Four Reports, One Election

Everything we know about Russian interference in 2016, and the FBI's flawed investigation

The 2016 presidential election was not normal. That’s true in several ways, but perhaps most important, both major party candidates were under active investigation by the FBI. At the time, it was the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server that dominated the news since it was public knowledge. However, since then it’s been issues surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that have been the focus of four major government reports.

The Investigations

The Justice department appointed Robert Mueller in May 2017, just months after President Trump took office. They tasked him with investigating Russian interference, the possible involvement of Trump in that interference, and whether Trump obstructed justice in suppressing the FBI’s investigation. Running concurrent to the Mueller investigation was the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which conducted a bi-partisan investigation into pretty much all aspects of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice, Inspector General (IG) Report focused on potential issues with the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign. Finally, Special Counsel John Durham was appointed to investigate and potentially prosecute any crimes committed during the investigation of the Trump campaign.

Given how partisan the political environment in America has become, you might think that putting together a coherent narrative of events based on agreed upon facts would be impossible. But you’d be wrong. The remarkable thing about these four reports is how closely they align with each other. These investigations focused on different, but often overlapping aspects of the 2016 election. Combined these investigations represent over a decade of research into the events surrounding that election and came back with over 2,000 pages of evidence and findings. This article describes what we know happened, what we’re not sure about, and my commentary on the significance of various events.

The Trump Campaign

As Trump announced his intent to run for president, two existing facts were about to collide. First, Trump’s long-standing desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow that had remained stubbornly elusive. Second, Russia’s increasingly aggressive attempts to influence American elections in response to sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. Trump had pursued various business interest in Russia since at least the 1990s and had taken several trips there over the years. Just months after his announcement two new offers from Russia came in looking to partner with him on building a tower in Moscow.

There’s no hard evidence to prove there’s a relationship between the offers to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and Russia’s new push to influence U.S. elections, but it’s hard to believe they’re not related. Having a major candidate for the American presidency who is financially tied to Russia and didn’t bat an eye at the obvious conflict of interest played perfectly into Putin’s hands.

Over the course of the winter and spring of 2016 events continued to unfold perfectly for Russian interests. Donald Trump began building a foreign policy team filled with pro-Russian advisors, none of whom were vetted. As a result, most of them were under qualified, and many had their own Russian financial conflicts of interest. The most important of them was Paul Manafort who had a long history of business dealings in Russia and Ukraine and believed they owed him millions of dollars. At the same time, Russian intelligence successfully hacked into the computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), accessing many of the Democrats confidential documents. These efforts didn’t go unnoticed by the FBI who began investigating this activity.

Russian Hacking

In April 2016, one of Trump’s unvetted foreign policy advisors, George Papadopoulos, learned of the successful Russian DNC hacking while trying to negotiate an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin. Papadopoulos quickly relayed this information to the rest of the Trump campaign. Unfortunately for Trump, Papadopoulos was more interested in making a name for himself than keeping his big mouth closed. He blabbed all about the Russian activities while drinking with an Australian diplomate who reported the conversation. Australia eventually communicated what they had learned to the FBI.

After learning of the hack, Trump wanted a copy of the stolen materials. Aras Agalarov, a Russian businessman that Trump worked with on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, arranged a meeting with the promise of “dirt” on Clinton. On June 9th in Trump Tower, Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to the Russian government. However, it appears the Trump team were disappointed with what they got. Still wanting to learn more about Clinton’s hacked files, they began working with Roger Stone, who they believed had advanced knowledge of the Wikileaks releases. On at least one occasion Stone was able to brief the Trump campaign on the contents of a leak ahead of time.

