A Primer on FBI Trump Electioneering with storyline and sources.
There has been continuing discussion in the Kos Community on the role of the FBI in tipping the election to Trump. www.dailykos.com/... . I had previously written that the FBI intervention, ( defined as Comey’s letters, FBI anti-Clinton leaks, and other anti-Clinton FBI actions) was decisive in the election. www.dailykos.com/... Decisive means the FBI intervention changed what looked in late October like a modest Clinton victory (according to CNN Exit Polls) and a Democratic Senate majority into a split decision for Trump and a Republican Senate majority. Obviously, there were many other reasons why Clinton was only slightly ahead at the end of October.
The belief that the FBI election intervention was decisive now seems like old news ( many have come to the same conclusion including Paul Krugman and Markos "kos" Moulitsas in his legendary post-election screed and others). My FBI analysis is different. I don’t believe Comey was the only problem. I believe what happened was a deep partisan intervention in the election by a significant portion of the Agency. Further, while Comey’s removal might be called for it would not necessarily prevent partisan FBI electioneering from happening again and would in the short term impede a more thorough investigation.
In other words, some part of the Agency itself has become corrupted and it would take an internal investigation (the DOJ has an office for this but it would obviously be corrupted in the new administration) or an independent counsel to get to the bottom of it. Such a counsel would make recommendations about DOJ/FBI policies and procedures that need reform. In addition, the independent counsel would suggest what disciplinary action is needed against the agents who participated. This investigation is even more important now that the FBI is going to receive broader personal computer hacking powers and now that Trump has threatened political opponents.
My evidence for the agency’s Partisan Politicization was the rampant FBI election leaks with which some may be unfamiliar. Assembling well sourced and public FBI leak reports like this provides a storyline that might be more compelling than our faulty memories of scattered individual reports. In any case, we should not forget.
1. The FBI is Trumplandia. Several reports driven by the reports of multiple FBI agents spoke of “…a deep antipathy to Clinton within the FBI.”
www.theguardian.com/...
thehill.com/...
2. Nick Baumann, who has written on the FBI for years and has his own treasure trove of Agency contacts, notes that the FBI is a white men’s lawyer club with low numbers of female and minority agents. Baumann noted that Comey himself said this adversely affects the Agency’s ability to meet its mission and has actively tried to change this culture. Were the Agency’s leakers also motivated by a chance to get back at Comey for his affirmative action steps? Helping Trump via leaks would represent a reactionary twofer if true.
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
3. Adam Schiff, a California Representative and ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee, noted that the leaks as well as the Comey letter had deeply damaged the FBI’s reputation and it was unlikely to be repaired in a Trump administration.
www.theguardian.com/...
4. FBI leaks included a damaging Twitter post of documents related to its investigation of the Clinton Foundation. The FBI could never find an explanation to how this dormant FBI Twitter account was reactivated ten days before the election.
www.theguardian.com/...
5. One week from Election Day the FBI released files from its 2001 investigation of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich. This release of 121 pages of notes from the Rich investigation occurred via Twitter by @FBIRecordsVault, an account that posts material from FOIA requests on subjects of public interest. A fifteen-year-old investigation is released seven days before the election? Not only was the timing suspicious, but the method of release and the FBI’s scramble to explain this second seemingly unplanned dump raises serious questions about the internal workings of the FBI. The FBI response seemingly was, ‘Oops we’ve done it again’.
www.cnn.com/...
6. The Times reported (along with other news sources) that Comey himself felt boxed in by the FBI leakers and used that as one reason he wrote the 10/29 letter handing the election to Trump. Vox and New York Magazine described an FBI Director essentially held hostage by a clique within his own Agency.
www.nytimes.com/...
www.nytimes.com/...
www.vox.com/...
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
nymag.com/...
7. Both a gleeful Rudy Giuliani, a senior Trump campaign advisor, and Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter in law, telegraphed the 10/29 Comey letter prior to its release. Giuliani, who happened to be chief counsel to the FBI Agents Association, at first crowed that he had received this information from active agents, an illegal act. He later recanted. Lara called the letter “…the nail in Clinton’s coffin” the night before Comey shocked the nation. These two pre-release trailers imply that someone in the FBI had leaked the Trump campaign news of the existence of the duplicate emails, the imminent release of Comey’s letter, and the leaker’s belief that it would upend the election in Trump’s favor. This clearly ties the FBI leaks to the Trump campaign, at least as early subscribers to the FBI 10/29 Comey letter if nothing else.
www.thedailybeast.com/...
thehill.com/...
8. The Wall Street Journal reported in the week leading up to the election that unnamed sources told the Journal that the FBI had enough evidence “to begin an aggressive investigation into a pay to play scheme with the Clinton Foundation but were overruled by superiors”.
www.wsj.com/...
9. The Thursday prior to the election Fox News anchor Brett Baier reported that informed sources had told him that an indictment of Clinton was likely. While Fox eventually walked back the report, Trump himself and the blogosphere lit up repeating this falsehood. While Fox News later backed off the story, it really didn’t matter because it had already helped rev up the right-wing base. As usual, the initial report was trumpeted and the correction got buried. Even the correction helped Trump as CNN reported that the story was a leak from an FBI group that is well known to be operating in the election sphere. For the right wing blogosphere, this made it easy to portray the FBI agents as whistle blowers rather than disloyal agents.
money.cnn.com/...
www.vox.com/...
10. In addition, The Daily Beast wrote that this FBI backchannel was tied to the Trump campaign not only via Giuliani, but through James Kalstrom, the retired former head of the FBI, whose charity received direct payments from Trump. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Kalstrom telegraphed this FBI punch in an interview on Fox news. The Daily Beast quoted Kalstrom in this interview as predicting FBI attacks on Clinton:
“I know some of the agents,” said Kallstrom. “I know some of the supervisors and I know the senior staff. And they’re P.O.’d [about the lack of indictment], I mean no question. This is like someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.” Kallstrom declared that “if it’s pushed under the rug,” the agents “won’t take that sitting down.” Kelly confirmed: “That’s going to get leaked.”
If true, this establishes far before the election the FBI agents’ intent to break Agency and DOJ rules.
www.thedailybeast.com/...
11. Obama tried to mitigate the damage of the leaks (which he called innuendo) prior to the election. He obviously bears responsibility for the loss of control in the FBI, but he has already been punished through the elimination of his legacy.
www.theguardian.com/...
www.theguardian.com/...
In summary, what emerges from these well sourced reports is a clear pattern of FBI leaks over the final months of the election campaign, a handcuffed FBI Director, a hyper partisan effort to help Trump, and a decisive election result. Taken together, one wonders why Trump didn’t win more bigly. While press leaks are an often used tool of Federal agencies to help achieve their public information objectives, the uncontrolled hyper Partisan leaks from the FBI are unprecedented and ominous. The Agency wields substantial investigative powers, a culture of secrecy, and a strongly hierarchical if not para-military chain of command. These control mechanisms broke down in a way that damaged our democracy itself. The consequences are severe. Specifically, is this evidence of the permanent diminishment of an important democratic institution? Will the FBI be able to attract the often vital assistance of now cowed US residents when the next attack is brewing? Why weren’t the current checks on the FBI (the DOJ, or the seventeen agencies of the US Intelligence Community) able to prevent or contain this?
This FBI activity must be investigated by an independent counsel and followed by a public report with recommendations for Agency reform. In the absence of this, Democratic members of the Intelligence Committees should ask the US Intelligence Community to investigate the FBI’s electioneering.