Russiagate still a source of confusion

Remember "Russiagate"? Well, it’s back in the news with the recent indictment of Russia analyst Igor Danchenko for allegedly lying to the FBI about his work on a controversial dossier alleging deep connections between Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

Special counsel John Durham, appointed under the Trump administration to probe the Russia probe, charges that Danchenko — who pleaded not guilty on Wednesday — deceived the FBI about the sourcing for the material he provided for the dossier. This development raises new and uncomfortable questions about certain sensational Trump/Russia claims and their knee-jerk amplification by various journalists. But it does not, as some assert, vindicate the notion that "Russiagate" was always a hoax to frame Trump.

Danchenko, a Russian-born Washington, D.C. resident, gathered information for retired British spy Christopher Steele, whose 35-page dossier, leaked to the media and made public days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, became a "Russiagate" centerpiece. Its most notorious claim, of course, was that Trump was under the Kremlin’s control due partly to sexual blackmail by means of a tape involving Russian prostitutes, made during Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow. While Danchenko claimed he got this information from a Russian businessman, the indictment alleges that it actually came from American Charles Dolan Jr., a longtime Democratic operative.

For the record, I cringed when the anti-Trump "resistance" made a big deal of the Steele dossier. There were major questions from the beginning about its credibility; even reports that took it seriously always noted that it was "unverified." Nonetheless, as Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple notes, a number of major news organizations, including Wemple's, ran stories based on its claims. Some progressive media figures such as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow thoroughly embarrassed themselves by flogging its shocking allegations as fact.

The FBI also has some explaining to do: The dossier was used to extend surveillance warrants, apparently without adequately informing the court on its flaws, of which documents show the agency was aware.

None of this proves that the Trump/Russia investigation was a fabrication by the Democrats and the "deep state" — an idea long flogged by Trump supporters on the right and by foes of the national security establishment, such as journalist Glenn Greenwald, on the left. The FBI was already investigating the Trump/Russia connection when it acquired the dossier.

There were plenty of reasons to investigate, from Trump’s just-kidding-or-maybe-not public invitation to Russia to hack into his rival Hillary Clinton’s emails to the fact that his campaign was swarming with people who had ties to Russia or to pro-Russia forces in Ukraine. And let’s not forget that later on, Trump acted in ways that stoked suspicion — such as firing FBI director James Comey, openly admitting that he did it to stop the Russia investigation, and bragging about it in a private meeting with top-level Russians.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, concluded in early 2019, found that there was no evidence Trump or his campaign actively colluded with Russian agents to subvert the 2016 election. But it also confirmed Russian interference, as well as the fact that Trump and some of his top advisers knowingly used this interference to their advantage — and sought to thwart the investigation. That’s bad enough.

The Danchenko indictment may raise questions about legal corner-cutting by the FBI, in this and other cases, and about media overreach. But it does not make Trump look any better.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute.