Donald Trump V. the United States : Inside the Struggle to Stop a President (9781984854674)

by Schmidt, Michael S.

  Fellow Democrats told Miller that they wished they could also speak out, but that they feared doing so because they had their own relationships with the FBI to maintain.

  But while Democrats—save for Miller—moved to put the investigation behind them, Republicans—who had been Jim’s main concern—dug in. For Republicans to understand Jim’s press conference, they needed a bit of intellectual dexterity, but not much. It asked Republicans to understand and appreciate two concepts at the same time: that Clinton might have done something improper related to national security but that she should not be charged with a crime. But that was a level of nuance that much of Washington lately could not accommodate. Because the finding was disagreeable to them, congressional Republicans assumed it was dishonest and called it suspicious. Given Comey’s harsh criticism of Clinton, they were enraged at his recommendation that she not be charged. His statements were useful to undermine Clinton, but became a target, too.

  What is the difference, they argued, between Comey’s “extremely careless” and the “gross negligence” from the criminal statute? His language was proof enough that Clinton was a criminal and that Jim—apparently a Clinton lackey—was covering up her crime.

  Two days after the press conference, Jim went up to Capitol Hill to testify before the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee—a panel dominated by members who had made their bones on Benghazi, often appearing on Fox News to push their latest theory of how Democrats were corrupt. The committee’s Republican chairman, Jason Chaffetz, lambasted Jim for deciding there would be “no consequence” for the handling of Clinton’s emails.

  “I’m here because we’re mystified and confused by the fact pattern you laid out and the conclusions that you reached,” Chaffetz said. “It seems there are two standards, and there’s no consequence for these types of activities and dealing in a careless way with classified information.”

  Jim tried to explain the nuances of federal prosecutions to the audience of angry Republicans, who were unmoved.

  “We did not find evidence sufficient to establish that she knew she was sending classified information beyond a reasonable doubt, to meet the intent standard,” Jim said. “I understand why people are confused by the whole discussion. I get that, but you know what would be a double standard? If she were prosecuted for gross negligence.”

  In explaining his conclusions, Comey also provided even more sound bites of him criticizing Clinton, which in Washington’s vicious cycle made his conclusions that much more assailable.

  “She should have known not to send classified information,” he said. “That’s the definition of negligent. I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent. That I could establish. What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.”

  Despite the backlash from Republicans, Comey headed into July believing the press conference had been a success. Getting knocked by partisans was far better than if the Department of Justice had sought to end the investigation silently and unaccountably. And any involvement by Loretta Lynch or other top political appointees would have given the chattering class more ammunition to push more mainstream Republicans to go after the Justice Department. So, while it would live on in the conservative media echo chamber, Comey was convinced that it would have only so much appeal and little of the criticism would stick.

  “By doing the announcement alone, I was spending some of my credibility and the FBI’s to protect both the bureau and all of DOJ,” Jim would later say. “I actually think that the goal was achieved, in large part, because the attackers were forced to come through me and focus on the FBI’s decision making. There was very little of the ‘Loretta Lynch is corrupt’ stuff that summer. Instead, they had to say I was wrong and the bureau was wrong, which was harder for them. It meant that I had to spend a lot of time testifying and fighting their bullshit, but it shifted the ground of the battle from political to tactical.”

  So as July wore on, Jim thought the Clinton matter was behind him and that he could return to regular FBI work, like looking for funding for a new headquarters to replace the collapsing one. On the tactical side, he knew the bureau and the country still had major challenges. The FBI’s top priority was thwarting attacks from Islamic-linked terrorists and homegrown violent extremists. A horrific example of that type of violence was still fresh in his mind. Three weeks before the press conference, a twenty-nine-year-old man who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State had killed forty-nine people at the Pulse nightclub in Florida, marking the deadliest attack on Americans since 9/11. Such mass violence had become sickeningly routine in the United States, and federal law enforcement had been impotent in the face of it. This was the important work that the FBI could now focus on. Comey was confident that he and the FBI could now leave the politics to the politicians, and do just that.

  But whatever punches he had taken from the Far Right would be nothing compared with what was awaiting him.

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  JULY 27, 2016

  177 DAYS BEFORE DONALD TRUMP IS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT

  TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL MIAMI RESORT IN DORAL, FLORIDA—As most eyes in the political world were on Philadelphia—where Obama was set to cap off the third night of the Democratic National Convention with a much-anticipated speech—Trump gathered reporters and television cameras for a press conference at his golf course in Doral, Florida. It had been less than a week since hacked Democratic National Committee emails had been released, and intelligence officials pointed to Russia as the culprit. And because Trump would be taking questions, the Republican candidate was bound to be asked about the Russian hack. Late in the morning, standing in front of flags of the United States and the State of Florida, and just thirteen minutes into the press conference, Trump addressed himself directly to a foreign adversary in a way that no reputable presidential candidate ever had before.

