OPINION — “The function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.” Walter Lippmann wrote in his 1925 book, Public Opinion.
In the Trump era, officials and legislators are cherry-picking facts, to justify their acts leaving the public confused about the whole truth and thus what was, and is, reality.
Nothing better illustrates the confusion that can be generated among the public than the fact manipulation that followed the December 9, release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia’s intervention in the 2016 presidential election. Started on July 31, 2016, and called Operation Crossfire Hurricane, it was the main focus of the IG’s report.
One basic fact in the Horowitz report that has not been emphasized is that as early as March 2016, the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Divisions had begun investigations into Russian hacking operations into various U.S. political organizations including the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
In June and July 2016, with the leaks of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Russian attempts to hack into state election systems, the FBI, along with the entire U.S. Intelligence Community, had already assessed that “in the weeks leading up to the 2016 elections, Russia was considering further intelligence operations to impact or disrupt the elections,” according to the Horowitz report.
It was against that already broad concern about extensive Russian activities related to the coming U.S. election that the FBI first received information on July 28, 2016, that in a May 2016 conversation, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, had told an Australian diplomat, “that Trump team had received some kind of suggestion” that Russia could assist with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.
The full investigation was opened three days later by William Priestap, head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, based solely on the Papadopoulos information and with the aim “to determine whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign are witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia.”
It was immediately designated a sensitive case, and “prohibited,” which meant access only to those assigned to it, plus “close-hold,” which meant covert investigative techniques would be used and knowledge of it remained within the investigative team plus only senior FBI and Justice officials.
At this point, a few facts should be noted.
The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election was already underway when the Trump campaign element of the Bureau’s inquiry was started. Neither the FISA wiretap applications related to Carter Page nor the Steele Dossier - the highly-publicized reports on Trump and his election aides put together as opposition research by former-British MI6 agent Christopher Steele - had anything to do with the opening of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, as repeatedly claimed by President Trump and his supporters.
It was not until open source and FBI data base searches for persons associated with the Trump campaign and who had ties with or had traveled to Russia that separate counterintelligence cases were opened on August 10, 2016 on Papadopoulos, Page and Paul Manafort, each under a code name. Six days later, a case was opened on ret.-Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor for the campaign.
In fact, the Crossfire Hurricane’s original request for a FISA order for Page originally was discussed in August but was turned down by the Bureau’s Office of General Counsel which said more information was needed.
Steele’s reporting, first received on September 19, 2016 by the Crossfire Hurricane team, specifically mentioned a Page visit to Moscow in 2016, and his making contacts there. That information indicated some possibility of Page being investigated as an agent of a foreign power and led to a new and successful push to seek a FISA request.
The Horowitz report said there were five elements in the Page FISA application of which the Steele Dossier material suggesting alleged coordination with Russian government 2016 election activities was just one.
However, Horowitz took issue with that allegation and others, and he described 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” the FBI made on the first Page application and three subsequent renewals. This has become one of the major issues used by Republicans to attack the entire FBI series of investigations, which led to the convictions of Manafort, Flynn, and Papadopoulos and the indictments of 25 Russian civilians and intelligence officers.
As important, it allowed the indictments of the Russians to begin and to make public exactly how Russian hackers gathered internal Clinton campaign materials and used them and other data to manipulate American citizens prior to the 2016 election.
Despite Trump’s claims of a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” investigation, Operation Crossfire Hurricane delivered important results.
Despite his criticism of the FBI’s FISA application materials, Horowitz report said, “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page.”
In the wake of Horowitz’s report being made public, Trump tweeted: “They spied on my campaign!” At a campaign rally in Hershey, Pa., the night after the report came out, Trump said, “The FBI also sent multiple undercover human spies to surveil and record people associated with our campaign…“They’ve destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum, okay, by scum.”
In fact, the IG report said it “found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs [Confidential Human Sources] or UCEs [Undercover Employees] within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign.”
The IG report did say that one FBI confidential source met with an unnamed high-level Trump campaign official who was asked about Page, Papadopoulos, and Manafort, and allegations in public reports concerning Russian activities in the 2016 elections. The result, according to the IG reports was that, the FBI “made no use of any information collected from the high-level Trump campaign official, because the team determined that none of the information gathered was ‘germane’ to the allegations under investigation.”
Finally, and most irritating to Trump and his supporters, Horowitz specifically noted, “Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI's decision to use CHSs or UCEs to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Read more national security insights, news and analysis in The Cipher Brief.
