Not to be left out, Hillary Clinton implied that Trump “colluded” with the Russians to influence the campaign against her by guiding the hacking of Democratic emails.62 Her comment was delivered while promoting her book explaining why everyone else caused her to lose the presidential election.
The mainstream media was equally complicit in shaping a misleading and often fictitious narrative that the Trump campaign committed a multitude of crimes by collaborating with Russia. Reports by ABC, CNN, and NBC cited acts of “collusion,” but were later retracted or corrected when they turned out to be false.63
The intelligence community knew there was scant evidence of any wrongdoing and, when pressed, was forced to admit it. James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, twice confirmed that he had seen no evidence of “collusion.”64 As the basis for his conclusion, he cited reports from the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the Central Intelligence Agency. James Comey, when asked if Clapper’s assessment was correct, stated, “I think he’s right.”65 John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, testified that he didn’t know about alleged “collusion”—an improbable claim. But he conceded, “We see contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons all the time.”66
Brennan’s predecessor, Michael Morell, who twice served as acting director of the CIA but remained well connected to the intelligence community, was less cagey and coy when he said this:
On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all. There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle. There’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.67
The statements by Clapper, Brennan, and Morell are compelling since they were senior Obama administration intelligence officials. As such, they were privy to all of the information gathered by both the FBI and the alphabet soup of intel agencies that were investigating the matter. And, of course, Comey headed the FBI itself which launched the formal Trump-Russia probe. He had access to all of the evidence, or lack thereof.
There are two reasons why the multiple investigations have, to date, failed to produce any evidence of criminal “collusion.” First, it is not a cognizable crime under any statute. Other ancillary crimes, as pointed out, have no relevance or application to anything that occurred during the campaign. Second, there are no facts to support this amorphous notion of “collusion.” The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to speak freely to, and associate with, any person. Russians are no exception. Candidates are allowed to meet, greet, and exchange ideas or information with foreign nations during political campaigns.
There was never any evidence that candidate Trump had personal conversations or contacts with Russian government officials or anyone connected with the Kremlin. Indeed, he consistently denied it and no one has come forth to assert that he did. His frustration over being falsely accused of “colluding” with a foreign power during his campaign was understandable. It is why he asked Comey and others to reveal the truth that no evidence existed that would prove otherwise. People who are wrongfully persecuted feel compelled to try to clear themselves of the taint of impropriety. It is the natural instinct in us all. Trump had the same right as a private citizen or public figure or presidential candidate.
Talking with a Russian Is Not a Crime
During the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, associates of the Trump campaign had occasion to meet with or talk to Russians. Some of the encounters were quite brief. None of them constituted criminal activity by Trump or his campaign. Nor did they present a substantial “articulable factual basis for an investigation” by the FBI, as the law demands.
Why? Because it is not a crime to talk with a Russian. There is no statute in the U.S. criminal codes that makes it illegal to have a conversation with, or even receive information from, a Russian. As Americans we are free to travel to just about any country in the world, including Russia; more than 200,000 visit there each year.68 Ideas and information are routinely exchanged without criminal implications.
We are allowed to engage in business enterprises with Russians. More than one thousand U.S. companies, large and small, do business in Russia.69 Ford, Boeing, Pfizer, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, General Motors, ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, and just about every major American company have operations there. Hundreds of Western firms have representatives living and working in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 2016, Russia was the thirty-eighth-largest export market for the United States and the twenty-fourth-largest exporter of goods to America. Our own government does business with Russia, selling more than $100 billion in bonds. In essence, millions of Americans collaborate or, if you must, “collude” with Russians every single day. It is not criminal to do so.
It is not unusual for U.S. political candidates to try to burnish their foreign policy credentials in advance of an election by traveling abroad and meeting with foreign leaders. Ahead of the 2008 presidential election, then-Senator Barack Obama was criticized for his lack of experience in international affairs, so he visited Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, meeting with leaders there. While in Germany, Obama met with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a discussion about future American-German relations.70 No one ever accused Obama of “colluding” with the Germans. He could have traveled to Russia and met with Putin. It would have been perfectly acceptable and legal.
Many other candidates in modern electoral politics have done much the same. Some of them engaged in aggressive actions that would make Trump campaign contacts seem tame by comparison. Senator George McGovern, as the Democratic nominee for president in 1972, attempted to negotiate with the leaders of communist North Vietnam over the issue of prisoners of war.71 Senator Edward Kennedy allegedly reached out to the Soviet Union on behalf of Democrats in advance of the 1984 election.72
Merely traveling to Russia or meeting with a Russian government official on America soil is not, by itself, a violation of any law. These contacts, assuming that any of them were even in the possession of the FBI when the Trump probe began in July 2016, were not sufficient to meet the legal requirement of a “substantial factual predication” in the FBI guidelines.
