Ball of Collusion

by Andrew C. McCarthy

  The agencies’ report, however, was conceived as a political document. It makes boldly suggestive declarations, conjuring visions of a Kremlin-orchestrated coup, ballast for the Democrats’ election-theft narrative. The agencies, for example, tossed in an inchoate conclusion that Russian intelligence has “researched US electoral processes and related technology and equipment,” and even “accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards.” Wait a second, you’re thinking, does that mean they fiddled with the actual votes? No. If you read on, you learn that the Department of Homeland Security “assesses that the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying.”

  So why mention this at all? It wouldn’t be because Trump supporters were highlighting the fact that Russia’s hacking had no impact on the electoral process, would it? Would John Brennan do something like that? No way, right?

  “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” That is what the report says, though you wouldn’t know it to hear a Democrat discuss the matter. Yes, the report breathlessly attests that Russia wanted to “influence” the election, but the agencies admit that the Kremlin’s desire was to “undermine the U.S.-led democratic order” and “faith in the US democratic process.” Did anyone need an intelligence report to know that?

  The Trump Tower Dossier Briefing … and CNN Is There!

  The intelligence chiefs met the president-elect on January 6 at Trump Tower. The main topic was the ICA. It was FBI Director James Comey’s first ever encounter with Donald Trump. As he later recounted in lawyerly Senate testimony, he had a plan for this session and executed it to a tee.

  First, the intelligence chiefs explained the report to the incoming president. Notice the distinction: they briefed Trump on the report about Russia’s interference in the campaign, not the ongoing investigation of Trump campaign coordination in Russia’s cyberespionage. The latter was hinted at in a two-page synopsis of some Steele dossier information that Clapper and the other intel chiefs decided to incorporate in the stack of top-secret briefing materials (though it is unknown if Trump ever saw it). It included the information that was already publicly known because of Senator Reid’s letter to Director Comey after being briefed by Brennan in the late summer—focusing on Carter Page’s alleged meetings with Sechin and Divyekin.

  The chiefs told Trump about the findings that Russia had interfered in the election, that Putin wanted to hurt Clinton and help Trump. They did not tell him about the suspicions confided to the FISC: that they suspected Trump himself was compromised, that his campaign was complicit in Putin’s scheme.

  Comey elaborated that the chiefs had also decided to brief Trump “on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.” That would, of course, be the Steele dossier. Except … not all of the Steele dossier. Comey was clearly referring to the part that would soon be the most notorious, but least consequential: The claims that, in 2013, Trump had cavorted with micturating prostitutes at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow, and that Russian intelligence recorded the escapade.

  In his later testimony, Comey explained that he had been asked by Clapper to handle this part of the briefing alone. The stated rationale was that the presence of fewer people would “minimize potential embarrassment to the President-Elect.” That is laughable. Trump would not be more or less embarrassed depending on whether this information were conveyed by one or more than one intelligence official he barely knew. Comey, moreover, was quick to assure Trump that this scandalous allegation was “salacious and unverified”—suggesting that it was yet another in a long line of tabloid-style Trump stories, so why would he have anything to be embarrassed about?

  If the information was salacious and unverified, why waste the president-elect’s time with it? Comey’s testimonial explanation was not very persuasive. The rationalization involved blackmail. There was apparently a lot of blackmail on the brain in the last days of Obama’s administration: As we’ll see shortly, an incoherent fear-of-blackmail rationale would also be offered by acting-Attorney General Yates for placing General Flynn under investigation.

  With respect to the pee tape allegation, Director Comey reasoned that “to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.” But if the story was nonsense, there was nothing to be concerned about. And the intelligence community had already concluded that the Steele dossier was too unreliable to include in the ICA.19

  By so solemnly briefing such rank rumor, the director succeeded only in persuading the president-elect that a J. Edgar Hoover move was being pulled on him: a not so subtle warning that Comey could leak this compromising information at any time if Trump crossed him, which is how senior FBI officials feared the new president would take it.20

  Comey also told the Senate, “We knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the [intelligence community] should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect.”21 Well that’s … intriguing. The dossier had long been an open secret, circulating among media and political people. How exactly did the agency chiefs know that press outlets were suddenly about to leak it? And why did the director specifically mention CNN as among the outlets that possessed the dossier and was “looking for a news hook”?

  Few journalists have followed the Russia-gate saga with the tenacity and attention to detail of Mollie Hemingway.22 As she notes, it was Clapper, Obama’s National Intelligence Director, who prevailed on Comey to do the one-on-one briefing with Trump. As we’ve seen, Clapper has a history of misleading Congress. In later House Intelligence Committee testimony, Clapper first flatly denied discussing the Steele dossier with any journalist. But then, when confronted about whether he’d discussed it with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Clapper changed his tune, admitting that he’d spoken about it with Tapper as well as other journalists. Clapper recalled that his conversation with Tapper occurred around the time the intelligence chiefs briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump—i.e., January 5 and 6.23

  Interestingly, the FBI’s Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also had a line on CNN’s deliberations. Around noon on January 8, he emailed senior FBI leadership, with the tart subject line, “Flood is coming.”

