On the 9th of May, 2017, the US President, Donald Trump, dismissed the then FBI Director, James Comey. At the time, there were allegations that Trump’s firing of Comey was related to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the Trump 2016 campaign and allegations of its links with Russian persons and the Russian state. At the same time, there was, also, a memorandum by the US Deputy Attorney General, Rod J. Rosenstein, recommending Comey’s termination. Trump’s own firing of Comey noted that Comey had told Trump privately that he was not under investigation, something that Comey would later admit was correct.
On the 17th of May, 2017, Mr Rosenstein appointed Robert Swan Mueller III, the former FBI Director, to thoroughly investigate the Russian Government’s effort to interfere in the United States’ 2016 election. The record of appointment can be found here.
It is important to note, here, that:
(A) the Mueller probe was, in its origins, a counter-intelligence investigation that contained a mandate for criminal prosecutions, where necessary and appropriate. A counter-intelligence investigation is necessarily protective – it is focused on identifying and assessing threats to national security, not merely investigating those criminal matters that may be prosecutable; and
(B) in the United States, the counter-intelligence and national criminal investigation functions are combined in the one agency: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In other Western countries, in particular in the British imperial/Commonwealth nations, the counter-intelligence and national criminal investigation missions are often discharged by separate agencies (eg in the UK, MI5 and the National Crime Agency, in Australia, ASIO and the Australian Federal Police, and so on.) There is much sense in separating the functions, if only because these agencies have very different cultures and the sorts of people who excel at counter-intelligence work are, very often, the sort of eccentrics and social misfits who would, rightly, never be accepted as agents and officers of any respectable law enforcement body.
Keeping both (A) and (B) in mind, we come to now, late March 2019, and Mr Mueller has submitted his report as Special Counsel to the US Attorney-General, William Barr. The Mueller Report's contents remain undisclosed and, one expects, will require significant declassification and/or redaction before any part of it can properly be released.
On the 24th of March 2019, Mr Barr, as the Attorney General, supplied a synopsis of the Mueller report to Congressional leaders (see here), and its two key findings:
Firstly, Mueller cleared Trump and his campaign of conspiring or coordinating (a distinction without any real difference) with the Russian Government. While the Special Counsel did charge a number of Russian military officers with cyber/computer hacking for the purposes of influencing the US 2016 election, the Mueller investigation did not find that Trump or his campaign were party to the Russian effort – and “despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign”. At the same time, while the Mueller probe may not have found evidence that established or supported any conspiracy, it is likely the counter-intelligence aspect of the Mueller probe has commenced or followed leads in respect of Russian and other foreign influences that will probably be run-down over the next few years if not decades. Mueller, as a former FBI director, was uniquely well-suited to oversee such a probe.
Secondly, Mueller left the issue of whether President Trump’s behaviour evidenced “obstruction-of-justice concerns” at large. It is unclear what the alleged obstruction was: was it Trump's intercession for Lieutenant General Michael Flynn? Was it Trump firing former FBI Director James Comey? Or was it Trump attacking the Mueller probe? Or something else? Was it Trump denouncing the probe as a “witch hunt”? (The last of which may be unwise and against legal advice, but is arguably something Trump is as free to do as anyone else). So, the obstruction issue became one for the Attorney General to determine. Thus it came to be that both the Attorney General Barr, and the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, “....concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” More than anything else, Rosenstein’s concurrence in this conclusion is critical, here. Rosenstein had both (A) advised Trump to fire the former FBI director James Comey and (B) had initiated and supervised the Mueller probe. Rosenstein would be the one US Government official who would be charged with pursuing, as well as the key government witness to, any allegation of obstruction. While there is no gainsaying the idiocies that any Congress will engage in, the legal question of obstruction was negatived by Rosenstein’s express concurrence. [An interesting question, also, arises here, as to whether Mueller could have formed an independent view on the facts. Mueller was interviewed by Trump for the position of FBI director on 16 May 2017. It seems highly likely that Mueller would, at that interview, have become acquainted with Trump's views on Comey and why Comey was fired. It is also highly likely that Mueller has his own views of Comey, which may well have changed during the Special Counsel probe. Another question for another day.]
As a matter of full disclosure, you can find all my comments on the Mueller probe here and you will note, and I take no satisfaction in saying this, that, as early as the 15th of June 2017, it was clear, on the evidence, that Trump would be cleared. Moreover, as a matter of common sense given the colandar-like US system, does anyone seriously believe that if there was evidence of Trump and his circle conspiring with the Russians, it would not have leaked long ago? Donald Trump could barely coordinate with his own presidential campaign-why would any sentient being think Trump would be able to conspire with the Kremlin and keep it a secret? This is not to say that Trump's campaign was not a magnet for grifters, drifters, people other GOP campaigns would not hire, as well as those with suspicious pasts, including Russian associations - Trump's campaign had all of those sorts of characters. But the idea that Trump, of all people, with his penchant for bombast and inability to keep a secret, would be the Kremlin's idea of a useful dupe, is rather at odds with the history of Russian subversion.
This all said, though, in the best traditions of the “wilderness of mirrors” that is the arena of intelligence and counter-intelligence work, as well as the slow drudge of a criminal investigation and prosecution, the question inevitably arises, ‘what did we learn’? In answer to this question, I say the following.
Firstly - and this did not require anyone of the stature of Robert Mueller to investigate - American politics is open to a degree of corruption and influence by foreign moneyed interests and foreign intelligence services (often the same thing in many countries) on a scale as great as, if not much worse than, any other first world country. The American republic, while it has so much to admire in its design and founding, is, in 2019, possessed of a political class that Russians, like the Chinese, Ukrainians, and a host of others, know is open to corruption, intelligence dangles, and compromise/kompromat. (Even Australia, felt it needed to donate money to the Clinton Foundation.) The Paul Manaforts and Podesta brothers and others are but archetypes of a notorious American cohort of political vagabonds. One hopes that the United States has now learned a valuable if painful lesson on why the swamps of professional politics are best drained permanently. One doubts, however, that anything will be done by a political establishment that is happy to be at least rented, if not bought. One foresees, instead, that the Russians, Chinese, and other malefactors, will simply see the Mueller probe as deterring them from doing nothing but seeking a smarter variety of traitor and useful idiot to now suborn in the future, and, especially, for 2020.
In the Russian case, their historic practice, going back to the Tsarist Okhrana, of spreading disinformation, fake documents, sowing domestic chaos and distrust, means that the Kremlin’s appetite for destruction has only been whetted by the hysteria and insanity of America’s political class and media over the past three years. The clearly desired Russian effect of a divided and suspicious America was achieved beyond Putin's wildest dreams. While I have long counselled a realistic and historically informed approach to the Russian threat, given that the cold war is now long over, anyone thinking the Russians, or the Chinese and Iranians, have not seen here a real vulnerability for exploiting America’s domestic divisions, at very little real cost, is deluding themself. Unless and until the United States takes seriously its duty to its own people, to protect them against foreign influences and the rampant political and lobbying corruption that enables its spread, the future of American domestic politics is what we have seen recently. And every US ally should be extraordinarily concerned by the sight of this great and powerful republic whose political class is seemingly unable to protect America from meddling by malevolent foreign adversaries.
The case of the Steele Dossier and how this tract found its way into the FBI's hands is endlessly fascinating and disturbing. This anti-Trump dossier, full of the most sordid and lurid details of Trump's alleged activities, was compiled by the former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, relying on local Russian sources, for the benefit of anti-Trump forces in US politics. The fact that Steele had not been in Russia since the 1990s, and Steele had no way to verify his alleged sources and whether any part of the dossier was or was not true, was neither here nor there. For a certain segment of US politics and media, the fact that the Steele Dossier was anti-Trump, even if it was otherwise the stuff of fabulism, was enough-they 'wanted to believe'. The fact that an apparently experienced Western intelligence operative like Steele could be so naive as to not see how ripe a target he was for Russian disinformation is simply bewildering. Even now, the Steele Dossier remains a still unverified product of opposition research yet, as set out below, it found its way into the FBI's hands and was briefed to Trump by Comey in early 2017. The question of whether the (known to be unverified and scandalous) Steele Dossier formed any part of the evidentiary foundation for a surveillance warrant obtained from the US' FISA courts is a matter that remains at large, and, if proved so, would be a matter that would see any lawyer in any other common law jurisdiction, seeking to move the court ex parte on the basis of Steele's dubious chronicle, disbarred or struck off. The Steele Dossier was the recycling of political skulduggery into an allegation of facts that would poison US politics from 2016 on and was a disinformation success beyond the Kremlin's wildest dreams.
Secondly, and further to the above, something clearly went badly wrong with the US Intelligence community in 2015-2016 and, most especially, with the FBI in the Comey era. The conduct of the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the former CIA Director, John Brennan, was nothing short of deplorable and, in Brennan's case, disgraceful in retirement. However, something was badly awry with Comey and the FBI. It is not just that James Comey was weak with respect to baulking at prosecuting Hillary Clinton, and a pathetic presence online. He seems to have been, at best, the FBI’s invisible man. It is not just that so much of the Comey-era FBI leadership has been fired or terminated for cause, or referred for criminal prosecution. If it was well known to the FBI in 2015-2016, such that it then commenced the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, that the Russians were seeking to insert themselves or their agents into the orbit of the Trump campaign (and, given Russian enrichment of the Clintons over the years, one cannot be sure it was only the Trump campaign), the FBI had an undeniable and positive duty to defensively brief Trump and his senior aides. There is, simply, no excuse for the FBI leadership’s failure to warn Trump and his campaign of what the FBI leadership then already knew were destabilising Russian machinations. It is difficult to think of another first world country where the national counter-intelligence agency would not have acted to protect a threat to a national political campaign. It is difficult to think of any serious counter-intelligence professional in history who would have behaved as Comey and his coterie did in 2015-2016. In the UK, for example, the security services are a not uncommon if subtle advisor to political leaders, especially where dubious backbenchers and mainchancers are associating or have associated with the wrong sorts of ‘Johnny Foreigner’. In Australia, ASIO will make public statements to warn of foreign influence, especially the Chinese in recent years. The French, also, are particularly zealous at protecting their domestic politics from foreign intrigues. Somehow the FBI of the Comey era went missing in action as a concerted - if not overly large, expensive, or sophisticated - Russian campaign to sow chaos in an election year went into top gear. The FBI’s handling of the notorious Steele dossier, almost certainly the product of current and former Russian intelligence operatives, where it was taken seriously enough for Comey to brief the US President-elect in January 2017, is a matter for another day but suggests an FBI with major problems.
(One suspects that Clapper and Comey briefed Trump on the Steele Dossier to both inform the incoming president but, also, one infers, as a means of suggesting to Trump this duo had 'one over' on Trump...little did either realise that Trump's careeer spent in property development prepared him unusually well for dealing with stand-over men and how they are best 'fired' when attempting to extort.)
Thirdly, on any view, the US news media has utterly disgraced itself at every step of the Mueller probe. It was clear to anyone who could read plain English that Mueller’s probe was intended as a counter-intelligence probe into Russian activities in the 2016 election, not a mission to remove Trump from office. The all but obsessive belief in the US media, with all too few honourable exceptions, that Mueller was, indeed, the means by which their bête noire Trump would leave office in disgrace if not under actual arrest, has destroyed what little remaining credibility that the US media enjoyed after its embarrassing bias during the Obama years and the Hillary campaign. That Trump won an election that the media overwhelmingly opposed him on was Trump’s unforgiveable sin. That, on balance, even the hyperbolic ‘Don from Queens’ Donald Trump was far closer to the truth as to the veracity of the allegations against him than almost anyone in American journalism was – not to mention a US media whose cable news green rooms were populated by former American security eminences sullied by the Iraq war - should provoke some serious soul-searching. To its credit, many independent and even left of centre journalists (who I would probably disagree with on most things) did ask questions and refuse to join the media herd, with Matthew Taibbi’s brutal but deserved account a 'must read' from this debacle. The lion of the conservative American media establishment, Brit Hume, was right to describe the media coverage as the "worst journalistic debacle of my lifetime". The US media needs its own reckoning. I say this with no relish but, instead, with regard to the vital role that a serious and independent media plays in informing the public and in holding governmental power to account. If the media is now so rotten and agenda driven, then not only will these crucial public duties go unperformed but, when a crisis inevitably occurs, there will be no media in which the public can have any confidence. Finally, hopefully, conservatives who believe in the rule of law will have learned to be sceptical of rushes to judgement based on institutional trust not actual evidence, and will be cautious before joining any future pile on of a Democrat placed in Trump’s position.
Fourthly, for all of the United States’ current travails, it should take enormous pride that it can still produce a public servant of the calibre of Robert Mueller. I have enormous personal regard for Mueller. Yes, he was and is, to borrow the nonsensical terminology of our time, a son of ‘privilege’, a ‘prep’, but he was also that rare member of his cohort who volunteered to serve in the Vietnam War that so many, including future US Presidents, did their best to evade – and Mueller served there with distinction as a Marine officer. Mueller then, also, eschewed a lucrative career in private practice to take prosecutorial positions in the service of the public interest. On any view, Mueller is a heroic figure and only the more so for his willingness to disappoint the baying mobs and political hacks. Hopefully, for the US’ sake, there are other Muellers out there, who will avoid partisan politics, and the temptation to play for applause from the gallery, and instead doggedly follow the evidence where it leads and, if it is insufficient, be satisfied to publicly clear, rather than bring a false prosecution. Robert Mueller is a living reminder of the sort of diligent, quiet, self-effacing, and American “wise men” who created the American century, and who built and led a superpower.
Finally, the full truth of the Mueller probe, especially its counter-intelligence aspects, and its related issues will likely never be known. Moreover, the personages involved have still never been asked questions on what really happened in 2015-2016 in any exhaustive manner. It is as if a narrative took hold that few if any in journalism or academia wanted to question. As a wise Crown Prosecutor once said to me, “Even the greatest of crimes is but a mere chronology”. In March 2019, even with Mueller’s report now submitted, it is still entirely unclear what actually happened – when, where, who, how, etc and why - during the late Obama era. It is hard to make sense of a counter-intelligence probe whose history only gets more confusing - not more clear - over time. None of this invoved Robert Mueller. But further questions only arise from anyone looking back, fairly, at the history of the "Crossfire Hurricane" probe and the bizarre set of circumstances that led to the Obama-era FBI probing the Trump campaign, especially after the truly sham-like decision of the FBI to allow Hillary Clinton to escape prosecution.
My own particular curiosity is the evidence that would be given by Admiral Michael S. Rogers, USN, the former head of the US’ National Security Agency. After the US election, in late November 2016, Admiral Rogers went to meet the then President-elect Trump in New York City. Very unusually, Admiral Rogers went on his own to meet Trump. Usually when intelligence chiefs meet with a senior political figure, let alone a president-elect in the American system, they will attend as a phalanx, not just to provide a comprehensive briefing to the dignitary but, also, to ensure that each has a witness as to what was actually said. Instead, Admiral Rogers went on his own to see Trump, ostensibly about a job in the new administration. If anyone in the US Government at that time would have been very well aware of Russian hacking and kompromat, it would be Admiral Rogers. Yet, Admiral Rogers went to meet Trump, on his own, and to this day, what they discussed has never been leaked. Perhaps it was just a job interview? Perhaps it was just an informal briefing? But, nonetheless, after Admiral Rogers met Trump, there were calls from within the outgoing Obama administration for Rogers to be fired. And, moreover, Admiral Rogers was the only senior intelligence figure of that Obama era to have then been kept on by the incoming Trump administration, and to have retired from government service with all due honour and dignity.
Whatever Admiral Rogers (and those of that circle) knows of this critical 2015-2016 period is a matter for others to question but, until, especially, he and others write their memoirs or are subpoenaed to produce documents and testify, the full history of the late Obama era, the FBI, and the Russian threat, will still elude us all. Until the intelligence and policing heads are probed at length on the chronology of all these matters, from the Russians to the FBI’s conduct, nothing approaching a reliable history of this 2015-2016 descent into Moscow Centre-induced madness can be written. Hopefully, with Mueller now reporting in, that timeline can now start to be assembled, by vigorous, curious, and unbiased, journalism of the kind that has been so woefully absent for the past 4 years. We should all hope this will happen, especially as, after all, if you have spent years stumbling around the ‘wilderness of mirrors’, you can only start to find your way out by first breaking glass.
