Russia-gate is over. But what really happened?

                    

By Reginald Johnson

     
    Finally, some truth has emerged in the long-running Russia-gate scandal.

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller, after an exhaustive two year investigation, concluded that there was no conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

   The Mueller investigative team employed dozens of attorneys and interviewed more than 500 witnesses. They issued  2800 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants and  issued 230 orders for communications records, according to a statement by U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

   On the issue of possible obstruction of  justice by Trump, both Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein --- who had originally ordered the Russia probe ---- said they found insufficient evidence in the Mueller report to prove that President Trump had illegally tried to impede the investigation.

  The report is clearly a vindication of  Trump, who has maintained all along that the claims about collusion with Russia were a hoax.

   While Trump and his family still face legal jeopardy from investigations into other matters, the culmination of the Mueller probe marks the effective end of the Russia-gate scandal.

   That began in the summer of 2016, when claims were made that Russia had hacked Democratic Party computers and gained information damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in order to undermine her campaign and throw the election to Trump.

   About the same time, word of a secret dossier emerged, a document written by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, which claimed that Trump had connections with the Russian government and was doing their bidding. Steele was paid by a firm doing opposition research for the Clinton campaign.

 On July 31, 2016, the FBI began an investigation of the Trump campaign.

  A McCarthyistic hysteria  took over Washington, with pundits, former intelligence officials and lawmakers accusing Trump and his family of  being traitors and secretly helping the Russian government and Vladimir Putin.

The frenzy continued unabated for two years, and, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey,  ostensibly for his improper handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, there were bi-partisan demands that a special counsel be set up to look at Russian election interference and possible collusion by Trump.

   Mueller, who had been the FBI director for years prior to Comey, was then appointed to conduct the probe.   

   Although Democratic members of Congress vow to continue the Russia investigation in the House, with several leaders saying they are not satisfied with Mueller’s  conclusions, it is hard to see how these committee probes will lead anywhere, and more importantly, why the American people would take them seriously.

  Polling by USA Today done just before the Mueller report was issued, showed that 50% of the American people agreed with Trump that the Russia collusion investigation was a “witch hunt.”   Now that the report is out --- essentially clearing Trump --- it is likely that a majority of Americans would  be skeptical about the purpose of any further investigations. The House inquiries could in fact turn into a political liability for Democrats heading into the 2020 election season.

President Donald Trump

   While the result of the Mueller investigation has settled the issue of collusion, it did nothing to answer a number of other crucial questions.  Just what was the basis for suspecting Trump was compromised  by Russia in the first place? Was the Steele dossier a legitimate basis for the FBI launching an investigation? Who was pushing the campaign to paint Trump and his family as being traitors?

 Another issue that needed investigation was the FBI application filed in October of 2016 for a surveillance warrant from the Foreign intelligence Surveillance Court  (FISC), that enabled them to spy on the Trump campaign. The Steele dossier again was used to provide a basis for the application.  FBI officials, including Comey, conceded later that they never verified the claims in the document.  But they went ahead anyway with the application for the warrant.

 It also appears that  FBI and Justice officials did not adequately disclose to the court the political origins of the dossier. If the court was intentionally misled, that would be fraud, and those who signed off on the application, including Comey, could be prosecuted.

   These issues need to be fully investigated, because they turn on whether there have been serious abuses of power by the leaders of our government, in the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department and even by the former president, Barack Obama.

  Looking back on the whole saga, there is good reason to believe that the drive to portray Trump as compromised, was orchestrated by members of the intelligence community, officials of the Justice Department and possibly Obama.

  This cabal, oriented to the neo-con interventionist mindset, wanted to make sure that the hawkish Hillary Clinton  won the presidency. They didn’t like Trump. The New York businessman, who had talked in his campaign about improving relations with Russia and staying away from interventions such as Syria, was seen as an unreliable commodity, who couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing.

   What better way to undermine Trump’s campaign  than to paint him as a Russian agent ---  after an FBI- authorized investigation found that Democratic National Committee campaign computers were hacked by Russians and information  damaging to Clinton was then given to Wikileaks for publication?  It was a perfect storyline. Trump had sold out to the Russians.

  The transcripts of cell phone text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, released by the Inspector General and a Senate committee in January 2018, point to a conspiracy by FBI officials and others to frame Trump and  block his election.

   Strzok, who was the lead investigator in the Trump probe, and his paramour, Lisa Page, an agency attorney, exchanged numerous messages in which they showed a hatred for Trump and an strong preference for Clinton. They used profanities to describe Trump.

   Then in one message to Page, Strzok referenced a meeting in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s office, in which Trump’s election chances were discussed.

  “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office --- that there’s no way he gets elected --- but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok wrote.

  What was the insurance policy? Apparently it was using the counter intelligence probe into the Trump campaign to gain negative information about Trump and use that, together with the dossier, to spread misinformation in the media about the GOP candidate and thwart his election.

   Another text message between Strzok and Page linked Obama to the conspiracy.

 “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” Strzok said.

   After his surprising  election victory, the drive against Trump turned into a coup attempt.  First, anti-Trump forces took the highly-unusual step of trying to persuade electors in the Electoral College to change their votes from Trump to Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State and military hawk.  That didn’t work.

  In the spring of  2017,  according to a report on “60 Minutes,”  McCabe,  Rosenstein and other officials discussed the idea of Rosenstein wearing a wire and then meeting with Trump and seeing if the president might say something incriminating.  If that happened, members of the Cabinet were going to be asked to invoke the 25^th amendment, which allows the Cabinet to remove a president if he or she is deemed unable to carry out the duties of their office. There was never any follow-up on this discussion, which Rosenstein denies having.

  With respect to the entire Russia-collusion case, the actions of  FBI and Justice Department officials, CIA Director John Brennan (who behind the scenes peddled the phony Steele dossier to members of Congress and the media) and President Obama, need to be thoroughly investigated by Congress or by an independent commission.

   Members of the journalism community also have to take a long hard look at their performance during the entire Russia- gate scandal.  Simply put, it’s been terrible. Too many reporters and editors too eagerly embraced the Trump-Russia-collusion narrative as fact. The cardinal rule of journalism --- to show skepticism and think critically --- was tossed out the window. As a result, numerous “major” stories turned out to be wrong. CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, all made mistakes or over-hyped many of the Trump-Russia stories.

 What caused the press failures? Part of it was the desire of reporters to be the next Woodward-Bernstein, to break that big Watergate-style story that brings down a president. In other cases reporters were too cozy with members of the intelligence community, and they willingly spit out a false story line.

  Over the years, I’ve had little use for conservative media. Often I find conservative pundits completely off- base. But on Trump-Russia collusion, outlets like FOX --- which consistently questioned the conspiracy narrative --- got it right. They deserve credit.

  The nation has been through a lot during the last three years of Russia-gate. There’s been abuses of power by top officials of our government. The democratic process has been undermined. Journalists covering the story have shown a lack of professionalism.

  Now, there has to be a reckoning.