  It sure was.

  “The sensitive story.” That is what McCabe related that “CNN is close to going forward with.” The network’s “trigger” for running with “the sensitive story” was the fact that, somehow, “they know the material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment”—a reference to the intelligence chiefs’ briefing of the president-elect and the two-page synopsis of the dossier they had decided to include in the briefing materials. Minutes later, McCabe emailed Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to alert her on this latest news about “the sensitive reporting.” “[A]s expected,” he elaborated, “it seems CNN is close to running a story about” it. Yates, who had met with President Obama three days earlier at the Oval Office confab Rice would later memorialize on her way out the door, clearly needed no further explanation about what “the sensitive reporting” was.24

  On January 10, 2017, CNN published its blockbuster story, based on leaks from “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings,” that the intelligence chiefs had told President-elect Trump about the dossier—at least some of it. The story, under the by-line of Jake Tapper and three other journalists, noted that a two-page synopsis of the dossier had been included in the briefing materials. Within minutes of the CNN report, BuzzFeed published the full dossier—which, Tapper later lamented, had undermined the impact of CNN’s reporting.25

  Did I mention that Clapper inked a deal in August 2017 to become a CNN commentator?26

  From the Brits to McCain to the FBI

  Incidentally, BuzzFeed’s acquisition and publication of the dossier is an interesting story of Trump–Russia
collusion—i.e., coordination in crafting of narrative between journalists, current and former government officials, our good friends the Brits, and their good friend (and Trump nemesis), John McCain.

  The late senator had an aide named David Kramer, a former State Department Russia expert, whom he had recruited to the McCain Institute.27 On November 19, 2016, days after Trump had been elected president, McCain and Kramer attended the Halifax International Security Forum. There, Kramer was pulled aside by Sir Andrew Wood, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow and a confidant of Christopher Steele’s. Wood had been consulted by Steele regarding the sensational dossier allegations. Alarmed, he told Kramer that his former British spy friend had gathered intelligence indicating “possible collusion” between Trump and Russia, and that the Kremlin might even have “compromising” information about the president-elect.

  These revelations seemed so troubling that Kramer agreed they must be shared, pronto, with Senator McCain. He proceeded to introduce McCain and his top staffer, Christopher Brose, to Wood, who walked the senator through Steele’s story. Wood said Steele would be willing to meet with the senator or his emissary. McCain turned to Kramer and asked him to fly straightaway to London.

  On November 28, Kramer traveled overnight across the Atlantic. At Heathrow Airport, he met up with Steele, who, in furtive spy-novel style, had texted him to look for the man in the blue coat clutching a copy of the Financial Times. The former spook drove Kramer to his flat. After a quick shower, McCain’s aide was given the dossier reports to read, along with a scrap of paper on which were scribbled the identities of some of Steele’s sources. Kramer recognized some of the names from his Russian work.28

  Steele acknowledged that the data was raw and unverified, in need of follow-up investigation. He said he had given the materials to an FBI agent in Europe (Gaeta) and “was hopeful that the FBI would take a serious look at this.” He apparently did not mention that the Bureau had been looking at it for over four months, and had recently terminated him as an official informant for exposing their investigation in his Mother Jones interview (which Kramer had not yet read). Steele said he was worried about the portents for the U.S.–U.K. alliance, and thought “having Senator McCain weigh in would be hopeful in terms of giving the FBI additional prod to take this seriously.”

  After a brief lunch, Steele drove Kramer back to the airport for the quick-turnaround flight home. He did not give Kramer a copy of the dossier—it was, after all, sensitive reporting. Rather, he arranged for Simpson to contact Kramer in Washington the next day. At Fusion’s Dupont Circle office, Simpson gave the dossier to the McCain aide, explaining that The New York Times was already aware of some its allegations. Simpson agreed to remain in touch with Kramer regarding the dossier’s delivery to Senator McCain and any next steps. The following afternoon, December 1, Kramer gave the dossier to McCain and Brose at the senator’s Capitol Hill office, advising the senator to alert the directors of the FBI and CIA about the material. Though Steele had told Kramer the FBI already had his reports, McCain indicated that he would personally share the dossier with Director Comey. He visited the FBI director on December 9, delivering the dossier. (The senator, who was already quite ill by then, died in August.)

  In the meantime, Kramer kept a copy. After he met with Simpson, a series of journalists began contacting him. Obviously, Simpson and Steele calculated that the dossier would be more newsworthy if reporters heard about it from the McCain camp than if they heard about it from Fusion. In his dealings with the media, Kramer says he stressed that Steele’s jaw-dropping allegations were unverified, and that it was vital to maintain discretion while the matter was under investigation. He discussed the dossier with David Corn, the Mother Jones reporter who had interviewed Steele and given some of the dossier to the FBI’s general counsel, Jim Baker. He talked about it with ABC News producer Matt Mosk and correspondent Brian Ross, who appeared to have at least some of the dossier already. He spoke about it with The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman.

