Dirty Rubles

by Greg Olear

  Years from now, when historians piece together the events of Trump/Russia, they will likely look at Flynn’s guilty plea as the moment the Trump presidency was doomed. As I tweeted at the time, the Flynn plea was like a bullet to the gut; it would take time to bleed out, but the wound would prove fatal to the Trump Administration.

  This yeoman’s work by Mueller’s team was followed up by still more indictments against obscure individuals—Americans, Dutchmen, Russians—whose remove from Trump suggested a massive investigation, generated from the bottom up, that would ultimately lead to scores of convictions.

  A new meme appeared around this time, a red Trump cap on which MAGA stood for this: MUELLER AIN’T GOIN’ AWAY.

  * * *

  1 Pronounced MULL-er, and not MULE-er.

  IX.

  WITCH HUNT:

  Collaborators Gonna Collaborate

  ON 17 MAY 2017, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROD ROSENSTEIN, acting in place of the recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions, formally appointed Robert Mueller to serve as Special Counsel for the US Department of Justice.

  At 7:52 the next morning, Donald Trump tweeted: “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” This was the same turn of phrase he’d used two months earlier to decry the “unfair” treatment of his disgraced former national security adviser: “Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!”

  It would become a pet term. From the time he took office until May of 2018, Trump tweeted the words “witch hunt” over three dozen times—sometimes in title case, sometimes in ALL CAPS, but almost always in reference to the Trump/Russia investigation. He even used it to defend his namesake firstborn after the press found out about the (clearly illegal) Trump Tower meeting: “My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”

  The regular witch hunt deployment amounted to a defense strategy—no different than shouting, “I know you are, but what am I?” If Trump were innocent, after all, he could have demanded a Special Counsel himself, before the Flynn imbroglio thrust one upon him. He could have released his taxes. He could have made a legitimate attempt to show his innocence. He did none of those things. Guilty, Trump has no other recourse but to attack the investigators. The objective is to make the American people question the integrity of Mueller and his team, by attacking Mueller’s character, and tweeting flat-out lies. For example, this tweet of 7 May 2018: “The 13 Angry Democrats in charge of the Russian Witch Hunt are starting to find out that there is a Court System in place that actually protects people from injustice...and just wait ‘till the Courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of Interest!” To which “Democrats” was Trump referring? Mueller is a Republican. Comey is a Republican. Rosenstein is a Republican. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of Trump’s tirades, is a Republican. But Trump’s base took him at his word, believing that Trump/Russia was baseless—partisan revenge for the Benghazi investigations.

  As Mueller and his “13 Angry Democrats” pursued justice, Trump and his collaborators engaged in its obstruction. Media allies amplified Trump’s lies, with the aim of giving them credibility by virtue of repetition. Chief among the propagandists was Sean Hannity, his informal adviser and formal apologist, but there were plenty more, on Fox News and elsewhere: Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, the Fox & Friends crew, Jesse Waters, Gregg Jarrett, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Andrew Napolitano, Lou Dobbs, Brit Hume, Geraldo Rivera, Tomi Lahren, Ainsley Earhardt, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Newt Gingrich, to name a few. All of these people went on TV and gave voice to Trump’s “witch hunt” protestations, impugned Robert Mueller, obsessed over Hillary Clinton, attacked the “liberal” media, and otherwise questioned the legitimacy of Trump/Russia. In the case of Sean Hannity, he did so in the guise as a journalist, without bothering to inform his viewers that Trump’s personal attorney and Russian mobster Michael Cohen was also his attorney.

  White House spokespersons used the imprimatur of the office to spread lies, while simultaneously attacking the media. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the most egregious offender here, but the likes of Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Jason Miller, and Raj Shah are also guilty.

  Republican members of Congress are said in general to loathe Donald Trump, and grouse about him off the record. A select few have spoken out from time to time, most remain silent, while a vocal minority actively support him. These Trump stans fanned out on TV and zealously attacked the Mueller investigation itself, and also the character of Robert Mueller. Jason Chaffetz, Dana Rohrabacher, Trey Gowdy, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis, Steve King, Mark Meadows, and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have all carried water for Trump.

  On Election Day, I was so convinced that Donald Trump would be quickly removed from office that I suggested that it would happen by the Fourth of July. I was wrong, obviously, but I was operating under the erroneous assumption that Members of Congress would not tolerate a Russian asset in the White House—that there was a red line that, once crossed, would cause the GOP to abandon Trump en masse. This has not come to pass, at least not yet. Republicans are terrified of Trump/Russia—and this is curious, because, at least in theory, a guilty Trump would yield not to Hillary Clinton, but to the conservative darling Mike Pence. What are they so afraid of? It can’t be Trump’s endorsement at the ballot box; his record there is wretched. In the Alabama special election to replace Jeff Sessions, Trump endorsed Luther Strange, who lost to Judge Roy Moore in the Republican primary; after throwing his full weight behind Moore, Trump could only watch as Alabama—the reddest of red states—opted instead for a Democrat, Doug Jones.