  “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, referring to those of Hillary Clinton’s personal emails that had been deleted. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

  He made other comments about Russia that day, too. Some contradicted things he had previously said, like when he said he had “never spoken to” Putin. And some were starkly in opposition to U.S. foreign policy, as when he was “looking at” recognizing the disputed Crimea region as a Russian territory—an act that would, astonishingly, encourage Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions and reward the menace Moscow posed to its neighbors and to Europe.

  But the headline of the day was clear: here was the Republican Party’s nominee encouraging—soliciting—Moscow’s interference in his race against Clinton.

  At the bureau, Comey and other top officials were struggling to understand Trump’s bizarre overture and were deeply bothered by it. At this level of American politics, such a pronouncement could not simply be dismissed as a joke, as some apologists tried to do. The behavior was so far outside acceptable norms—and was so vexing in its challenge to geopolitical realities—that it commanded the attention of American officials at the highest levels, who were already beginning to see evidence that Putin and his government were up to something that appeared designed to upend the American election. “Russia is a sworn adversary of the United States, committed to degrading our country’s power, influence, and reach,” Jim would later tell me. “The United States intelligence community, of which the FBI is a part, devotes billions of dollars and countless hours each year to trying to understand and thwart the threat Russia poses. And yet, in the middle of an unprecedented Russian effort to erode the legitimacy of our electoral process, the Republican presidential candidate openly called for their assistance and participation in that electoral process. The conduct is so outrageous that the mind struggles to even categorize it, which is why I suspect so many people underreacted to it at the time, and maybe still do
.”

  What no one knew at the time was just how seriously the Russians had taken Trump. Less than five hours after Trump’s comments, that night marked the first time a Russian intelligence unit nicknamed Fancy Bear attempted to infiltrate email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office. Russian hackers sent “spear phishing” emails—a common way to infiltrate specific accounts—to fifteen different email addresses associated with Clinton, none of which were publicly searchable. They also attacked seventy-six separate email accounts under the Clinton campaign’s domain.

  The comment was so outlandish that it was enough, some former FBI officials now acknowledge, for them to open up a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was coordinating with a foreign adversary to undermine the United States. But they did not do that because Trump was a major-party candidate and such a move was politically precarious. While the Obama administration was required to investigate any potential election interference, no one in the administration wanted to be seen as interfering in the election themselves. It was an unprecedented and untenable situation. How had it come to this moment? How was it that the Russians were interfering in the election and one of the two major-party candidates was asking them for help? How had the Russians burrowed so deeply inside the American system that they could follow through on Trump’s request within five hours? How had the American intelligence community and national security apparatus been caught so flat-footed again—only fifteen years after the tragic failure of imagination in advance of the 9/11 attacks? And how had a foreign adversary undertaken a sprawling campaign to disrupt an election? The failures dated back to the end of the Cold War and included countless decisions taken by Republican and Democratic presidents. I was shocked by Russia’s success, dexterity, and understanding of America’s vulnerabilities and capacity to exploit them. But I knew from a reporting experience I’d had only three years earlier just how unprepared official Washington was for Russian aggression.

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  OCTOBER 16, 2013

  THREE YEARS, THREE MONTHS, AND FOUR DAYS BEFORE DONALD TRUMP IS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT

  STETSON’S FAMOUS BAR AND GRILL, NORTHWEST WASHINGTON, D.C.—A month after Comey became the FBI director in 2013, and long before Hillary Clinton’s emails ever became a public issue or Donald Trump was considered a serious candidate for president, I took the three-block walk from my apartment to my favorite local bar, Stetson’s, for dinner by myself.

  Stetson’s looks like your typical neighborhood bar that serves burgers and wings and has free popcorn. It’s dimly lit and has a long bar down the right-hand side of it with televisions playing sports on the wall and high-top tables on the other side. It became a go-to place for me in large part because there was hardly ever food in my refrigerator to go home to. I liked the bar so much that I had my thirtieth birthday party in a room on its second floor.

  I ordered a turkey burger and a beer and watched playoff baseball. It was a Wednesday night and fairly quiet—quiet enough to hear the chatter of the half dozen or so people scattered around me. The folks I could hear the best were a woman and a man in their thirties sitting at the bar, roughly fifteen feet to my right. They looked like a typical young Washington couple. They dressed professionally and acted as if they were dating or married. I overheard the man say something along the lines of You’re never going to believe what happened at work today.

  The man told the woman that a whole kerfuffle had been unfolding between the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon over something the Russian government wanted to do. Obviously, I couldn’t tune this out, so I started listening while making it appear as if I were just watching the game and eating dinner.

  The man told the woman that the Russians have their own GPS-like system called GLONASS. He explained that it is potentially even better than the GPS we have on our phones because it can also determine an individual’s exact altitude. He said that feature can be particularly helpful in urban settings because firefighters and paramedics are able to see exactly which floor a fire or ailing person is on.

