The purveyors of the fake Russian collusion conspiracy theory now find themselves claiming they in fact are the victims of a fake conspiracy theory perpetrated by Donald Trump himself.
In one of the richest ironies in recent memory, the purveyors of the fake Russian collusion conspiracy theory, those that spent years and millions upon millions of dollars, alleging that President Donald Trump was essentially a Russian asset, find themselves claiming that they in fact are the victims of a fake conspiracy theory perpetrated by Donald Trump himself. This remarkable turn of events occurred last week when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released declassified information making it clear that former President Barack Obama was far more closely involved in the process that ultimately led to his predecessor being investigated for Russian collusion. Previously, we were made aware by both an Inspector General’s report and a Special Counsel investigation led by John Durham that the FBI’s handling of the matter was incredibly suspicious to say the least, complete with almost 20 mistakes that invariably went against then-candidate Trump, at least one major lie about whether or not a Trump associate at the time was working for the US government or the Russians, and despite their protestations, the entire investigation was based primarily on a dossier compiled by the Hillary Clinton campaign, meaning it was opposition research where millions of dollars were fed to Russia itself making her more guilty of collusion than anyone else. DNI Gabbard, however, revealed that the decisions to manipulate this intelligence and expand these investigations reached President Obama himself in late 2016 into early 2017, shortly before he left office. “The effect of what President Obama and his senior national security team did was subvert the will of the American people, undermining our democratic republic, and enacting what would be essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” she told Maria Bartiromo last Sunday. “It’s worse than even politicization of intelligence; it was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama’s and his team’s objective, which was undermining President Trump,” she continued. At issue is a meeting on December 9, 2016 when President Obama gathered top cabinet officials including James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, and Andrew McCabe to discuss a Presidential Daily Briefing submitted the day before which found that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against (election) infrastructure.” Following the meeting, an email with the subject “POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling” was sent by Mr. Clapper’s assistant to begin the creation of a new “assessment at the President’s request.” This report would “pull together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities, and how Moscow’s approach has changed over time.” Considering that everyone involved must have been aware there was already an ongoing investigation into President Trump for supposedly colluding with the Russians, it certainly didn’t need to be said what was meant by this request.
Thus, the Office of Director of National Intelligence under President Obama was charged with leading the effort in collaboration with the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS. On January 6, 2017, barely a month later, the new report was released, one which determined that Russia interfered with the election to help incoming President Donald Trump. As the report stated, Russia conducted an “influence campaign” to “denigrate” Democratic candidate Clinton and “help” President Trump. It also alleged that Russia’s intelligence services stole emails and documents from the Democrat Party, then distributed them to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 despite that Wikileaks operator, Julian Assange, had always denied that was the case and a report issued by the Intelligence Community the previous September had concluded there was “low confidence” in that assessment. Though both the December and January reports were supposed to be confidential, they were quickly followed by a number of leaks to the mainstream media, suggesting the soon to be Chief Executive was at best the beneficiary of the malicious influence of a foreign power and at worst an actual asset of the power. On December 9, The Washington Post reported “The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.” On December 14, NBC News claimed “US Intelligence officials now believe with a ‘high level of confidence’ that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the US presidential election, senior US intelligence officials told NBC News.” How they could know this before the report was even complete is left unsaid, but it certainly indicates that those involved knew precisely what they were doing. Combined with a subsequent email on December 2019, in which an intelligence official admitted that much of the Obama Administration’s intelligence on Russian efforts during this period was based on the Steele Dossier itself, an assessment supported by the Inspector General’s report, DNI Gabbard concluded that “These documents detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate.” She has also forwarded the materials to the Department of Justice to investigate the matter criminally, apparently Mr. Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey are already under investigation, and she has promised that whistleblowers with more detail are coming forward providing information she will release in the coming days.
In one sense, these documents do not really tell us anything new. As I mentioned, the Inspector General determined long ago that the Steele Dossier, an opposition research product, was recycled through American law enforcement and intelligence to open an unfounded investigation into then-candidate and President Donald Trump. We have also been aware for some time that President Obama participated in at least some meetings on the topic, such as on January 5, 2017 when top officials including Vice President Joe Biden this time considered whether to monitor incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador as a potential violation of the obscure Logan Act. According to an email Susan Rice sent to herself shortly before leaving the White House in January 2017, President Obama asked if they should withhold information from General Flynn on these specious grounds. FBI Director Comey replied “Potentially.” The meeting concluded with a decision to withhold key information from the incoming Trump team in their entirety. “President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book. From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.” Beyond the obvious nice little store you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it tone, “The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would,” but needless to say the course was already set and everyone knew it. When this email was released in 2018, conservatives took it to mean President Obama and future President Biden were involved the entire time, and certainly DNI Gabbard’s revelation that this was the second of at least two meetings makes that more clear. At the same time, conservatives now jumping to the conclusion that all of them will be arrested in short order, face charges, and be imprisoned are likely getting way ahead of themselves. The reality, as ever, is more murky. The initial report in December 2016 confirmed only that Russia did not hack election software, a claim that President Obama never himself made. Further, the details of what transpired after the December meeting have not been revealed, meaning we do not know what inputs other than the Steele Dossier went into the Russian collusion claim, or whether or not those inputs were manipulated in some fashion.