  Wherefore the Trump/Russia fear? The story is still emerging. However, we know that Paul Ryan was caught on tape suggesting that Rohrabacher was taking money from Moscow, along with Trump; he later claimed this was a joke. We know that the Russians hacked the DNC and the RNC, but only the former’s emails were released. Reince Priebus, Trump’s first White House chief of staff, was the chair of the RNC when those emails were pilfered.

  We know that Trump employed the Israeli black ops concern Black Cube, the same outfit used by serial rapist Harvey Weinstein to menace his victims, to spy on Americans.

  We know that dirty rubles poured into the RNC coffers via the National Rifle Association, the arms dealer lobbyist group masquerading as Second Amendment defense organization.

  Given all of this, it is not a stretch to suggest that Trump/Russia runs deeper than we originally thought—that certain key Republican Congressmen have been compromised somehow by Moscow, and are thus playing ball. The strange decision by Paul Ryan to resign after this term—rather than seek to impeach both Trump and Pence, which would both be the right thing to do and land the ambitious Ryan in the Oval himself—is a startling admission, it seems to me, when we consider that Ryan has done everything in his ample power to slow-walk the investigation—especially aiding and abetting the Congressman most in Putin’s pocket: Rep. Devin Nunes, Republican of California.

  Devin Nunes is 44 years old, married with three children. He’s from CA-22, which includes Fresno and Tulare counties. A lot of rural land. Heavy GOP. He grew up on a cattle ranch and studied agriculture in college. He was precocious, ambitious, but pretty much unknown until he latched himself onto the Trump Transition Team in November 2016. Nunes probably determined that the national exposure would be worth the risk of associating himself with Trump.

  Nunes, with his background in cattle, was nevertheless named chair of the powerful House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) by Paul Ryan.1 From the gate, he was reluctant to investigate Trump. On 6 January 2017, the Intelligence Community released a report unanimously concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump. A week later, he was poo-pooing the notion of a House investigation: �
�House committees don’t go operational like that, that I know of.” He suggested that the committee’s time would be better spent investigating leaks.

  On 18 January 2017, Nunes attended a breakfast with incoming national security adviser Mike Flynn and the foreign minister of Turkey. At the time, Flynn was working as a lobbyist for the Turkish government, a relationship he had failed to disclose. Whatever he may have done before, breakfast with the Turk and the traitor put Devin Nunes squarely in the shit.

  A week later, the HPSCI opened its own investigation into Trump/Russia. Paul Ryan chose to ignore the blatant conflict of interest—Nunes had worked on the transition, and was therefore part of the group under investigation—and allowed Nunes not to recuse himself. On 27 February, responding to questions from the press about the recently-discovered phone calls between Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, Nunes said: “As of right now, I don’t have any evidence of any phone calls ….That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I don’t have that. And what I’ve been told by many folks is that there’s nothing there….I want to be very careful that we can’t just go on a witch hunt against Americans because they appear in news stories.” (Later, we would learn that the White House specifically requested him to downplay Trump/Russia to the press). Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, and a man of saintly patience, responded thus: “When you begin an investigation, you don’t begin by stating what you believe to be the conclusion.”2

  On the night of 21 March 2017, the day after the Comey hearing, Nunes and a staffer were driving when he got an alarming text message. He made the Uber stop, jumped out, and hightailed it to the White House. This began a series of strange events that has never been adequately explained. At the White House, Nunes met Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis, two Trump loyalists, who gave him some alarming information. Something about “unmasking.” (This was two weeks after Trump had accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower). The next morning, after briefing Paul Ryan, Nunes held a bizarre press conference. “I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked,” Nunes told reporters, before leaving to powwow directly with the President. On 23 March, at another strange press conference, Nunes said: “The president didn’t invite me over, I called down there and invited myself because I thought he needed to understand what I say and he needed to get that information,” which was a complete lie, as the White House had given him the information, and not the other way around. Nunes then canceled regular HPSCI meetings, and scrapped a hearing at which Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who warned Trump about Mike Flynn, was set to testify.

  From that moment on, Devin Nunes has done everything in his not inconsiderable power to throw water on the Russia investigation. He dispatched HPSCI staffers to London, to investigate Christopher Steele. He railed against leaks, against unmasking, against Steele and the dossier. He recused himself from the investigation, but never went through with it. He subpoenaed Fusion GPS, in a vain attempt to sully Steele, but refused to subpoena Deutsche Bank, the only legitimate creditor Trump had been able to procure in recent years. He launched a crusade against the Uranium One deal, in a veiled attempt to get at Mueller. He lobbied for the impeachment of FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump had just appointed a few months earlier. He insisted that there was underhandedness in the Department of Justice, again attempting to tarnish Mueller. “I hate to use the word corrupt, but they’ve become at least so dirty that who’s watching the watchmen? Who’s investigating these people? There is no one.”

