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 Modern political scandals, like Caesar’s Gaul, are
divided into three parts. The first is the actual malfeasance. That might be
taking bribes, lying to federal agents, leaking classified materials, sexual
misconduct, selling political access, whatever. The second part is the
hyper-partisan involvement of Congress and, often, federal agencies, all eager
to score points for their side. The third part is the media’s role, which goes
beyond bias to include active promotion of political goals.
Federal agencies, like all bureaucratic institutions, have always tried to
increase their power and preserve their autonomy. What’s different today is that
the bureaucrats, and often their entire agencies, are frequently partisan
players. That’s disheartening but understandable. One party is clearly the
“party of government” and the party of experts. Most educated professionals,
including bureaucrats and journalists, identify with that party. Filled with
partisan “civil servants,” these agencies routinely tilt investigations (or kill
them outright) to advance political goals – the same ones as their favored
party. For the same reasons, they leak insider information to friendly media.
Predictably, the opposing party tries to score points by attacking them for
doing so.
That brings us to the third element of these scandals: the “friendly media.”
Mainstream outlets are not just biased. They often become outright partisans
when a potential scandal could hurt conservatives or populists. That bias
degrades what was once called “hard news.” Today, neutral reporting is as
antiquated as rotary phones, conservative Democrats, and liberal Republicans.
The media’s bias, both left and right, is amplified by the fragmentation of the
digital landscape. That fragmentation encourages each outlet to appeal to its
self-selected audience and avoid alienating them with uncomfortable information.
The trial of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann illustrates how modern
scandals have devolved into this dismal three-ring circus. Last Thursday, the
FBI’s former general counsel, James Baker, testified at length that his old
friend Sussmann had requested an urgent private meeting and provided the bureau
damning, confidential information. Sussmann claimed he did so solely “as a good
citizen,” not on behalf of any client. Sussmann made the same claim in a text
message to Baker the night before. Baker testified that he was “100% confident”
Sussmann had repeated his disclaimer at the beginning of their meeting. (Before
Special Counsel John Durham’s team concluded their case on Wednesday, they
showed the jury that Sussmann had actually billed the Clinton campaign for that
meeting.) Baker’s testimony was especially powerful because he was clearly
reluctant to provide it.
The papers and thumb drives Sussmann gave Baker were designed to show that
Donald Trump was secretly communicating with a Kremlin-connected European bank.
The implication was that this back-channel communication was part of Vladimir
Putin’s effort to elect Trump, a line the Clinton campaign eagerly promoted.
Baker testified he was alarmed by the prospect, which is why he immediately
briefed his bosses, including FBI Director James Comey. Baker gave the materials
Sussmann had provided to the bureau’s cyber experts, who quickly discovered it
was rubbish. Their conclusion: Trump was not secretly communicating with
Russia’s Alfa Bank.
Baker’s testimony was followed, on Friday, by that of Clinton campaign manager
Robby Mook. Mook casually (perhaps inadvertently) dropped a bombshell. Hillary
Clinton, he said, had personally approved sharing the Trump-Alfa Bank story with
the press. Mook said the campaign wasn’t sure if the story was true but figured
the press would look into it. Hillary agreed and approved spreading the false
story.
But Mook cannot be right when he says “the campaign” didn’t know if the Alfa
Bank story was true. Mook may not have known, but others in the campaign surely
did since they were the ones who created the false story. They expended campaign
funds to generate that dishonest “inference and narrative” about Trump and Alfa
Bank from internet data, knowing it would fool only naïve FBI agents and
reporters. Real cyber experts could – and did – disprove the “inference” almost
immediately.
The Alfa Bank tale wasn’t the Clinton campaign’s only dirty trick. They also
commissioned the now-disproven Steele dossier and aggressively shopped it to the
FBI, Department of Justice, State Department, and, of course, the press.
Both the Alfa Bank story and the Steele dossier had the same goals: Smear Donald
Trump, generate media reports that the “FBI is investigating,” and distract the
media from Hillary’s own problems with her private email server and the
classified documents it contained. The obvious goal before November 2016 was to
prevent Trump’s election. That’s why Sussmann wanted the late October meeting
with Baker so urgently. After Trump was elected, the new goal was to hamstring
his presidency by tying him up in investigations. That is presumably why
Sussmann later met with the CIA and gave them the same Alfa bank story, plus
another fable about secret Russian mobile phones that were always near Trump.
