The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump

256 Pages·2018·1.4 MB·English

by  Gregg Jarrett

Dedication
TO CATE, GRACE AND LIV,
FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT
Epigraph
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal.
—JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (OLMSTEAD V. U.S., 1928, 277 U.S. 438, 479)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface: An Insidious Abuse of Power
Chapter 1: Hillary Clinton’s Email Server
Chapter 2: Comey Contorts the Law to Clear Clinton
Chapter 3: “The Fix”
Chapter 4: Clinton Greed and “Uranium One”
Chapter 5: The Fraudulent Case Against Donald Trump
Chapter 6: The Fabricated “Dossier” Used Against Trump
Chapter 7: Government Abuse of Surveillance
Chapter 8: Meeting with Russians Is Not a Crime
Chapter 9: Flynn’s Firing, Sessions’s Recusal, and the Canning of Comey
Chapter 10: Obstruction of Justice
Chapter 11: The Illegitimate Appointment of Robert Mueller
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface
An Insidious Abuse of Power
I
write this the week that James Comey began peddling his vainglorious book. It
reads like a Harlequin romance, except that the protagonist is in love with
himself.
Comey sermonizes about lies and lying people. This is perversely ironic
coming from a man who, more than anyone else, is responsible for the most
notorious hoax in modern American history.
As director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Comey launched a dilating
investigation into Donald J. Trump in the summer of 2016. There was not a
whiff of credible evidence to legally justify the probe. So, in a deception worthy
of a solid street hustle, Comey labeled it a “counterintelligence matter.” The
clever feint allowed for a covert criminal investigation in search of a crime,
reversing and bastardizing the legal process.
This is what abuse of power looks like.
For the better part of two years, the FBI, U.S. intelligence apparatus,
mainstream media, Democrats, and, eventually, Special Counsel Robert Mueller,
and his team of partisans peered furiously into every obscure corner and crevice
for some proof that Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential
election. They seemed to believe that Trump could not possibly have won absent
some treasonous conspiracy hatched by him in the bowels of the Kremlin. They
were convinced he was an illegitimate president. Besides, Comey and his
minions didn’t like Trump—the man or his politics. They loathed him. The
vaunted director, who surely knew better than naïve and gullible voters, would
be the savior of the nation.
Armed with immense power, Comey and other top officials at the FBI became
the law unto themselves. The end would justify the means, if only collaboration
with the Russians could be found. Failing that, the investigation itself could be
manipulated to create the illusion of wrongdoing. The ensuing scandal would be
sufficient to annul Trump. It wasn’t merely that the flamboyant businessman-
turned-candidate would upset the natural order of the political landscape, but as
president he would likely show the director the door at the Hoover Building in
Washington, D.C. There is nothing that will motivate a man like Comey more
than the prospect of power forfeited. Something had to be done.
But first, Comey and his confederates had to turn an even tougher trick by
exculpating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, from the
sundry crimes she appeared to have committed by storing copious classified
documents on her unauthorized private computer system at the Clinton
homestead. Despite a subpoena to preserve her records, tens of thousands of
government documents were deleted, her server wiped clean, and numerous
devices destroyed. How exactly could the FBI circumvent the inevitable
multicount indictments against Clinton for everything from obstruction of justice
to mishandling of classified documents?
It would not be easy. Criminal codes would have to be creatively reinterpreted
or deliberately misconstrued. A grand jury must be avoided or diminished at all
costs. But the Department of Justice would acquiesce since it was brimming with
Clinton allies, especially Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Best of all, President
Barack Obama had sent out the clarion call on national television that his chosen
Democratic successor should not be prosecuted since she never “intended” to
jeopardize national security, notwithstanding what he characterized as her
“carelessness.”
Comey was instrumental to this scheme. He penned an “exoneration
statement” well before the FBI interviewed seventeen key witnesses, including
Clinton herself. Then he commandeered the authority of the attorney general in
delivering his infamous pronouncement that no charges should be brought. No
mention was ever made of another vexing FBI probe into whether Clinton had
engaged in corrupt acts with the Russians by hanging the equivalent of a “for
sale” sign on her office door as secretary of state. That investigation quietly
vanished under the auspices of the Obama administration. Thus, there was never
a serious examination of Clinton and the various laws she seemed to have
plainly violated. The entire exercise was a preconceived charade with a
predetermined outcome.
All of this set the stage for Comey and the FBI to pursue its imaginary case of
“collusion” against Trump. The evidence was scant, until a scurrilous anti-
Trump “dossier” surfaced. It was secretly funded by the Clinton campaign and
delivered to the FBI by a former British spy who claimed to have spoken to
unidentified Russians. The FBI first met with the author of the “dossier” on the
same day that Comey absolved Clinton. But try as it may, the bureau seemed
unable to verify its inflammatory contents alleging that Trump had been
collaborating with Russia for at least five years. No matter. The FBI appropriated
the document as a pretext for spying on a Trump campaign associate while
simultaneously advancing their investigation of the candidate who would
unexpectedly become president. They actively hid the fact that Clinton and
Democrats had underwritten the specious document. At the same time, Comey’s
FBI deployed an undercover government informant to infiltrate the Trump
campaign to induce (or entrap) associates into saying something incriminating.
The unverified “dossier” was leaked to the press and, by the time Trump was
sworn in as president, the mainstream media had its “collusion” tale. It was off
to the races as journalists propagated their nonstop narrative that Trump was
undoubtedly guilty of collaborating with Moscow to win the election. But a
curious thing happened on the way to their twin goal of indictment and
impeachment. “Collusion” is not a crime, except in antitrust law. Reporters and
anchors never bothered to cite a specific statute because none could be found in
the criminal codes. Not that they ever bothered to look. They were satisfied,
indeed anxious, to level the accusation as a legal conclusion because their bias
against Trump was so impassioned and pervasive that it became impervious to
the facts.
The media’s miscalculation was compounded by the inconvenient absence of
any incriminating evidence to prove this invisible offense called collusion. They
were adamant that meeting with, or talking to, a Russian, even on American soil,
was somehow an undefined crime unprotected by the First Amendment. Any
chance encounter or a casual handshake with a Russian was vilified. Breathless
media accounts inflated trivial contacts beyond reason. They fanned tiny embers,
repeatedly arguing that this much smoke means there will eventually be fire.
When the truth finally sunk in that “collusion” appeared to be a myth, the press
seamlessly shifted to a different accusation that Trump must have obstructed
justice by attempting to impede the FBI’s investigation.
In this, Comey once again became the central character. When he was fired as
FBI director for repeated violations of the bureau’s regulations, he admitted
pilfering government memorandums, which he improbably claimed as his own,
for the sole purpose of triggering a special counsel who just happened to be his
longtime friend and ally, Robert Mueller. When Comey testified before
Congress, he all but accused the president of attempting to obstruct his
investigation, even though the detailed memos offer no such allegation. It was a
Machiavellian move to perpetuate the fabricated case against Trump.
Over the course of a year, Mueller’s investigation did manage to render
several indictments. However, none of them had anything whatsoever to do with
“collusion” with the Russians. Did Moscow meddle in the presidential election?
Yes, in much the same way it had tried to tamper for decades. Their design was
to sow discord in the Western democracy they so detest. But the notion that
anyone in the Trump campaign had somehow been complicit was dispelled when
the indictment of thirteen Russians revealed that no Americans knowingly
participated. To date, no known actionable proof of “collusion” involving Trump
has surfaced.
They did, however, sow their desired political discord, thanks to a deluded and
compliant American left.
As I write this, Comey is several days into his “adoration tour,” hawking his
book and pocketing millions of dollars. As he does so, he accuses Trump of
being morally unfit, ignoring that he was all too willing to serve the same
president he now so freely condemns. There is something profoundly
incongruous about a man who pontificates about professional ethics but seems
bereft of them himself. His hypocrisy was underscored when, three days after his
book was published, it was confirmed that the inspector general of the Justice
Department was investigating Comey for leaking the presidential memos and
mishandling classified information. FBI agents were forced to conduct searches
to contain the leak. It is conceivable that Comey committed the very offenses he
helped Clinton escape. Self-righteous people tend to self-immolate.
The tale of The Russia Hoax is a labyrinth of intertwined stories. Clinton’s
penchant for secrecy surrounding her dealings with foreign governments and
money sources almost certainly propelled her to set up her private server. When
caught, she spun a series of deceptions to justify her actions. Comey and
company abided by contorting the law to clear her path to the presidency and
influence its outcome. This same small group of Washington insiders then
abused the power of their positions to conjure a case against Trump to defeat him
in the election. When that failed, they doubled down to frame the new president
for crimes he did not commit. The “dossier,” which Comey confessed was
“salacious and unverified,” was their in flagrante delicto or “smoking gun.” Its
lack of authenticity was irrelevant. It would be politicized and weaponized to
achieve the objective of destroying Trump and driving him from office.
The provenance of this book can be found in the many opinion columns I
began composing three years ago in which I argued that Clinton mishandled
classified documents and violated the law. When Comey inexplicably absolved
her, and launched a fraudulent investigation of Trump, even more columns were
written. But the shape and theme of the book did not fully materialize until
October 2017, when I published The Trump-Russian Collusion and Other Great
Hoaxes, followed by a column titled “Did the FBI and the Justice Department
Plot to Clear Hillary Clinton, Bring Down Trump?” By this time, it had become
evident to me that the FBI, as well as the Department of Justice, had become
cesspools of corruption that played a direct hand in attempting to influence the
election and subvert the democratic process.
The greatest peril to democracy today is not a foreign force, but the abuse of
power from within. Those who operate under color of authority are prone to
exploit it for political reasons and personal gain. In a government of laws, they
too often fail to follow the law themselves. As Justice Brandeis put it, “if the
government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites
every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
The most celebrated form of governance known to the world is democracy. It
is a system of, by, and for the people. Because of this personal construct,
democracy is susceptible to the same human frailties that afflict us all—greed,
prejudice, hubris, intellectual dishonesty, and moral weakness. Government,
therefore, is only as sound and effective as the people who are empowered to run
it at any given time. This is its fundamental imperfection.
Sometimes, driven by these flaws of the human condition, democracy can be
trifled with by those who hold the reins of power in government. Despite
carefully devised checks and balances, individual positions are nevertheless
misused in ways unseen by the public. Systems are unduly influenced in
defiance of both the law and conscience. Misdeeds are covered up.
This is the story of The Russia Hoax. It is a cautionary annal of the damage
wrought when those who serve in government seek to undermine it.
Comey and other participants in this hoax were not interviewed for the book. I
doubted they would consent and distrusted their credibility. My conclusions
about their motivations and intent are drawn from the extensive public record of
their conduct in these matters and interviews with current and former employees
of the FBI and Justice Department about such conduct, and, based on this record,
no other conclusion is reasonably supportable.
GREGG JARRETT
APRIL 21, 2018