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FBI Thwarted an Investigation into How Russians Injected Disinformation in the Steele Dossier

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Judging from the chronology of his interview transcripts, John Durham first started chasing his conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton by September 17, 2019 (a detail I’ll return to). This list shows all the interviews cited in both Durham’s unclassified report and the annex; the italicized ones appear only in his classified annex (meaning they likely focus on the SVR intelligence at the core of that material).

In early September, Bill Barr’s office was micromanaging what Durham should investigate, including feeding him a binder of material. On September 16, he met with a partisan Cyber Agent named Nate Batty; he’s the guy who bolloxed the investigation of the Alfa Bank allegations, knowing that they came from Democrats. Then, on September 17, he met with “HQ Analyst-3” and she explained the nature of the SVR collection.

That September 17 interview is the only one exclusively listed in the annex. But it’s not the only interview Durham did with her. Between the unclassified report and the annex, Durham cited five interviews with this analyst, starting a month earlier, on August 14, 2019. In that interview, she described checking the SVR materials for information on the people prosecuted by Robert Mueller, a question he returned to twice more, in December 2019 and February 2020.

Where this analyst played the most significant role in his report, though, was in finding — in “significant intelligence information that first became available for the FBI to review in 2018” (perhaps not coincidentally after the DOJ IG investigation into the SVR material raised concerns about whether it had been sufficiently consulted during the Hillary email investigation) — “that as a result of [Russia’s access to sensitive U.S. government information”], Steele’s subsources could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report.”

It’s possible this analyst is Brittany Herzog, who testified about Steele’s subsources at the Igor Danchenko trial, though she left the FBI in 2019 to start grad school.

The bulk of what Durham included from this analyst pertained to how, in fall 2018, after she found evidence that Steele’s subsources had been identified before the first report in 2016, senior officials at FBI told her to stop documenting her work. She escalated the problem, ultimately to David Bowdich. Durham doesn’t discuss what happened then, even though his investigation continued past the time Bowdich departed.

We’ve never heard the results of that — except, perhaps, in questions by DOJ IG why the FBI didn’t unpack the possibility that Oleg Deripaska had injected disinformation in the dossier.

Which is why Durham’s own disinformation problem (well, one of them) is so interesting.

Having interviewed Analyst-3 about what was in the SVR files, he cited the DOJ IG report (by way of the SSCI Report) to affirm that Oleg Deripaska knew of the Steele project by July 2016. But then in a totally separate section, he casually asserted (citing NYT) that Steele worked for Deripaska (something he could, and should, have cited to Bruce Ohr’s 302s).

The FBI would have multiple reasons not to want to chase the disinformation in the Steele dossier, first in 2018, and then — after Mueller had established that Manafort was trying to get debt forgiven by him when he shared how the campaign planned to win and then discussed how to carve up Ukraine, another reason when Bowdich got that briefing. Over and over again, however, people serving Trump’s disinformation purposes never seem to want to pull the threads of Deripaska’s relationship with Steele and the possibility that Russia was sending disinformation coming and going.

Incidentally, Analyst-3 was not among the people who backed Durham’s theory that the Leonard Benardo emails were authentic.

Cited testimony

August 14, 2019: SVR didn’t have anything regarding regarding any Trump election campaign conspiracy with the Russians, nor did she see anything in FBI holdings regarding Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, or Paul Manafort, though there was material on Manafort that was not connected to the election or the presidential campaign.

September 17, 2019: Timing of SVR hacks. Victims targeted. 

December 10, 2019: Timing of SVR hacks. Victims targeted. The three things obtained: emails about hacking, analysis of hacked documents, and the stolen emails hacked. Hypothesis that the reference to “special services” in the SVR report was a reference to Christopher Steele. Details of the SVR report. Probable description of the compromise of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. SVR didn’t have anything regarding regarding any Trump election campaign conspiracy with the Russians, nor did she see anything in FBI holdings regarding Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, or Paul Manafort.

February 19, 2020: The review team initially briefed Counterintelligence and Cyber executive management about their findings on the compromise of Steele’s sources during a conference call. Following the call, while driving home, Headquarters Analyst-3 was called by Acting Section Chief-2. Acting Section Chief-2 told Headquarters Analyst-3 that they appreciated the team’s work, but no more memorandums were to be written. A meeting was then held with Assistant Director Priestap and others. During that meeting, the review team was told to be careful about what they were writing down because issues relating to Steele were under intense scrutiny. SVR didn’t have anything regarding regarding any Trump election campaign conspiracy with the Russians, nor did she see anything in FBI holdings regarding Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, or Paul Manafort.

December 2, 2021: Moreover, significant intelligence information that first became available for the FBI to review in 2018 showed that the Russians had access to sensitive U.S. government information years earlier that would have allowed them to identify Steele’s subsources. Indeed, an experienced FBI analyst assessed that as a result of their access to the information, Steele’s subsources could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report. Two weeks later, the Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, Dina Corsi, met with the review team and directed them not to document any recommendations, context, or analysis in the memorandum they were preparing. The instructions, which Headquarters Analyst-3 described as “highly unusual,” concerned the team because analysis is what analysts do. Headquarters Analyst-3 was so concerned about the failure to fully exploit the materials involving Steele subsource information (and the possible need to bring information already exploited to the attention of the FISC) that she raised her concerns about the FBI’s lack of action in an email to her supervisor in the hope of having the issues explored further. See FBI-0009265 (Email from Headquarters Analyst-3 to FBI employees dated 10/17/2018). Although the team did not fully adhere to that instruction because of the need to provide context to the team’s findings, they did tone down their conclusions in the final memorandum. Headquarters Analyst-3 recalled that a separate briefing on the review was eventually provided by the team in the Deputy Director’s conference room, although Headquarters Analyst-3 could not recall if Deputy Director David Bowdich attended the briefing. Headquarters Analyst-3 did know that Bowdich was aware of the review itself. [T]here is reason to believe that even earlier in time [Russia] had access to other highly sensitive information from which the identities of Steele’s sources could have been compromised.

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How John Durham and Chuck Grassley Covered Up Getting Ass-Handed by Russia

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The most important passage of the classified annex of the Durham Report is this one — though you won’t hear it from the frothy mob, in significant part because Chuck Grassley and Tulsi Gabbard are hiding what these documents are. Durham describes that it is “dated the following day” just after discussing an email dated July 25, so July 26.

Go ahead and read it once. But before I explain why it is so important, first let me illustrate how Chuck Grassley and Tulsi Gabbard are obscuring the provenance of these documents.

As I explained here, these documents were stolen from Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) by another country’s intelligence service (understood to be the Dutch). The documents themselves generally consist of two different kinds of documents:

  • Emails and other raw intelligence that SVR stole from victims, including US think tanks, State Department, and the Executive Office of the President
  • Discussions among SVR — mostly intelligence analysis — about the files they stole

Sometimes the victim files the Russians stole would be attached to the reports, sometimes they would be incorporated into the reports. Sometimes the Russians would translate the English-language documents they stole, other times they would not. So the game of telephone that most of these documents entail looks like this:

  • SVR steals documents
  • SVR translates documents
  • SVR analyzes documents
  • Dutch intelligence steals documents from SVR
  • Dutch intelligence shares documents with CIA and/or FBI
  • CIA and/or FBI translate the Russian bits
  • CIA and/or FBI analyze what they found
  • CIA sends what they think they found to FBI

But that’s not all. For the key documents in this collection, they report the speech of one or another Hillary Clinton associate, which means the game of telephone looks like this:

  • Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Julianne Smith talk with Think Tank guys (primarily Open Society’s Leonard Benardo, but also OSF’s Jeffrey Goldstein, as well as unidentified people at Atlantic Council and Carnegie Endowment)
  • Think tank guys write what they learned from DWS or Julianne Smith
  • SVR steals documents from Think Tank guys
  • SVR translates documents from English to Russian
  • SVR analyzes documents
  • Dutch intelligence steals documents from SVR
  • Dutch intelligence shares documents with CIA and/or FBI
  • CIA and/or FBI translate the Russian bits to English
  • CIA and/or FBI analyze what they found
  • CIA sends what they think they found to FBI

Best as I can tell, that path is the one involved in the documents Durham claims are the most important in his appendix, the ones that claim to report what Smith said about a Hillary Clinton plan to smear Donald Trump.

Here’s what FBI lawyer Tricia Anderson wrote about the problems with this game of telephone in a memo:

  • The reports likely reflected multiple levels of hearsay given that they were based on purported communications between Wasserman Schultz and potential donors, not any underlying communications between Lynch and Clinton campaign staff;
  • Wasserman Schultz’ communications may have contained exaggerations designed to reassure potential donors who were concerned by news about the FBI investigation;
  • The [Russians] who drafted the reports may have injected opinion, editorialization, or exaggeration into the reports; and
  • Translation errors may have contributed to the potential for unreliability

Durham provided just a summary of this assessment, but a fair one (in part because he’s more focused on later documents that don’t involve DWS but do involve all those levels of reported speech).

Here’s how the purported smoking gun was introduced (note, if Durham provided the date, it is redacted, but it reports something that happened on July 26, so it can be no later than then but could be July 27).

 

There was additional analysis about the provenance following the text.

There are a number of things conveyed in these redactions:

  • The classification marks
  • That CIA received these documents
  • The dates the Dutch passed them on
  • Presumably (though given Durham’s practice elsewhere in his report, not definitely) the date of the underlying memo
  • A description of the people at SVR they were obtained from
  • The import of all the other think tanks
  • The nature of the incorporated messages purported to be from Benardo

I don’t contest some of those redactions. But the amount of redaction, and lack of context elsewhere, obscure what the purported smoking gun is: a draft SVR report that in some way incorporates language attributed to Leonard Benardo. We have no clue whether it is dated July 26, 27, or 28 (by which date CIA had a copy). The section that most frothers are quoting (just like the section of other SVR reports released in recent weeks) is not an email itself, it is a Russian discussion about purported emails.

Durham follows the actual SVR report with the text attributed to Benardo; the description of how this text is incorporated in the document is redacted.

He follows it with another similar (raw) email attributed to Benardo (which should make evident whom Benardo sent the email to, or at what time, but Durham didn’t share that).

John Durham does not mention, at all, that the language of those first two purported Benardo emails — the ones with a date of July 25 — in no way supports the claim made in the SVR Report, that on,

26 July 2016, Clinton approved of a plan of her policy advisor, Julianna Smith … to smear Donald Trump. by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican nominee.

As envisioned by Smith, raising the theme of “Putin’s support for Trump” to the level of the Olympics scandal would divert the constituents’ attention from the investigation of Clinton’s compromised electronic correspondence.

