The IRA and its related companies also encouraged business owners to buy into marketing campaigns, getting them to turn over private information such as log-in credentials and IP addresses, under the auspices of a Russian called “Yan Big Davis,” who claimed to be involved with several black activist groups.
It used those businesses “to make its network for fake accounts seem legitimate,” according to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal. “Working with real Americans allowed the Russian trolls to ‘eliminate the detection and exposure risk of inauthentic personas.’ ”151
The Russian operatives ran a Los Angeles–based start-up called Your Digital Face, which provided social media programs for small-business owners. It operated in the United States, Russia, Iran, China, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and Cuba. “The group took control of social-media accounts, posted advertisements, and deployed software designed to add followers.” Several accounts attracted more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. Twitter revealed that it had identified about 3,100 accounts linked to the “troll farm.”152
A former intelligence officer told the Wall Street Journal that such marketing schemes had been used to map out business networks. In other words, it was a scam, like many other internet-based businesses.
No matter; with all the named defendants safely in Russia, which does not extradite accused individuals to the United States, the indictment would stand as proof that the Russians had been behind Trump’s election. One American, Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, California, pleaded guilty to taking part in identity fraud to aid the IRA in setting up PayPal accounts to purchase online ads. His was the third known guilty plea, after Papadopoulos’s and Flynn’s.153
The indictments of the Russians “very specifically didn’t make a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Russian government,” as Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone pointed out. “So that piece of it was not really reported all that well. It quickly became, ‘The Russians attacked us.’ Well, what does ‘The Russians’ mean? Is it anybody in Russia? Is it necessarily a Russian government operation?”154
CNN seized upon the indictments to ambush an elderly pro-Trump woman in Florida who had unwittingly endorsed an event promoted by the Russian trolls. It published her full name, inciting an avalanche of hate on social media. The network didn’t acknowledge that it had enthusiastically covered anti-Trump rallies staged by the IRA.155
Then, for Mueller, the unthinkable happened: one of the three named Russian entities, Concord Management and Consulting, sent two American lawyers to court to challenge allegations that it had funded the IRA’s efforts.
Concord was controlled by a Russian businessman, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin ally sanctioned by the State Department in 2017 for ties to senior Russian government officials and Russia’s defense ministry.156 Named as a defendant in the indictment, Prigozhin operates some of Saint Petersburg’s most prestigious restaurants, and his companies have contracts to feed Russian soldiers.157
On April 11, 2018, attorneys Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly entered appearances on behalf of Concord, and made discovery demands seeking full disclosure of the evidence. Insisting that their client was not guilty, they sought “information about more than 70 years of American foreign policy,” including each time the United States had attempted to interfere in a foreign election.158
When asked if he represented a third company, Concord Catering, Dubelier said, “I think we’re dealing with the government having indicted the proverbial ham sandwich. That company didn’t exist as an entity during the period alleged by the government.”159
Mueller’s team backpedaled, first seeking to postpone the arraignment on the grounds that Concord had not been properly served. It then filed a protective order opposing a proposal by Concord’s attorneys that they be allowed to share information with the officers or employees of the company, including Prigozhin.160
“To anyone with an IQ above that of a celery stalk, such a fundamental and entirely proper move should have been anticipated,” said former prosecutor George Parry. “Nevertheless, this seems to have caught Team Mueller by surprise.”161
At a hearing in May 2018, Dubelier accused Mueller of filing charges against Concord “to justify his own existence,” because he “has to indict a Russian—any Russian.” He pointed out that the DOJ had never brought any case of “an alleged conspiracy by a foreign corporation to ‘interfere’ in a Presidential election by allegedly funding free speech.”
He wrote, “The obvious reason for that is that no such crime exists in the federal criminal code.”162 If successfully prosecuted, the DOJ’s strategy had the potential to make a criminal of anyone who posted political speech on the internet under a pseudonym.
At a hearing in autumn 2018, the judge acknowledged that Dubelier had an argument. “I’ll give it to you, Mr. Dubelier,” he said, “this is an unprecedented case,” adding that the government would have a “heavy burden at trial.”163
Dubelier’s insistence that Mueller turn over documents proving his case was a major ace up his sleeve. In March 2019, OSC prosecutors asked the judge to withhold 3.2 million “sensitive” documents because of national security and law enforcement concerns. Even though none of the material was deemed classified, the government had provided only five hundred documents to that point. DOJ attorney Jonathan Kravis told the judge that the accused individuals could view some of the documents at Dubelier’s Washington law firm, but the entire set could reveal how the government had acquired them.164 Since Prigozhin would be arrested if he entered the United States, Dubelier called that idea a “nonstarter.”
The rest of the hearing was sealed and the public removed from the courtroom. It is doubtful that the case will ever go to trial, but it could prove entertaining, based on Dubelier’s cheeky filings. “Could the manner in which [the special counsel] collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States?” he asked in one court brief.165
“Mueller risked exactly what has happened: one of the businesses showing up to contest the case at no risk, in effect forcing Mueller to show this Kremlin-connected defendant what he’s got,” wrote Andrew McCarthy, “even though he has no chance of getting the Kremlin-connected defendant convicted and sentenced to prison.”166
In other words, the IRA indictment was a Mueller public relations stunt.
