Facts About Election Meddling

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment I, United States Constitution

In the wake of Adam Schiff's abysmal Clown World Impeachment Inquiry, absurdly yet accurately termed a "Schiff Show" (with all the scatological implication one cares to layer on), it seems wise to examine the narratives swirling around in the legacy media about both Russian and Ukrainian election "meddling" -- foreign actors interfering in the 2016 Presidential Election. With so much hysteria, we are well advised to recall the facts and evidences that we have, both of what was actually done and what impact it can be fairly shown to have had.

Russian Meddling: The Cyberattack Narrative

According to the legacy media, Russia began a concerted effort to manipulate the 2016 election outcomes in 2015, when computer hackers employed by or sponsored by Russian intelligence agencies gained access into the computer network of the Democratic National Committee.

One of the earliest known direct efforts by the Russians to meddle in the election came in the summer of 2015, when hackers believed to be linked to Russian intelligence gained access to the network of the Democratic National Committee. For an extended period, the hackers collected email and chat messages from DNC staff.

Between summer 2015 and spring 2016, these hackers presumably harvested a trove of data--email messages, chats and other text messages, as well as other documents. The network penetration was discovered in April of 2016 by the DNC, who engaged network security firm CrowdStrike to analyze the penetration and effect threat mitigation and remediation.

The firm identified two separate hacker groups, both working for the Russian government, that had infiltrated the network, said Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike co-founder and chief technology officer. The firm had analyzed other breaches by both groups over the past two years.

One group, which CrowdStrike had dubbed Cozy Bear, had gained access last summer and was monitoring the DNC’s email and chat communications, Alperovitch said.

The other, which the firm had named Fancy Bear, broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files, Henry said. And they had access to the computers of the entire research staff — an average of about several dozen on any given day.

The computers contained research going back years on Trump. “It’s a huge job” to dig into the dealings of somebody who has never run for office before, Dacey said.

Crowdstrike would later publish some of their findings in their company blog, after the story was released to the public in June of 2016.

Separately, Russia was alleged in June of 2017 by the NSA to have attempted hacks of voter software companies in the US, as well as local voter registration rolls, during the 2016 election cycle. The consistent official stance in regards to these hacking efforts is that no voter registrations were compromised nor actual votes or vote tallies altered during the election

In addition to these cyberattacks, Russia also is alleged to have engaged in an extended "disinformation" campaign, using social media as well as Russian owned media outlets such as Sputnik and RT. Much of this effort was mentioned in the Intelligence Community Assessment on election interference published by the US Intelligence agencies in January of 2017.

Russia Meddling: The Evidence

We should always acknowledge the obvious. Hacking is a crime, and hacking by a foreign government is espionage. Some would even say it is an act of war. Yet it is because of the seriousness of the offense that we must take care to scrutinize all the information available, rather than rely on superficial narratives. With that in mind, let us review the evidences of Russian hacking related to the 2016 election.

For the hack of the DNC, we only have the Crowdstrike report available as evidence of what was done, when, and by whom. Crowdstrike did have some of its work reviewed by a separate cybersecurity firm, ThreatConnect, which affirmed CrowdStrike's conclusions, but the data they reviewed was the forensic material collected by CrowdStrike. No independent investigation of the DNC infrastructure was ever performed by any company other than CrowdStrike. Even the FBI was not given access to the servers to conduct an independent investigation. The FBI's conclusions on the DNC server hack are thus the CrowdStrike conclusions, which were accepted unchallenged.

We should also note that CrowdStrike has also made some significant errors in the realm of forensic investigation and analysis. In December of 2016, CrowdStrike published a report of Russian-sponsored malware affecting Ukrainian field artillery systems to devastating effect, and identified the source of the malware as the same Fancy Bear hacker group involved in the DNC penetrations. However, this report was disputed by several of the principals named, not the least of which was the Ukrainian government itself, which insisted that the hack never even took place, and Crowdstrike was later obliged to amend and ultimately retract much of the report. As I wrote shortly after Crowdstrike made its retractions, this rather egregious error, which included a misattribution of hacking activity to the Fancy Bear group named in the DNC hack, calls into question the accuracy and reliability of the DNC report--a report for which we have no independent verification.

Separately, however, a forensic analysis of some of the material gained from the DNC servers and released through WikiLeaks was performed in July of 2017 by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity (VIPS), concluding that at least some of the material had been copied locally from the servers themselves--which would make the "hack" not a hack at all, but rather a leak of information by a person working in physical proximity to the servers. Without commenting on the credentials of the VIPS members, the one noteworthy attribute of their presentation which distinguished it from the Crowdstrike analysis was the inclusion of raw data and sources--things that people could, if so motivated, scrutinize independently to either rebut or affirm the VIPS conclusions.  To date, I am unaware of anyone presenting a rebuttal to the VIPS conclusions.

Even more curious is the summary of the DNC server hack presented by Robert Mueller in his second round of indictments during his Russian Collusion Probe. Mueller's team presented a version of the DNC intrusion that was conspicuously at odds with the Crowdstrike report, most notably in the role of the hacker persona Guccifer 2.0. Whereas Crowdstrike and their companion firm Threat Connect discounted the role of Guccifer 2.0, the Mueller indictments ascribed to him a far greater level of involvement. 

Thus we have a problematic assessment by Crowdstrike of the DNC server hack, an assessment for which Crowdstrike, by virtue of its erroneous assessment regarding Ukrainian field artillery software, is the main challenge for credibility claiming Russian-backed actors were responsible, and we have a competing assessment, still problematic but lacking any clear rebuttal or challenge, suggesting that there might not have been a hack at all, just a rather mundane whistleblower/leaker. We have indictments asserting a theory of the intrusion that contradicts the Crowdstrike analysis directly. 