The FBI Investigation

Even though the Trump Tower meeting proved unsuccessful, it’s still important because it confirms that Trump was aware of Russia’s hacking activity and wanted to benefit from it. Ironically, if the Russians had given Trump what he wanted, it probably would have represented criminal foreign collusion. To be fair, opposition research is a normal part of campaigns. Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to poke around to see what they could find out about Trump’s ties to Russia. This research became the basis of the Steele dossier that the FBI used in its investigation of Trump. That’s normal opposition research. Trump reached out to a representative of a foreign government to obtain stolen documents. That’s not normal and bordered on illegal.

The FBI opened an investigation into Russian’s targeting of Democratic computers in the spring of 2016. They learned from Australia in July that the Trump campaign already knew all about the hacking. The fact that Trump seemed to welcome the Russian assistance rather than reporting it to law enforcement made Trump’s actions particularly suspicious. At about the same time they detected unusual internet activity between Russia’s largest bank, Alpha Bank, and the Trump campaign. This suggested possible unreported financial transactions between Trump’s campaign and Russia. The FBI decided this information called for opening a new investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Durham report calls this decision into question. Durham points out that the FBI didn’t independently corroborate the information from the Australian diplomat and points out that Papadopoulos wasn’t a paid member of the Trump campaign. However, the FBI considered the information reliable, and there was no requirement to corroborate it before opening a case. Papadopoulos being unpaid was irrelevant. He was working in close coordination with the Trump campaign and was in frequent communication with them. The IG Report found that this met a reasonable standard for opening an investigation, a fact Durham doesn’t directly refute.

Durham’s Critiques

Durham also compares the FBI’s handling of information concerning the Clinton and Trump campaigns. He questions why the FBI decided to brief Clinton that her computers were the target of Russian intelligence, but didn’t brief Trump about information they found out about his campaign. This whole line of reasoning from Durham is very odd. The Clinton campaign was the target of criminal activity, while the Trump campaign was suspected of committing crimes. It’s frankly confusing why Durham thinks the FBI would react the same to these two very different situations.

Another area Durham spends considerable time focusing on is possible political bias in the FBI. It’s well documented that one of the principal agents in the case, Peter Strzok, made very damning statements. At one point he texted another agent that they would stop Trump from getting elected. Later he texted the same person that Trump would never become president. As bad as that looks, the evidence shows it was isolated, and the IG investigation found no evidence of bias in the decision to open the investigation.

No Collusion

This is only a small part of Russia’s overall efforts to influence the election. They were actively pushing out misinformation on social media, had informants in both campaigns, and strategically timed the release of the stolen Clinton files on Wikileaks to gain maximum advantage for Donald Trump. Although there are still significant gaps in our knowledge, there isn’t any evidence supporting the charge of collusion between Trump and the Russians. It seems likely the reason for this is the Russians had no interest in colluding with the Trump campaign. They clearly saw Trump was more advantageous to Russia’s interest, but they simply didn’t need, or want, his assistance. Rather than helping their efforts, working directly with him risked either Trump, or one of his inexperienced staffers, messing up the operation. It was much safer to keep their efforts to influence the election as separate from the Trump campaign as possible.

With years of investigation by Robert Mueller, only to find there was no evidence of collusion, it became a frequent Republican talking point that the “deep state” had corrupted the FBI to the core. Many believed a Trump directed investigation into the FBI’s actions would reveal the rot, and expose the “crime of the century.” To that end, Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, appointed John Durham as special counsel to investigate misdeeds and political bias in the FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign.

The Durham investigation was the most obviously partisan of the four investigations. However, John Durham is a respected federal prosecutor, and we need to take this investigation seriously. His investigation essentially covered the same ground as the earlier IG investigation and had largely the same conclusions. I’ve already discussed some of these findings, but their most significant findings involved the FBI’s application to get FISA warrants to surveil four individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

Flawed FISA Warrants

The FBI has a requirement to accurately portray the evidence on FISA applications, it quickly became clear they failed to do so in this case. The IG report methodically lays out 17 instances of the FBI either misrepresenting the evidence or excluding evidence that didn’t support their case. The court rejected their first attempt at a FISA application for a lack of evidence. Soon after that they learned about the previously mentioned Steele dossier and incorporated it into their renewed applications, which the judge approved.