He does note in a footnote that the SVR report got Julianne’s first name wrong, Juliana. He simply asserts that the “Julie” referred to in the purported Benardo emails is Julianne; he doesn’t note that in the purported follow-up Benardo email the name used is “Julia,” not the kind of thing a colleague would normally do. Durham interviewed Benardo, who specifically said he didn’t know who “Julie” (or “Julia”) was.

The only corroboration at all that the language in the Benardo email was real, was evidence it was not: an email sent by someone else, a Carnegie Endowment cyber guy named Tim Maurer, discussing this article on attribution from Thomas Rid. Durham says less about the Rid article than another cited in this correspondence, which is telling, because Rid discussed the Democrats’ decision, back in June, to go public with the hack.

This was big. Democratic political operatives suspected that not one but two teams of Putin’s spies were trying to help Trump and harm Clinton. The Trump campaign, after all, was getting friendly with Russia. The Democrats decided to go public.

Rid also discussed the Guccifer persona at length, which is important for reasons I’ll explain in a follow-up.

As noted, ultimately Durham concludes that the emails themselves — documents that are supposed to be raw collection — are instead “composites,” including from a totally different guy, Maurer.

The Office’s best assessment is that the July 25th and July 27th emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based Think Tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment, and others. Indeed, as discussed above, language from Tim Maurer’s email of July 25th is identical to language contained in Benardo’s purported email of the same date.

Durham is hedging wildly here. I think the NYT overstates when it says, “Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.” That would be the conclusion sane normal people would draw, that if emails purporting to be from Benardo were actually cut-and-pasted language from Maurer, but Durham doesn’t make that conclusion (perhaps because he continued to chase this conspiracy theory for another two years after he interviewed all these people, indicting two more men only to discover his theories about them, too, were made up). Indeed, in an almost entirely redacted (and therefore useless) passage, Durham claims that in what must be July 2017, the CIA still maintained that the report and at least some of the purported emails were not fabrications. He also cites interviews he did with people who thought the Benardo emails were authentic.

But yeah, if the emails themselves are “composites,” it means they’re made up, not even attributing the author correctly. In fact, if they’re composites, we have no reason to believe the emails dated July 25 weren’t in fact “composited” on July 26 or 27.

Now’s a good time to mention that Durham is obscuring the sequence of the documents here (not least by withholding the metadata of the real email he obtains, but also thanks to the redactions from Grassley and Tulsi). The sequence looks something like this, but we can’t be sure:

  • July 25: Thomas Rid story
  • July 25, 11 to 11:35AM: Smith texts other people trying to figure out if there was any investigation of the hack (as I noted here, Durham doesn’t disclose anywhere in his report that during the Michael Sussmann prosecution, Sussmann forced him to obtain these emails that show FBI releasing a statement without consulting with the Dems, the victims of the hack.
  • July 25, undisclosed time: Maurer responds to the Rid story
  • July 25, undisclosed time, but the date could be made up: Two drafts of purported Benardo emails
  • July 26: Email between two Russian spooks suggesting “doing something about a task from someone”
  • Unknown date: A draft Russian spy memorandum claiming that on July 26, Hillary Clinton approved a plan to smear Donald Trump, citing July 25 emails purportedly from Benardo
  • July 27: Email between two Russian spooks about illuminating Hillary’s attempts to vilify Trump and Putin that links to a purported Benardo email, in what Durham describes as English but is … probably not written by a native English speaker
  • July 27: Email from Smith soliciting signers for a letter condemning Trump’s attack on NATO

Narratively, Durham puts the draft report, incorporating a July 25 email attributed to Benardo, then citing another July 25 email attributed to Benardo, and describing Hillary approving a plan on July 26, before the email between two Russian spooks, which by description is dated July 26. But I’ve been staring at it for an hour (and reviewing Durham’s unclassified report and now realizing he never provides the date there, either) and for the life of me, I’m not sure if we know whether the two spooks email precedes the draft intelligence report or not (note, too, that it starts, “Great!” by responding to something, suggesting there’s an even earlier one Durham suppressed). If my read that it is dated July 26 is correct, it would have been written on the same day as the purported approval by Hillary, of a plan to smear Donald Trump. But the only email attributed to Benardo reflecting Hillary’s approval is written July 27, meaning it’s more likely it was written on July 27.

So we don’t know. I am still searching but I believe Durham never revealed the date of that memo. But based on what we can see, SVR didn’t “have” an email reflecting Hillary approving this plan until July 27, the day after (at least by Durham’s description) two Russian spooks discussed telling stories about the Deep State.

If that’s right, Russian spooks were discussing “making” such a report before they “found” an email in stilted English that Durham couldn’t match describing Hillary approving this plan.

Based on interviews (italicized here) that appear only in this annex, John Durham first started chasing this conspiracy theory no later than September 2019 (the day after meeting with Nate Batty, the politicized FBI Agent who killed the Alfa Bank investigation). After interviews done by July 2021, Durham should have come to the conclusion he states here: that the purported emails were “compiled” from emails of entirely different people. And yet all the while, the IC was in possession of documents showing one Russian spook suggesting that another one, “do something about a task from someone, I don’t know, some dark forces, like the FBI for instance, or better yet, Clinton sympathizers in IC, Pentagon, Deep State.”

Durham tried to bury all that, that he created precisely the chaos the Russian spooks were trying to manufacture, in this classified annex and — if you believe Kash Patel — burn the proof.

The Russians told you what they were up to.

And yet you fell for it anyway.

Update: Fixed spelling of Benardo’s last name.

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BREAKING: Right Wingers Believe Jim Comey Threw the 2016 Election to Trump and Jim Jordan Must Go to Jail

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The Epstein distraction files continue, with a purported whistleblower report (which Tulsi Gabbard now seems to claim was the entire source of her past discredited propaganda) and the Classified Annex to the Durham Appendix.

I’ll return to the substance of the Durham Appendix.

The Tl;dr is that Durham made false claims in the appendix contradicted in the unclassified version, and ignored totally basic details about the 2016 election as well as evidence in his own possession to sustain his Clinton Conspiracy Theory, which I addressed at length here.

But the short version of the story is that in addition to the two SVR documents involving Loretta Lynch I described here, Durham reviewed two more SVR documents. So in sum total, this scandal is about:

  • A January 2016 intelligence memo purporting to describe what Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said about the Clinton email investigation and also stating that Jim Comey intended to keep the scandal running “to jeopardize the chance of the DP to win the presidential race.”
  • A March 2016 intelligence memo claiming that the Hillary’s political director, Amanda Renteria, regularly receives updates from Loretta Lynch and that Hillary was reviewing Trump’s ties with Russian oligarchs (including Aras Agalarov), “with support from special services.”
  • A July 2016 “draft memo” relaying that the Soros Foundation had evidence that on July 26, Hillary approved a plan from her policy advisor, Juliane Smith, “to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.” This was, in part, an effort to get the White House to be more confrontational with Russia. (There’s a reference to “PC” that Durham takes to be “Political Convention” and not “Principals Committee”). It claimed (remember, this purports to be what Smith said) that the FBI lacked irrefutable evidence of Russia’s involvement in the scandal. The July 2016 memo then says that the campaign Hillary purportedly approved on July 26 was launched in June 2016, and also claimed that Hillary lacked direct evidence (which they of course did have). The appendix cites five more somethings of emails (the report redacts the description) purportedly from Leonard Bernardo, dated July 25 to July 27, that say “the FBI will put more oil into the fire,” most of which are in Russian.

Durham obtained records from many of the think tanks involved and he “was unable to locate in the records from the Think Tanks any exact versions of the Bernardo emails obtained” from their source. Instead, he found some real emails, “contain language and references with the exact same verbiage to the materials.” One was a discussion about Thomas Rid’s analysis of the DNC hack. Another was an email Smith actually sent soliciting bipartisan experts to condemn Trump’s attacks on NATO. As noted in my earlier post, Durham focused on Smith’s efforts to get a public statement about the actual hack released, which had no tie to Trump (as also noted, Durham omits a great deal of context to make that look damning).

None of the people involved in the purported emails said they sent them. None of Hillary’s staffers said there was a plan. Durham ultimately concludes that the emails on which he predicated a five year investigation were merely “a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking.” The rest of his opinion is stupid for the reasons I laid out in my earlier post, but will return to.

From that, the right wing is treating the things in the Russian intelligence reports as true. And treating the desire to make political hay of an election year hack as a criminal conspiracy.

Curiously, though, none of them are treating as true that Jim Comey would draw out the investigation into Hillary until the end of the election to help Trump win, even though that is what happened.

And none of them are accusing Jim Jordan (or anyone else) of trying to make political hay about the Iran hack of Donald Trump last year — the exact equivalent of the worst insinuations about what Smith did.

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray requesting an unclassified briefing on the Iranian hack of President Trump’s campaign. According to reporting, Iran emailed the illegally obtained information to at least three advisers on the Democratic presidential campaign and emailed stolen information, including at least three major media outlets—Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

The Committee is requesting the briefing to address questions including:

  • What material did Iran obtain from President Trump’s campaign?
  • To whom at the Biden for President or the Harris for President campaigns did the hackers send information and materials?
  • On what date did the FBI learn there had been a hack and exfiltration of nonpublic information from President Trump’s campaign?
  • On what date(s) did Iran provide the stolen documents to the Biden for President campaign or the Harris for President campaign?
  • On what date did the FBI first inform President Trump’s campaign it had been hacked?
  • Did the FBI use any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities to surveil President Trump’s campaign?
Excerpts of the letter to Director Wray: 

“On September 18, 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that in ‘late June and early July,’ the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by ‘sen[ding] unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with the Biden-Harris campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign . . . .’  Since then, Iran has continued ‘to send stolen, non-public material’ from President Trump’s campaign to the media.  Iran’s actions raise serious concerns about foreign election interference targeting President Trump’s campaign to support President Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s campaigns. We write to request information about this serious matter.

Look, if you really believe that these documents represent the transparent truth, then you believe that Jim Comey threw the election to Donald Trump and Jim Jordan must go to prison.

But if you’re ignoring those bits (as well as John Durham’s silence that the DOJ IG report quoted FBI as saying some of the SVR memos were “objectively false”), then you’re simply chasing conspiracy theories to drown out the Epstein scandal.

Pick. Either send Jim Jordan to prison or shut your yap.

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Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Kash Patel of Covering Up for the Obama Deep State

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Suspected Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard has released a report of screen caps out of context and one 114-page collection of documents purportedly showing what she claims is a conspiracy against Donald Trump.

It serves its purpose — because a broad swath of very stupid people are currently frothing madly about it on Xitter.

What Tulsi purports to show is that the FBI didn’t back expansive claims of Russian involvement in election interference in September and October 2016, refused to participate in a assessment in December, only for Obama to order a new assessment, after which — Tulsi claims — the assessment changed to reflect more confidence in Putin’s involvement.

In general, Tulsi accomplishes the circus trick of getting stupid people to buy her narrative by conflating whether spooks thought Russia hacked the US voting tabulation infrastructure with Intelligence Community confidence that Russia was involved in the hack of the DNC and DCCC and then involved in the dissemination of files stolen from it.

So:

Voting infrastructure

Hack and leak

Not the same things

Tulsi assumes her rubes won’t notice she’s doing that and — lo and behold!! — she’s right!!

As one example of how transparently shoddy Tulsi’s “work” is, note how she misquotes a story (which she attributes to spooks but which might come from Congress) talking about the larger Russian intelligence operation in 2016, claiming it pertains exclusively to the “U.S. Election Hack.”

Tulsi doesn’t link the underlying story, for good reason, because reading the story gives away her game.

While it does use the word “hack” in the title, it includes two details that undermine Tulsi’s information operation.

U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack

New intelligence shows that Putin became personally involved in the computer breach, two senior U.S. officials say.

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

[snip]

The latest intelligence said to show Putin’s involvement goes much further than the information the U.S. was relying on in October, when all 17 intelligence agencies signed onto a statement attributing the Democratic National Committee hack to Russia.

Most importantly, the story describes that the Intelligence Community got new information. Wow! An explanation for why the assessment changed in December 2016!!!! All readily available if you just check Tulsi’s sources!!

Just as importantly, nothing in the article addresses tampering with the voting infrastructure, the topic of almost all the other screen caps in Tulsi’s propaganda, in her effort to conflate the voting infrastructure, the hack and leak, and the larger information operation.

There are a slew of other problems with Tulsi’s book report. It ignores:

  • The Russian investigation into Trump didn’t arise out of this intelligence. It arose out of Mike Flynn’s efforts to undermine the Obama sanctions on Russia in response, and Trump’s efforts to undermine the investigation of Flynn.
  • The Russian investigation discovered abundant new evidence, including proof that Trump’s campaign learned of Russia’s operation in advance. Trump’s Coffee Boy, Campaign Manager, National Security Advisor, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker were all eventually adjudged to have lied to cover up aspects of Trump’s involvement in the Russian investigation. And through their confessions, we learned that Russia dangled an impossibly lucrative real estate deal, told a Trump campaign official and his rat-fucker about their operation, got campaign data and strategy — possibly in exchange for millions of dollars and involvement in a plan to carve of Ukraine — and then undermined Obama’s foreign policy to help Russia.
  • After all these 2016 assessments, the NSA later developed evidence — according to the document Reality Winner leaked — that showed Russia did attempt to and had some success in hacking voting infrastructure.

Which is to say, Tulsi’s entire little book report is unrelated to the Russian investigation into Trump and her claims about hacking the election infrastructure were eventually revised.

But her report is not without interest.

If her story is true — if there is a shred of truth to her claims that Obama tried to alter the intelligence in 2016 — then evidence to that fact was available in 2020, when Kash Patel was reviewing precisely the same intelligence while serving as Ric Grenell’s handler, and that evidence was available from 2019 through 2023, when John Durham reviewed it all and determined that the spooks did nothing wrong.

In other words, if Tulsi’s allegations are true, it means Kash Patel and John Durham are part of the Deep State plot against Donald Trump!!!!

It means Trump’s hand-picked FBI Director was part of a sustained effort to cover-up Obama’s devious intervention in 2016.

If Tulsi’s allegations have any merit, then Pam Bondi must fire Kash Patel and include him, right along with all the nefarious actors Tulsi targets, because Kash covered this up when he could have helped Trump win the 2020 election.

Update: Corrected how long the primary document collection is.

Links

A Dossier Steal: HPSCI Expertly Discloses Their Own Shoddy Cover-Up

Think of the HPSCI Report as a Time Machine to Launder Donald Trump’s Russia Russia Russia Claims

Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe Reveal Putin “Was Counting on” a Trump Win

Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up with Russian Spies to Wiretap and Unmask Hillary Clinton

The Secrets about Russia’s Influence Operation that Tulsi Gabbard Is Still Keeping from Us

Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Kash Patel of Covering Up for the Obama Deep State

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“Friendly to Us:” NYT Buries Its Own Role in Trump’s Attacks on Rule of Law

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There comes a time in almost every Trump legal scandal where evidence comes out that Trump insiders believe they manipulated Maggie Haberman to serve Trump’s interests.

Evidence that both Roger Stone and Rick Gates used Maggie for various purposes came out in the Mueller investigation files, as when Gates claimed leaking Trump’s foreign policy speech to Maggie was a way to share it with Stone.

At Trump’s NY trial, Michael Cohen described how he deliberately misled Maggie about the nature of the payments he made to Stormy Daniels.

Perhaps the most damning example came in Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, where she described how, after her last appearance before the January 6 Committee while still represented by Stefan Passantino, he took a call from Maggie and confirmed that Hutchinson had just finished testifying to the committee.

His phone is ringing.

I look down at his phone. It’s Maggie Haberman calling him. And I looked at Stefan, and I said, “Stefan, did you tell Maggie Haberman that we were meeting with the committee today?”

And he’s like, “No, no. Maybe that’s not what she’s calling me about.”

And I said, “Stefan, did you tell Maggie that we were meeting with the committee today?

And he said, “No, no, but I should probably answer to see if she knows, right? I should answer.”

And said, “Stefan, no. I don’t think you should answer that call. She probably wants to know if we met with the committee today.”

He said, “Cass, I’m just going to answer. It will just be 2 seconds. I just want to find out what she’s going to talk to me about.”

He answers.

I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I hear Stefan say, “Yeah, yeah, we did just leave her third interview. You can put it out, but don’t don’t – don’t – don’t make it too big of a deal. I don’t think she’ll want it to be too big of a deal. All right. Thanks.”

And I said, “Stefan, was that Maggie Haberman asking about my interview?”

And he said, “Yeah, but don’t worry. She’s not going to make it a big deal.”

I said, “Stefan, I don’t want this out there.”

He said, “Don’t worry. Like, Maggie’s friendly to us. We’ll be fine.”

So I was just like, “Whatever.” I was annoyed.

Hutchinson went on to describe how, even as Passantino was discouraging Hutchinson from reviewing documents in a SCIF that would allow a follow-up appearance, Passantino and Alex Cannon spent the weekend talking to Maggie about Hutchinson’s testimony.

So I reached out to him on Monday, May 23rd: “Has [redacted] reached out about the SCIF?”

And then he was just kind of being wishy-washy with it.

He also let me know on that phone conversation that Maggie Haberman, quote, “got a story from the committee about my third interview,” end quote, and he spent he, Stefan, spent the whole weekend with Alex Cannon convincing Maggie Haberman not to publish the story that she got from the committee about my third interview.

Hutchinson described her particular disinterest in sharing her story with Maggie (and Josh Dawsey, another Trump whisperer).

And s0 now we’re moving into the phase of you know, I did my best throughout this whole period — I don’ like talking to reporters. Reporters would text me during this period. Ninety-nine percent of reporter texts always go unresponded to. I don’t like talking to reporters. I think there are some that I have, like, a friendship/working relationship with that I knew from being on the Hill and at the White House, but, like, Josh [Dawsey], Maggie Haberman, all those people, I stay very clear from.

But Josh [Dawsey], for example, had started reaching out to me and saying that he heard that the committee was in talks with Stefan about bringing me in for a SCIF interview and a live testimony; where did I stand on that with Stefan?

Say what you will about Maggie’s role in all this: Assuming it was her on Passantino’s phone (Hutchinson does not name the journalist in her book), she was just chasing a big story.

But there’s no doubt that one source of Hutchinson’s distrust of Passantino in the period leading up to her decision to get new lawyers stemmed from his willingness to share details of her testimony with Maggie — at least as she portrayed it — against her wishes.

“I don’t think you should answer that call,” Hutchinson said.

“Don’t worry,” the attorney representing Hutchinson but paid by a Trump entity said. “Like, Maggie’s friendly to us. We’ll be fine.”

None of that shows up in NYT’s faux savvy review of the game behind Barry Loudermilk’s referral of Liz Cheney for criminal investigation for allegedly intervening in Hutchinson’s legal representation at the time. NYT doesn’t bother to disclose to readers that, as Hutchinson described it, Maggie — who is bylined — played as significant a role in the breakup of the relationship between Passantino and Hutchinson as Cheney did.

Having failed to disclose Maggie’s alleged role in all that, here’s how — starting 28¶¶ in — NYT ultimately describes Loudermilk’s report and the claims within it.

The House report on Ms. Cheney, prepared by a Republican-led subcommittee on oversight, was specifically focused on the former representative, who broke with her G.O.P. colleagues over their ongoing support of Mr. Trump in 2021. But she has also infuriated Mr. Trump not only because she helped to lead the congressional investigation into him, but because she crossed party lines in the election and campaigned against him in support of Ms. Harris.

The report claimed that Ms. Cheney may have violated “numerous federal laws” by secretly communicating with Cassidy Hutchinson, a star witness for the Jan. 6 committee, without the knowledge of Ms. Hutchinson’s lawyer.

When Ms. Hutchinson was first approached to provide testimony to the committee, she was represented by a lawyer who had once worked in the Trump administration’s White House Counsel’s Office.

After meeting with Ms. Cheney, she hired a different lawyer and her subsequent public testimony was damaging to Mr. Trump. It included allegations that he had been warned his supporters were carrying weapons on Jan. 6, but expressed no concern because they were not a threat to him.

The report asked the F.B.I. to investigate whether Ms. Cheney’s dealings with Ms. Hutchinson were carried out in violation of a federal obstruction statute that prohibits tampering with witnesses. The report also accused Ms. Hutchinson of lying under oath to the committee several times and suggested that investigators examine whether Ms. Cheney had played any role in “procuring another person to commit perjury.” [my emphasis]

There’s a lot that’s misleading in this description. As I’ve noted, the section of the report describing DOD’s failures is actually longer (39 pages as compared to 36) than the section on Cheney and Hutchinson. Particularly given Loudermilk’s silence about Kash Patel’s role in what Loudermilk claims was DOD misconduct, to claim the report was “specifically focused” on Cheney is particularly misleading.

Maggie, writing with Alan Feuer, takes as proven the timeline Loudermilk lays out, which overstates what the evidence shows. While Cheney did communicate directly with Hutchinson, that was in June 2022, hours after Passantino had advised Hutchinson to take the “small element of risk to refus[e] to cooperate” with the committee any further in light of DOJ’s declination to press contempt charges against Mark Meadows. Hutchinson initiated the communication with Cheney and did so because, as she told Passantino, “I don’t want to gamble with being held in contempt.”

