Trump v FBI: what lies behind ‘Spygate’

Was there malice aforethought in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia?

Donald Trump claims the FBI investigation was politically motivated. Picture: AFP

Ever since he became President, Donald Trump has been pushing an alternative narrative to the investigation over Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

He argues the probe began within the FBI as a politically motivated hit job, calculated to damage him. He has called it “an illegal investigation”, saying: “Everything about it was crooked — every single thing about it.

“These were dirty cops. These were bad people.”

He has dubbed it “Spygate”, but his claims about the FBI being crooked in choosing to initiate the Russia probe have never gained widespread traction in the US. The mainstream and mostly liberal US media has tended to ignore or dismiss the claims, deeming them far-fetched and conspiratorial.

Investigating investigators

Spygate, however, has thrived on the conservative Fox News network, which has long claimed the FBI was rotten to the core in the Russia probe.

It also has gained more prominence since special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation failed to find evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. This has led Trump and many Republicans to question why the investigation was launched, prompting a push to “investigate the investigators”.

Now those who have dismissed or embraced Spygate are about to hear the umpire’s verdict on whether there is anything to it.

Two parallel investigations into how the Russia investigation began are nearing their conclusions. The first is by US Justice ­Department Inspector-General Michael Horowitz and the second is overseen by Attorney-General William Barr.

Barr says the questions about the origins of the Russia probe are worth asking. The mainstream US media has been negligent in largely ignoring the possibility that the FBI did behave badly, he argues.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he told congress in April. “I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

More recently Barr has gone further. “The fact that today people just seem to brush aside the idea that it is OK to engage in these activities against a political campaign is stunning to me, especially when the media doesn’t seem to think that it’s worth looking into,” he says.

“They’re supposed to be the watchdogs of our civil liberties.”

Downer and the dossier

There are several elements to Spygate, each of which is hotly contested by both sides of politics.

The first is the deep scepticism expressed by Trump and his supporters about the origins of the Russia probe.

Mueller’s report says the investigation began in late July 2016 after “a foreign government” informed the FBI of claims made by then Trump adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia planned to release damaging information on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Mueller was referring to the claims made in a meeting in London in May 2016 between Papadopolous and Australia’s high commissioner in London at the time, Alexander Downer. Australia reported Papadopoulos’s claim to the US government in late July that year, after a trove of Russian-hacked Democratic emails was released through WikiLeaks.

“On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign government reporting, the FBI opened an investigation into potential co-ordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” the Mueller report says.

But the President and many of his supporters say the investigation grew from the notorious dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which made salacious but unverified claims against Trump.

That document was an opposition research project funded by a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

The argument goes that the FBI took this dossier seriously and initiated the Russia probe on this false basis.

From that point, according to the Spygate theory, the FBI adopted a nakedly political bent against Trump, effectively spying on his campaign.

The FBI denies it was spying on the Republican campaign. It says it was engaged in proper investigation work, including surveillance, to evaluate the ramifications of Papadopoulos’s revelation and explore the connections between Russia and the Trump camp.

The FBI began the Russia probe by turning its attention to those in the Trump camp with links to Russia. This included former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former campaign and national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant to allow it to intercept Page’s phone calls and emails because of relationships he had formed with Russian intelligence officials.

But Trump and others say this warrant was tainted because it relied in part on the contents of the now discredited Steele dossier.

The dossier included claims by Steele that Page met a Russian officer in July 2016 who promised him compromising information on Clinton — a claim that Page has rejected.

A FISC judge ultimately approved the surveillance warrant and Horowitz is examining whether the FBI broke the law in how it handled the FISC application.

The President has said he will declassify documents related to the warrant.

Page says the investigations by Barr and Horowitz into the FBI’s conduct are long overdue.

“I just see it as confirmation of the clear reality that sensible people have realised a long time ago,” he says, accusing the Justice Department of “extensive wrongdoing and unconscionable practices”.

Page has never been charged with a crime.

The Barr investigation is looking at whether the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump team was legitimate or whether it crossed the line and became political.

‘Bigger than Watergate’

Trump was energised by a report in The New York Times in April that revealed how an FBI investigator posed as a research assistant to meet Papadopoulos to ask him about Russia.

The FBI argues that such actions were a legitimate part of its investigation to understand the connections between a Trump adviser and Russia.

Trump disagrees, calling the New York Times story “bigger than Watergate, as far as I’m concerned”.

Barr also is looking at the role of FBI informant Stefan Halper, a US foreign policy expert who taught at the University of Cambridge. Halper used his position as an academic to meet Papadopoulos and Page at the FBI’s request.

British intelligence was told about Halper’s involvement in the FBI operation, a disclosure that has led Trump to claim that the British government helped to spy on his campaign.

Barr also has taken aim at unnamed former senior leaders in the FBI, implying that his investigation may find fault with their leadership.

“To the extent there were any issues at the FBI, I do not view it as a problem that is endemic to the FBI,” he says.

“I think there was probably failure among a group of leaders there at the upper echelon.

“To the extent there was overreach, what we have to be concerned about is a few people at the top getting it into their heads that they know better than the American people.”

Former FBI director James Comey, who has became a strident Trump critic since he was sacked by the President in May 2017, hit back at Barr’s claims.

“I really don’t know what he is talking about when he talks about spying on the campaign,” Comey says.

“It’s concerning because the FBI and the Department of Justice conduct court-ordered surveillance. I have never thought of that as spying.”

Trump says Comey, Comey’s former deputy Andrew McCabe and senior FBI officials were openly pro-Democrats and that they fuelled a partisan investigation into him and his team.

He points to a series of anti-Trump texts shared between Peter Strzok, an FBI official working on the Russia probe, and his lover Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer.

In one text in August 2016, Page asks Strzok: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president right? Right?”

Strzok replies: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

Trump and his supporters say this text and others disparaging of Trump prove that those involved in the FBI’s Russian collusion probe were out to get him.

Strzok claims the text “was intended to reassure Page that Trump would not be elected”, rather than to suggest that he “would do something to impact the investigation”.

Strzok says if the FBI had wanted to harm Trump’s election ­chances it could have leaked before the election the fact Trump’s team was being investigated for possible collusion with Russia.

Democrats are angry at Barr for ordering his own probe into the origins of the Russia investigation.

In doing so, they say, he has served only to legitimise what they say are no more than far-fetched conspiracy theories.

Eyes on 2020

They claim this is part of a broader plan by Trump to cast himself as a victim of the FBI and Mueller, and to use that to energise his voting base.

“The Trump campaign is trying to use a debunked conspiracy theory to distract from the Trump administration’s attacks on the rule of law and its attempts to cover up Mueller findings,” DNC spokesman Daniel Wessel told The Washington Post. “Voters won’t be fooled.”

Trump hasn’t helped the credibility of his claims by making more extreme Spygate-style allegations that have proven to be false. This includes his mistaken claim that then president Barack Obama had ordered wiretaps on Trump Tower in New York.

But, if nothing else, Barr’s investigation will help clear the air on some of the more explosive allegations against the FBI and the Justice Department.

More than two years after Trump alleged that the Russia probe was tainted from the start, we are about to learn what is fact and what is fiction.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.