Russiagate -- 3rd Annual Review

In February 2018, I made the case that Russia-gate is overblown.  A year later, on March 25, 2019, I revisited the affair in Russiagate Redux - Falling Into the Trap.  I concluded:

I'm mad at the neoliberal and conservative groups for reviving the Cold War and making Trump (libertarian group) stronger by putting him on the truthful side of the Russiagate narrative. They fell into the blind hatred trap.  This is the same trap we fell into after 9/11 when our blind rage with regard to Islamic terrorists led us into an ill advised war in Iraq.  Once again we have been misled by neoconservatives exploiting a bad situation (9/11, Trump presidency) for their warlike purposes.

Another year later, I'm more convinced than ever that "Russiagate" was a horrific fraud perpetrated by the CIA and/or FBI.  It's horrific because of the McCarthyite hysteria that leading Democrats have bought into.  It's an apparent fraud because I have seen no credible defenses of the intelligence agencies' behavior.  Here are some examples from the past year.

Inspector General's FISA Investigation

Inspector general Michael Horowitz (appointed by Obama) investigated the surveillance of Carter Page by the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in general.  The FBI officials being investigated tried to defend themselves as follows back in April 2019:

“Former U.S. officials interviewed by the inspector general were skeptical about the quality of his probe,” Bertrand wrote in Politico last week. “They emphasized to Horowitz that information in a warrant application need not be wholly verified, as long as the reliability of the source of the information is disclosed to the court.” Democrats have insisted that the FISA court was given fair warning that Christopher Steele’s dossier was opposition research;  

Add up all this criticism — that the IG’s probe is of dubious “quality”; that Horowitz exposed his ignorance of the “FISA process”; that he is too hardheaded to listen to “explanations”; that the IG is prone to being “irked” — and what comes through isn’t a frustration with Horowitz’s failures, but fear of what he may do. Thus the need to discredit him preemptively. 

 When Horowitz's reports were released however, there was documentation of serious malfeasance.   From the NY Times, from December 11, 2019:  We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly:

The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. 

But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court. 

To give just three examples: 

First, when agents initially sought permission for the wiretap, F.B.I. officials scoured information from confidential informants and selectively presented portions that supported their suspicions that Mr. Page might be a conduit between Russia and the Trump campaign’s onetime chairman, Paul Manafort. 

But officials did not disclose information that undercut that allegation — such as the fact that Mr. Page had told an informant in August 2016 that he “never met” or “said one word” to Mr. Manafort, who had never returned Mr. Page’s emails. Even if the investigators did not necessarily believe Mr. Page, the court should have been told what he had said. 

Second, as the initial court order was nearing its expiration and law-enforcement officials prepared to ask the surveillance court to renew it, the F.B.I. had uncovered information that cast doubt on some of its original assertions. But law enforcement officials never reported that new information to the court. 

Specifically, the application included allegations about Mr. Page contained in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent whose research was funded by Democrats. In January 2017, the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Steele’s own primary source, and he contradicted what Mr. Steele had written in the dossier. 

The source for Mr. Steele may, of course, have been lying. But either way, officials should have flagged the disconnect for the court. Instead, the F.B.I. reported that its agents had met with the source to “further corroborate” the dossier and found him to be “truthful and cooperative,” leaving a misleading impression in renewal applications. 

Finally, the report stressed Mr. Page’s long history of meeting with Russian intelligence officials. But he had also said that he had a relationship with the C.I.A., and it turns out that he had for years told the agency about those meetings — including one that was cited in the wiretap application as a reason to be suspicious of him.

So the FBI officials protesting anonymously were proven wrong about the specifics of the Carter Page surveillance.  And their insistence that the FISA process in general has been handled well has also been discredited:  IG Horowitz Found ‘Apparent Errors or Inadequately Supported Facts’ in Every Single FBI FISA Application He Reviewed (March 31, 2020):

The Justice Department inspector general said it does “not have confidence” in the FBI’s FISA application process following an audit that found the Bureau was not sufficiently transparent with the court in 29 applications from 2014 to 2019, all of which included “apparent errors or inadequately supported facts.”

McCabe admitted in January that the FBI has an “inherent weakness in the process” of obtaining FISA warrants. 

 Durham Investigation

In May 2019, U.S. Attorney General William Barr tasked John Durham with overseeing a review of the origins of the Russia investigation and to determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was "lawful and appropriate".  Similar to the Inspector General's investigation, we are getting self-serving leaks to the press that the investigator does not understand how the intelligence agencies work:  Justice Dept. Is Investigating C.I.A. Resistance to Sharing Russia Secrets.  

Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said. 

But officials from the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency have told Mr. Durham and his investigators that such an interpretation is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions, the people said. National security officials are typically cautious about sharing their most delicate information, like source identities, even with other agencies inside the executive branch.

The Durham investigation has rattled current and former intelligence officers. Little precedent exists for a criminal prosecutor to review the analytic judgment-making process of intelligence agencies, said Michael Morrell, a former acting C.I.A. director who left the government in 2013. 

“This whole thing is so abnormal,” Mr. Morrell said. 

Prosecutors are ill equipped to assess how analysts work, he added. “The bar for making a legal judgment is really high. The bar for an analytic decision is much lower,” Mr. Morrell said. “So he is going to get the wrong answer if he tries to figure out if they had enough information to make this judgment.” 

But other intelligence officials, according to an American official, are reserving judgment about Mr. Durham, who previously spent years investigating the C.I.A. over its torture program and its destruction of interrogation videotapes without charging anyone with a crime. Two detainees died in the agency’s custody. 

Mr. Durham is a longtime federal prosecutor who has repeatedly been asked, under administrations of both parties, to investigate accusations of wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

So once again, we have an investigation of the intelligence agencies in process, and we have insiders telling the press that the investigators just don't understand how the intelligence agencies work.  As was the case with Horowitz investigation, the insiders seem to be trying to spin an investigation that is finding insider misconduct.

The Obvious Malfeasance

My personal observation, which I've documented here, is that the allegations of Trump collusion with Russia were fabricated by the FBI and/or CIA.  It's obvious to me.  I occasionally look at articles attempting to support the FBI/CIA and invariably I find them unconvincing and similar to the articles quoted above saying that the investigators just don't understand how the intelligence community works.  Frequently, they'll just quote an intelligence insider denying any wrongdoing, and leave it at that.  At most they'll say something like "Joseph Mifsud" is an international man of mystery, without following through on the obvious signs that he was a western intelligence asset.  

Another recent development was the dropping of charges against the Russian troll firm:

Before a pandemic, there was a time when we were relentlessly told to fear Russian social media accounts. Their juvenile memes not only elected Trump, but also "sowed chaos." When Mueller indicted 13 Russians over it, he was hailed as a hero. Well, DOJ just dropped the case: ...  

For a snapshot in time, this was the NYT homepage after the Russian troll farm indictment back in February 2018. Russia, we were told, "is engaged in a virtual war against the United States."

to people claiming this is all Bill Barr's doing: the motion to dismiss was signed by a prosecutor on Mueller team and another who worked closely w/ Mueller team.

and Justice Department Mueller against two Russian companies accused of funding the “troll farms” in the 2016 election:

The charging of the defendant brought MSNBC Rachel Maddow close to tears in proclaiming that “For me, personally, hearing these charges and hearing what they were charging these Russians for — it was the first time that I felt like finally, finally, for the first time since we realized all this was happened, finally, it feels like someone is defending us.” The emotion around the case often seem disconnected from the actual evidence both against the companies and more importantly on any real impact on the 2016 election. 

Prosecutors now say that the trial “unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States.” It is a curious conclusion since they have been litigating the case for years...  That claim seemed like more of a spin in a case that never seemed to materialize into hard evidence to support these charges. 

So, from my perspective, after another year and a failed impeachment trial, the facts of Russiagate continue to point to a conspiracy theory invented by the intelligence community and swallowed whole by the Democratic establishment and the mainstream media.

The McCarthyite Hysteria

It's become common for opponents of the mainstream Democrats to be labeled Putin lovers.  For example, Hillary Clinton opined that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset.  Howard Dean tried to discredit a #MeToo charge against Biden by associating one media outlet that published it with Putin undermining the 2016 election.  Tara Reade herself, who claimed that she was assaulted by Biden, reported this:

I’m being called a Russian agent, this happened. Biden supporters would just write…you’re a Russian agent, you’re a bot. And it’s being silenced about sexual assault and sexual harassment.  It’s like McCarthyism
Yeah. He said, I know you live in _____, you know, we’re coming, you’re a traitor, you’d better get Putin to protect you. 

I've been mocked myself as a Russian dupe.  Rachel Maddow garnered a vast audience and made millions of dollars promoting Putin conspiracies on MSNBC with former CIA Director John Brennan as a frequent guest expert.  My closest friends and family bought into this.

I'm open to arguments that justify the intelligence community behavior in cooperation with the Democrats and the mainstream media.  I just haven't seen any in the 2 years since my initially skeptical reaction to Russiagate.