Another installment of my analysis of the Durham Report, which confirmed that the Trump Russia Collusion story was a hoax conceived by the Clinton campaign and then turned to further use by the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, and the media after Trump's unexpected election (see Part 1).
In Part 1, I reported Durham's finding that "not one of the damning allegations contained in the Steele reporting was ever corroborated", confirming what was already implicit in DOJ Inspector Horowitz's investigation released in 2019.
One of those allegations was the "pee tape" allegedly made when Trump was staying at the Ritz Carlton and invited prostitutes to his suite, a suite he demanded because President Obama had stayed there, an allegation that attracted a lot of media attention in early 2017.(1) A recent article in the Daily Mail reminded me of how the Mueller team and his report were used as vehicles to try and reinforce this narrative despite a lack of proof.
The article reports on efforts by Georgian-American businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze to repair his reputation by filing a defamation action against Mueller and the Justice Department. A Federal District Court dimissed his lawsuit and his appeal was just argued in the DC Court of Appeals. The lawsuit is based on a reference to Rtskhiadze in a footnote regarding the "pee tape" in the Mueller Report. You can read about the lawsuit and the footnote here.
I'm less concerned about the legal merits than what it reveals about the Mueller investigation. You see, by the time the Mueller report was released in 2019, Mueller and his team knew all the allegations in the Steele Dossier could not be corroborated. Yet, without making reference to the Dossier itself, the report spent considerable time on the events it allegedly described. Though Mueller could not prove anything it allowed his investigative team to release publicly all sorts of indirect inferences, abetted by the skillful use of adjectives and adverbs to imply things that simply were not true. Whether it was Sergei Millian, Carter Page, Rtskhiladze, or Svetlana Lokhova the Mueller team didn't care what harm was done to reputations, though they knew the individuals to be innocent, as long as it enabled Mueller to create a narrative damaging to Donald Trump.
The collusion section of the Mueller Report contains no mention of the Steele Dossier and, at his Congressional testimony in July 2019, Mueller repeatedly stated, under oath, that investigation of the Dossier was "out of my purview". It was clear the Special Counsel wanted to avoid any discussion of the Dossier. Based on observing his testimony, Mueller appeared to have lost some of his mental capacity, but his staff certainly knew that his repeated statements were untrue and the Durham report provides the details.
The Mueller Team Obstructs Justice & Deceptive Congressional Testimony
The Mueller Team deliberately obstructed a full investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election
The Mueller Team lied about whether it had investigated the Steele Dossier
The Mueller Team perpetrated a fraud on the American public in an attempt to influence elections and interfere with the functioning of our democracy
By the time Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel in May 2017, FBI investigators had discovered where they believed the "pee tape" allegation (and others contained in the Steele Dossier) originated. It was with Charles Dolan, a DC lobbyist and PR guy, who worked for the Russian Federation on its public relations in the United States. According to the Durham Report, Dolan:
". . . frequently interacted frequently with Russian government officials, including, most importantly, Dimitry Peskov, Press Secretary of the Russian Presidential Administration, and Alex Pavlov, Deputy Press Secretary of the Russian Presidential Administration. Peskov has often been described in media reports as President Putin's 'right-hand man'. . . . Additionally, Dolan maintained relationships with Sergei Kislyak, who served as Russian Ambassador to the United States from 2008-17, and Mikhail Kalugin, the head of the Russian Embassy's Economic Section . . " (p.139).
Dolan also served as an advisor to the Valdai Club, where he attended several lunches with former Russian President and then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and was a frequent visitor to Moscow. Durham describes the Valdai Club as:
"a Moscow based think tank that is closely associated with Russian President Putin and is viewed by many in the West as a vehicle for Russian propaganda" (p.142)
In emails obtained by Durham, Dolan described Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as Christopher Steele's "main subsource" for the Dossier as a "Russian agent" who he thought worked for the FSB [the Russian successor to the KGB]. (p.143&160)
The analysts also learned that in addition to Dolan's work for the Russian Federation he had an extensive background in Democratic politics, previously serving as:
"(i) Executive Director of the Democratic Governors Association, (ii) Virginia Chairman of former President Clinton's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, and (iii) an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Moreover, beginning in 1997, President Clinton appointed Dolan to two four-year terms on the State Department's U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. With respect to the 2016 Clinton campaign, Dolan described himself as a 'door to door' guy in New Hampshire who did not hold any significant position."(p. 138-9)
For the analysts it meant there was now a potential connection between the Clinton campaign and the Russians. However, the analyst request that the FBI interview Dolan was denied.
