On Mueller, Christopher Steele, and Republicans
(Posted to Twitter on April 4.)
For me, there were two big stories today. 1/34
The first was this news from NBC: “We’re hearing from a separate U.S. official that some members of the Mueller team say that the evidence on collusion, while not establishing a criminal conspiracy, is actually very compelling.” 2/34
The second big news story, IMO, is that Republicans are raising the stakes on the MUELLER REPORT, claiming that it was irredeemably flawed at its birth. 3/34
Mueller’s Report, according to some important Republican leaders, is a corrupt, deep state effort to unlawfully overturn Trump’s election and must be exposed and discredited as such. 4/34
In recent days these Republicans have been busy attacking the Mueller investigation and its report at what they are convinced is its weakest point: the Steele “dossier.” 5/34
Two markers from today’s news show that this has become now — more than ever — the focal point of their attacks on the investigations. 6/34
Today Devin Nunes even called the MUELLER REPORT the “Mueller dossier.” (at 3:00+) 7/34
And today Rand Paul blocked a Senate resolution calling for the public release of the MUELLER REPORT, saying (inter alia) that he would not support its release unless information about the Steele dossier was *also* released. 8/34
Paul based his opposition on the claim, which is false, that the Steele dossier was the basis for the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigations. 9/34
This has long been the contention of Nunes, in particular, even though his own committee (HPSCI) correctly identified the information the FBI received about George Papadopoulos as the trigger for the investigation. 10/34
Giuliani has also suggested that Papadopoulos was not the origin of the Mueller probe, saying darkly that he is not ready yet to “give any details.” 11/34
My guess is that Giuliani, too, is hoping to counter any negative findings from the MUELLER REPORT by discrediting the “dossier.” 12/34
The right-wing conspiracy mongering about the supposedly suspect origins of the Trump-Russia investigations, and especially about the role of the Steele dossier, is going full bore, but if there was any conspiracy involving the dossier it runs in the OPPOSITE direction. 13/34
To anyone who reads the HPSCI report — or even better, the Congressional testimonies of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok — it is unquestionable that the FBI’s Russia (counterintelligence) team opened Operation Crossfire Hurricane before it had received the Steele reports. 14/34
The real question is why the Russia team that opened Crossfire Hurricane didn’t have the dossier SOONER.
(Strzok and Page didn’t have it in hand before some date in early August, whereas we know that Steele had given his FBI handler two of his early memos in early July.) 15/34
What happened to those memos when they entered the FBI’s New York office through Gaeta? We do not know, and therein lies a mystery. 16/34
My guess — and it’s only a guess at this point — is that the Steele memos were deep-sixed by partisans in the NY office of the FBI, which was notoriously pro-Trump and anti-Clinton. 17/34
(I wrote about this at length in early Feb 2018. See
beginning at tweet #51.)
(I wrote about this at length in early Feb 2018. See beginning at tweet #51.)
[In light of the Page and Strzok hearings, I will be making some corrections to this very early thread, but they are minor.] 18/34
Nunes and his gang think that it is to their advantage to get to the bottom of how the federal investigations of Trump-Russia began, and particularly the Steele dossier’s role in it, but as the adage goes: be careful what you wish for, Republicans. 19/34
I say that because the dossier was the fons et origo of the claim of Trump-Russia collusion. 20/34
Until a few hours ago, when NBC News broke the news that the evidence for campaign collusion in the MUELLER REPORT is likely “compelling,” this was thought to be an embarrassment, because 21/34
most commentators took the Barr letter at face value, and assumed that it meant that Mueller had exonerated Trump and his campaign on the charge of collusion. 22/34
As we now know, Mueller only concluded that he had failed to establish a case for criminal conspiracy meeting the beyond a reasonable standard of proof — and that hardly exhausts all the legitimate questions that can be asked about the Trump campaign. 23/34
Now compare the NBC News story that I cited above:
“We’re hearing from a separate U.S. official that some members of the Mueller team say that the evidence on collusion, while not establishing a criminal conspiracy, is actually very compelling.” 24/34
with the following passage from Steele memo #095. (This is an undated memo to which I had earlier assigned a date of ~ 23 July 2016. I realize now this was a mistake. The date is important, but more about this in another posting.): 25/34
This passage is historically important, because it was the first time that an allegation appeared in public (after BuzzFeed published the “dossier”) that there was a “well developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia. 26/34
It matters not at all that Steele called it a “conspiracy” and that Mueller failed to establish (because of insufficient evidence) that there was a provable case of “criminal conspiracy” in U.S. law. 27/34
There is no reason to think that Steele was conversant with the intricacies and details of U.S. criminal law (and some evidence in the Page and Strzok testimonies that he was not), 28/3
but he could certainly recognize collusion in a counterintelligence sense when he saw it, as all sane people (i.e., non-Republicans) do: 29/34 (video)
(The speaker at this rally places special emphasis on Paul Manafort, who gave internal strategy and polling data to GRU intelligence. The speaker was certainly right to do so. 30/34
Note that Steele was the FIRST to finger Manafort as playing the key role in campaign “conspiracy “ or “collusion” (whatever you want to call it.) 31/34
So I say to Nunes, Paul, Giuliani, Jordan and their ilk: BRING IT ON!
Investigate Steele to your heart’s content (provided his sources and methods are protected — as they should be, like all the other human sources used by Mueller and the FBI). 32/34
Steele said a year ago that 70–90% of the dossier would be confirmed. (It’s only HUMINT after all.) I’m sure he’s right, and that Mueller and the Congressional investigations that are coming will amply confirm his prediction. 33/34
And my question to the Republicans is: what are you going to do when 70–90% of the dossier IS confirmed? 34/34
PS/ I have been meaning for days to do a write-up of my notes on the Congressional testimonies of Strzok, Page, and Ohr, but breaking news stories keeping getting in my way. (Not that I’m complaining, because all the news stories have been great for us!)