Regardless, whether or not any of these revelations turn out to be criminal, they certainly support the conclusion that the focus on Donald Trump as the centerpiece of Russian collusion was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Obama Administration. No matter what your opinion on the President himself, either one for that matter, the initial report was rejected and a new one was ordered by President Obama, one that just happened to conclude his predecessor was a Russian asset, the same as the opposition research, completely discredited Steele Dossier. The result was an FBI investigation during the campaign and into President Trump’s time in office complete with spying on some of his staff, unfounded charges against General Flynn, followed by a multiyear Special Counsel investigation into a conspiracy that didn’t exist and would never have been said to exist if President Trump’s opponent had not paid for opposition research, then funneled it through the Obama Administration. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller found, he “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” meaning there was never any conspiracy whatever was claimed by the government and the media. Undoubtedly, if it was revealed that President Trump held similar meetings concerning intelligence and investigations into President Biden about an alleged conspiracy with a foreign government which simply didn’t exist, Democrats and their progressives supporters would be demanding accountability. Instead, these new revelations have prompted them to declare that the real conspiracy is President Trump and DNI Gabbard having the nerve to demand the same accountability. According to MSNBC’s Steve Benen, the new documents were “over-the-top nonsense that Gabbard was quick to bring to Fox News during multiple on-air appearances, including an interview in which she raised the prospect of an anti-Trump ‘coup’ prompted by the fact that she’s been “struggling for months. On Capitol Hill, she’s become the subject of bipartisan ridicule” and “In the White House, it’s worse.” Thus, “the DNI released a document that can charitably be described as an embarrassment to herself, her office and the U.S. intelligence community.” Bizarrely, Mr. Benen continues to cite the notoriously anti-trump The Bulwark as though they were some kind of reliable source, whose analysis confirmed it was a “nothingburger. There is no actual substance. Instead, there is blatant sleight of hand and manipulation of evidence.” From there, he cited the equally anti-Trump Philip Bump of the Washington Post, who called it “ludicrous.”
To support these claims, Mr. Benen did two things that he accuses DNI Gabbard of doing herself. First, he completely ignored all of the background information provided by both the Inspector General and the Special Counsel that the idea President Trump was colluding with Russia emanated from an opposition research document compiled by his opponent rather than any real probable cause or legitimate predicate. Instead, he zoned specifically in on the narrow claim that Russia interfered in the election, which of course they did because that’s what they do – and we do. In other words, the fact that Russia interfered in some manner isn’t in dispute. The fact that President Trump engaged in a freaking conspiracy to do so, what amounts to a truly monstrous charge that should have been dismissed out of hand given the source, is. The birth of this non existent conspiracy and how it moved through the FBI leading to warrants and ultimately to President Obama’s desk is what really matters, and in that regard Ms. Gabbard undoubtedly delivered. President Obama himself personally rejected one assessment and ordered a new one, likely knowing that the result would be given incoming President Trump was already under investigation, which a month later just happened to include the conspiracy angle based on the Steele Dossier. To suggest this is coincidence, strikes me at least as absurd, but whatever your opinion, it’s certainly not nothing. Strangely, Mr. Benen chose to conclude with yet another irony, wherein he worried that the Justice Department might get pushed into a “silly partisan stunt.” “Looking ahead,” he claimed, “the fact that Gabbard released a pitiful report might seem unimportant. The DNI already lacked credibility, so the fact that her findings make her appear like an even more brazen partisan activist will strike some as trivial. But Gabbard has also spent the last three days claiming that she’s now pushing for ‘indictments’ and ‘prosecutions’ of Obama administration officials who committed outrageous crimes that don’t appear to have actually happened in reality. In other words, the release of a misguided report on Trump’s Russia scandal wasn’t just a desperate ploy to make the president happy; it was also an apparent first step toward pushing the Justice Department to act on a silly partisan stunt.” Has Mr. Benen been asleep for the past five years when federal, state, and local prosecutors, all of whom were Democrats, indicted President Trump almost a hundred times and wanted to put him in jail for several lifetimes? Are we supposed to forget that happened in its entirety? Are we really supposed to believe he did himself?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 