by Greg Olear
This is ironic, because Steele never intended that his reports be disseminated to a wide audience. He wanted Comey to act on it back in July 2016, but the FBI Director does not appear to have actually read the document until five months later, when it was given to him by John McCain. This was after the election, but before inauguration, so there was still time to investigate before the transition of power. Alas, President Obama seemed more concerned with safeguarding his legacy than stirring up trouble with Trump.
As I write this 18 months into the Trump presidency, Comey has been fully embraced by the left, more or less exonerated for writing his letter, while Obama is regarded in those same circles as a figure of almost mythological goodness. Unlike Trump, the two are unquestionably men of honor. But both made terrible mistakes in the fall of 2016 that will haunt this country for years to come.
* * *
1 Tea Pain wrote a brilliant piece on the server contact, the “stealth Russian data machine.”
2 Originally, Glomar was an ocean vessel constructed in 1975 by the CIA for the purpose of salvaging a sunken Soviet submarine—a covert operation called Project Azorian. When the press got wind of the op, and asked the Agency for confirmation, its response was to “neither confirm nor deny.” Since then, the term “Glomar” means to issue that same response on matters of national security.
3 Mensch herself predicted more Glomar.
4 Felix Sater is one of the more curious characters in the story. The son of a Russian mobster, he grew up with Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen. His business practices are sketchy. Trump denies knowing him, but they spent a lot of time together. Sater, however, is also an FBI and CIA informant. It is rumored that he provided valuable intelligence that helped us catch and kill Bin Laden. I’m not sure what to make of Sater.
VIII.
LAME DUCKS & PINK SLIPS:
#ObamaFail and #ComeyFail
BOTH BARACK OBAMA AND JAMES COMEY fucked up royally. They fucked up royally at least in part because the internal calculus that informed their decision-making assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the next president. True, this assumption was shared by every pollster in the world, almost everyone in the media, and—mea culpa—Yours Truly. But the rest of us weren’t aware of the extent of the Russian election tampering. The President and the FBI Director knew how bad it was. They knew. The fact that they knew and we did not, of course, is one of the ways they royally fucked up.
Before we delve into the failures of these two otherwise great men, I’d like to reframe what really happened on Election Day. Hillary Clinton, who was a “flawed candidate,” as the media never tired of pointing out (as if Donald Trump somehow were not), had the following working against her:
A reputation as a liar, which was nothing short of character assassination by the Fourth Estate, as she was the most truthful candidate on either side during the campaign.
Her opponent’s public persona as a likable, decisive, “alpha male” leader, cultivated entirely from his performance on a scripted TV show, and divorced from reality.
Her husband’s well-advertised taste for lechery, which seemed to negate every heinous sexual assault charge against Donald Trump (“Sure, Trump did X, but Bill did Y, and Hillary stayed with him!”).
A rogue primary opponent whose followers comprised an extremely vocal minority of left-leaning voters; one who blamed the extant primary system of the Democratic Party for his loss rather than his own considerable shortcomings, who would not campaign on her behalf with the necessary vigor, and who attacks her still. (This minority of left-leaning voters was extremely vocal, it turns out, because Russia helped amplify its Bernie-or-Bust voice).
A mainstream print media, most notably the “liberal” New York Times, whose negative coverage of her, especially over the email server bit (n.b.: Pence did same thing as Indiana governor, Colin Powell used a private server too, and Hillary’s server is the only one the Russians didn’t hack!), that was, to put it charitably, disproportionate.
A TV news media that gave Trump’s Mussolini-esque rallies billions of dollars’ worth of free airtime for the sake of ratings.
Facebook and Twitter and other social media outfits, which allowed illicit “ads” and “bots,” respectively, to contaminate the feeds to an extent not yet fully realized.
Institutionalized sexism, with its insidious double standard, that did its dread work in a race between the most qualified person to ever seek the presidency who happened to be a woman and the very epitome of rich white male mediocrity.
Institutionalized racism, to the extent that Hillary was running under the aegis of Barack Obama—as Ta-Nehisi Coates explains in The Atlantic, “an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white.”
Active voter suppression (speaking of racism!) by Republican legislatures in places like Texas, North Carolina, and oh yes, Wisconsin.
The Comey letter, as previously discussed.
An active and ultimately successful operation by the Russians, working in concert with the Trump campaign, to tamper with the election—an op that included manipulation of social media, coordination with Trump’s people on how best to target the attacks, and, not certainly but possibly, actual hacking of machines and tampering with the results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Despite these forces working against her, Hillary Clinton received 65,853,516 votes—more than any white male candidate in American history, including Donald Trump, who lost by 2,868,691 votes, which is more people than live in New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, the District of Columbia, Vermont or Wyoming.