Again, pure garbage, based on cherry-picked data and quickly shown to be
worthless.
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The Sussmann trial indicates how the media and federal agencies play into the
Democrats’ scandal-industrial process. Take Mook’s testimony last Friday. It was
a huge story because, for the first time, a Clinton insider directly tied
Hillary to the smear campaign. That campaign was the biggest political dirty
trick in modern American politics, one the media had actively promoted. Yet,
when the bombshell exploded, the mainstream media went silent, both about the
news and about their own culpability. On Friday, when the news broke, ABC, CBS,
NBC, CNN, and MSNBC did not mention the Mook bombshell or even the Sussmann
trial. Not a peep. Saturday’s New York Times was equally silent. The Washington
Post did cover the story but buried the lede – Hillary Clinton’s direct
involvement – well down in their report. A Post national correspondent actually
ran an “analysis” piece entitled “Again: There’s No Evidence Hillary Clinton
Triggered the Russian Probe.”
Robert Mueller’s prolonged investigation as Special Counsel missed this whole
massive scandal. When Mueller testified before Congress, he was asked about
Fusion GPS, a central player in Clinton’s smear campaign, and the Special
Counsel said he’d never even heard of the firm.
What about the FBI? How did it treat Sussmann’s information about Trump and Alfa
Bank? General Counsel Baker testified that he immediately informed the bureau’s
top officials, noting Sussmann’s assurance that he had no client. Although the
Alfa Bank story was quickly disproven, that didn’t stop the bureau’s relentless
investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. Two days after Sussmann gave the FBI
his (false) information, the head of the bureau’s counter-intelligence division
texted a colleague, “People of the 7th floor to include Director are fired up
about this server.” They were so fired up they refused to let agents know
Sussmann’s name, referred to him (dishonestly) as the “Department of Justice,”
and refused to let agents interview the authors of the cyber data given to
Baker.
The FBI handled the Steele dossier the same way they handled Sussmann’s material
– a mixture of incompetence and malign intent, trampling over administrative
safeguards and legal rules in an effort to ensnare Donald Trump. Even though the
FBI couldn’t verify the dossier’s salacious allegations, it used them to impale
the president-elect. Comey briefed Trump on the worst allegations and then
secretly told the press that the FBI was investigating them. Over the next
month, the bureau conducted lengthy interviews with Steele’s principle source
(Igor Danchenko, now indicted himself) and learned the dossier’s allegations
were based on bar talk and rumors, as told by a Brookings Institution
researcher, not Kremlin insiders. That didn’t stop – or even slow – the
government’s pursuit of Trump, and its use of this discredited material.
The falsity of the Alfa Bank connection and Steele dossier – and the FBI’s
knowledge of their falsity – did not stop the bureau from spying on Trump
associates for purported “Russian connections.” That surveillance didn’t stop
even after field agents said their investigation turned up no evidence and
should be closed. Instead, Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, personally kept
the investigation open. Since the spying required FISA warrants (from the court
overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the FBI omitted or
doctored exculpatory information to renew their authorization. Yet another
subversion of justice.
The full scope of this multi-pronged scandal is finally emerging after five
years of administrative misconduct, media coverups, partisan reporting, and
pervasive deceit by Washington insiders. What is still submerged is any
accountability. The media is still burying the story and its own role in
promoting those lies. Nobody has returned their dubious Pulitzer Prizes. Senior
officials in Comey’s FBI have never been held to account. Congressmen, led by
California Democrat Adam Schiff, who continued the smear and leaked their
closed-door inquiries to the press, still appear on the Sunday talk shows.
Hillary Clinton, who sat atop the conspiracy, was given a quick “all clear” by
the FBI on her server and has not been targeted for federal investigation in the
subsequent scandals. That Mook’s testimony surprised Durham’s prosecutors
indicates they never bothered to probe Hillary’s involvement before the grand
jury.
The Sussmann trial, like all modern political scandals, is part of a three-ring
circus, showcasing sleazy political enablers, malfeasance by public officials,
and biased reporting. In this circus of deceit, the public has to walk behind
the elephants with a huge shovel.
Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at
the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International
Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.
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