NYT asserts that what was damning about Hutchinson’s testimony after she ditched Passantino was Trump’s knowledge that people were refusing to go through magnetometers, but he wasn’t concerned because they wouldn’t hurt him. Hutchinson did tell that story publicly on June 28, 2022 (and J6C played earlier video testimony she had provided). But that thread of testimony started in her first interview in February 2022 and continued in her May 2022 interview, both of which Passantino attended. It all stemmed from texts she exchanged with Tony Ornato (texts that also make clear Trump “kept mentioning [a trip to the Capitol] before he took the stage” to give his speech).

To the extent this is among the things Loudermilk claimed Hutchinson lied about, Loudermilk’s case is based on word games, conflating formal intelligence with notice from Secret Service manning the rally that rally goers had (at least) flagpoles that were triggering the mags, misrepresenting a conversation Hutchinson claims she and Tony Ornato had with Mark Meadows, and ignoring that one of Ornato’s denials amounted to a claim he didn’t remember.

Plus, Hutchinson always emphasized that Trump’s concern was “get[ting] the shot,” packing enough bodies into the audience to make it look crowded, and not about ensuring that his supporters could keep their weapons before they marched to the Capitol. The claim that Trump knew his supporters were armed was legally damaging; it meant he knew the risk when he riled them up further about Mike Pence. But that’s not how Hutchinson spun it and it was testimony rooted in what she said in Passantino’s presence.

A reader might expect some assessment of Loudermilk’s claims in an article that boasts, as the headline of this does, that “Republicans Map a Case Against Liz Cheney.” No they didn’t. They floated a number of flimsy claims that don’t amount to a crime. You’re reporters. Act like it. Make that clear (as Philip Bump did here), rather than pretending Loudermilk’s claims aren’t mere whitewash.

The report neither links nor shows much understanding of the report itself. Even where it quotes lawyers about the viability of the charges, it doesn’t mention (for example) that the Jack Smith investigation resulted in a new Speech and Debate opinion that would apply to Cheney’s actions.

The real sin with the four-paragraph description of Loudermilk’s case, however, is one closely tied to Maggie’s own undisclosed role in it. NYT claims that Passantino was merely a former Trump White House Counsel. That’s not the issue. The issue, which goes to the core of the dispute and the reason Hutchinson replaced him, is that he was paid by entities associated with Trump, and Hutchinson came to believe he represented Trump’s interests over her own.

Loudermilk packages up as a crime actions Cheney took to give Hutchinson confidence her attorney was representing her interests, not Trump’s. Loudermilk packages up as a crime Hutchinson’s effort to avoid what even Passantino depicted as a risk of a contempt referral.

When Passantino told Hutchinson that it was okay for him to share information against her wishes because, “Maggie’s friendly to us,” was he also expecting that Maggie might misrepresent his role in all this (and leave his name unmentioned)?

That’s why you disclose such things.

The rest of this column (NYT bills it as analysis and claims the reporters who wrote it have “deep experience in the subject,” which is one way you might describe involvement in the story you’re telling) focuses on describing how delivering this report after Trump’s public demands, “reliev[es] Mr. Trump of the potentially fraught step of explicitly ordering the inquiry himself.”

A “friendly to us” reporter treats Trump’s word games as if they absolve him of responsibility.

¶¶4-14 describe Trump’s contradictory claims, including an uncorrected quote from Trump’s spox that “the nation’s ‘system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans.'”

¶¶15-23 describe Trump’s efforts to gin up investigations into his adversaries in his first term and going forward. The section includes multiple grossly misleading claims. First, it falsely insinuates that Trump never got the investigation of Hillary he demanded.

During his first presidential campaign, he often joined crowds at his rallies in chanting, “Lock her up!” — a reference to his opponent Hillary Clinton, whom he and other Republicans believed should have been investigated for using a private email server while she was secretary of state. After he won that election, however, Mr. Trump appeared to soften his stance, telling The New York Times editorial board that he did not want to “hurt the Clintons.”

But Mr. Trump, facing a special counsel investigation of his own, changed his mind again in 2018, telling his White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to investigate Mrs. Clinton.

[snip]

While the White House counsel ultimately declined to approve his plans to investigate Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump made clear on social media during his years in office that he believed various people should be prosecuted.

NYT simply ignores the Clinton Foundation investigation predicated in significant part on Bannon-associated oppo research that (as NYT reported) continued throughout Trump’s first term.

More problematic, given the suggestion that someone stopped Trump from getting a Special Counsel investigation into Hillary, it ignores that Special Counsel John Durham not only insinuated two false statement indictments against people associated with Hillary — both of which ended in acquittal — were conspiracies, but fabricated a claim about Hillary to which he dedicated an 18-page section in his final report.

NYT goes onto to — again — falsely suggest that Trump never got a special counsel investigation into Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump has called for Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against him last year, to be “thrown out of the country.” And after he was arraigned on the first of Mr. Smith’s indictments, he said that, as president, he would appoint “a real special prosecutor” to “go after” President Biden and his family. (He has since backed away from his position on specifically investigating the Bidens.)

NYT’s “friendly” journalists would have you to believe they are ignorant that:

  • Trump extorted Ukraine for dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden
  • During Trump’s first impeachment, his personal attorney solicited such dirt from known Russian agents
  • Bill Barr set up a side channel via which Rudy could share that dirt obtained from Russian agents and others
  • Somehow, an FBI informant willing to frame Joe Biden came to share a claim that Mykola Zlochevsky bribed Biden that got laundered to the Biden investigation via that side channel
  • Trump spoke directly to both Barr and Jeffrey Rosen about the investigation into the Bidens
  • After David Weiss announced a plea deal with Hunter Biden, Trump attacked Weiss, contributing to threats against Weiss’ family
  • After Barr made public representations about the false bribery allegation, Weiss reneged on Hunter’s plea deal and obtained Special Counsel status and chased the bribery allegation, only to discover it was false

Trump already got his Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden, and just in time for election season. And while it flopped when Weiss discovered Scott Brady’s vetting failed to find obvious problems with the bribery claim, it nevertheless led to felony charges against Hunter and a humiliating trial in June.

Suggesting Trump didn’t get a Special Counsel to investigate the Bidens is propaganda, just as suggesting he didn’t get one to pursue Hillary is.

But I guess that’s what Trump’s people know they’ll get when they work with a journalist “friendly to us.”

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With Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s Myth Cannot Fail — It Can Only Be Failed

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Folks, I know this is bad timing, but in about 20 minutes, I’m going to temporarily shut down comments here, as we’re going to do some planned maintenance. Hopefully it won’t take too long.

I keep thinking back to this June 2023 exchange between Matt Gaetz and John Durham.

It came at the end of Durham’s testimony after delivering his report, in which Durham said a lot of inflammatory things, but ultimately concluded that the allegations of Russian interference should have been investigated, but should have been opened at a lower level of investigation.

After four years, Durham blamed Hillary Clinton for things Russians (like those suspected of filling the Christopher Steele dossier with disinformation) had done. But he hadn’t done the one thing Republicans needed him to do: assert that the Russian investigation was a hoax.

At the end of it, Jim Jordan adopted a tactic he has come to use in his hearings. He took a break for votes, giving staffers a half hour to prepare a rebuttal. And then three Republican members took turns, including Matt Gaetz for his second turn, unrebutted by any Democratic member.

He came prepared.

Gaetz cued up video from Robert Mueller’s July 2019 testimony, showing Jim Jordan grilling Mueller about Joseph Mifsud. Jordan asserted that Bill Barr and John Durham were trying to find out what Mifsud was doing. After Durham responded that they did try to pursue that angle, Gaetz asserted that Durham’s investigation was “an op.”

You had years to find out the answer to what Mr. Jordan said was the seminal question, and you don’t have it. It just begs the question whether or not you were really trying to find that out. Because it’s one thing to criticize the FBI for their FISA violations, to write a report. They’ve been criticized in plenty of reports. Some have referred to your work as just a repackaging and regurgitation of what the Inspector General already told us. So if you weren’t going to do what Mr. Jordan said you were going to do in that video, and give us the basis for all of it, what’s this all been about?

Now, in point of fact, who Mifsud really was was never the seminal question. Or rather, he only ever became a question via conspiracy theories Jordan and Mark Meadows laundered through a sham Congressional appearance from George Papadopoulos. Under their direction, the Coffee Boy provided no primary documentation with which staffers could hold him to account. Instead, Papadopoulos laundered conspiracy theories first posted in right wing propaganda outlets.

Q Okay. So, and Mifsud, he presented himself as what? Who did he tell you he was?

A So looking back in my memory of this person, this is a mid-50’s person, describes himself as a former diplomat who is connected to the world, essentially. I remember he was even telling me that, you know, the Vietnamese prime minister is a good friend of mine. I mean, you have to understand this is the type of personality he was portraying himself as.

And, you know, I guess I took the bait because, you know, usually somebody who — at least in Washington, when somebody portrays themselves in a specific way and has credentials to back it, you believe them. But that’s how he portrayed himself. And then I can’t remember exactly the next thing that happened until he decided to introduce me to Putin’s fake niece in London, which we later found out is some sort of student. But I could get into those details of how that all started.

Q And what’s your — just to kind of jump way ahead, what’s your current understanding of who Mifsud is?

A My current understanding?

Q Yeah. A You know, I don’t want to espouse conspiracy theories because, you know, it’s horrifying to really think that they might be true, but just yesterday, there was a report in the Daily Caller from his own lawyer that he was working with the FBI when he approached me. And when he was working me, I guess — I don’t know if that’s a fact, and I’m not saying it’s a fact — I’m just relaying what the Daily Caller reported yesterday, with Chuck Ross, and it stated in a categorical fashion that Stephan Roh, who is Joseph Mifsud’s, I believe his President’s counsel, or PR person, said that Mifsud was never a Russian agent.

In fact, he’s a tremendous friend of western intelligence, which makes sense considering I met him at a western spying school in Rome. And all his interactions — this is just me trying to repeat the report, these are not my words — and when he met with me, he was working as some sort of asset of the FBI. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’m just reporting what my current understanding is of this individual based on reports from journalists.

[snip]

Q And then at what point did you learn that, you know, he’s not who he said he was?

A Like I said, I don’t have the concrete proof of who this person is. I’m just going with reports. And all I can say is that I believe the day I was, my name was publicly released and Papadopoulos became this person that everyone now knows, Mifsud gave an interview to an Italian newspaper. And in this newspaper, he basically said, I’m not a Russian agent. I’m a Clinton supporter. I’m a Clinton Foundation donor, and that — something along those lines. I mean, don’t quote me exactly, you could look up the article yourself. It is in La Republica. And then all of a sudden, after that, he disappears off the face of the planet, which I always found as odd.

