Pence’s allegations about Hillary Clinton: A guide for
the perplexed
By
Oct. 9, 2020 at 2:00 a.m. CDT
“Talk
about accepting the outcome of the election. I must tell you, Senator, your
party has spent the last three and a half years trying to overturn the results
of the last election. It’s amazing. When Joe Biden was vice president of the
United States, the FBI actually spied on President Trump and my campaign. I
mean, there were documents released this week that the CIA actually made a
referral to the FBI documenting that those allegations were coming from the
Hillary Clinton campaign.”
— Vice
President Pence, in remarks during the
vice-presidential debate with Sen. Kamala D. Harris, Oct. 7
If you
are not a regular viewer of Fox News, these remarks by Pence during the debate
might have seemed surprising.
After
all, a special counsel appointed by President Trump’s Justice Department documented that the Russian government,
at its highest levels, sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 election —
and the Trump campaign was a willing recipient of that help. Moreover, a bipartisan report released in
August by the Senate Intelligence Committee also concluded that
the Russian government interfered in the election with the goal of electing
Trump.
As part
of the plot, Russian-linked entities hacked into the Democratic National
Committee and the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
Embarrassing tidbits were doled out over a period of weeks by WikiLeaks,
disrupting the Clinton campaign with distracting news stories.
So how
did Clinton, the apparent victim of the Russian scheme, become the instigator?
Welcome
to the alternative reality created by Trump and his aides. The president has
never accepted the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, except to
falsely claim that Mueller exonerated him. Trump has been determined to prove
that the Clinton campaign was actually in cahoots with the Russians, not the
Trump campaign.
The
president has had success in convincing his supporters that the alternative
version is the truth, aided by the echo chamber of the conservative media,
Republican lawmakers and administration officials eager to selectively release
documents that might support this theory.
At the
same time, Trump’s push has yielded evidence of FBI incompetence and largely
discredited a document that was once the focus of tremendous media attention —
the “dossier” of Trump’s alleged links to the Russians. These revelations have
given the president’s alternative reality a fair amount of oxygen, especially
among his supporters.
Here’s
a brief guide to Pence’s language for the perplexed.
“I must
tell you, Senator, your party has spent the last three and a half years trying
to overturn the results of the last election.”
This is
a reference to frequent calls by Democrats to impeach Trump, starting with the
Mueller investigation. Ultimately, Trump was impeached by the House for seeking
Ukrainian assistance to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for security aid and
a presidential visit to the White House. He was acquitted in the Senate.
Notably,
if Trump had been removed from office, Pence would have replaced him. So no
matter what happened, a Republican would have remained president.
“When
Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, the FBI actually spied on
President Trump and my campaign.”
Early
in 2017, Trump falsely claimed that
Barack Obama had put a wiretap on him — a statement later disavowed in court by
the Justice Department. To this day, Trump frequently personalizes “spy”
allegations, even calling it “Obamagate,” as if it were a conspiracy directed
by Obama himself.
In the
debate, Pence was much more careful, saying instead that the FBI spied on Trump
and the campaign. There are three elements to this claim, rooted in the fact
that the FBI launched an investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” after
receiving a tip from a foreign diplomat that the Trump campaign may have had
advance knowledge of the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails.
·
An FBI agent, part of the probe, attended a security briefing
for Trump in August 2016. Michael Flynn, one of Trump’s advisers, was a subject
of the Crossfire Hurricane probe and the agent wrote a memo on his
observations. “During the [intelligence] briefs, writer actively listened for
topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation,” he wrote, recording
comments by Trump.
·
An FBI informant in Europe, a professor named Stefan
Halper, met in Europe in the summer of 2016 with
at least three people working on the Trump campaign.
·
An FBI surveillance warrant was issued in
October 2016 regarding Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser, who was one
of four Trump officials under scrutiny (including Flynn). The warrant was
approved after Page left the campaign, but Page said he remained in
contact with Trump campaign officials “through the election, transition, and
later during the Trump administration.” He said the FBI quizzed him on “my early
2017 text messages with Steve Bannon,” one of Trump’s top advisers.
The
Justice Department inspector general investigated the origins of the probe and
found numerous errors. It also found that the threshold for starting a
counterintelligence investigation was rather low. But “we did not find
documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation
influenced [the] decision to open Crossfire Hurricane,” the report said.
“I
mean, there were documents released this week that the CIA actually made a
referral to the FBI documenting that those allegations were coming from the
Hillary Clinton campaign.”
This
next sentence might seem like a non-sequitur, but it would make sense to anyone
steeped in the alternative story. The key element is the false claim promoted
by Trump since 2017 that the Clinton campaign actually colluded with the
Russians, even though her campaign was damaged by Russian activities.
John
Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist recently installed as director of national
intelligence, has been declassifying documents that help promote this theory.
The day before the debate, Ratcliffe released (heavily
redacted) handwritten notes by Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, following a
briefing for the president, as well as a CIA memo.
Brennan’s
notes appeared to refer to intelligence from Russian sources concerning
“alleged approval by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy
advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference
by the Russian security service.” The CIA memo (also heavily redacted) was written
to the FBI official heading the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, referencing
the allegation.
In
September, Ratcliffe had sent a letter to the
House and Senate Intelligence Committees concerning the claim. “In late July
2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis
alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a
campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald
Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic
National Committee,” the letter said. “The IC [Intelligence Community] does not
know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian
intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”
Note
that last sentence? This is code that this could be meaningless gossip. In
ordinary times, the director of national intelligence would not release what
are essentially raw intelligence files.
Also,
note that Pence left off that caveat. He treated it as an established fact —
that the CIA “documented” the allegations to the FBI. Actually, it simply
passed on the intelligence from Russian sources. It could even be Russian
disinformation, though Ratcliffe issued a statement saying there is no evidence
of that.
At this
point, it’s hard to see much value in these documents. The FBI appears not to
have acted on the referral. “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” former FBI
director James B. Comey told the Senate
Judiciary Committee last week.
In June
2016, The Washington Post first reported that
Russian government hackers had targeted the DNC. By July, Clinton campaign
officials were openly calling attention to
possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, prompting furious denials
from the Trump campaign. U.S. intelligence may have simply picked up Russian
officials discussing what was apparent to anyone following the election
campaign.
Meanwhile,
the Clinton campaign had asked a research firm,
Fusion GPS, to investigate whether Russia was trying to influence the campaign,
Trump’s personal and business ties to Russia and whether there was any
connection between the Trump campaign and Russia. That request led to the
hiring of a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who produced a series of
reports now known as “the dossier.”
Numerous
investigations and lawsuits have called into question many of the details of
his reports, including his sourcing and methods. Still, the FBI relied on
Steele for some information as it conducted its own investigation. Moreover,
the existence of the dossier was disclosed by Comey in his first meeting with
the president-elect. The Clinton campaign’s funding of Steele’s research only emerged months later,
long after the dossier was published. The revelation sparked new charges that
Clinton was behind the FBI probe of Trump, perhaps working in cahoots with
Steele’s Russian sources.
In the
end, the Justice Department inspector general concluded that
“Steele’s reports played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening.” But that
has not stopped Trump and his allies from pointing the finger at Clinton —
which is why Pence name-checked her in the debate.
