OPINION — President Trump is actively trying to excise the criminal fallout from investigations into Moscow’s 2016 covert support for his presidential election and have his attorney general, Bill Barr, control any similar investigations into Russian activities that might involve the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s suppression efforts come at the same time that FBI Director Christopher Wray has been alerting Congress to current FBI current counterintelligence investigations into Russian and other foreign country covert influence operations in advance of the 2020 election that “spread disinformation, sow discord, push foreign nations’ policy agendas, and ultimately undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values.”
Back in 2016, similar FBI counterintelligence investigations into malign Russian hacking activities led to the opening of the criminal inquiry into Trump campaign members’ alleged cooperation with Moscow operatives.
During the FBI Director’s February 5, appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, he said the FBI is tracking Moscow-directed efforts designed to “suppress voting and provide illegal campaign financing…influence US government activities [and set the stage for] cyber attacks against election infrastructure.”
Director Wray went on to say, “We assess that the Russians continue to engage in malign foreign influence efforts of the sorts I was describing before, fake personas, trolls, bots, state-sponsored media, the whole gamut and bag of tricks. Also, just like any sophisticated actor, they continue to refine their approach. We saw that from 2016 to 2018. We have seen it moving forward. We are refining our approach too, and trying to stay ahead of it.”
“In some cases we press charges,” Wray said and referred to a October 19, 2018, criminal indictment of Elena Khusyaynova, chief accountant for Project Lakhta—a Russian disinformation organization. The project was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, the same associate of President Vladimir Putin who provided funds for the Internet Research Agency that covertly ran social media accounts that attempted to influence Americans to vote for Trump or against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
During the first half of 2018, Khusyaynova managed a $10 million budget for Project Lakhta, part of which was for initiatives to undermine the US political system and candidates, according to the US Justice Department complaint.
Khusyaynova’s group, according to the Justice complaint, used a Facebook account it had earlier created in the name of Bertha Malone, to establish a Facebook page for a group called "Stop A.I.," which was an abbreviation for "Stop All Invaders." The Bertha Malone account created 400 inflammatory posts on immigration and Islam in eight months before August 2017. In just one week in mid-July 2017, the content on the "Stop A.I." Facebook page reached approximately 1,385,795 individuals.
Her group also created a Twitter account, @wokeluisa, for a non-existent US woman named Luisa Haynes. Over 12 months ending in March 2018, they posted over 2,000 tweets dealing with subjects such as the 2018 midterm elections, disenfranchisement of African-American voters, the NFL national anthem debate, and the US President's family, according to the complaint. By March 2018, the Twitter account had amassed over 55,000 followers.
Wray explained that “the FBI is not a truth squad,” and investigating all of social media threats “is far beyond something law enforcement, even if everybody in the FBI did this, could investigate.”
As a result, since 2016, the Bureau has been engaging with social media companies, providing them with information about accounts being manipulated by false persons which the companies then shut down under their terms of service. “We get information back from them [social media companies] which allows us to investigate more aggressively…That allows the government to do what it is most effective at, but also allows the private sector to do what it needs to do.”
Wray also testified on February 5 that he had agreed with Attorney General William Barr that opening a future counterintelligence election year investigation like the one in late July 2016 that started with a Trump campaign aide claiming the Russians had damaging information on candidate Hillary Clinton, would require both their approvals. The 2016 Russian investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, was initiated by William Priestap, the former assistant FBI director for counterintelligence. It later grew into a criminal investigation involving President Trump, directly.
It is unclear who would expand any of the current FBI counterintelligence investigations already underway should they come across allegations involving one or more of today’s presidential candidates, including the President, himself.
Wray said the FBI is cooperating with Barr’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane that was begun last May and being directed by John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut. Started as a management review, it has since escalated into a criminal investigation with the possibility that FBI, CIA and/or Justice Department individuals could face charges.
It is hardly the first inquiry into how the Russian investigation began, which has been a constant and vocal complaint of President Trump. In the fall of 2017, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed John Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, to investigate how the FBI handled the FISA wiretapping warrant for Trump’s former campaign aide Carter Page as well as an inquiry into allegations of Hillary Clinton’s involvement in a uranium deal.
In 2018, the Justice Department asked the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, to review a turnover to Republican House Judiciary Committee members of internal FBI documents about the Page warrant and Hillary Clinton’s private server after Trump complained about their delay.
Also in 2018, both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, prodded by Trump, initiated their own investigations into origins of the Russia investigation, when both were under Republican leadership.
In addition, the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2018, started his own inquiry into whether the FBI followed proper procedures in seeking the Page warrant and its renewals.
His report, released December 9, 2018, criticized the FBI warrant processes, but also could find no evidence that that FBI’s Russian inquiry was started or run because of political bias on the part of those agents and officials involved.
After the Horowitz report came out, Barr said, "The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken." Trump commented at a political rally in Pennsylvania that the Durham report is, “…the one I look forward to.”
They both seem to be now pinning their hopes on burying the Russia investigation based on results they expect from the Durham report.
In his ABC News interview with Pierre Thomas last Thursday, Attorney General Barr said toward the end, “As you know, Pierre, one of my passions is the feeling that we have to ensure that the Department of Justice is not used as a political football. And one of the things I'm distressed about is the increasing use of the criminal process to achieve political results. And I want to — I want to get away from that.”
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