[snip]

I guess the overwhelming evidence, from what I’ve read, just in reports, nothing classified, of course, because I’m not privy to anything like that, and considering his own lawyer is saying it, Stephan Roh, that Mifsud is a western intelligence source. And, I guess, according to reports yesterday, he was working with the FBI. [my emphasis]

And that’s what led Barr and Durham to jump on a plane together and chase Papadopoulos’ conspiracy theories — without ever interviewing Papadopoulos directly. Mifsud’s own lawyer — the one who couldn’t help Durham figure out how to subpoena him — who started the conspiracy theory that Mifsud worked for Western, not Russian, spies.

Durham and Barr did more than just chase Papadopoulos’ conspiracy theories together. Durham fabricated a key part of the theory of his case. He ignored key events — most notably, Trump’s invitation for Russia to hack his opponent — that made all the actions of Hillary’s people make sense. He relied on a Twitter account as the foundation of his indictment against Igor Danchenko, then whined when such communications were deemed inadmissible without a witness to introduce them.

Yet ultimately, the rules of criminal procedure and some very very good defense attorneys (no doubt paid with life savings) managed to thwart Durham’s efforts to spin from his own fevered imaginations a conspiracy implicating Hillary Clinton.

For that, Matt Gaetz accused Durham of “inoculating” the FBI.

Your report seems to be less an indictment of the FBI and more of an inoculation — lower case I, of course. And like many inoculations, it may have worse consequences down the road. It’s just hard to pretend as though this was a sincere effort. When you don’t get to the fundamental thing that started the whole deal.

Because reality ultimately debunked Durham’s conspiracy theories, Gaetz deemed him to be part of the Deep State.

I get that Matt Gaetz’ nomination is one of the most likely to be rejected by the Senate. I get that there’s still a chance this guy — the guy who proclaims even a fellow conspiracist part of the Deep State if he permits himself to discover that reality doesn’t back his fever dreams — won’t be Attorney General.

But this is what it means that Trump wants to take a hammer to DOJ and FBI: not just that they’ll avoid any investigations implicating Trump or his allies, but they will find a way to meld reality to their own myth.

As it was, Bill Barr’s DOJ added post-it notes to evidence in ways that happened to feed Trump’s myth of grievance. They claimed travel records of the informant with something akin to a Let’s go Brandon cap matched his claims about Joe Biden accepting a bribe when, purportedly, the opposite is true.

Bill Barr’s DOJ already made shit up to feed Trump’s myth.

Since then, a Trump judge admitted a laptop full of evidence at a criminal trial with little more validation than an access to an iCloud account to which multiple outsiders had access, and an email sent to a publicly available email address.

But whoever Trump installs atop DOJ will take all this one step further. No longer will it be a select crony US Attorneys who forget to remove post-it notes with erroneous but convenient dates or claim travel records say the opposite of what they actually say. It will be the litmus test from the top: Donald Trump’s myths cannot fail, they can only be failed.

Update: Gaetz has withdrawn from consideration.

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Ball of Threads: Durham Descends

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LOLGOP finished this just in time for you to spend your day watching it while you wait. We describe how Bill Barr and John Durham attempted to criminalize being the victim of a hack-and-leak attack.

Here’s the Patreon for the series.

You can also subscribe on:
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Bill Barr Didn’t Hear When Trump Asked, “Russia Are You Listening?”

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One of the most surprising details in the book by former Mueller prosecutors, including Aaron Zebley, is that they added a contentious half paragraph the morning they finished the report.

For volume I, we discussed one last time whether the report was sufficiently clear about “coordination” with Russia. One of the sticking points: on July 27, 2016, Trump had made his “Russia, if you’re listening” speech urging Russia to find Clinton’s “missing” emails. Five hours later, the Russian GRU launched attacks into the Clinton team’s personal email accounts. This appeared to be Russia’s response to Trump’s speech.

Bob had tied our work to established criminal standards. We did not view this “call and response”—Trump’s publicly asking for an action and then Russia taking one—as sufficient for a criminal agreement or conspiracy. But without more explanation, we were concerned a reader might not understand why these July 27 events did not constitute “coordination.” That morning, we added a paragraph to the introduction to volume I to make our reasoning clearer (emphasis added):

“Coordination” does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement—tacit or express—between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interest. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating that the investigation did not establish that Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.

There’s more to this paragraph: it starts by explaining why prosecutors didn’t assess Trump’s actions in terms of “collusion,” another term that’s not a crime. Unlike “collusion,” though, “coordination” was included in Rod Rosenstein’s appointment order. As a prosecution and declination report, Mueller had to (and did) assess conduct in terms of law, not buzzwords or Rosenstein’s ill-considered measures.

Rather than providing clarity, this paragraph made things worse, because those who had spent years talking about “collusion,” incorrectly claimed the report had addressed it. No collusion!!! All the headlines blared. No collusion!!! Bill Barr keeps claiming.

In fact, as the book describes it, prosecutors added the coordination language, at least, not to expand the scope of the report (to include terms people used to describe it), but to address how they approached what the book calls “call-and-response:” when Russia and Trump’s campaign worked in concert without formally agreeing to do so.

Of late, I’ve come to understand this “call-and-response” structure as Russia’s effort to lock Trump in, ensuring a benefit to itself, in his compromise and America’s polarization, whether or not he took the actions Russia would prefer.

There’s a sad irony here. Prosecutors thought that the “are you listening” comment was so outrageous, they needed to explain why it was nevertheless not a crime, because of course must appear outrageous to everyone else.

But in reality, it didn’t appear to their bosses at all. Both Rod Rosenstein and Bill Barr, for example, repeatedly excised a key part of Mueller’s findings: that Russia was seeking to help Trump and Trump was happy to accept the help from a hostile foreign country.

Rod Rosenstein did so when announcing the Internet Research Agency troll indictment; Rosenstein even ad-libbed a claim that the indictment did not allege the information operation changed the outcome of the election.

One thing we noticed about Rosenstein’s remarks was that he never stated that the defendants’ actions were designed to help Trump and disparage Clinton, even though that was one of the core allegations of the indictment. And at the end of his remarks, he added something that wasn’t in the indictment: “There is no allegation,” he said, “that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”

Bill Barr didn’t say Russia was trying to help Trump when he informed Congress of his spin of the results.

It omitted or misstated our analysis. In its discussion of volume I, the letter accurately stated our core charging decisions, but left out any reference to the intent of the Russian social media campaign to aid Trump in his bid for the White House, nor did it describe that same objective driving the hack-and-dump operation run by Russian military intelligence. There was no mention of the contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials and proxies. The letter also left out a core conclusion of volume I: that the “Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure the outcome, and that the [Trump] Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through [Russian military] efforts.

And Barr did it again — refused to say Russia was trying to help Trump — when he gave a press conference with the release of the Report.

[A]s he had in his March 24 letter, he omitted any mention of Russian support for Trump’s election bid. He then described the Russian military intelligence operation to steal and dump Clinton campaign emails, but again omitted the Russian government’s purpose of harming Clinton’s election bid in order to aid Trump. Barr also did not mention our finding that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian military intelligence efforts.

He then described the Russian military intelligence operation to steal and dump Clinton campaign emails, but again omitted the Russian government’s purpose of harming Clinton’s election bid in order to aid Trump. Barr also did not mention our finding that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian military intelligence efforts.

To be sure, the prosecutors’ larger gripe was always how Barr dealt with volume II. Mueller’s team had decided they would not to make a prosecutorial decision, but Barr spun it as a choice that they could not make such a decision. (My instincts that they deliberately left this for Congress are confirmed by the book.)

But the book tracks how the people overseeing the investigation refused to admit something central to it: Russia wanted to help Trump, and Trump invited that help.

“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

It’s an important observation given what came next. The entire Durham investigation was premised on ignoring Trump’s request for help. Two years later, for example, Barr insisted that the Russian investigation started from the Steele dossier (and astonishingly, Barr dismissed the possibility that Russia would want something in exchange for electing Trump).

Bill Barr and John Durham deliberately kept themselves ignorant of all that. Three years later, Barr continued to insist the investigation arose from the Steele dossier (and, insanely, said that since Russia didn’t need help doing a hack-and-leak, there was no reason to investigate Trump). Durham repeatedly tried to prevent those he charged from describing how Trump’s public comments (and their likely knowledge that another hacking attempted followed the comments) drove their concerns about Trump’s ties to Russia, even though as Marc Elias described, that was the reason they all started to focus on Russia.

Even at the end of his four year investigation, Durham claimed to have no idea that in response to Trump’s comments, Russia attempted to hack a new target.

Of course, Barr and Durham had to ignore Trump’s solicitation of a hack. If they hadn’t, they would never have had an excuse to launch the Durham probe, to pretend that investigating why Trump’s campaign got advance warning of the operation and then goaded it on made total sense. Barr and Durham had to pretend that none of this posed a risk to the country.

For a report for Bill Barr, Mueller added language trying to explain why they didn’t treat Trump’s successful solicitation of an attempted hack against his opponent as a crime.

But Barr, both before, in real time, and for years after, never even considered that a problem. Or couldn’t, because if he did, he couldn’t criminalize Hillary Clinton’s victimization at the hand of Russia.

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Barr Time 1: “Conjuring up criminal conspiracies about political opponents”

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June 6 of last year was the official publication date for Bill Barr’s book. In it, he claimed — at least three different times — that under him, DOJ did not investigate Joe Biden’s role in pushing Petro Poroshenko to fire Viktor Shokin. “[T]he facts about this episode were out in the open and didn’t warrant a criminal investigation,” Barr said in one instance.

The day after release of a book making that assertion, on June 7, 2023, Bill Barr went on the record with Margot Cleveland insisting that investigation into an allegation that we now know came from Alexander Smirnov, claiming that Mykola Zlochevsky had bribed Joe Biden, not only hadn’t been shut down in August 2020, but had been sent to Delaware “for further investigation.”

“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” William Barr told The Federalist on Tuesday in response to Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin’s claim that the former attorney general and his “handpicked prosecutor” had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe. “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

On June 6, Bill Barr claimed his DOJ didn’t investigate Biden’s ties to Burisma because all the facts were out in the open. On June 7, he insisted DOJ had sustained a secret investigation into an allegation that Burisma bribed Joe Biden.

Barr’s book mentions Ukraine almost 70 times. He mentions the Bidens, in an investigative context, over 56 times. Virtually everything he says on the topic conflicts as dramatically with known events as that claim on June 7 did.