Despite all of these forces working against her, she lost in the archaic Electoral College by fewer people than can fit in a college football stadium. You can scream until you’re blue in the face that she should have visited Michigan or whatever. But Hillary lost the election in the same way the US men’s basketball team lost the gold medal at the 1972 Olympics: the Russians fucking cheated.
BARACK OBAMA SPENT THE LAST YEAR OF HIS PRESIDENCY appeasing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. There’s no kinder way to put it. Obama was Neville Chamberlain 2.0 to McConnell’s Hitler. Maybe, after eight years of being in the shit, he was tired. Maybe he had the West Wing version of senioritis. Maybe he didn’t have any fight left in him. Certainly he assumed Hillary Clinton would succeed him, so his lame duck last year wouldn’t make much of a difference in long run. Certainly he wanted to protect his legacy above all else. Whatever the reason or reasons, Obama yielded to McConnell on two of the most consequential moments in his presidency.
On 16 March 2016, Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a highly-regarded judge and a moderate, to fill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia. Garland was not some liberal version of Robert Bork. His confirmation should have been swift and easy. There should have been no controversy. But McConnell decided that Garland should be denied the seat. “Let the next president choose,” he announced—as if that was a thing.
Obama could have fought this. He could have said, “You have 60 days to hold a confirmation vote on Garland, and if you fail to do so, we will interpret this as waiving your right to confirm.” That would have put pressure on McConnell to bring it to a vote. And if a Constitutional crisis ensued, so what? Let the Supreme Court decide if the Founders really wanted a mendacious Senate Majority Leader to game the system.
But the President did not do this. Instead, he did nothing. To Obama, a SCOTUS seat was not worth squabbling about. Hillary Clinton would re-nominate Garland, or else pick someone else, and that would be that.
But McConnell’s gamble paid off. Clinton did not win. And Donald Trump nominated the reactionary Neil Gorsuch instead. Now a Court that should have veered more to the left, after decades of rightward listing,
would be solidly conservative for the foreseeable future, not mirroring at all the trend in the general population.
Then there was the business of the Russian election interference. In late summer, Obama met with Senate leaders and asked them to put out a joint statement about the Russian menace. McConnell flat-out refused. “If you do that,” he threatened, “I will claim the whole thing is politically motivated.” So the President was stone-silent.
After the Election Day debacle, Obama completely threw in the towel. He could have taken action. He was still president from 8 November 2016 through 20 January 2017, after all. There was still time. He could have, for example, called for a Special Counsel to investigate Trump/Russia back in November. He did nothing of the sort. After the inauguration, he went to the South Pacific, as far away from Washington as possible, for two agonizing weeks. He was windsurfing while Rome burned.
I have great admiration for Obama. His list of accomplishments is impressive, especially considering the precarious state of the economy when he took the job, and the crippling obstruction from the GOP during six of his eight years in office. However, in his desire to protect his legacy, he did not use all the means at his disposal to thwart a compromised Russian asset from succeeding him. Depending on how this all plays out, it is this singular failure that he might be most remembered for.
DIRECTOR COMEY BUNGLED THINGS SO BADLY in October 2016 that the very fate of the nation hangs, present tense, in the balance. First, as discussed, he allowed himself to be played by the rogue “Trumplandia” agents at the FBI’s New York field office, who coerced him into sending the letter to Congress concerning the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation. According to the New York Times, Comey sent the letter because he was certain, given leaks in the FBI New York field office, that “word of the new [Hillary Clinton] emails [found on Anthony Weiner’s computer]...was sure to leak out” and he did not want to “risk being accused of misleading Congress and the public ahead of an election.”
He explained his decision to write the letter thus, to his charges at the FBI: “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.”
This all makes perfect sense, but for one glaring problem: In October of 2016, the FBI was actively investigating 1) Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, and 2) Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Comey chose only to inform the public about the former. How exactly was it not “misleading…the American people…not to supplement the record” about Trump’s clandestine dealings with Moscow?
The difference boils down to the Bureau’s “Glomar” policy concerning active investigations. “Democrats, including Democrats in Obama’s government who ought to know better, have asked if James Comey had ‘a double standard’ over the investigations into Clinton and Trump,” Mensch explained in her “Chess” piece of 17 January 2017. “Yes, he did, and he does. He may talk about a criminal investigation. He may not talk about a current, ongoing investigation into espionage, bribery, money laundering and so forth that affects U.S. national security.” To even confirm that the investigation existed would jeopardize the investigation. Mensch herself tweeted on 16 March 2017, to the question of what to expect from Comey at the hearing: “In public he will GLOMAR the hell out of it. Sorry.”
