When Special Counsel Mueller was advised in August 2017 of all the incendiary texts exposing Strzok’s abiding and pervasive bias, he quietly removed him from the special counsel team but kept it a secret. Congress inquired why the lead investigator had been removed, but Mueller never explained. Perhaps he was hoping to conceal from the American public the likelihood that the integrity and credibility of his probe had been horribly corrupted.
Yet, according to Strzok’s testimony, when the special counsel called him into his office to question him about the explicitly biased texts, he never bothered to ask him whether his Trump-hating opinions had influenced the Russia investigation and any decisions made.134 No one else on the team made such an inquiry either, said Strzok.135 How was that possible? Maybe the special counsel didn’t care. Perhaps he feared a truthful answer. In either case, Mueller’s failure to pose such a vital question suggests an unwillingness to even consider that his investigation of Trump had already been incurably contaminated by Strzok’s actions and the misconduct of so many others at the FBI. As one Washington Post columnist observed, “Nobody did more damage to Robert Mueller than Peter Strzok.”136
When Mueller fired Strzok, he did not ask that the agent hand over his infamous cell phone as potential evidence in the ensuing FBI investigation of his conduct. It had been issued by the special counsel, and yet Mueller did not confiscate the device to preserve the text messages. The data on the iPhones of both Strzok and Page were stripped of their contents and text messages vanished to the consternation of the inspector general.137 It is hard to comprehend how a prosecutor with Mueller’s experience would not automatically take steps to seize and secure evidence. As journalist Byron York wrote, “One might think that, given the reason for the removal, Mueller might want to check the content of the Strzok and Page iPhones.”138 Unless, of course, the special counsel feared even worse consequences to his probe if more incendiary texts came to light.
Despite the capacious nature of Mueller’s investigation, there was never any plausible evidence to support the incessant accusations that Trump had “colluded” with Russia to steal the election. Again, it’s important to think about the Clinton email scandal as a precedent for how this FBI and DOJ looked at political investigations. In the Clinton case, they were willing to overlook on-the-record lying, suspicious meetings, improper public statements, and obstructions of the investigation, because it was better to let the voters decide. They did so despite the fact that crimes had clearly been committed.
So how did the same group of people start the Trump case with no evidence of a crime and then convince the country an unparalleled investigation was necessary?
Attorney General Barr said it best when he observed, “Mueller has spent two and a half years and the fact is there is no evidence of a conspiracy. So it was bogus, this whole idea that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.”139
Chapter 2
Clinton Collusion
Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least 5 years. Further evidence of extensive conspiracy between Trump’s campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels.
According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.
—“DOSSIER” FROM ANONYMOUS RUSSIAN SOURCES COMMISSIONED BY THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN
I had nothing to do with Russia and the election. I don’t know any Russians. The idea that I was conspiring with them is ridiculous. Prostitutes peeing on a bed? C’mon . . . where’s the evidence of that?
—AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, SEPTEMBER 17, 2017, BEDMINSTER, NEW JERSEY
Imagine if Donald Trump’s campaign had secretly paid a foreign spy to obtain Russian disinformation about Hillary Clinton and then fed it to the media, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the State Department, all to unduly influence the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump would immediately have been accused of “colluding” with Russia. Demands for his indictment and impeachment would have reverberated through the halls of Congress, in newsrooms across America, on television airwaves, and on social media websites everywhere.
Trump did not do that to Clinton. Clinton did it to Trump. However, the president is the one who was hounded by the constant condemnation of having “colluded” with Moscow to win the presidency, even though he did no such thing and there was no credible evidence that he did. On an almost daily basis, the media declared him guilty in the court of public opinion. He was saddled with multiple investigations by the FBI, Congress, and a special counsel. Clinton was not. It is hard to make sense of it until you consider the virulent bias that animated the actions of those who sought to destroy Trump and undo his election.
The unadulterated truth is that Trump never did get any opposition research from Russia, but the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee did. They paid for Russian phony information and then fed it to the FBI and the media to damage Trump’s candidacy and influence the election. When that failed, the effort was kicked into overdrive to exploit the same bogus material to destroy Trump and undo his election. In sum, Clinton’s campaign “colluded” with Russia to falsely accuse Trump of “colluding” with Russia. It was so far-fetched and so harebrained that you could not make it up. Yet it happened.