It was always clear these claims were an attempt to spin the events, Barr’s CYA about fairly damning events in which he was involved. Given the subsequent disclosures of the the SDNY warrants, claims Lev Parnas’ has made since this book came out, Brady’s testimony about the side channel, and Smirnov’s indictment, I want to look at how Barr describes his involvement in efforts to investigate Joe Biden and his son.

At best, they show that Bill Barr was an easy mark for Russian disinformation.

Barr needed a bribery allegation and an informant fabricated it for him

Here’s how Barr describes the Brady side channel, which we now know resulted in an FBI informant with ties to Russian spies fabricating a claim about Joe Biden that right wingers successfully demanded be used to renege on a plea deal for Hunter Biden during the 2024 election season, a claim that — had Brady done the vetting he and Barr claimed he did — would have been identified as a fabrication in 2020.

With impeachment still pending, Giuliani embarked on yet another round of grandstanding. He went about claiming he had compiled significant evidence relating to the Bidens that he wanted to present to the Justice Department. While anyone is free to present evidence to the DOJ, the fact Giuliani was making such a public display obviously made his motives suspect. It looked to me that Rudy was trying to run the same play against Biden that I thought the Clinton campaign had tried to run against Trump in 2016: giving just enough evidence to law enforcement to have some allegation investigated, then claiming one’s adversary was “being investigated.” This presented a quandary. On the one hand, I wasn’t going to let the department be drawn into Giuliani’s game, and I wasn’t about to allow the work of other prosecutors on other, potentially related matters be tainted by commingling their evidence with whatever Giuliani had pulled together. On the other hand, the department has an obligation to be open to all comers who believe they possess relevant evidence; we could not merely dismiss his information out of hand without looking at it. Yet merely receiving information does not imply the department believes opening an investigation is warranted. My solution to Giuliani’s posturing was to create an intake system for evidence originating in Ukraine—including but not limited to Giuliani’s—that dispelled any suggestion that, by accepting the information, the department was signaling it considered the allegations credible.

I set up a screening process whereby an office outside of Washington—in this case, the US Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh— would vet the information provided by Giuliani, working with the FBI and intelligence experts on Ukraine. That office, which was run by a trusted US attorney, Scott Brady, who was well known to me and my staff, would not be responsible for deciding whether to open any investigation, just for assessing the credibility of the information. This would be an intermediary step before any information was forwarded to an office responsible for making any investigative determinations. Employing such a “taint team” is a well-established procedure within the department for screening potentially suspect evidence. These precautions were especially apt in the case of Giuliani, whose political passions and previous associations in Ukraine possibly affected his own critical faculties.

At an unrelated press conference in early February 2020, I made clear I was skeptical of information coming out of Ukraine. “We have to be very careful with respect to any information coming from the Ukraine,” I said. “There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, a lot of crosscurrents. And we can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.” My usual critics on the Hill and in the media, as always getting the point exactly backward, screamed that I was giving Giuliani special access to the department. Wrong. It was an exercise in caution and an effort to protect other investigations that the DOJ had going on at the time.

While the effort to push the Ukrainians to investigate Biden was foolish, I do not believe it was criminal. Not all censurable conduct is criminal. The current tendency to conflate the foolish with the legally culpable causes more harm than good. Trying to apply the criminal law to diplomatic give-and-take is especially dangerous. A quid pro quo is inherent in almost all diplomacy, and Presidents frequently ask foreign countries to do things that are politically beneficial to the Presidents. A President might, for example, make a large, secret concession to a foreign country in order to expedite release of a hostage or win some other timely agreement the President expects will yield substantial political benefits prior to an election. The fact that the action sought from the foreign government will yield political benefit should not make the request criminal. It may have been in the national interest. Nor should it be criminal because the concession made by a President seems disproportionate or even reckless. Nor should it make a difference that the President was subjectively motivated by the expectation of political benefit.

The fact is that diplomatic transactions frequently involve “mixed motives.” The quo being sought will provide a political benefit and will likely satisfy a legitimate policy purpose of the government. In any particular case, the political motive may loom much larger than the governmental purpose, but as long as the latter is present, it would be hazardous to criminalize diplomacy by attempting to assess the balance of subjective motivations. Of course, if the quo being sought objectively has no governmental purpose at all and is purely a private benefit—say, a payment of cash for private use—then we are in the realm of bribery. But so long as the quo arguably advances a public policy objective, then policing the propriety of diplomatic transactions should be left to the political, not the criminal, realm.

To this extent, I viewed Vice President Biden’s pushing for Shokin’s termination as similar to President Trump’s pushing for an investigation of Biden’s role. The quo sought by Biden—the firing of Shokin—held a potential political benefit for Biden: avoiding the embarrassment of having his son’s company investigated for corruption. It also, ostensibly, had a legitimate public policy purpose: advancing the US anticorruption agenda. Similarly, Trump would benefit politically from an investigation into Shokin’s termination, but bringing transparency to that episode would also arguably advance America’s anticorruption agenda.

Biden supporters would say that, in his case, his policy purpose was overarching and supervened any possible political agenda. Trump supporters would say the same about his aims. My point is that the criminal justice process cannot legitimately be used to investigate politicians’ motivations when those politicians are asking for some rational and lawful policy concession. What Biden was demanding in Ukraine, quite apart from whether it would benefit his son, technically had a legitimate governmental purpose. And what Trump was demanding, quite apart from whether it would benefit his reelection, had the same. (309-312)

Regarding the side channel itself, Barr claims it was simply a taint team for information offered up by the public — by anyone — from Ukraine. That’s inconsistent with Brady’s still unexplained effort to go look for information on Hunter Biden and Burisma in the Burisma investigation that had just been shut down. It’s inconsistent with Brady’s concessions of all the things he didn’t consult — such as materials released as part of impeachment and contemporaneous reporting — before passing on tips.

And consider the euphemism Barr uses to describe Rudy’s motives. In addition to a specific concern about the “crosscurrents” in Ukraine, Barr cited Rudy’s “political passions and previous associations in Ukraine” to explain the need for such vetting.

There’s no mention of Russian spies.

There’s no mention of the fact that both the White House and DOJ recognized that Andrii Derkach was a Russian agent before Rudy boarded a plane to go solicit dirt from him.

There’s no mention of the fact that Barr set up a way for Rudy to share tips from known Russian agents.

And that’s one of several reasons why Barr’s complaint about the criticism he got — his claim that he was merely exercising caution — is bullshit. The side channel was one part of a larger scheme that had the effect of protecting Rudy (and therefore Trump) and framing Joe Biden. The scheme included:

  • Constraining the ongoing investigation into Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman in SDNY so it could not include Dmitry Firtash, much less Derkach
  • Moving the Derkach investigation to EDNY
  • Prohibiting anyone from opening an investigation into a Presidential candidate without his approval
  • Allowing Rudy to share information with Scott Brady
  • Permitting Brady to intervene in SDNY investigation (as well as that of Hunter Biden, Dmitry Firtash, and Ihor Kolomoyskyi)

These steps did more than vet Rudy’s tips. Taken together, they used the entire weight of DOJ to protect Rudy (and Trump) from any consequences for soliciting dirt from known Russian spies — a separate possible crime than merely sharing false information with the FBI.

Perhaps that’s why, having misrepresented the nature of the side channel, Barr opined that “I do not believe it was criminal” to solicit dirt on the Bidens from known Russian spies. Perhaps that’s why Barr followed that opinion with two paragraphs equating Joe Biden’s effort to rein in corruption in Ukraine with Rudy’s effort to solicit dirt from known Russian spies for Trump.

Barr’s explanation never made sense. The expectation was always that by firing Shokin, Burisma would get more scrutiny, not less. Barr’s explanation makes far less sense given that he launched this side channel just days after his DOJ shut down a four year investigation into Zlochevsky started while Biden was Vice President.

But his explanation does clarify something. The side channel assessment — based off material from Rudy, Chuck Grassley says — was a bribery assessment. It was started as a bribery assessment months before (if we can believe the indictment, which given the way it obfuscates other known details, we cannot) Smirnov first started pitching his false claims of bribery. It was started as a bribery assessment because that, in Barr’s mind, distinguished an inappropriate use of DOJ to investigate a politician’s motive and a fair use of DOJ’s authorities in an election year.

And in the year before an election last year, Barr doubled down on the bribery allegation allegedly fabricated by an informant with ties to Russian spies. In the process, Barr helped ensure that Joe Biden’s kid will face two trials and six felony charges as opposed to a settlement David Weiss had already offered.

An Attorney General dedicated to killing an investigation into Russian interference

That’s where Barr’s tenure as AG ended: setting up a side channel via which Joe Biden was framed by an informant with ties to Russian spies, which in turn led directly to felony charges against Biden’s kid.

That makes Barr’s single-minded focus on killing the Mueller investigation look quite different. Everything stemmed from that effort, according to Barr.

Russiagate dominated the first two years of President Trump’s term, looming over every aspect of the administration. I was on the outside as a private citizen during this time, and so my early reaction to the collusion claims was based on public reporting and my own informed speculation. Only in early 2019, when I joined the administration as Attorney General, did I begin to get a fuller picture of this manufactured scandal. From that time forward, it became increasingly clear to me that there were never any legitimate grounds for accusing Trump or his campaign of colluding with the Russians. This was not only my conclusion. Every investigation into the matter—including those of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees—also found no evidence of collusion.

I would soon make the difficult decision to go back into government in large part because I saw the way the President’s adversaries had enmeshed the Department of Justice in this phony scandal and were using it to hobble his administration. Once in office, it occupied much of my time for the first six months of my tenure. It was at the heart of my most controversial decisions. Even after dealing with the Mueller report, I still had to launch US Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the genesis of this bogus scandal. At the end of my first year in office, the President was impeached over a harebrained effort, involving Rudy Giuliani, to push back on the Russia collusion canard by digging up an alleged counter-scandal in Ukraine implicating the Clinton campaign or Vice President Biden and his son Hunter.

The fallout from Russiagate continued during my last year in office. My relationship with the President frayed as he became frustrated by my failure to bring charges against those who had ginned up Russiagate and the failure of Durham’s investigation to produce more rapid results. (180-181)

Of course Barr’s “Russiagate” claims are riddled with lies. We’re used to that.

The HPSCI investigation did ask every Trump-friendly witness if they had evidence of “collusion,” and they all said no (though it’s clear that Devin Nunes worked directly with the White House to craft at least one of these scripts). Senators split on partisan lines regarding whether the SSCI investigation showed “collusion.” The Mueller investigation did not make a conclusion about “collusion.” And not only did the report itself imply there was evidence of conspiracy — just not enough to charge — but a footnote Barr hid until right before the 2020 election revealed that an investigation into whether Trump’s rat-fucker joined a CFAA conspiracy with Russia continued after Mueller finished. Perhaps because of that, the declinations section on conspiracy actually didn’t make a conclusion, one way or another, about whether Trump’s people conspired with Russia on the hack-and-leak itself; that section addresses Section II and IV of the first volume, but not Section III, where the hack-and-leak was described.

