In a normal EC opening a FARA case, we should expect to see a list of reasons why the FBI believes individuals associated with a U.S. presidential campaign had been engaged by the Russian government to represent and advocate that government’s goals.
This, however, was no normal EC. Try as we might to spot them, those reasons are not found anywhere in the document.83
Strzok’s electronic communication doesn’t get any more compelling once it gets into the report from the Australian diplomat Downer, which is the heart of the document. Brock notes:
Downer claims Papadopoulos “suggested” to him that the Trump team had received “some kind of suggestion” of assistance from Russia regarding information damaging to Hillary Clinton and President Obama. In other words, a suggestion of a suggestion.
Strzok apparently took this nebulous reporting by Downer and then leapt to the dubious conclusion that Papadopoulos and unnamed others were engaged by the Russians to act as foreign agents on Russia’s behalf. This, despite Downer also offering two exculpatory statements in the same email: 1) It was “unclear” how the Trump campaign might have reacted to the Russian claims and 2) the Russians likely were going to do what they were going to do with the information whether anyone in the Trump campaign cooperated with them or not.
Strzok then concludes the EC by moving the goalposts. He writes that Crossfire Hurricane is being opened to determine if unspecified “individual(s)” associated with the Trump campaign are “witting of and/or coordinating activities”—also unspecified—“with the Government of Russia.” He doesn’t even mention Papadopoulos.
Ultimately, there was no attempt by Strzok to articulate any factors that address the elements of FARA. He couldn’t, because there are none. Instead, there was a weak attempt to allege some kind of cooperation with Russians by unknown individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign, again, with no supporting facts listed.84
For someone not accustomed to reading such documents, what is perhaps most striking in Peter Strzok’s electronic communication is the acknowledgment that no one knows if the information that someone claims the Russians might be willing to release includes “material acquired publicly” or “through other means.”85
The FBI can launch full investigations of Americans participating in election campaigns based on a mere suggestion that a foreign government might release information that is already public? If the bar is set this low, the FBI could investigate American citizens for participating in politics during every election cycle.
This would be fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law on which our liberty and prosperity depend. Deploying intelligence and law enforcement assets against the political opposition is a hallmark of dictatorships, not free and open societies. To prevent a new normal of politicized and corrupt policing, the Justice Department must hold the collusion investigators to account.
The FBI standards applied to Trump associates were clearly not applied to Trump’s opponents. In 2016, many of the same FBI officials, and most notably Director James Comey, were also involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information while serving as secretary of state.
Several Clinton associates were given immunity from prosecution even though they did not help the FBI make a criminal case against anyone. In the spring of 2016, Comey began drafting a statement closing the case and exonerating Hillary Clinton while FBI agents were still conducting the investigation—and before they had even interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses, including Clinton herself.
There have been no reports of the FBI doctoring emails or hiding exculpatory evidence or misleading federal judges or promoting fact-free rumors in an effort to snare Team Clinton. To the contrary, the FBI downplayed the investigation, referring to it only as a “matter” at the request of Obama administration attorney general Loretta Lynch. Three days before Hillary Clinton’s interview, Lynch met Bill Clinton on the tarmac at an Arizona airport and both would later claim to the Justice Department’s inspector general that they had discussed golf and grandkids but not the Hillary Clinton investigation. According to the inspector general, Lynch’s staff recognized the problem even if she didn’t: “The Deputy Chief of Staff said that they quickly realized that the meeting was problematic, because Clinton was not just the former president but was also the husband of someone who was under investigation. The Deputy Chief of Staff said that she felt ‘shocked,’ and that they all ‘just felt completely… blindsided.’ ”86
Given the friendly treatment of Hillary Clinton, perhaps no one ended up being shocked that Clinton was never prosecuted by the Justice Department. Senator Chuck Grassley would later find that, during the drafting of Comey’s July 2016 statement announcing no charges against Clinton, the description of her conduct as “grossly negligent,” which carries a criminal penalty, was changed to read “extremely careless,” which does not.87
Looking back now, current attorney general Barr says, “I do believe there were two standards of justice during that period of time toward the end of the Obama administration. And all I can do about it is apply one standard of justice, the right standard of justice and make sure we apply it to everybody equally. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”88
Did President Obama direct the investigation against Trump? Maria recently put the question to senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who responded, “That’s not how it works. That’s not how our investigations work. We leave that to the intelligence community to bring forward information and the dossier I would imagine would be one piece of a much bigger puzzle.”89
“Well, you’ll notice she didn’t answer your question,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R.-Wis.) told Maria after watching an excerpt of the Jarrett interview. “She just talked about in general what the process should be. That’s not the process they followed. It is very clear that there was corruption at the highest levels of certainly the FBI. We have evidence of it.”90
As voters assess President Trump’s record in office, they should consider the cost that this double standard imposed on his presidency—and could impose on the country if left unreformed.
As for the target of
