Last week the current occupant of the Oval Office was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos for a television program that racked up disappointedly low ratings for our mighty king of his own imaginary ratings empire. Within that interview was this exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Your campaign this time around, if foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on opponents, should they accept it or should they call the FBI?
TRUMP: I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen, I don’t, there’s nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, “We have information on your opponent.” Oh, I think I’d want to hear it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You want that kind of interference in our elections?
TRUMP: It’s not an interference, they have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, that they come up with oppo research. Oh, let’s call the FBI. The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.
[…]
STEPHANOPOULOS: The FBI Director says that’s what should happen. [A campaign should notify FBI when offered oppo research from a foreign entity.]
TRUMP: The FBI Director is wrong. Because, frankly, it doesn’t happen like that in life. Now, maybe it will start happening. Maybe today you think differently, but two or three years ago, if somebody comes into your office with oppo research--they call it oppo research--with information that might be good or bad or something, but good for you, bad for your opponent, you don’t call the FBI. I would guarantee you that 90 percent, could be 100 percent of the congressmen or the senators over there, have had meetings, if they didn’t they probably wouldn’t be elected, on negative information about their opponent--
Contained within the Mueller report, but also widely available online, is a copy of the indictment of thirteen entities for their interference in the 2016 election. The indictment was published online in July of 2018, so there is absolutely no excuse for Trump’s response. Included in the indictment is this:
1. The United States of America, through its departments and agencies, regulates the activities of foreign individuals and entities in and affecting the United States in order to prevent, disclose, and counteract improper foreign influence on U.S. elections and on the U.S. political system. U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General.
While it is perfectly legal for a campaign to request and pay for opposition research from a foreign entity, as did the Clinton campaign, to accept it without any payment is accepting an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign entity. An American president should know that.
To those of you who missed last week’s essay, we are reading the Mueller report as a community project, beginning this week with:
... the Introduction to Volume I, the Executive Summary, and parts I through III of Volume I, which include the special counsel’s Investigation, the Russian “active measures” social media campaign, and Russian hacking and dumping operations.
If you would like to join us, there is a free pdf of the report, published by the Justice Department, available to download here. A paperback copy that has lots of room for notes is available from Amazon, and an audio version can be found at Audible. So please grab your copy and join us for our ongoing discussion of the Mueller report.
The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.
Volume I of the Mueller report deals with how Russia violated our laws to interfere with our elections in 2016 in two ways: using social media to spread anti-Clinton lies and the actual hacking of email accounts and computers. Also reported are the means that the Russians used to disseminate the illegally obtained information.
The first thing we learn in the Executive Summary of the report is that:
The Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out the earliest Russian interference operations identified by the investigation—a social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States. The IRA was based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and received funding from Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin and companies he controlled. Prigozhin is widely reported to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Using fake social media accounts, employees of the IRA spread the original Fake News that disparaged Hillary Clinton.
“Main idea: Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary [Clinton] and the rest (except Sanders and Trump – we support them).”
The social media “active measures” even included fake Facebook groups and organized pro-Trump rallies after recruiting an America citizen who, unknowingly, became a front for the Russian actors, who would then claim illness or travel that would prevent them from attending the rally in person. (Not revealed to the American participant was that St. Petersburg was at least a 12-hour flight to New York.) It was no secret to the IRA employees that what they were doing was prohibited by U.S. laws. A shame our president never learned that basic lesson.
What was clearly prohibited by law, in spite of Trump’s very public encouragement, was the Russian hacking of emails and computer networks.
Beginning in March 2016, units of the Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) hacked the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton Campaign, including the email account of campaign chairman John Podesta. Starting in April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Most of this has been known for a long time, but what many members of the public may be unaware of is the evidence of Russian hacking operations against, not just county and state election boards, but of the hacking operations of the electronic technology firms that we rely on for voting machines and software.
The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.187 The GRU continued to target these victims through the elections in November 2016.
The special counsel did not investigate any damage caused by this hacking because, he claimed:
The Office understands that the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the states have separately investigated that activity.
By at least the summer of 2016, GRU officers sought access to state and local computer networks by exploiting known software vulnerabilities on websites of state and local governmental entities.
I find it disturbing that further investigation into the possibility of these hacking operations affecting vote totals is in the hands of an executive branch headed by the one who benefited the most from the illegal activity. As for the state governments, it is still unclear which counties in which states may have been impacted by the hacking. We have heard very little from the FBI or the DHS on who was attacked.
Florida’s secretary of state has been unable to determine which counties within that state had been impacted by the GRU’s hacking operation.
“The department reached out to the F.B.I. and they declined to share that information with us,” said Sarah Revell, a department spokeswoman. “No county has come forward.”
After the material was hacked, the GRU published it on the website DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, two entities they created for that purpose. The dissemination of the hacked material was also assisted by Julian Assange, and his WikiLeaks organization, who is now facing charges under the Espionage Act.
Malloch stated to investigators that beginning in or about August 2016, he and Corsi had multiple FaceTime discussions about WikiLeaks [+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +] had made a connection to Assange and that he hacked emails of John Podesta would be released prior to Election Day and would be helpful to the Trump Campaign. In one conversation in or around August or September 2016, Corsi told Malloch that the release of the Podesta emails was coming, after which “we” were going to be in the driver’s seat.221
From the appendix we learn that Malloch:
Malloch, Theodore (Ted)
Chief executive officer of Global Fiduciary Governance and the Roosevelt Group. He was a London-based associate of Jerome Corsi.
And Jerome Corsi is a notorious writer who has worked for InfoWars and WorldNetDaily. Trump does indeed use the “very best people.”
Unlike Trump, Robert Mueller knows the difference between collusion and conspiracy, and declines to investigate a non-crime, focusing instead on a criminal conspiracy which requires coordination that includes an agreement—“tacit or expressed”—between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
I was struck by how many words the report uses to avoid violating the special counsel’s authorization and the Department of Justice’s guidelines. He mentioned the fact that his staff lacked all of the necessary information to confirm the existence of a criminal conspiracy.
...the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.
And that will be covered next week as we look at the rest of Volume I: Part IV Russian Government Links to and contacts with the Trump campaign and Part V Prosecution and declination decisions.
What struck you most about this week’s read? What parts provided you with a surprise or with facts you had been unaware of?