  Then, in January 2018, Nunes wrote his infamous memo—a cherry-picked document that attempted to make the case that the FBI had erred in its issue of FISA warrants against Carter Page, or some such thing. The brouhaha about the Nunes memo was immense, and when Nunes finally released it to the press—despite DOJ concerns that doing so would jeopardize national security—it succeeded only in showing that Nunes was a living, breathing Obstruction of Justice charge.3 As one wag put it, “Nunes has pulled the pin out of the grenade and thrown away the pin.”4 The Nunes memo was supposed to vindicate Trump…and it could not, because it wasn’t a magic spell that made us all go back in time to before the Trump campaign began colluding with Moscow.

  During all of this, it should be noted that Paul Ryan did exactly nothing, allowing the Nunes farce to continue. The former slunk quietly into the background, abetting Trump with inaction, while the latter made as much noise as possible to deflect attention from Trump/Russia. This has been going on for a year and a half.

  The question is: Why? Why has Devin Nunes acted so strangely, and so brazenly attempted to scuttle the investigation? While he was clearly a Trump loyalist from the gate, his enthusiasm for obstruction of justice only hit a fever pitch after his late-night rendezvous at the White House—when he learned something about the unmasking. What did he learn, and why did it freak him out so much? If Trump were on the recordings, that would be a concern, but would it really explain Nunes’s crazed behavior regarding the investigation? Or, for that matter, his dramatic exit from the Uber after getting that text?

  The most logical explanation, it seems to me, is that the “individual” unmasked on those tapes was none other than Devin Nunes himself. That would explain his freak-out, and his almost pathological attempt to kill the investigation. Devin Nunes joined the transition team, got mic’ed up talking about illicit shit, perhaps at that breakfast with Mike Flynn and the Turkish foreign minister, and he knows the FBI knows. Devin Nunes is not trying to protect Donald Trump from the long arm of the law; Devin Nunes is trying to protect himself from the long arm of the law. After all, if there is one common through-line among Trump loyalists, it is brazen self-interest.

  To be clear: this is just a theory. At some point, we will discover the truth about Nunes’s late-night 21 March 2017 White House foray. For now, the details of that fateful rendezvous are one of many outstanding Trump/Russia mysteries waiting to be revealed.

  * * *

  1 The cattle and the intelligence chairmanship are what prompted Eric Garland to nickname Nunes “Special Agent Dipshit Cowpoke.”

  2 The Moscow Project and Lawfare both have Devin Nunes timelines that were useful in writing this section.

  3 Schiff’s comments at the time: “The Majority voted today on a party-line basis to grant House Members access to a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation….Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI….This may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.”

  4 I can’t remember who tweeted this, and I can’t find it now. Sorry!

  X.

  KNOWN UNKNOWNS:

  Up Next in Trump/Russia

  SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. A down-on-his-luck real estate opportunist launders money for the Russian mob, which exploits him and his key advisers, while the KGB works with his campaign to contaminate our electoral process and sow chaos in the West. The Russians shot the moon and hit the Sea of Tranquility.

  But Trump/Russia was never about winning. It was always about laundering dirty rubles for the Vory v Zakone, taking advantage of the opaque, byzantine, and big-money nature of the corrupt American campaign finance system, while also lining the coffers of Donald J. Trump—a partnership of enormous mutual enrichment. Sure, the benefits of the Trump Administration to Vladimir Putin were gargantuan, everything from the erosion of NATO to his grinning jackals gaining access to the Oval Office. But Make America Great Again was a mob money-laundering operation, simple and plain. That Moscow’s man is now in the Oval Office is just icing on the Kremlin’s kekc.

  What happens in the coming months will determine the very fate of our nation—and I say that without hyperbole. Many of the
details of Trump/Russia will be revealed in the weeks, months, and years to come. New characters will emerge in the story and assume positions of prominence. Three months ago, no one had heard of Michael Avenatti; now he operates as Mueller’s de facto surrogate, giving much-needed voice to the prosecution as he makes the rounds on the news shows, roiling Donald Trump and leaving hapless defense attorneys in his wake. There are sure to be other, bigger surprises.

  But there are also things we expect to find out: “known unknowns,” to borrow the phraseology of that most poetical of defense secretaries, Donald Rumsfeld. To wit:

  From 8-11 November 2013, Donald Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant. We know that, despite several attempts to muddy the timeline, Trump spent at least one night at the Ritz Moscow hotel. We do not yet know with whom he spent that night, or the activities in which he was engaged.

  In the two years leading up to his presidential run, Trump’s real estate company purchased an inordinate amount of property in cash. We do not yet know why the “king of debt” suddenly reversed course and plopped down actual coin, nor do we know how such exorbitant sums were obtained.

  Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner, the president’s son and son-in-law, are both clearly targets of Mueller’s investigation. We do not yet know when they will be indicted, or on which charges. Too, while Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump—Junior’s full siblings—were somehow involved with the shady dealings, we do not yet know to what extent, or if either of them will face indictments.