When Mueller was appointed, the two FBI analysts were moved over to the Special Counsel's team to assist in its investigation. They were assigned to a team working on investigating the allegations in the Steele Dossier.
Wait a minute! Mueller told Congress the Dossier was not in his purview and his report makes no mention on efforts to verify it or any conclusions regarding the allegations. What is going on?
Not only does the Durham Report state that such a team existed but, in the fall of 2022, at the trial of Igor Danchenko, the FBI analysts confirmed its existence in their trial testimony!
And now we come to the rest of the story.
The FBI analysts continued their research on Dolan and by August 2017 had prepared a briefing in which they proposed opening a formal investigation of Dolan and interviewing him, uploading their case file to the Special Counsel's computer system. Several members of the Mueller team attended the briefing, including senior attorney Jeannie Rhee. Rhee, like most of Mueller's team, was a Democratic operative. A protege of Eric Holder, Rhee had recently represented Hillary Clinton in her email travails as well as representing ex-Obama National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 racketeering case. (p.167)
However, on September 7, 2017 the analysts supervisor ordered them to "cease all research and analysis related to Dolan". Later that day, one of the analysts was informed they were being transferred to another team in the Special Counsel's office. According to Durham, the analyst asked "for permission to continue researching Dolan before moving to 'Team M' but that her request was denied". (p.168)
Later in September, the analysts and other FBI personnel later interviewed by Dolan said they were told that all work "should cease on attempting to corroborate the Steele Reports". One of the analysts "recalled that Rhee opined, in sum, that there was no longer a need to investigate the Steele Reports, because the Reports were not within the scope of the Mueller Special Counsel mandate", a position described as "curious" by Durham. (p.169). Having read the scope letter issued to Mueller it is a ridiculous position to take if one were serious about investigating possible Russian interference with the 2016 election as the Special Counsel was authorized to do.
Durham was unable to find anyone who could provide the reasoning behind shutting down the research on Dolan and disbanding the effort to investigate the Steele information. All Durham's interviews of the supervising agents revealed was a statement that it was a "higher level decision". (p.170) The proposed case opening on Dolan that had been filed on the Special Counsel's computer system was ordered deleted. (p.170)
Durham notes that "The FBI interviewed hundreds of individuals through the course of the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller Special Counsel investigations, and yet, they did not interview Dolan . . . " (p.172)
What should we make of the Mueller team's deliberate avoidance of interviewing Charles Dolan, of its decision in September 2017 to shut down the investigation of the Steele Dossier, of the absence of any reference to it in the Mueller report, and of Mueller's adamant and repeated insistence to Congress that his investigation did not extend to the Dossier?
Timing and contingency are important in understanding what happened and why. When the Clinton campaign originated the Russia collusion narrative and Peter Strzok at the FBI was assuring Lisa Page that the agency would prevent Trump from becoming president, everyone assumed Hillary would win in November 2016 and whatever stratagems had been deployed by the campaign and the FBI would remain concealed and never investigated. It was Trump's unexpected victory that disrupted those plans. It was essential that the origins of the Russia collusion narrative remain obscure because of the potential damage to Democrats.
In retrospect, the strategy is clear. From the start, the Special Counsel investigation was directed less at Russian interference and more in continuing an ongoing narrative for the media and Democrats against Donald Trump in order to, at a minimum, create an atmosphere to impede the operation of his administration, create a sense of illegitimacy around his presidency, impact the mid-term elections, and, if possible lure him into an obstruction of justice case.(2) Prior to Mueller's appointment, Comey and his minions had failed to verify the Steele allegations. In fact, when the FBI interviewed Danchenko, Steele's main source, in late January 2017, he told the FBI he was merely passing on gossip and stories he'd heard and had no idea if they were true or not.
The failure of the FBI investigation to uncover any confirmation of the Trump collusion narrative was evident by May 2017. Peter Strzok, who, as Deputy Assistant Director of the agency's Counterintelligence Division, and outspoken opponent of Trump, was leading the investigation, was offered a position on the Mueller team but texted that month he was hesitant in joining, "in part, because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there". (p.109)
When he started as Special Counsel, Mueller set up a team to further investigate Steele because it was the logical thing to do, but quickly concluded there was nothing that could be corroborated. Worse, there were potentially embarrassing aspects for the Democrats now that they knew about Dolan's role, in addition to the Clinton campaign funding of the Steele Dossier. Discovering Dolan's involvement leads to other questions:
Did the Mueller team know that FusionGPS was working for a Russian oligarch at the same time it was working for the Clinton campaign?
Did the Mueller team know that Christopher Steele was working for yet another Russian oligarch at the same time as he was working for FusionGPS?
Did the Mueller team know that Steel's main source, Igor Danchenko, had been the subject of an unresolved FBI counterintelligence investigation?
Did the Mueller team know that Danchenko had only managed to maintain his American visa after being firing by the liberal Brookings Institution for soliciting staff on behalf of Russian intelligence (and where he had been hired at the recommendation of later Trump opponent Fiona Hill), by virtue of Christopher Steele's arrangement to pay Danchenko using a cut-out, fraudulently evading American immigration laws?
Or, once they identified Dolan's role and political connections, did they decide not to open that can of worms? Mueller already knew that Steele had been working for the Clinton campaign in 2016, though the public did not learn about it until October 2017, so it was potentially disruptive of the desired anti-Trump narrative.
The Special Counsel's authorization letter gave him authority to investigate Russian interference with the election. Mueller and his team decided to ignore anything that did not potential implicate Trump.(3) Instead, in the fall of 2017, Mueller decided on a two-track approach. Internally, to quash any further investigation of the Steele allegations and avoid any embarrassing blow-back for Democrats. Externally, not to say anything so they could continue to leak juicy tidbits to friends in the press and let the narrative continue to build around Steele, because those allegations were the emotional heart of the collusion allegations and best known to the public.
From a timing perspective, until William Barr finally blew the whistle and told Mueller to shut it down, the plan was to run the investigation right through the 2020 election, generating stories to thrill the press and ensuring Trump's defeat. The last thing the Special Counsel team wanted was to have to write a report because they had nothing.
Forced to write a report sooner than anticipated, the Special Counsel team did the best they could given the lack of evidence. The Mueller Report, released in March 2019, was divided into two parts. The first was regarding collusion and Mueller reported that the investigation:
"did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"
Notice the carefully structured wording which implies that while they couldn't prove conspiracy or coordination, it definitely might have happened, rather than more accurately reporting that Mueller found no evidence to support the allegations. The first section contained no references to Steele or his reports. The discussion in this section goes into great detail on every potential interaction investigated and cleverly uses adjectives, adverbs, and colorful, but not relevant, assertions to make it seem like something really must have happened, but when you strip out the literary embroidery you realize there is nothing there. For example, there is a lengthy narrative regarding the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in New York which, while a stupid move by Fredo Trump Jr, was a nothingburger, something confirmed by Mueller within days of the public revelation of the meeting, when his team interviewed the respected and credible translator present at that meeting (a fact omitted in the Mueller report). For my analysis of that meeting reading this.
We see another example in the long discussion on the mysterious Josef Mifsud and his dealing with George Papadopolous in early 2016. The Mueller Report makes a big deal about Mifsud's membership in the Valdai Club and its relationship with the Russian government as part of insinuating he was a Russian intelligence asset. Yet when, as described above, the Mueller team learned the Clinton connected Charles Dolan was an advisor to the Valdai Club, they decided it was so immaterial that Dolan wasn't even worth interviewing and shut down any further research on him.
The second section concerned President Trump's potential obstruction of justice. The Mueller report lists a number of incidents that might constitute obstruction but makes no recommendation, infuriating Attorney General Barr, who believed it Mueller's obligation to reach a conclusion. Mueller's strategy was to make sure it was left as an open question. And it is here we see another reason for Mueller to avoid the Steele Report. It was the allegations in the Steele Report and, in particular, the extensive and sensationalized media coverage that outraged Trump. His visible frustration and outbursts were prompted by his knowledge that the allegations were false.