The second effort by Russians to influence the election, according to the Mueller Report, involved Russian “government actors.” On July 13, 2018, the special counsel charged a dozen Russian intelligence agents with hacking the computers of several Democratic Party organizations, including the DNC. Though the detailed twenty-nine-page indictment outlined the technological trickery used to allegedly subvert the 2016 presidential election, his charges did not allege collusion or conspiracy by the Trump campaign with the Russians. Nor did he allege that any votes had been affected.167
But the convenient timing of the indictments—just before the Trump-Putin summit—provided fodder for critics to attack Trump. Senator John McCain urged Trump to cancel the summit unless he was “prepared to hold Putin accountable.”168
Mueller was controlling and shaping the narrative. Never mind the fact that because the FBI and the DOJ had never physically examined the DNC servers, the indictment would be extremely difficult to prove in court. And why hadn’t Assange been charged with criminal collusion along with those Russian operatives? After all, the indictment said that Assange and WikiLeaks had urged Russian hackers to send them “new material” to raise the chances of Senator Bernie Sanders becoming the Democrat nominee. The only US charge against Assange to that point was a single cybertheft count alleging a conspiracy between him and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.169
“Why leave obvious, serious charges on the cutting room floor?” asked Andrew McCarthy. “Mueller brought a dozen felony charges against the Russian operatives with whom, we’ve been told, Assange conspired. . . . If I were a cynic (perish the thought!), I’d s
uspect that the government does not want Special Counsel Mueller’s Russian-hacking indictment to be challenged.”170
He’s not the only cynic. The indictment of the intelligence agents was a PR gambit to put to rest the nagging question of how Americans could believe that the Russians were guilty. If Assange were to be tried, that question might be answered.
Afterword
The Reckoning
Most guys would’ve crawled in a corner with their thumb in their mouth. Okay? Saying “Mommy, take me home.” I found it to be an incredible challenge. What shocked me was the level of corruption. They really did try to take away an election.
What went on in this country with our intelligence agencies and the FBI is unprecedented in American history. It should never, ever happen to another president again.
—AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, OVAL OFFICE, WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 25, 2019
In civil society, power to act for the benefit of the many is vested in the few. We instill our public trust that this power is dispensed for the common good without passion or prejudice. Such faith is an indispensable necessity to sound governance. Democracy fails when that trust is breached for personal gain or political design. It failed here.
Witch Hunt is the story of ambitious and unscrupulous people in high positions of government who abused their authority. They sought to subvert the rule of law and undermine the democratic process. They weaponized their powers to influence a presidential election, undo the result they did not like, and extrude the elected president from office. Our intelligence community and the FBI were at the heart of this illicit and unprecedented scheme.
Their cudgel was “collusion.” It was nothing more than a cleverly conjured-up lie. There was never any evidence of a treasonous conspiracy hatched by Trump and Putin in the bowels of the Kremlin. It was all a hoax, contrived to masquerade as the truth. Yet the hoax gained popular currency because Democrats and the media drove the fictive narrative with ferocity. They were convinced that Trump was an illegitimate president. To them, it was inconceivable that he had won the highest office in the land, absent some sinister plot to steal the election. Many people across the United States believed it. They accepted without question or challenge that Trump was a poseur—a Russian agent disguised as a US president. The carefully crafted hoax begot the witch hunt, a series of investigations designed to sully and destroy him.
There are many villains in this morass of misbegotten deeds. Clinton ally John Brennan, who was CIA director in the summer of 2016, instigated and fueled the hoax by collecting foreign source information on Trump that proved to be utterly bogus. Undeterred, he exploited those phony tips to create an “interagency task force,” which was fundamentally a spying operation, despite US laws prohibiting his agency from targeting US citizens domestically.1 That was why some members of the Trump campaign were lured overseas, where Brennan’s cabal could spy on them more freely and where undercover informants, such as Stefan Halper, could be deployed without limits. James Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and others at the FBI were in on the task force and eagerly used it as the foundation to open the Bureau’s Trump-Russia “collusion” probe, dubbed “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Intelligence from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy was mined, with timely contributions by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who was Brennan’s favorite collaborator. They were all virulently opposed to Trump and strong supporters of Clinton.
Of course, the centerpiece of the hoax was the anti-Trump “dossier” composed by ex–British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by the Clinton campaign and Democrats but cloaked behind a double firewall of payments that allowed them to smear Trump and influence the election. Based on either Russian disinformation or fabricated hearsay from anonymous Moscow sources (or both), those garbage documents were “unverifiable,” as Steele admitted.2 But that minor detail did not dissuade the FBI, which zealously appropriated the material to launch its counterintelligence investigation of Trump as a covert Russian asset. Try as it might, the FBI could corroborate none of the “collusion” allegations contained therein. Its reported “spreadsheet” of findings was barren of proof.3 The agency was repeatedly warned of the “dossier’s” “credibility issues.”4 Nevertheless, Comey signed off on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, while concealing vital evidence from the FISA court and deceiving the judges. Comey represented that his information was “verified” when he knew it was not. He vouched that his source was “reliable” when he knew he was not.5 The artifice also allowed the FBI to gain retroactive access to all of Page’s electronic communications with the campaign. No evidence of a criminal conspiracy with Russia was ever found.
As all of those Machiavellian machinations were unfolding, Steele and the man who had hired him, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, were furiously disseminating the “dossier” to any reporter who would listen in the hope that media stories would scuttle Trump’s bid for the White House. The FBI, which knew that Steele was both biased against Trump and pushing dubious material, set up an “information-laundering” system to conceal the identity of its source.6 Simpson and Steele would furtively feed each new “dossier” memo to Bruce Ohr at the Justice Department. Ohr would be debriefed by his “handler,” FBI agent Joe Pientka, who would then pass the material on to his cohort, Peter Strzok, who would deliver it to Andrew McCabe, FBI director Comey’s chief deputy. By transferring it through that complex sequence, its origins could be obscured and the fact that it was paid political propaganda funded by Trump’s opponent could be shrouded. Similar to money laundering, Steele and his dirty information were sufficiently cleansed, and his product would thereafter be referenced only as emanating from a reliable and neutral foreign intelligence source. In truth, the Trump-hating Steele was the antithesis of neutral. Although he was fired by the FBI for leaking to the media and lying about it, the FBI continued to use him as its source while pretending to disassociate from him to avoid raising suspicions.7 Even after Trump won the presidency, Steele was composing and circulating his specious material that the new president was in league with Putin. His clandestine contacts with the FBI and DOJ continued well into Trump’s first year in office.8 FBI documents uncovered in early August 2019 confirmed that the bureau and the Justice Department were well aware of Steele’s anti-Trump bias, but persisted in their reliance on his “dossier” to gain permission from the FISA court to wiretap Page.9 Calling the warrant application a “fraud,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee added, “Here’s what we’re looking at: Systemic corruption at the highest level of the Department of Justice and the FBI against President Trump and in favor of Hillary Clinton.”10
Comey, Brennan, and Clapper were determined to sabotage Trump before he took the oath of office. Their ploy to selectively brief him about the “dossier” as a pretext for leaking it to the media was the definition of devious.11 Trump was not told that he and his campaign were under investigation or that the FBI had obtained a warrant to surveil a former campaign associate.12 This information was also withheld from congressional leadership. The unmasking and leaking of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador were both unconscionable and felonious.13 Comey and McCabe manipulated him into an FBI interrogation under the guise of the moribund Logan Act.14 Flynn was fired and later charged with lying after agents concluded that he had not appeared to be lying.15 Comey was also busy compiling confidential presidential memos that he later stole and leaked to effectuate the appointment of his friend and mentor Robert Mueller as special counsel.16 By his own admission, Comey’s intent was to influence the investigation of the man who had fired him. The witch hunt assumed an odious dimension as Mueller hired a “hit squad” of partisans, while Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein connived to depose the president under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.17
None of those corrupt acts
seemed to interest Mueller in the least. Tasked to find proof of a nonexistent “collusion” conspiracy by Trump to filch the election from Clinton, no plausible evidence surfaced over the course of the twenty-two-month probe. Instead of determining who had engineered the hoax and exposing its manipulation to destroy a presidency, the special counsel was determined to imagine an obstruction of justice offense that was unsupportable under the law. Mueller and his confederates surely knew that. His explanation for why he decided not to decide the issue was stunningly “unintelligible.”18 Attorney General William Barr admitted he had been baffled by the special counsel’s “strange statement,” forcing him and other top lawyers at the Justice Department to correct Mueller’s tortured interpretation of the law.19 The evidence did not sustain an obstruction offense.20
Beyond the special counsel’s incomprehensible reasoning and his shameless derogation of Trump, what was extraordinary about the Mueller Report was what was missing. Nowhere in the exhaustive 448 pages was there an earnest examination of the surreptitious actions of the Clinton campaign and Democrats to hustle and hype their false Russian information to damage Trump and impact the outcome of the 2016 election.21 Trump didn’t “collude” with Russians, but his opponent did. Mueller conspicuously ignored that fact. There were a few passing references to Steele and only an indirect reference to his infamous “dossier.” How is that possible? The special counsel reportedly interviewed Steele twice.22 Was Mueller looking only for incriminating evidence against Trump, while ignoring the role of his opponent in successfully paying for Russian information to influence the election? It was a remarkable abdication of duty for a man whose primary responsibility was to determine any Russian interference in the United States’ democratic process. That glaring omission reinforced how the special counsel’s investigation was infected with bias against Trump.
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