by Dan Bongino
12Solomon, “Joe Biden’s 2020 Ukrainian Nightmare.”
13Peter Schweizer, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends (New York: Harper, 2018), 36–41.
14Solomon, “As Russia Collusion Fades, Ukrainian Plot to Help Clinton Emerges,” The Hill, March 20, 2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435029-as-russia-collusion-fades-ukrainian-plot-to-help-clinton-emerges.
15Ibid.
16Solomon, “How the Obama White House Engaged Ukraine to Give Russia Collusion Narrative an Early Boost,” April 25, 2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/440730-how-the-obama-white-house-engaged-ukraine-to-give-russia-collusion.
17Ibid.
18Kramer, Andrew E. et al. “Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief.” New York Times. Aug. 14, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html.
19Gillum, Chad Day, and Jeff Horwitz, “AP Exclusive: Manafort Firm Received Ukraine Ledger Payout,” April 12, 2017, https://www.apnews.com/20cfc75c82eb4a67b94e624e97207e23.
20Ben Smith and Vogel, “Obama Consultants Land Abroad,” Politico, November 18, 2009, https://www.politico.com/story/2009/11/obama-consultants-land-abroad-029410.
21Vogel and Katie Benner, “Gregory Craig, Ex-Obama Aide, Is Indicted on Charges of Lying to Justice Dept,” The New York Times, April 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/politics/gregory-craig-indictment.html.
22Ivan Pentchoukov, “Clinton Foundation Donor Funded Ukraine Report at Core of Charges Against Former Obama Counsel,” The Epoch Times, April 16, 2019, https://www.theepochtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donor-funded-ukraine-report-at-core-of-charges-against-former-obama-counsel_2881961.html.
23Ibid.
24Solomon, “Ukrainian Embassy Confirms DNC Contractor Solicited Trump Dirt in 2016,” The Hill, May 2, 2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/441892-ukrainian-embassy-confirms-dnc-contractor-solicited-trump-dirt-in-2016.
CHAPTER 9
Fixing the Future
The U.S. Constitution is not just a piece of paper.
To me, it’s the closest thing our nation has to a sacred document. And that, in many ways, is what drove me to write this book and tell this story.
If we can’t agree as Democrats or Republicans, or as conservatives or liberals, on a common set of operating principles to guide the liberty-loving republic envisioned by our nation’s founders and codified in our flexible but firm Constitution, we are doomed. If Russiagate makes one thing crystal clear, it’s that we need to hammer out an agreement about how we use—and don’t use—government intelligence resources to conduct surveillance and to spy on American citizens. We need to clearly define when it’s appropriate. We need to establish how to conduct oversight on such usage in investigations—and how to prevent the weaponization of unconfirmed intelligence and any surveillance for political ends.
If we can’t, the protection of liberty and the right to due process that are specified in the Constitution will become empty words, and the promise of America will be stripped of its future.
That would be a tragedy, not just for America but for the entire world.
As enduring as the Constitution is, its true power comes from a nation that believes in it and adheres to it. It is a flexible document—which is part of its power. But its basic truths should never be forsaken for political gain.
Russiagate should be seen as a cautionary tale for people of all political persuasions. Regardless of who the president is, Republican or Democrat, the fabrication of “raw intelligence” that was systematically laundered, fed to the FBI, and simultaneously leaked to damage and destabilize both a presidential campaign and a presidency should never happen again.
I don’t want to beat up on FBI agents. That is not the point of Exonerated. I believe that 99.9 percent of bureau agents are good, upstanding patriots dedicated to enforcing the law and upholding justice. But the senior managers of the agency dropped the ball. And this was not and is not okay.
Look, this is tricky stuff. Covert cyberoperations allow bad actors to fabricate false stories. Social media offers exponential power to spread those stories. Those who know how to master the various platforms can just pour gasoline on a damaging fiction about a public figure and watch it burn down that person’s career. As digital technology advances, documents can and will be falsified and doctored. Video and audio manipulation is so sophisticated that it will become difficult to ascertain whether tapes of alleged backroom deals, secret meetings, or sex acts are real or are faked kompromat. So the kind of intelligence manipulation at play in Russiagate is likely to grow worse. I have little doubt that counterintelligence will soon evolve from unverified written reports, like the Steele dossier, to high-tech manufactured digital “proof.” God help us when bad actors sample public figures’ voices and then literally put digitally faked, damaging words in their mouths.
This means our political leaders need to hatch a bipartisan set of protocols to ensure that a case like Russiagate never happens again. We need to have safeguards, and there need to be checks and balances. Where are the Democrats standing up and saying this needs to be done? Where are the Republicans who can reach out to Never Trumpers and say, “Hey, guys, look what just happened. If it happened to one president, it can happen to the next occupant in the Oval Office! We, as a nation, need to protect ourselves from this kind of grotesque abuse”?
The issues this book raises should not be viewed as political footballs and opportunities for bloviators to grandstand. National security is hugely important. But so is good governance, the right to privacy, due process, and the presumption of innocence. We need whistleblowers. They need protection. The Obama administration prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other previous administrations combined.1 These people need to be protected, not prosecuted! History tells us that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are not immune to abusing power. To this day, forty-seven years after his death, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s covert campaigns against American citizens are still being discovered. A just-published biography about Nelson Algren, the National Book Award winner for The Man With the Golden Arm (which was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra), reveals that Hoover arranged for the leftist author’s book contract to be canceled and his passport application denied in order to hurt Algren’s soon-to-plummet career.2
I have opposed the key provisions of the PATRIOT Act for constitutional reasons, and I remain against it. America has always defined itself by protecting God-given rights and civil liberties. Law enforcement should not use unsubstantiated rumors to justify running sting operations to hurt political opponents. It should not outsource surveillance on American citizens to foreign intelligence as a way to skirt our own domestic laws. When these things happen, when politicized lawmen and government officials ignore weaponized investigations and ignore civil rights, not to mention basic fair play and decency, then we as a nation have lost our way.
Our leaders need to get back on track. They need to earn our trust. They need to figure out the best way to protect our nation from internal and external investigatory and surveillance abuses. Only when our lawmakers and law enforcers have put a system of checks and balances in place to prevent the gross exploitation we have witnessed will they, too, be exonerated.
1Spencer Ackerman and Ed Pilkington, “Obama’s War on Whistleblowers Leaves Administration Insiders Unscathed,” The Guardian, March 16, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning.
2Jonathan Dees, “Nelson Algren’s Street Cred,” The New Yorker, April 8, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/15/nelson-algrens-street-cred.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
/> Dan Bongino is a former Secret Service agent, NYPD Police Officer, and a former Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate and the House. He is a multiple-time New York Times bestselling author and he is the host of the top-ranked podcast The Dan Bongino Show.