There were also at least eighteen contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia in the months before the presidential election via emails and telephone calls.73 But according to a Reuters report, “The people who described the contacts said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications . . .”74 The conversations were about improving future economic relations and cooperating in the effort to destroy Islamic terrorism. These are the same subjects that candidate Trump spoke about publicly on the campaign trail. There was no odious conspiracy or secret treachery in the making. It was all rather routine in the evolving political landscape.
The Clinton campaign also had contacts with the Russian government. A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak met with Clinton advisers because that is part of his job:
Well, if you look at some people connected with Hillary Clinton during her campaign, you would probably see that he [Kislyak] had lots of meetings of that kind. There are lots of specialists in politology, people working in think tanks advising Hillary or advising people working for Hillary.75
But no one in the media made an issue of it. Nor did the FBI investigate the Clintons when Bill traveled to Moscow in June 2010 for a $500,000 speech and a meeting with Vladimir Putin. The reason is simple and obvious. The Clintons and their associates were free to speak with Russians or meet with them, just as anyone in the Trump campaign was entitled to do the same. However, as explained in the last chapter, using a public office to confer a benefit to a foreign government in exchange for money, as Clinton may have done, would be illegal.
Yet, the FBI decided to criminalize constitutionally protected speech and actions by Trump and his assoc
iates by opening an investigation that the bureau knew would damage the candidate’s chances once it was leaked. It might also help to destroy his presidency, if elected. No such comparable investigation of Clinton was opened.
Thanks to a complicit media, several of the Trump associated meetings described above gained exaggerated attention with near hysterical press coverage that implied criminality. But the essential question remained unanswered by the FBI: what legal justification did it have to investigate a presidential nominee when it opened its probe in July 2016 right after it had cleared Clinton in the email case? A close examination of records and reports shows the bureau had almost no reliable facts or evidence required under the law.
Yet Director Comey and his agents pursued Trump and his campaign associates with exceptional zeal in what appeared to be a politically motivated agenda to harm the candidate to the benefit of his opponent. A close examination of the various contacts and conversations with Russians reveals that none of them were consequential or sufficient to launch a criminal investigation.
Yet, none of this deterred the FBI from secretly assigning a government informant to work undercover in an attempt to elicit any incriminating evidence he could find within the Trump campaign by talking with associates of the candidate.76 When this tactic was uncovered in May of 2018, Trump accused the FBI of spying on his campaign, whereupon the Justice Department announced an investigation to determine “whether there was any impropriety or political motivation” involved and to take “appropriate action.”77
Papadopoulos’s Bar Talk
George Papadopoulos, a twenty-eight-year-old energy consultant, was selected to serve as a volunteer on a Trump campaign foreign policy advisory panel in March 2016.78 Though he had no real experience on matters related to Russia, he reportedly felt that improved relations with Moscow would be a good idea for the next president. He pushed for a meeting between Trump and Putin, but the campaign rebuffed the idea.
The next month, while in London, Papadopoulos met with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor, who stated that some Russian officials in Moscow claimed to have “dirt” on Clinton in the form of emails.79 There appears to be no known evidence that the young volunteer ever passed this information along to the campaign. However, Papadopoulos made mention of the rumored Clinton emails and supposed Russian contacts to an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, at a London bar during a night of what was later described as “heavy drinking.”80 Months later, when hacked emails from Democrats were leaked to the public, Downer allegedly contacted the FBI thinking there might be some possible correlation to what he had heard in the bar.81
A year and a half later, the New York Times ran a front-page story, citing unnamed “American and foreign officials,” stating that the Australian diplomat’s tip to the FBI is what triggered the bureau’s opening of the criminal investigation of Trump-Russia “collusion.”82 Perhaps not coincidentally, the story was published at a time when the FBI was under intense pressure to justify why exactly it had commenced an investigation of Trump to begin with. If the probe was opened based on an unverified “dossier” about Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, then the investigation itself was highly suspect.
Let’s examine the rumor Papadopoulos heard. An unidentified person in Moscow told a professor he had “dirt” on an American candidate. The professor told Papadopoulos, who then may have told an Australian diplomat, who then told the FBI. Forget that the professor denied he ever had such a discussion with Papadopoulos about Russian “dirt” on Clinton.83 Anyone along the chain of chatter could have lied or exaggerated or mistakenly conveyed the exchange of words. By the time the alleged information was repeated numerous times and eventually reached the FBI, it was what lawyers call “quadruple hearsay.” It contained no indicia of reliability and would never be accepted as trustworthy evidence in a court of law. It would be inadmissible in every courtroom in America. Hence, it should never have been used by the FBI as justification for opening a criminal probe of any American citizen, much less a candidate for the presidency. Rumors, innuendo, supposition, and gossip are not a legal basis for criminal investigations. The alleged information must first be verified.