  The McCain aide also took it on himself—with all due discretion, of course—to provide copies of the dossier to McClatchy’s Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, to Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post’s editorial page, to The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Cullison, and to NPR’s Bob Little. In addition, at Steele’s request, Kramer met with CNN’s Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame), first in New York City on around January 3 or 4, then in Washington a few days later (i.e., during the period when CNN was also speaking with Clapper about Steele’s allegations). During those discussions, Kramer decided to give Bernstein a copy.

  Finally, at Steele’s urging, the McCain aide met with BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger. Steele vouched for Bensinger as a “very trustworthy and professional” journalist whom Steele had “worked with” during the FBI’s FIFA soccer investigation. Bensinger called Kramer from Los Angeles and said he would soon fly cross-country to see the dossier. They met at the McCain Institute in Washington on December 29—Christmas season, when the office was mostly vacant. After rehearsing his connection with the sensitive matter through Sir Andrew Wood and Senator McCain, Kramer allowed Bensinger to read the document. Explaining that he was a slow reader, Bensinger asked if he could take pictures of the document, but Kramer asked him not to do that … before leaving him alone in a room with the dossier for about twenty minutes.

  On January 10, Kramer met in Washington with the Guardian’s Julian Borger about Steele’s anti-Trump research. As they sat in a lounge, a large television was tuned in to CNN, which suddenly broke the news about the dossier. The pair traded “Holy shit!” exclamations. Kramer quickly returned to his office, where a distraught Simpson called to say that BuzzFeed had published the dossier—each page photographed by Bensinger in Kramer’s office. The McCain aide replied that he would “ask them to take it down.” He immediately phoned Bensinger, and “the first words out of [Kramer’s] mouth were, ‘You are gonna get people killed!” Bensinger would not agree to remove the dossier from Buzz-Feed’s website, though he promised to consider some redactions and to keep Kramer’s name out of the coverage. Simpson subsequently told Kramer that the publicity (which Steele and Simpson had instigated) was causing him and Fusion considerable problems. Steele told Kramer he was going into hiding because The Wall Street Journal was about to identify him as the author. Kramer pleaded with the Journal’s news editors not to do that, but they had already made up their minds.

  The president-elect flew into a rage over the coverage. The CNN report about the briefing had obviously come from the intelligence agencies, and, he observed in Trumpian hyperbole, the machinations of these officials were reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s tactics.29 The intelligence agencies expected news coverage about the dossier because some of their officials were talking to the media. They used that expectation as their rationalization for briefing Trump on the “sensitive reporting.” The intelligence chiefs’ decision to brief Trump on it became CNN’s rationalization for breaking news about the dossier. In turn, CNN’s breaking of the news became BuzzFeed’s rationalization for publishing the dossier.

  The Russia-gate narrative now had a fitting public script: raw, unverifiable innuendo, given the presumption of trustworthiness because it was about Trump.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Not a Suspect?

  What would make the Obama administration think Trump would allow the Russia investigation to continue if he was the main suspect? Of course, the administration thought no such thing.

  The urgent need to keep investigating “Russia’s attack on our democracy” would be stressed to the public. Obama had already taken care of this. First his ballyhooed “national emergency” executive order announced Russian sanctions, the expulsion of Russian operatives, and the seizure of Russian properties. Next, he rolled out the intelligence agencies’ assessment, which addressed Moscow’s provocation in stark terms and emphasized that Trump was the intended beneficiary—just a short hop from the portrayal of Trump as the complic
it beneficiary.

  From a political standpoint, this would ratchet up the pressure on the new president to let the investigation proceed. Then, to put Trump at ease, he would be told he was not a suspect, even though the public would surely assume he was the main suspect. This news would be delivered to him by Director Comey—who would repeatedly tell the new president that they needed to guard against creating a public narrative that the FBI was investigating him—even as the FBI repeated Steele dossier allegations in FISA warrant applications, and even as, we shall see, the director himself made the stunning public revelation that the Bureau was investigating Trump campaign coordination in Russia’s cyberespionage.1

  The FBI director is given a ten-year term of office. Director Comey sometimes suggested this was Congress’s way of ensuring the independence of the nation’s top federal law-enforcement agent. Not so. The tenure provision was enacted in 1976,2 after J. Edgar Hoover’s death four years earlier. What Congress and President Gerald R. Ford wanted to ensure was that there would never again be a director who reigned for nearly a half-century with Washington cowering in fear of the deep dark secrets in his files. The ten-year term was conceived as a limit, not a license. It subjected the Bureau to more political control, not less. More importantly, as Director Comey rightly recognized in his conversations with President Trump, the ten-year term is merely nominal. As a matter of constitutional law, all executive power is reposed in the president; therefore, subordinate executive officials, including the FBI director, are delegates who are permitted to exercise the president’s power at the president’s pleasure. They may be removed without cause.3

  Donald Trump prizes personal loyalty (to him) above all else. He did not know the FBI director. It would not have been difficult to figure out, though, that they were not personalities that would coexist easily. The new president’s circle of advisers was not exactly the Jim Comey Fan Club—Rudy Giuliani, who had hired Comey as a young prosecutor in the 1980s, had become disenchanted. So why did Trump retain Comey when he could easily have dismissed him?