January 2018
The investigation into possible Trump -Russia collusion, is by any measure, very aggressive. In addition to the special counsel probe led by Robert Mueller, there are three congressional committees pursuing their own parallel inquiries. There is also no shortage of media coverage reporting on every leak and revelation. This extensive interest in all things involving Russia makes the lack of curiosity, and dearth of answers surrounding certain actions, perplexing.
Starting with the breach of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) computer network. A satisfactory answer has never been given as to why the DNC refused to hand over their servers to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Both Jeh Johnson, former secretary of DHS and James Comey, former FBI Director, testified separately before congressional panels, that the DNC declined their help, and refused to turn over their servers to the government agencies. Instead they relied on a private cyber security company, CrowdStrike, to investigate the hacking.
To this day the intelligence community has not analyzed, first hand, the DNC computer server. Strikingly, many have been critical of the lack of substance in the January report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Even The New York Times commented, “The declassified report contained no information about how the agencies had collected their data or has come to their conclusion.” Yet based on this report everyone is to accept as fact that Russia not only was responsible for the Democratic National Committee breach, and John Podesta email hack, but also actively worked against Hillary Clinton to get Donald Trump elected. It is worth noting that Russian actors attempted to infiltrate the Republican National Committee’s computer system, but failed to get past security defenses.
The testimony on capital hill of representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google belie the foregone conclusion that Russia’s motivation was to get Trump elected. According to Richard Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, many of the ads bought with Russian rubles contradict the narrative that their main goal was to help Trump and hurt Clinton. It was the consensus among the tech representatives that the only obvious Russian motive was to sow discord and exploit divisions between Americans.
Another perplexing unanswered question is why did Samantha Powers, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, (or someone using her name, as she claimed when testifying before congress), “unmask” the identities of Americans, not under surveillance, but caught incidentally speaking to someone being monitored, 260 times. The volume of the unmasking was unprecedented, and her position had no apparent intelligence relation function. Further, if she did not request the release of these identities, then who made these requests under her name, and why?
No adequate explanation has ever been given as to why during the remaining weeks of Obama’s presidency the National Security Agency (NSA) relaxed their classification rules. This allowed for the easy dissemination of globally intercepted communications with the 16 other intelligence agencies before screening out irrelevant personal information, such as the identities of the innocent, making it more likely for intelligence of private citizens to be circulated improperly and leaked. Who was behind this change in protocol and what was the intended purpose?
These unanswered questions lead to wondering if intelligence authorities were improperly used to investigate the Trump campaign, and subsequent transition team. Were national security powers used under a pretext, with the real purpose of conducting political spying? Was this an attempt to weaponize the media, via leaked information, to cast doubt on Trumps win?
Much ado was made when it was revealed that Don Jr. met with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskya, in an attempt to gain discrediting information on Hillary Clinton. Incredibly, the same news agencies declaring this evidence of a willingness of the Trump campaign to collude with Russian operatives, dismissed the news that Hillary Clinton and the DNC financed the infamous Russian sourced dossier on Trump. Through a law firm, Perkins Coie, the DNC and the Clinton campaign, commissioned the research firm, Fusion GPS, who in turn hired a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, to gather damaging information on Trump. It was revealed by Fox News that hours before Don Jr. met with Veselnitskya she was with one of the founders of Fusion, Glenn Simpson, in a federal courtroom for a hearing centered on another Fusion client, Russian oligarch Denis katsyv. They met again a couple of days after the meeting. This raises suspicions that perhaps Veselnitskya and Simpson were working together to ensnare Don Jr. and consequently hurt the Trump campaign. It is also noteworthy that the same month that Perkins Coie hired Fusion on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, that Obama’s campaign paid Perkins Coie $900,000.
One refrain among the media was that this was standard oppositional research. However, the reality was Clinton and the DNC financed a foreign spy to gather derogatory information from anonymous Russian sources. Although not publically released in its entirety until after the election, Steele admits that as early as September 2016 he briefed various media outlets on his research. On September 23, 2016 Yahoo News posted an article entitled “ U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump advisor and Kremlin”, citing many of the unfounded dossier allegations about Carter Page, a brief advisor to the Trump campaign. Incredulously, the same democrats decrying Russian “fake news” and interference in the election, willfully circulated some of the information in this unsubstantiated, and in parts verifiably erroneous report. Soon after the Yahoo article implicating Page was published, Clinton surrogates including Jennifer Palmieri , Clinton’s communication director, cited it during television appearances. Numerous times during the campaign Harry Reid, the former senator from Nevada, accused Trump of collusion with Russia, citing “classified briefings”. Was Reid referring to the dossier? Steel himself has conceded that due to unverified accusations in his report that it never should have been made public.
As reported by CNN, the FBI relied upon the unsubstantiated dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrant against Carter Page, a brief advisor to the Trump campaign. Page, however, has denied meeting the officials mentioned in the dossier and the allegations against him. Page is currently suing Yahoo news along with other media outlets claiming “reckless” and “irresponsible” journalism. The questions remains, how much did the FBI rely on this document throughout their investigation? It’s noteworthy that Steele gave the dossier to the FBI in early June 2016. The FBI began their Russian Trump collusion counterintelligence investigation at the end of June 2016. It is also concerning that the head of the FBI at the time, James Comey, gave legitimacy to an unverified report commissioned by a political opponent, by bringing the dossier to the white house to brief Trump shortly after his election. Not surprisingly this visit was leaked to CNN, with the consequent effect of de facto validation.
Charles Grassley, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has questioned whether Steele had revealed the contents of his report to British or other foreign intelligence agencies. If this occurred and Britain, or others, shared this information with American intelligence, this “echo” from the dossier could have been interpreted as a second source that corroborated the Steele report, and unwittingly presented as evidence to the FISA court. Incredulously, It has also been reported that the FBI offered to pay Steele to continue his work after the campaign.
A second refrain among many news outlets, is that Fusion GPS was first hired by a conservative website, The Washington Free Beacon, to conduct oppositional research. This is disingenuous. The Free Beacon was not involved in the funding of the Russian dossier on Trump. Steele was hired to conduct a Kremlin sourced investigation only after the DNC and Clinton took over the funding.
After 18 months of seemingly exhaustive investigations there are still many unanswered questions. Unfortunately, there appears to be disinterest in probing certain actions that do not implicate Trump or his campaign staff in nefarious deeds. In spite of best efforts there is zero public evidence of Trump –Russia collusion. Unfortunately, finding evidence to implicate Trump, and invalidate his presidency appears to be the left’s and the media’s, (many would say there one in the same), main objective.