In March 2016, Clinton told a California gathering that with Trump in the White House “it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin.”1 In a June 2 speech in San Diego, Clinton connected Trump to Putin four times. “If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin,” she declared. She accused him of having a “bizarre fascination with dictators and strongmen,” mentioning the Russian president by name.2 Thunderous applause greeted her when she said her next line, “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants.”3 Was Clinton insinuating that Trump was under the influence of Putin and acting as a clandestine agent for Russia? The implication was most certainly there. The audience reaction showed that it was a well-received, winning line of attack.
Clinton’s devoted coterie of disciples also alluded to an illicit Trump-Russia partnership. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, labeled it a “bromance,” while her senior adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a national security issue.”4 Clinton’s website was more trenchant, posting accusations in the form of queries such as “Why does Trump surround himself with advisers with links to the Kremlin?” The site all but stated that Trump had “ties to Russian oligarchs” and raised the specter that he was tangled in a Russian plot to “interfere in our election.”5 It escalated to a point where Clinton herself openly predicted that if Trump won the presidency, he would be a “puppet” of Putin.6
All the campaign needed now was a series of leaks from the intelligence community that would appear to back up her claims.
The Clinton Campaign Commissioned the “Dossier”
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) commissioned the series of documents that became known as the “dossier.” The money was secretly funneled through a Washington, DC, law firm called Perkins Coie and a lawyer representing the campaign and Democrats, Marc E. Elias. The firm received between $9.2 million and $12.4 million in legal and consulting fees, of which $1.02 million was then given to Fusion GPS and its founder, Glenn Simpson, for any negative information they could drum up against Clinton’s opponent, Trump.7
One of the myths associated with the “dossier” is that it was initiated and funded by a conservative website called The Washington Free Beacon.8 This is not true, as Simpson explained in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017. The website, funded substantially by Republican donor and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, had retained Fusion GPS months earlier to conduct standard opposition research on Trump that was derived from open-source information found in public records, corporate and financial data, and online material. When it became clear that Trump would likely wi
n the GOP nomination, both the conservative funding and Fusion’s work against Trump ceased. Only thereafter, when the Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Simpson, did Simpson first contact a former British intelligence service agent by the name of Christopher Steele in London.9 This sequence of events was also confirmed by The Washington Free Beacon, which stated that its work had ended before Steele produced the “dossier.”10
For years, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson had been a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He had penned several articles about Russian organized crime and other Russia-related subjects. He fancied himself an expert, even though he did not speak Russian and had never once visited the country. In his subsequent congressional testimony, he seemed to throw around Russian buzzwords such as kompromat and “kleptocracy,” as if that somehow established his bona fides.11 Simpson was rather vague about why he had first begun to think that Trump might have questionable ties to Russia, but in June 2016, he contacted Steele, who had specialized in Russian intelligence for MI6 and was now operating his own firm called Orbis Business Intelligence. Commensurate with Clinton’s public accusations against her opponent, Simpson asked Steele to investigate any relationship Trump might have had with Russian businesses or the Russian government. Steele and his company pocketed $168,000 for their work.12
Just how this former spook went about compiling his dubious “dossier” remains largely a mystery since he has resisted attempts to be questioned by Congress. The FBI, which had many contacts and conversations with him, has remained mum, except to confirm that he was fired for leaking to the media and lying about it.13 Even though Steele had not set foot in Russia in more than a decade, he managed to compose the first of seventeen “dossier” memos in a remarkably short period—a couple of weeks, if that. That was next to impossible. Bear in mind that this kind of detailed intelligence gathering from a foreign power would normally demand months of intensive culling of information from confidential human sources and an extensive process of attempting to corroborate its reliability. Steele accomplished it almost overnight, like magic. He never ventured beyond the shores of Great Britain when he did it. It’s as if he had picked up a telephone, dialed a couple of numbers at the Kremlin, and was happily handed incriminating information that should have been both sensitive and highly guarded—quite an accomplishment for a guy who had been out of the spy game for many years.
Steele’s initial document was dated June 20, 2016, and titled “Republican Candidate Donald Trump’s Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin.”14 Two qualities immediately stand out when examining the document. First, it seems utterly preposterous on its face. Second, no direct sources are identified. It is based entirely on multiple hearsay from anonymous individuals, who are referred to cryptically as “sources A, B, and C.” This opening “dossier” memorandum leveled three main charges against Trump:
“Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.”
“So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further the Kremlin’s cultivation of him.”
“TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform ‘golden showers’ (urination) shows in front of him.”15
No evidence was offered, and there was never any proof that it was true. No video has ever surfaced, although it was widely reported to exist. Either this first “dossier” was invented out of whole cloth, or Steele was fed preposterous disinformation by Russian sources, who must have laughed at their handiwork and the gullibility of the recipient. Interestingly, the term “trusted compatriot” was used in the memo. This suggests that it was written, at least in part, by a Russian determined to invent a collection of lies to create mischief.16
It is possible that the Trump-Russia “collusion” fiction arose from Steele’s relationship with one of his clients at Orbis, a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska, who had hired the ex–British spy as a subcontractor in 2012 to conduct research for a lawsuit that had been filed against the aluminum magnate.17 Deripaska’s business interests included properties in Ukraine, where he came in contact with Paul Manafort, Jr., who briefly served as Trump’s campaign manager in the summer of 2016. Later memos in the “dossier” accused Manafort of acting as an intermediary in the supposed Trump-Russia conspiracy. That false story about Manafort also explains why the FBI interviewed Deripaska in New York in September 2016 and allegedly tried to recruit him as an undercover informant.18 He refused.
Simpson, whom the Los Angeles Times aptly called “a mercenary for hire by anyone with fat stacks of bitcoins,”19 was also obsessed with Manafort. As far back as 2007, he and his wife, Mary Jacoby, had coauthored a story for the Wall Street Journal that identified Manafort as representing Ukrainian and Russian business interests, including those of Deripaska.20 That nine-year-old story bears an odd and striking resemblance to several of the subsequent “dossier” memos authored by Steele and, perhaps, Simpson. Jacoby’s name would surface again in a Facebook post on June 24, 2017, which has since vanished. The journalist Lee Smith reported that he had seen screenshots of the post in which Jacoby had given her husband full credit for creating the “collusion” narrative: “It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump. Let’s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”21 According to Smith, Jacoby never replied to his repeated requests for comment.
In his Senate testimony, Simpson said that Manafort’s role in the Trump campaign made him suspicious that the Republican candidate might somehow have improper ties to Russia, which was what prompted him to hire Steele, who was a subcontractor for Deripaska.22 If all of this seems rather circular and incestuous, it was. As he was trashing Trump as a suspected agent of the Kremlin by peddling the phony “dossier,” Simpson was also working on behalf of a Russian real estate firm by the name of Prevezon Holdings, which is operated by an oligarch family with a deep allegiance to Putin.23 According to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), Simpson’s assignment was to discredit a critic of the Russian president through the same kind of salacious “opposition research” or smear campaign that he employed against Trump:
There are public reports that the FBI used the dossier to kick start its Russia investigation. Did the FBI know that Fusion pitched Russian propaganda for another client as it pushed the dirty Trump dossier? What would that say about the reliability of the information?24
The evidence is compelling that it was Simpson who was actually “colluding” with Russia through his surrogate or intermediary, Steele, while falsely accusing Trump of doing the same. Moreover, Simpson was not registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
But that’s not all. Simpson seems to have played a crucial role in the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump, Jr., also attended by several campaign staffers. The lawyer purportedly had negative information on Clinton. However, those who attended the meeting all concurred that she passed no such information along. Simpson, who worked with Veselnitskaya on the Prevezon case, admitted he had met with her immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.25 In an interview with NBC News, Veselnitskaya stated that it was Simpson who had supplied her with “supposedly incriminating information” about Clinton that was supposed to be passed along to the Trump campaign.26 In an interview with Fox News, she insisted she had not provided such information.27 Based on those statements, one can reasonably conclude that the Trump campaign was set up by none other than Simpson and the lawyer. “They were baiting a trap for the Trump campaign to make it appear as if they were colluding with R
ussian officials,” as one editorial described it.28 Simpson denied knowing anything about the meeting, which means that one of them is not telling the truth. This may account for why Simpson later invoked the Fifth Amendment and clammed up.
The lightning speed with which Steele collected his anti-Trump fables may be explained in another way: cold, hard cash might have lubricated the dissemination of disinformation. According to Michael Morell, who twice served as acting director of the CIA, Steele seems to have accumulated his dubious “dossier” material from former agents of the FSB (Federal Security Service, the successor of the KBG) by lining the pockets of intermediaries who, in turn, doled out payments to the supposed sources:
If you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, “Hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,” because they want to get paid some more.29
In British court documents, Steele laid bare that his “dossier” was not worth the paper on which it was written. He readily confessed that the accusations against Trump were “unverifiable” and derived from “limited intelligence.”30 He also called it “raw intelligence,” meaning it had not been checked for its authenticity. It was so poorly sourced that it was inherently untrustworthy. Further admissions by him cast genuine doubt that any of it reflected so much as a thread of truth.
Witch Hunt Page 6