Like I said, we’re used to those lies. I’m interested in this passage, which repeats Barr’s tired old lies about the Russian investigation, because of the relationship Barr sets up between those lies and what came before and after. Barr admits that he made a conclusion about the merit of “Russiagate” based on “public reporting” (presumably of the kind a right winger would see) and what Barr describes as his “own informed speculation.” Based on that conclusion, he decided to return to government to kill the investigation.

Barr built his justification to investigate Democrats from there.

Barr’s description of the Durham investigation — something he “had” to launch and something that he expected, in 2020 and presumably even in 2023 (his book came out just weeks after Durham gave up the ghost), would have “results” in the form of prosecutions — ties directly to his false claims (which may or may not be beliefs) about the Russian investigation. The Durham investigation had to produce results because Barr needed it to be true that the Russian investigation had no merit.

That imperative may explain Barr’s inconsistent claims. On page 180, describing that he had to open the Durham investigation, Barr made clear he believed an imagined Hillary effort to set up an investigation against Trump was criminal. On page 310, Barr explained that he didn’t believe an effort to push Ukraine [including known Russian assets, but Barr doesn’t mention that part] to investigate the Bidens was criminal. Rudy’s effort to solicit dirt from known Russian spies was not criminal, but Russian injection of disinformation into Hillary’s oppo research was.

It’s in that framework where Barr describes his personal involvement in Ukraine dirt — which the available record shows started no later than August 2019 and continued through at least October 2020, which an unreliable Parnas claims started far earlier, and which in paragraphs following Barr’s description of the side channel he improbably claims he first learned from a warning John Bolton gave him in early August. Rather than an impeachment focused on Trump, it focused on Rudy, and rather than an attempt to cheat in an election, it was an attempt to create a “counter-scandal.” In this passage, it is all portrayed as a ham-handed but, in Barr’s mind, justified effort to respond to the Russian investigation. In this passage, there’s no mention of Barr’s involvement in it at all. Only later would Barr refashion it (in the side channel passage above) as an effort to get transparency about Biden’s role in firing Shokin, transparency that multiple direct witnesses had already provided as part of the impeachment.

But in this passage, everything — the Durham investigation, the Ukraine response, and a bunch of things Barr conflates with the two, including the Brady side channel — arise out of Barr’s imperative to kill the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia. That’s what justifies it all. Barr’s attempt to sustain false claims about the Russian investigation. Barr turned those false claims into license to retaliate.

That’s the before (the need to investigate Hillary as part of the imperative to kill the Russian investigation) and after (the side channel that protected Rudy from consequences for soliciting dirt from Russian spies and had the result of framing Joe Biden).

The AG doth protest too much, methinks

With those in mind, consider how Barr denials about the Durham investigation serve as a way to disclaim any involvement with Ukraine, where [3], “Conjuring up criminal conspiracies about political opponents had been honed into a fine art form.” This long passage, full of prevarications and word games, denies Trump asked him to open the kind of Biden investigation Barr opened up with the side channel.

As I was launching John Durham’s investigation in the spring of 2019, I was aware of the claims that the Ukrainians had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Clinton. Because these allegations were relevant to the origins of the Russia collusion narrative, they legitimately fell within the ambit of Durham’s inquiry. I put little stock in them and suggested to Durham that he defer any Ukraine-related work, and so these claims weren’t being pursued actively at that point. I was dubious of the idea that the Ukrainians, not the Russians, had been responsible for hacking into the DNC. [1] It had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and seemed contrary to the evidence developed by the intelligence community and by Mueller’s investigation. Moreover, contrary to the President’s claims, CrowdStrike did not appear to be controlled by Ukrainians and seemed to be a reputable company. I doubted the firm had any reason to fabricate its analysis of the hack. In any event, I wanted Durham to hold back from engaging with Ukraine because I considered it [2] a land of smoke and mirrors, where disinformation was everywhere and reliable evidence extremely difficult to find. There were so many different actors with varying agendas—pro-Western politicians, pro-Russian politicians, countless oligarchs, each with his own aim—that it was hard to determine the provenance and motivations behind any information collected there. [3] Conjuring up criminal conspiracies about political opponents had been honed into a fine art form. I was especially concerned that Ukrainian actors could act as channels for Russian disinformation. I didn’t want Durham to get bogged down in that morass.

Consequently, in the spring and early summer of 2019, when John [Durham] and I discussed the international dimensions of his work, [4] we agreed to engage with the three countries we felt would be most helpful to the investigation: the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy. I started by making contact with the ambassadors of these countries, and later had discussions with senior officials in each. I traveled to both Italy and the UK to explain Durham’s investigation and ask for any assistance or information they could provide. I alerted the President that we would be making these contacts and asked him to mention Durham’s investigation to the prime ministers of the three countries, stressing the importance of their help. In contrast, [5] I never talked with the Ukrainians or asked President Trump to talk to the Ukrainians. The President never asked me to talk to the Ukrainians. Nor had I talked with Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine. I was also not aware of anyone at the department requesting the Ukrainians to open up an investigation. As far as I was concerned, if Durham ever found a reason to look into Ukrainian activities, he would do the investigation, not leave it to the Ukrainians.

What really fueled the impeachment drive was the attempt to sic the Ukrainians on allegations about Vice President Biden. It was one thing to argue, as the President’s private defense attorneys did, that Ukrainians had interfered with the 2016 election. That would have had a bearing on collusion allegations against the President. It was something else to argue, as the President’s defense also did, that Joe Biden’s son Hunter had traded on his surname and engaged in un- ethical deal making in Ukraine. That looked less like defensive work and more like an offensive thrust against President Trump’s likely opponent in the 2020 election. Moreover, although the Department of Justice was investigating election interference, [6] DOJ was not investigating Joe Biden, and I didn’t think there was a legitimate basis to do so. The conflict-of-interest laws do not apply to the President or Vice President.

The key facts regarding Biden’s role in the ouster of the Ukrainian anticorruption prosecutor were largely a matter of public record. In 2014 the Vice President’s son Hunter, with virtually no relevant experience, had received a lucrative position on the board of Burisma at a time when the Vice President had the “lead” in the Obama administration’s push to get Ukraine to step up anticorruption efforts. In late 2015 Vice President Biden, by his own account, used the threat of withholding loan guarantees to pressure the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the lead Ukrainian anticorruption prosecutor. The public record is fairly clear that there was frustration in US and European policy circles with Shokin’s failure to pursue corruption cases aggressively, and his removal was widely favored by key US figures. It also appears he was not actively pursuing Burisma at the time of his dismissal, although he claimed later that he was planning to investigate the company. In my view, while the whole situation was [7] shameful and unethical, the facts did not provide a basis for criminally investigating Vice President Biden.

[8] By the spring of 2019, I had noticed news stories stating that Giuliani was pushing the Ukrainians to investigate Biden’s role in Shokin’s dismissal. But other than what I glimpsed in the media, I had no knowledge of the former mayor’s activities. During the spring, I expressed my concern about Giuliani with the President. As I was leaving an Oval Office meeting on another topic, I paused briefly to raise the matter.

“Mr. President,” I said, “I don’t think you are being well served by Giuliani at this point. Mueller is over, and Russiagate is dying. Why is Giuliani thrashing about in Ukraine? It is going to blow up—”
“Yeah,” the President said, cutting me off. “I told him not to go over there. It was a trap.” President Trump gave the impression Giuliani had a degree of independence and was going to pull back. I did not press the point.

Unfortunately, the President’s careless statement to Zelensky erroneously implied some connection between me and Giuliani. Early in the conversation, the President asked Zelensky to “get to the bottom” of CrowdStrike and the server allegations, and said he was going to have the Attorney General talk to him about this. If the President had stopped there, I wouldn’t have been especially upset, because at least these particular allegations were within Durham’s purview, albeit on the back burner. However, later in the conversation, the President asked Zelensky to investigate Biden’s role in Shokin’s removal and said he should work with the Attorney General and Giuliani. When I read this, I hit the ceiling. When the transcript was released, I had the department put out a categorical statement:

[9] The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son. The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine—on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine—on this or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.

Although this seemed to be largely accepted by journalists covering the department, some commentators still speculated that the President might have been pressing me to have the DOJ investigate Biden’s role.

This didn’t happen. The President had not asked that the Justice Department investigate the former Vice President, and it would not have made a difference if he had. [10] As far as I was concerned, the facts about this episode were out in the open and didn’t warrant a criminal investigation. Although Hunter Biden’s position was obviously a sordid instance of monetizing his father’s office, the Vice President did not violate the law because federal conflict-of-interest laws do not apply to Vice Presidents. Moreover, given the evidence that Biden was acting in line with US policy, and the absence of good evidence that Shokin was actively pursuing Burisma and that his removal would inhibit future action against the company, it would be impossible to prove that the Vice President acted with corrupt intent in pressing the Ukrainians to dismiss Shokin. And if there ever were a reason to pursue the matter, we would do it ourselves and certainly not pressure the Ukrainians to do it. (annotated numbering my own) (300 -304)

Three times, here, Barr claims he didn’t think the facts behind the Burisma allegations merited the kind of criminal investigation he would later set up.

[6] DOJ was not investigating Joe Biden, and I didn’t think there was a legitimate basis to do so.

the whole situation was [7] shameful and unethical, the facts did not provide a basis for criminally investigating Vice President Biden.

[10] As far as I was concerned, the facts about this episode were out in the open and didn’t warrant a criminal investigation.

He does so in a passage that claims to have avoided Ukrainian dirt because of the very same “smoke and mirrors” [2] Barr used to justify the side channel in January 2020. Those smoke and mirrors and Ukraine’s fine art form of conjuring up criminal conspiracies were the reason (Barr claims) he kept Durham out of Ukraine; but those very same smoke and mirrors are what Barr used to rationalize a side channel assessing dirt from known Russian spies that conjured up a criminal conspiracy against Joe Biden!

In other words, this disavowal of Ukranian involvement as part of the Durham investigation — which is transparently misleading in any case — serves as a proxy denial of the Ukrainian involvement we know Barr undertook elsewhere.

Barr’s discussion of the Durham investigation attempts to disclaim chasing Ukrainian dirt in three different ways.

First, he claims he didn’t know about any of Rudy’s efforts until … he doesn’t say precisely when. Barr claims at [8] that, “other than what I glimpsed in the media, I had no knowledge of the former mayor’s activities.” He situates the claim, vaguely, in “the spring of 2019,” far earlier than the warning he describes that Bolton gave him in early August pages later.

