Papadopoulos. I apologize if some of this feels repetitive, but it is important to establish what happened and when.
It is a fact that long before the Carter Page FISA warrant was issued, the FBI started investigating the collusion case against George Papadopoulos. We know this because the FBI still insists that the Papadopoulos case was the one that ignited Russiagate. Not the alleged communications from foreign intelligence in late 2015 and early 2016. Not Glenn Simpson’s whispering in the ear of Bruce Ohr or Christopher Steele’s meeting him for lunch. No, according to the FBI, it was George Papadopoulos, the young political rookie who had been living in London when he was named to the Trump advisory team.
Almost immediately upon joining the campaign—literally one day after he told colleagues he might be joining Team Trump—his boss in London told him to go to a conference in Rome. Papadopoulos didn’t realize he was heading to one of Europe’s most spy-friendly hangouts—Link Campus University—and when he showed up, he was introduced to Joseph Mifsud, a middle-aged spinmaster who allegedly told Papadopoulos he could help put the Trump campaign in touch with Russia. A few weeks later, Mifsud, who never actually delivered on any of his claims to Papadopoulos, showed up in London and allegedly revealed that the Russians have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
“Emails of Clinton,” he said to Papadopoulos when they breakfasted at the Andaz hotel in London. “They have thousands of emails.”1
According to the anti-Trump cabal’s version of events, Mifsud is a Russian agent. According to Papadopoulos, Mifsud presented himself as having Russian connections but introduced him, via email, to only one person who had tangential Kremlin contacts. Papadopoulos considers Mifsud a fraud and a Western intelligence agent. According to Mifsud’s millionaire friend and Swiss lawyer, Stephan Roh, mystery man Mifsud has ties to Western governments.2 But for the moment, let’s just accept the cabal’s absurd designation that Mifsud’s a Russian agent.
The formal investigation, operation Crossfire Hurricane, started on July 31, 2016. But by the middle of September, the FBI case against Papadopoulos was already disintegrating.
Papadopoulos’s book, Deep State Target, reveals that on September 2, 2016, he got an “out of the blue” email invitation from Stefan Halper.3 Remember him? He’s the Western spy who appears to have launched allegations, in conjunction with his U.K. intelligence pal Richard Dearlove, about Lieutenant General Mike Flynn’s being compromised for talking to a Russian woman at a Cambridge conference in 2014.
Halper offered Papadopoulos $3,000 plus expenses to fly to London to “discuss the Leviathan natural gas field.”4 Although Papadopoulos didn’t know it at the time, Halper was working as a U.S. government informant. He also had made approaches to Carter Page and to Trump campaign bigwig Sam Clovis.
“I think [Halper] was using his meeting with me to give him bona fides to talk to George Papadopoulos,” Clovis told the Washington Examiner. “He used Carter Page to get to me and he used me to get to George. George was the target. I think George was the target all along.”5
When Papadopoulos unwittingly took the bait and showed up to meet with Halper, he was put through the wringer. First, Halper’s attractive “research assistant,” “Azra Turk,” met Papadopoulos for drinks and possibly more. According to Papadopoulos, she was extremely touchy-feely at the bar, flirting while also asking him repeatedly about Trump and Russia and the campaign. Even after he told her directly, “I have nothing to do with Russia and don’t know anyone else who has anything to do with Russia, either,” she kept bringing up the campaign. Says Papadopoulos: “I’m thinking ‘There is no way this is a Cambridge professor’s research assistant. The only thing she seems to want to research is Trump, Russia, and me. I’m stunned by the come-hither tone of Azra Turk and her classic honey-pot act.’”6
It turns out Papadopoulos’s suspicions were 100 percent correct. A May 2, 2019, article in the New York Times reports that sources confirmed that “Azra Turk” “was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant…. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.”7 The Times said its sources were “people familiar with the F.B.I. activities of Mr. Halper, Ms. Turk and” the DOJ inspector general’s investigation into the FBI investigation.
Let’s be clear: the Times does not clearly state that Azra Turk—which is likely a fake name—was working for the FBI, only that agents sent her there. Papadopoulos, for his part, has stated that he believes she was likely a CIA or Turkish intelligence recruit. Either way, the FBI needs to do a much better job choosing investigators. Papadopoulos quickly raised his suspicions during his two subsequent meetings with Halper. These encounters also veered into interrogations about the campaign and its work with Russia. As he recalls in his book, Halper posed the following types of questions:
It’s great that Russia is helping you and the campaign, right, George?
George, you and your campaign are involved in hacking and with Russia, right?
It seems like you are a middleman for Trump and Russia, right?
I know you know about the emails.8
Papadopoulos finally grew furious with Halper’s line of questioning. “What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with Russia, so stop bothering me about it.”
The entire FBI operation to lure Papadopoulos into collusion charges fell apart right there, on the weekend of September 15–17, 2016. Azra Turk got nothing out of Papadopoulos and neither did Halper. Thousands of dollars must have been spent on this part of the operation—to pay Papadopoulos and his expenses as well as the operatives. For what? Papadopoulos was definitely a marked man—although it is still not clear who, exactly, first marked him. But no evidence has surfaced showing him to be a traitor. At no time was he conspiring or colluding. As he has consistently maintained, the campaign had told him they were interested in communicating with Russia and he was trying to make that happen. That was as far as he went. And when, allegedly, Mifsud told him about the emails, he never mentioned them in any subsequent emails or on any calls with the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos has been criticized for not sharing that story or reporting Mifsud to the authorities. He says that helping the campaign arrange a meeting with Russians was the only thing he cared about. He had oversold his connections to the campaign and he wanted to follow through. “I don’t ask abo
ut the emails,” he writes. “I don’t want to know, really. I don’t really care. My mission is to make a meeting happen. End of story. Hacking, security breaches, potential blackmail—that is illegal and treasonous. I want no part of it.”9
So the FBI knew in September 2016 that, barring a miracle, the Papadopoulos conspiracy angle was a flop. It had no evidence. No emails. No taped phone calls. No honey-pot-induced confessions. Nothing. There was no evidence that Papadopoulos did anything criminal as far as collusion is concerned. (In fact, reports later surfaced alleging that D.C. politicians had seen classified information indicating that there are “transcripts” of some of Papadopoulos’s conversations that are “exculpatory.”)
Can you imagine the panic in the FBI at this point? Operation Crossfire Hurricane had just shot itself in the foot. Now the only way to continue the probe was to double down on the allegations listed in the FISA warrant application.
And we all now know that the application was based on the reports Steele filed to the FBI, which sound remarkably similar to the reports in the dossier.
A FACTUAL INTERLUDE
Before we move on, I need to point something out.
Papadopoulos admits in his book that he did repeat Mifsud’s claim to one and only one other person: the Greek foreign minister, Nikolaos Kotzias. During a visit to Athens on May 26, 2016, Kotzias told Papadopoulos that Putin would be in his office the next day. Papadopoulos decided to share what Mifsud had told him. “I’ve heard the Russians have Hillary Clinton’s emails,” he blurted out. According to the book, the foreign minister admonished Papadopoulos to never repeat what he’d just said, and Papadopoulos himself says he was immediately horrified by his own indiscretion.10