Here is my quibble. When Comey testified before Congress on 20 March 2017, he abandoned “Glomar” and instead confirmed that the FBI was indeed “investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” And I think this was the right move. But if the Director could ignore “Glomar” on 20 March 2017, in breach of protocol concerning ongoing investigations, why did he not see fit to do so five months sooner, when it might have done some good? If he wrote the same letter to Congress about Hillary’s emails, but added that Trump’s campaign was also under investigation for possible coordination with the Russians, the two investigations would have canceled each other out—reinforcing previously held biases, not tipping the scale. The abominable Times story of 31 October 2016 would never have run. Jason Chaffetz may have had second thoughts about leaking the memo. Hillary Clinton would absolutely be president right now.
That letter is a black mark against James Comey, and will be the first thing mentioned in his Times obituary. However, it must also be said that since Election Day, Comey has done everything in his power to redeem himself, and served as the model of probity and honor that this country desperately needs. He would not play ball with Donald Trump, refusing to pledge loyalty. He probably had something to do with revelations that, contrary to sworn statements, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had secretly met with Russians during the campaign; Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation on 2 March 2017, two weeks after the departure of national security adviser Mike Flynn—a decision that infuriated the volatile president. Comey’s strategic releases to the media and his careful taking of notes after his meetings with Trump were of vital importance in the arena of public perception. And his grace in the face of his own humiliating dismissal was exemplary.
In his Oval Office meeting with the Russian envoys Sergei Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov on 10 May 2017, the day after firing Comey, Donald Trump explained his rationale for giving the Director the axe: “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s been taken off.”
What Trump did not realize is that a week later, the Trump/Russia investigation would be taken up by former FBI Director Robert Mueller,1 who would be named Special Counsel. Far from being “taken off,” the pressure on Trump would ramp up, bigly. Replacing Comey with Mueller was like replacing Batman with Superman—and the rest of the Justice League.
ROBERT SWAN MUELLER III IS THE ANTI-TRUMP. They are roughly the same age, both tall, both children of wealth and privilege who attended the best schools. That’s where the similarities end. Mueller served honorably in Vietnam; Trump finagled five deferments, due to bone spurs. Mueller is the consummate man of honor; Trump is an inveterate liar and crook. Mueller has dedicated his life to public service; Trump is the epitome of venality. In many ways, Mueller was the perfect choice to lead the Trump/Russia investigation.
Mueller quickly assembled a legal dream team: Zainab Ahmad, the assistant US District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, the best terrorism prosecutor in the country; Greg Andres, who specializes in bribery; the Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeban, a criminal law expert; Kyle Freeny, of the DOJ’s money laundering department, and Andrew Weissman, of its Fraud section; Andrew Goldstein, who headed the SDNY’s public corruption unit; Jeannie Rhee, of Wilmer Hale, a white-collar crime expert; and, just to make the Nixon parallels complete, James Quarles III, who served as assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force.
This was not a team of investigators.
This was a team of prosecutors.
And they were not devoting their time and energy to Trump/Russia to come up empty.
“Hurry up, Mueller” became a popular refrain among those anxious for Donald Trump and his associates to vacate the White House. Trump is a reality TV president, after all, so it only follows that his administration would be over in 13 weeks—canceled after the first season. What was taking so long?
But Trump/Russia is not Celebrity Apprentice. It is
the most consequential criminal investigation in American history, complex and multi-layered: a multiplicity of Watergates. Mueller’s task is not only to take down the wrongdoers, but to do so in a way that will convince the country—including a sizable proportion of Trump voters—that justice was indeed served, that this wasn’t the “witch hunt” Trump would insist it was. This takes time.
With that said, Mueller has been moving at warp speed, as far as investigations go. On 3 October 2017, six months after being appointed Special Counsel, he had his first indictment. George Papadopoulos, Trump’s youthful foreign affairs adviser who had been a liaison between the campaign and the Kremlin, was charged with lying to the FBI. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty two days later, and every indication was that he’d “flipped” and was cooperating with the investigation.
On 27 October 2017—364 days after the Comey letter that gave Trump the White House—Mueller reeled in a much bigger fish. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, along with his deputy, Rick Gates, were indicted on a number of counts, including Conspiracy Against the United States. (After a few months of fence-sitting, Gates began cooperating with the investigation.) A month later, Mike Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, was also charged. On 1 December 2017, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of lying to the FBI, suggesting that he, too, had flipped.
I can’t stress this enough: Paul Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman. He ran the campaign in the spring and summer of 2016, when the Trump team was actively holding covert meetings with Russians. Gates continued to work with the Trump team long after Manafort left. Flynn, meanwhile, had been the deputy chair of the transition team—a key insider, one of the handful of men Trump repeatedly leaned on and vouched for. Trump hired him as national security adviser, granting him access to eyes-only intelligence, over the objections of President Obama, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and members of Congress. One of the reasons Trump fired James Comey was because Comey refused to “let it go” with Flynn, at Trump’s request.