Parnas claims that Barr knew of their scheme from the start, from February, which would also be Barr first started getting briefings on the SDNY investigation, though Parnas didn’t say whether Barr learned of the scheme via SDNY briefings or separately, from Rudy’s effort to broker meetings with Barr. It might be true that the briefings Barr was getting on the Parnas investigation didn’t emphasize the tie to Rudy by whenever in spring Barr means. The first warrant against Rudy’s grifters had just a passing mention of Rudy; Kevin McCarthy, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, and Trump himself were all a more central focus of that warrant. The second, dated May 16, which focused directly on Marie Yovanovitch (and Pete Sessions’ role in her ouster), took out a reference to Rudy. SDNY obtained that warrant days after one possible date for Barr’s expressed concern to Trump that Rudy was “thrashing about in Ukraine.” Ken Vogel reported on May 9 that Rudy would head to Ukraine for election year dirt, only to report two days later that Rudy was canceling the trip after Adam Schiff and others made a stink; both reports postdated Trump’s comments to Hannity that Barr would investigate all this. That probably would be around the time when, according to Barr, he knew and warned Trump about “Giuliani thrashing about in Ukraine,” but claimed only to know that from press coverage.

By making the timing of this so vague, Barr makes it impossible to tell whether this conversation happened before or after the decision — made as part of, “inter‐department discussions well above” Joseph Ziegler’s second-order supervisor and originally attributed by Ziegler to Barr himself — to put the Hunter Biden investigation in Delaware, which made no sense if Hunter were the target but made perfect sense if Joe were. (Elsewhere in the book, Barr boasts that the investigation preceded his tenure, which it did, but the grand jury investigation did not, and — as noted — Ziegler originally said Barr personally made choices about the grand jury investigation.)

In any case, it would have happened long before the Perfect Phone call in July and meetings with Victoria Toensing — allegedly witnessed by Lev Parnas — regarding Dmitry Firtash. Barr is not denying getting involved in all this. He’s saying that he didn’t know what he was in for until sometime in later spring or summer 2019. By August, in any case, briefings on the Parnas investigation would have made SDNY’s increased focus on Rudy’s search for dirt on Hunter Biden clear. Barr knew what Rudy was up to well before DOJ chose to review only the transcript of Trump’s call for possible crimes, rather than the full whistleblower complaint that invoked Parnas and Fruman. Barr knew that if DOJ reviewed the entire whistleblower complaint, it would tie Trump’s call to an ongoing criminal investigation into unlawful influence peddling.

In short, even if Barr is telling the truth, even if he and Trump hadn’t spoken about Rudy’s efforts by the time Trump told Hannity they had, Barr had internal knowledge of both the SDNY investigation and Trump’s enthusiasm for Rudy’s efforts well before DOJ ensured the full whistleblower complaint would not be reviewed.

Having fiddled with the timing but not denied he was involved in Rudy’s efforts before the Perfect Phone Call, Barr then made much of what he claims was an affirmative choice not to pursue Ukrainian leads. He claims  [1] that he didn’t send Durham to chase (what were, but which he didn’t identify as) Konstantin Kilimnik’s claims of Ukrainian tampering in the 2016 investigation because it felt like disinformation.

Remember: the foundational theory of the Durham investigation — what Durham imagined was a fully-blown “Clinton Plan” — was based on possible Russian disinformation, and from there Durham (and Barr) fabricated more. Durham’s pursuit of a conspiracy theory that Hillary made a plan to fabricate information implicating Trump in Russia’s attack was not only based on files that the intelligence community always warned might be Russian disinformation, but Durham — almost certainly with Barr’s help — fabricated an additional element to it: that Hillary would invent false evidence, rather than simply point to true evidence of Trump’s affinity for Russia.

That’s not the only disinformation Barr chased. He and Durham went on junkets around Europe chasing the ginned up conspiracy theories of George Papadopoulos, including at least one fostered by Joseph Mifsud’s attorney.

Which brings us to Barr’s claim at [4] that he and Durham, “agreed to engage with the three countries we felt would be most helpful to the investigation: the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy,” Barr is referring, in the last case, to chasing the Coffee Boy’s Mifsud conspiracies, every bit as obvious disinformation as Kilimnik’s Ukraine conspiracies. And when Barr explains at [5] that “I never talked with the Ukrainians or asked President Trump to talk to the Ukrainians,” he’s limiting his comments to official contacts.

Barr is attempting to distinguish, “ask[ing Trump] to mention Durham’s investigation to the prime ministers of [the UK, Australia, and Italy], stressing the importance of their help,” from Trump’s mention of Barr’s efforts to Zelenskyy, in which he stressed the import of Ukraine’s help.

That’s why it’s so interesting what a big deal Barr makes of the statement at [9], what he describes as a categorical denial of Trump’s mention to Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he’d have Barr reach out.

Barr doesn’t include another part of the statement that DOJ put out (or a follow-up sent out the same day), which described, “certain Ukrainians … volunteer[ing] information to Mr. Durham.”

A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Wednesday. “While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.

Nor does he mention a statement he referred to over and over in the weeks that followed, one he sent on his personal cell phone.

Barr did have contacts with Ukrainians; he even discussed how Durham could get information confidentially from him.

They just were not members of government, Barr claimed.

To this day, we don’t know who those Ukrainians are (and all this would be in addition to discussions with Victoria Toensing about Dmitry Firtash, discussions that Parnas claims involved a quid pro quo for a Hunter Biden laptop).

But as I laid out here (and as I’ll return to), there’s good reason to suspect they include one or more of the Derkach associates Treasury sanctioned in January 2021.

Bill Barr told on himself the day after his book came out: He did investigate Joe Biden. Worse, he set up a system via which an informant responded to Andrii Derkach’s election interference by framing Biden.

Bill Barr walked into the AG job determined to kill an investigation into Russian interference. Before he walked out, he set up a system that protected election interference from Russian agents in Ukraine, election interference that resulted in Joe Biden being framed.

As I said above, a comparison of Barr’s claims with everything we’ve learned in the year since then shows that, at a minimum, Bill Barr was an easy mark for Russian disinformation.

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Michael Bromwich Warns of Robert Hur Report Ahead of Release

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Merrick Garland has informed Congress that Robert Hur, the Special Counsel who spent an entire year confirming that when Joe Biden discovered classified information, he returned it, has finished his investigation and will release it pending a privilege review.

ABC’s report on the release raises cause for concern. Former Inspector General Michael Bromwich, who represented twenty witnesses in the inquiry (and who also has represented Andrew McCabe in avenging his firing), cautions that Hur is refusing to ensure he has the proper context for the interviews he did.

According to attorney Michael Bromwich, for the past month he has repeatedly suggested to Hur’s team that — without such a review — Hur might miss “proper factual context” for the information that each of his clients provided.

But, as Bromwich described it, Hur’s office repeatedly told him that none of the witnesses in the probe would be able to see the report before it became public.

“It’s a huge process foul, and not in the public interest,” Bromwich told ABC News.

An attorney representing other witnesses agreed, saying that his clients should be able to review a draft of Hur’s report before its release.

The ongoing dispute underscores a growing concern among Biden’s closest aides — and the attorneys representing them — that Hur’s report could be substantially critical of Biden, even if it doesn’t recommend charges against him.

ABC News previously reported that Hur’s team had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness related to Biden.

Speaking to ABC News on Wednesday, Bromwich said he expects anecdotes and information provided by many of his clients — ranging from junior staffers to senior advisers — to be included in Hur’s report, but he declined to offer any specifics.

However, Bromwich noted that Hur’s investigation has been so far-reaching that investigators even interviewed waitstaff who had worked an event at Biden’s home in recent years to determine if they might have been exposed to classified documents.

Hur is absolutely right that other Special Counsels have not offered witnesses the ability to review a report before its release.

But his immediate comparison is a tell.

Hur, a close associate of Rod Rosenstein who served as his Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General during (and therefore supervised) the Mueller investigation in its earliest, productive phase, may be thinking of the Mueller Report. In its first 200 pages it laid out how Trump’s willingness to welcome Russian help during an assault on democracy showed evidence for, but not enough to charge, a conspiracy (though the investigation into Roger Stone for such a conspiracy remained ongoing). All of it, though, was tied to a series of prosecutorial decisions. In its second 200 pages, it described obstructive conduct as President that could not be charged.

Rosenstein, after barely keeping his job in the wake of disclosures that he had considered wiretapping the President, participated in a corrupt declination for those actions.

There are key differences between the Mueller Report and what we should expect the scope to be for this report — notably, that much of the conduct pertains to what happened between the time Joe Biden left the Naval Observatory and when he moved into the White House.

And, more importantly, Bromwich advised people to cooperate. And such cooperation no doubt freed Hur to search and search and search in a way that was not possible when key witnesses were lying to obstruct the investigation, as happened with Mueller.

That’s how you spend over a year confirming what was known from the start.

But Hur’s stance also comes in the wake of the Durham Report, which because of a supine press, has never been exposed as the propaganda hit job it is. It is provable that Durham:

  • Was appointed without evidence any potential crime had been committed
  • Engaged in a review of other investigations taken during an election (and lied about the results), something that is not remotely a prosecutorial function and does not remotely belong in a SCO report
  • Fabricated a key claim against Hillary Clinton, one which he pursued for years
  • Renewed allegations against defendants who were acquitted at trial
  • Made claims about witness cooperation that at least one has disputed publicly
  • Failed to make prosecutorial decisions for one crime he investigated (the Italian referral) and the statement for which there was most proof it was a deliberate lie
  • Engaged in selective editing to substantiate false claims

Only the last of those — selective editing — was a claim that was credibly made about Mueller (in his editing of an obstructive voice mail John Dowd left for Mike Flynn’s attorney).

And it comes in the wake of David Weiss’ decision — taken in tandem with long-time associates of Rosenstein and Hur, Leo Wise and Derek Hines, and in the wake of pressure from Baltimore-based IRS Agent Gary Shapley — to ask for Special Counsel status because he wants to write a report. (As I have noted, I think that may be one point of Abbe Lowell’s SCO challenge to Weiss’ appointment; to attempt to enjoin a report that is not legally justified.)

Because of the aforementioned supine press, because there is no accountability structure in place for Special Counsels, and because as prosecutors they enjoy broad immunity (though Durham tellingly backed off false claims he made in his report when he testified to Congress), the Special Counsel process was exploited by Bill Barr in retaliation for Rosenstein’s appropriate decision to appoint one.

I don’t expect Hur’s report to be as corrupt as Durham’s. I expect it to overcompensate for claims that Trump was treated differently for intentionally stealing 300 classified records (and hiding still more) than Joe Biden was for negligently taking some home and then giving them back.

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