On the application they referred to Trump advisor Carter Page as a Russian agent. However, they failed to mention that the CIA had approved him as a reliable source of intelligence and gave a positive review of his candor. The FBI consistently included statements in their applications that made an individual look guilty, but withheld other statements that contradicted that assertion. The applications overstated the importance of past intelligence gathered from Christopher Steele, while not revealing issues with the information he provided. Even Steele indicated one of his sub-sources embellished some of the information he supplied. They didn’t include that in the application.

The Steele Dossier

In fact, none of the information in the dossier was independently corroborated. The Steele dossier included reports of a sex tape that the Russians had on Trump from one of his visits to Russia. There was another report of a compromising video from a Moscow hotel elevator of Trump and a Russian prostitute. Given Trump’s history and the Russian proclivity for collecting compromising information on people, these claims certainly seemed plausible. However, the only evidence of these claims were people who claimed they heard about these videos, but hadn’t actually seen them. The FBI errored in including that flimsy evidence in the application. The FBI also should have been more transparent in saying this information was gathered as Clinton opposition research.

The Steele dossier also had claims about the relationship between the Trump campaign and Alpha bank in Russia. This seemed to strengthen the evidence of unusual internet traffic between the bank and Trump. However, as the FBI continued to investigate this connection, it seemed less likely that the evidence supported any illicit connection between them. Although there was contradictory information, they determined there were alternate explanations for the internet traffic and no direct evidence of any secret financial transactions.

The IG found the issues with the FISA applications represented a significant break down of the Bureau’s management and supervision. This was all the more surprising given the high-profile nature of this case and attention it was likely to receive. So why did they do it?

Bias, FBI or Durham?

Durham points to confirmation bias on the part of the FBI. He believes they were politically biased against Trump which affected how they interpreted evidence. It caused them to evaluate evidence through a lens that assumed his guilt. There’s probably some truth in that, however, I think it’s more fair to say that law enforcement tends to be biased against criminal suspects. In theory law enforcement should be neutral when evaluating evidence. In reality, once they have a suspect, they tend to focus on evidence that points to their guilt rather than evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative.

The most astonishing thing about the Durham report is how he commits the same logic errors he accuses the FBI of. Statements from both Barr and President Trump made it clear when they appointed him, they expected him to uncover massive corruption in the FBI. That biased the investigation from the start. From Durham’s false equivalency in comparing the FBI’s actions in the Clinton and Trump investigations, to his assuming a political bias accounts for the mistakes made in the case, the report often reads more like a partisan Facebook post rather than a boring matter of fact government report.

Perhaps the most biased, and frankly immature, comments in the Durham Report concern the three prosecutions coming out of his investigations. The first was Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney who was charged with altering the wording of an email. Durham highlights the guilty plea as a major accomplishment, however the judge gave Clinesmith probation and indicated it was likely the result of laziness rather than criminal intent.

Even worse is the way he discusses his two failed prosecutions. Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko were both tried for making false statements to the FBI, both were acquitted. Not hung juries, unanimous “not guilty” verdicts. Despite that, Durham continues to refer to their “false statements” that a jury found they didn’t make. And rather than accepting the verdicts, he blames the acquittals on biased juries rather than the weakness of his cases.

Conclusion

Despite the clear bias of the Durham investigation, he’s still grounded in facts. That’s why, despite his list of grievances about the FBI opening the investigation, he never comes out and says it was a mistake. That’s because he knows they had plenty of probable cause. That’s also why he never launches into a deep state conspiracy rant, he knows that’s nonsense. In fact, he doesn’t even recommend any sweeping changes to the Bureau beyond the reforms already implemented based on the IG Report. In the end, the Durham report is a strange mix of factual findings and biased opinions, that after three and a half years of investigations didn’t uncover anything that wasn’t already known.