If the Mueller Report had acknowledged the truth about Steele, that his team investigated and could not corroborate any of the allegations, it would have made Trump's reaction to the investigation much more understandable, undermining Mueller's implied obstruction argument, and the media's ability to maintain its narrative. That was the last thing the Mueller team wanted. Better keep what they knew about Steele under wraps. In 2019 I summarized the key aspects of the obstruction discussion in the Mueller Report.(4)
Given what we now know about the Mueller investigation, the Clinton campaign's involvement in structuring a false narrative about Trump, and Comey and the Intelligence Community's manipulation of the investigation, the reasons for Trump's frustration and outbursts are even more understandable.
Trump may be guilty of naivete, gullibility, ignorance, and a host of other shortcomings but he is not the villain in the Russian collusion story. There are plenty of real villains including Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Adam Schiff, and much of the media.
. . . more to come on the Durham Report
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(1) Durham reports that while Trump did stay at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton in 2013, he did not, as the Steele Dossier claims, stay in the Presidential Suite once occupied by President Obama (a key element in the allegation), nor did he ever stay there on other visits to the city.
(2) Mueller's Special Counsel remit from DOJ, while it mentioned allegations regarding the Trump administration, empowered him to look at all aspects of alleged Russian interference with the election. It was a political choice by the Special Counsel to only look at allegations regarding Trump and ignore the evidence of connections between Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the Kremlin, evidence that was at least as strong as any potential connection between Trump and the Russians.
(3) In 2018 the FBI learned about more potential Russian manipulation and quashed any further investigation. According to Durham, the FBI learned that Russian access to "sensitive U.S. government information . . . would have allowed them to identify Steele's subsources" and that those subsources "could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report" (p.107-8). In other words, Steele's project was likely known at the time by the Russians and the allegations reported by Steele could have been manipulated by them.
The FBI team that identified the issue met with higher ups and were instructed "to be careful about what they were writing down because issues relating to Steele were under intense scrutiny". (p.108) Two weeks later the team met with Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Dina Corsi who "directed them not to document any recommendations, context, or analysis in the memorandum they were preparing", instructions which the team described as "highly unusual" and "concerned the team because analysis is what analysts do". (p.108)
An FBI Office of General Counsel attorney was also at the same meeting and told Durham he was "shocked" by Corsi's directive. His recollection was that "Corsi was speaking for FBI leadership". The attorney said "what Corsi said was not right in any circumstance, and it was the most inappropriate operational or professional statement he had ever heard at the FBI." (p.108)
Whether the Mueller team learned of this information is unknown, though FBI analysts worked in support of the team. The extent of the interaction between FBI leadership, which according to the Durham report was updated daily on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and leadership on the Mueller team is also unknown. What is evident is that for both the FBI and Mueller, any information damaging to the credibility of Steele needed to be closely held and suppressed from further investigation.
(4) The obstruction discussion in the Mueller report omits the remarkable extent of cooperation with the investigation by the White House, including production of millions of documents, and not asserting executive privilege, even allowing Trump's White House Counsel to be repeatedly interviewed by Mueller, an unprecedented event. The only request denied was for an interview with Trump.
Mueller also omits reference to Acting FBI Director McCabe's response to the question posed by Senator Rubio in a hearing in the days after the dismissal of James Comey:
Q. Has the dismissal of Mr Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped, or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or any ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
A. There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.
There is also the matter of President Trump's dinner with Comey on January 27, 2017. According to Comey's own account:
The President brought up the Steele report that Comey had raised in the January 6, 2017 briefing and stated that he was thinking about ordering the FBI to investigate the allegations to prove they were false. Comey responded that the President should think carefully about issuing such an order because it could create a narrative that the FBI was investigating him personally, which was incorrect.
The President backed away from issuing the order after Comey's comment. Isn't it curious that it is the President wanting the allegations investigated and the FBI Director trying to persuade him not to order it? Perhaps not so curious when the FBI was investigating Trump personally and Comey had, by that time, twice certified that the allegations in the Steele Dossier was reliable enough for the FISA Court to issue search warrants, though Comey knew that certification to be false.
A final note - I've found it interesting that in the outbursts cited in the Mueller Report, Trump repeatedly complains that he needs an Attorney General like Robert Kennedy or Eric Holder to protect him. Trump was accurate in his assessment of the role of Kennedy and Holder. Their primary role was to protect their presidents, not to be chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Holder even publicly bragged of being Obama's "wingman". Sadly, Trump's assessment of the role of the AG in modern America is correct. The President needs an AG looking out for him.
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