Therefore, the Times story made little sense. Papadopoulos was trading grapevine whispers and speculation with no way of knowing whether any of it was true. Nowhere in the article did the reporters raise the essential question of why the bureau would initiate a criminal probe with such scant and legally insufficient evidence.
The New York Times reported that Papadopoulos also traded correspondence with a Russian and once met with another Russian. This is neither illegal nor improper. His apparent goal was to improve relations between the two nations by organizing a summit between Trump and Putin. The campaign, however, was not interested in this overly ambitious and premature idea.
Before opening its case, the FBI was required to identify a possible crime. Where was the crime in listening to someone claim that Moscow had “dirt” on Clinton? Where was the crime in repeating that bit of gossip? Even if someone in the Trump campaign acted on the information in some way, it was still not a crime to do so, as will be explained later in the book.
It is more likely that the Papadopoulos conversations were not the impetus for the Trump-Russia “collusion” case, but something else. At best, they served as a propitious pretext for an illegitimate probe. At worst, they were employed as a contrived cover for a politically motivated inquisition by the FBI designed to harm Trump in the campaign or the White House, if elected.
While it was not a crime to speak with Professor Mifsud or pass along his words of conjecture, it was a crime for Papadopoulos not to be forthcoming about it with FBI agents when they approached him in January 2017 for questioning. For reasons that were inexplicable and baffling, he did not tell the truth and was charged with, and pled guilty to, making a “material false statement.”84 He was not charged with “collusion” or any other crime because there was nothing illegal about his contacts or conversations involving Russians. Had Papadopoulos simply told the truth, he would not have been charged with anything.
The Times reporters may have been used, wittingly or unwittingly, to deflect attention from the dubious “dossier” and to provide some other justification for the Trump investigation. If this was the goal, it was an implausible and clumsy attempt at misdirection. Under no normal circumstances could a rumor based on multiple hearsays be a proper and legal reason for opening a criminal investigation, especially when the original source was not even identified, and none of the allegations were substantiated.
It’s worth looking more closely at the “dossier,” and why President Trump’s tormentors would rather that we didn’t.
Chapter 6
The Fabricated “Dossier” Used Against Trump
Apart from the Constitution, the government ought not to use evidence obtained, and only obtainable, by a criminal act.
—JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ON THE USE OF WIRETAPS (OLMSTEAD V. U.S., 1928, 277 U.S. 438, 469-470)
Everything the Central Intelligence Agency does is cloaked in stealth and secrecy. Subversion is a proficiency. Duplicity is second nature. Against this hushed backdrop, it is not easy to uncover John Brennan’s machinations while he was President Obama’s CIA chief.
However, a senior aide to the House Intelligence Committee who examined Brennan’s actions involving the “dossier” offered this analysis:
John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier. He politicized and effectively weaponized what was false intelligence against Trump.1
What exactly did Brennan do? When he learned of the “dossier,” he allegedly gave the information contained therein to the FBI and Democrats on Capitol Hill, and certain members of the media were alerted.2 According to his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Brennan seemed to acknowledge that he was among the first individuals to have access to the “dossier” and soon alerted the FBI whic
h then opened its Trump-Russia investigation.3 He also began telling top members of Congress of his “information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president,” as reported by the New York Times.4 Whether he told them his “information” came from the unproven “dossier” is unclear, but his access to it would seem to answer that question.
Unanswered is whether Brennan ever took any steps to verify the contents of the “dossier” or affirm its authenticity. As director of the CIA, it was well within his authority to do this since both the author and the alleged sources were foreign actors who supposedly possessed information about illicit activities in the United States. For example, gathering intelligence on Russia’s suspected hacking of America’s computer systems would be well within the CIA’s purview. If Brennan studied the “dossier,” he would have inexorably concluded the document was worthless, although that might not have deterred him from using it for political purposes to hurt Trump and help Clinton.
On its face, the “dossier” was a preposterous collection of rumors, innuendos, supposition, and wild speculation. At least one significant part of it contained demonstrably false statements. In its entirety, the set of documents incorporated not a bit of direct evidence. Instead, it was based solely on multiple hearsay accounts from inherently unreliable sources in Russia who were, notably, experts in lies and disinformation. Some sources were apparently paid for passing along the hearsay, which made their claims even more suspect. Although some Russian names were referenced, almost none of the information attributed to them actually came from them. The sources were largely anonymous, but their lack of credibility could be determined by the capacious characterizations of their duties and Kremlin connections.
The Russia Hoax Page 11