  The Russians, however, had a problem with GLONASS, the man said. They wanted to sell the technology to cell phone companies, but unlike GPS—which is owned by the U.S. government and operated by the U.S. Air Force—the Russian system is not completely functional around the world. For that to happen, the Russians would need to put at least two large monitoring stations equipped with antennas on American soil to achieve full global coverage.

  As I sat there, I thought back to the legal training the Times had given me over my career. Anything that happens out in public is essentially fair game for us to report on, whether we’re seeing a car accident or overhearing a conversation. Knowing that, I took out my phone and, as if I were writing an email, started typing out what the man was saying.

  From the sound of it, I guessed that he worked at the State Department. He said that the Russians had found a receptive ear at State, where officials were seeking to improve relations between the United States and Russia, and the officials believed the technology could help first responders. But, the man said, State faced big obstacles. The CIA was all worked up about this and contended that allowing the Russians to put their own monitoring stations on our territory would essentially be giving them a beachhead, and a jump start, on hacking into our infrastructure and other networks.

  Analysts working elsewhere in the American government had come to a different conclusion from the CIA, the man said. Those analysts said the CIA’s views were shortsighted and simplistic, arguing that the Russians are so good at spying on us that they do not need these antennas to get at what they want in the United States. The man said that the Russians already had the trove of documents that the NSA contractor Edward Snowden had stolen that year from the intelligence community, giving the Russians an even greater advantage in hacking our networks. So, the analysts argued, if allowing the Russians to put these monitoring stations on our land helps our relations, why not allow it?

  The couple’s conversation finally turned to other matters.

  At this point, I had three choices: I could go over, identify myself, and ask some follow-up questions. Or I could tell them I was a reporter and say that I wasn’t going to write a story but that they should learn to be more discreet. Or I could say nothing to them. Just eat dinner, pay the check, walk out without saying anything, and then try to get the substance of this rather amazing bar chatter confirmed elsewhere. There was no way I would be able to write a story simply off some random guy I overheard at a bar; accurately reporting such information would require asking questions across the intelligence, diplomatic, and defense communities. I left without saying a word.

  In the following weeks, my colleague Eric Schmitt and I pursued the story with our sources—many more of Eric’s than mine—across the government. The conflict between the CIA and the other departments and agencies on the topic was real. We were able to confirm much of what I heard at the bar and add several new details, including how the Pentagon had also tried to stop the Russians from putting in the satellite receptors and that some lawmakers—including a lesser-known Republican representative from Alabama named Mike Rogers, who chaired a sleepy House subcommittee on transportation security—had voiced concerns on Capitol Hill. The Obama administration had delayed making a decision on the issue until the Russians provided more information about what they wanted.

  A couple of weeks later, Eric and I led the Sunday edition of the Times with our story under the headline “A Russian GPS Using U.S. Soil Stirs Spy Fears.” I had essentially operated as a spy to report a scoop about espionage games reminiscent of the Cold War, but there was no major outcry from either party about the prospect of the Obama administration allowing the Russians to put two satellite receptors on American soil. A year had passed since Mitt Romney had said at one of the presidential debates with Obama that Russia represented the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat. His sta
tements were still being mocked. The Cold War was long over. National security officials in Washington were focused on terrorism, China, and ending the war in Afghanistan. For better or worse, our coverage often focused on the issues the officials running the government believed were most important. At the Times, there was no push from our editors to do more. None of our major competitors wrote follow-up pieces.

  In the months and years that followed, I rarely returned to the topic of Russia and the potential national security threat it posed. Whenever I did, the stories received little attention. There was enough violence in the United States to keep me occupied. My assignment at the time—covering the FBI—meant I essentially served as the police reporter for the country. Whenever something awful happened somewhere in the nation—like a mass shooting or terrorist attack—editors in New York and Washington would call me and say, “Call the FBI and find out what the hell is going on.”

  But what I failed to realize—along with James Comey, top intelligence officials, the Obama White House, and everyone else in the media—was that we were living through the country’s greatest intelligence failure since 9/11.

  Our long-defeated foreign adversary, Russia, had launched one of the most brazen and novel attacks on the United States in history. And we all missed it. The failure to detect this coming attack and defend against it was so great that it would take the intelligence services of the United States two more years to even figure out that America was under attack.

  The attack on the 2016 election began in earnest five months after we wrote the story on the Russian GPS system. From a plain-looking building sandwiched in an unglamorous neighborhood in St. Petersburg, Russia, a company—known as the Internet Research Agency, or IRA—devised a canny and comprehensive attack on American society. Masquerading as Americans on social media, the Russians designed a plan to exploit the fissures of American society by polluting the American information ecosystem with unprecedented levels of disinformation, weakening American democracy. The disinformation campaign was only one part of the interference. Starting in 2014, the Russian intelligence services began a hacking campaign that targeted the White House and State Department. But even though the Russians had gone after the biggest targets in Washington, it was hard to get the Obama administration to take these attacks seriously.