As the Mueller indictments are unlikely to ever be adjudicated in a court of law, none of these materials will be given ultimate legal scrutiny, but, taken as a whole, it is impossible absent such adjudication to say with certainty if the DNC server was even hacked, much less that it was hacked by Russian actors. We cannot rule it out, but there is a very large question mark that must be appended to the assertion.

As regards the later hacking efforts against voter systems and voter databases, the only source document we have is a redacted NSA report saying it was done by Russian actors, but with sparse presentation of source materials, which only describe two Microsoft Word-based "spear phishing" pieces of malware which, when activated, reach out to an IP address within the US to download additional malicious payloads. That these bits of malware originated with Russian hackers is something for which we must simply take the NSA at their word--a proposition that is under any circumstances a questionable leap of faith, and given the numerous intelligence failings by the US intelligence community over the years, a leap that many would find too great.

As with the DNC hack, the Russian origin of the voter system hacks cannot be ruled out, but comes with a very large question mark appended.

Ukrainian Meddling: The Forgotten Narrative

Ukraine's presumed misdeeds with regards to the 2016 election are both more plain and more problematic than the cyberattacks attributed to Russia.

In January of 2017, Politico reported on various efforts by Ukrainian officials to weigh in on the 2016 election. That report detailed efforts by a DNC staffer, Alexandra Chalupa, to obtain material unfavorable to then candidate Donald Trump from the Ukrainian government. The report also highlighted publicity efforts by the Ukrainian Ambassador, Valeriy Chaly, which included writing an op-ed piece in The Hill in August of 2016.

Prior to the start of the Schiff Show, these bits of news reporting were conveniently forgotten by the legacy media. However, the facts have not been forgotten, and they are summarized excellently by investigative reporter John Solomon.

Election Meddling: The Problem

Aside from the problematic cyber intrusions allegedly performed by Russian actors, all of the "meddling" alleged in any reporting, be it the Intelligence Community Assessment, The Report On Russian Active Measures by the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, the Mueller indictments, or any of the legacy media reporting on the topic, revolves around the publication of presumably propagandistic "disinformation" and "Fake News". The election meddling that is such a threat to the Republic, we are told, is at its essence a matter of people speaking out, speaking their mind in some cases, giving opinions, perhaps even making statements which are either misleading or completely false. Unfortunately for the narratives, there is a rather significant problem with that thesis: the First Amendment.

The right of free speech is pre-eminent among our inalienable rights. The right enshrined in the First Amendment is repeated in other declarations of rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the case of the First Amendment, the right is categorical: there can be no law enacted, no regulation promulgated, which inhibits free speech.

Even if we assume that Russia utilizes RT and Sputnik as media mouthpieces for promoting the Kremlin position on various news items, even if we presume that Russia used these outlets to argue one side or another in the 2016 election, the question must be asked "how is that wrong?" In a free society, how is it wrong for anyone, even Vladimir Putin, to express his opinion? Even when the ICA first came out, it was readily apparent this was a central flaw of that assessment. The fact that Ukrainian commentary went unchallenged during the election compounds the question, for if the Ukrainian Ambassador can hold forth in The Hill, why can Russian individual not present their views on RT and Sputnik?

We must ask that question, because when it comes to media presentations, Russia has never been the lone actor. China has, by this standard, "meddled", and has even admitted as much. Moreover, these things for which Russia is excoriated and other nations are not are things even the United States has done, as was the case in the 2015 Israeli elections, where the Obama Administration deployed political ads in Israeli media against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The observation I made at the publication of the ICA remains very much on point:

People may not like that Putin has sought a voice in American electoral politics, but it is disingenuous if not deceitful to pretend that anyone--even a despotic dictator such as Putin--seeking a voice is antithetical to America's "liberal democratic order," and it is dangerously naive to pretend that the intrusion of such foreign voices into the "liberal democratic order" is not very much the established political order of things.

Election Meddling: Focus On Facts

We may plausibly say that opinions of foreign actors regarding US elections should be discounted as irrelevant. We may even object when foreign actors present opinions they claim are representative of a portion of the US electorate--that foreign actors are not the best interlocutors of the opinions of the electorate. However, as we are still a free society, and still both blessed and challenged by the right--and the moral imperative--of free speech, we should tread lightly on how we criticize foreign commentary about our politics.

The fact that a commentator is not native to these shores is relevant in any political debate. The fact that a commentator is not native to these shores does not make the commentator either malicious or malevolent. We should consider that fact, but we should never be consumed by just that fact. The focus should always be on all the facts.

The facts supporting Russian complicity in the various cyber intrusions reported during the 2016 election are incomplete and not without challenge. The full facts leave more than a little room for doubt on the subject. It may be the Russians did engage in such activities, or it may be that they did not. When we focus on all the facts we cannot state either as an absolute certainty.

Perversely, the facts surrounding Russia media activities during the 2016 election may be the one body of facts that ultimately does not matter. Russia may very well have taken out Facebook ads in 2016, and may very well have arranged for an army of Twitter bots and trolls to put forth their particular propaganda. All this may be true. Yet we cannot call this "meddling" without looking askance at the propaganda put out by our own political parties, by our own fellow citizens. 

Speech is, ultimately, merely speech. It matters not who utters it--a free society demands that speech be kept free for all parties. Even the Russians. 

There stands President Trump. What Crime Has ANYONE Found?

Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD under Josef Stalin (The Soviet Union's secret police and precursor to the infamous KGB), is often cited as having said "show me the man and I'll find you the crime."

We should be mindful of these words in regarding the broad authority granted Robert Mueller in his appointment as Special Counsel for the US Department of Justice, charged with investigating possible "collusion" between the campaign staffs of Donald Trump and Russia. We should be mindful for the simple reason that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, at the time of Mueller's appointment, explicitly discounted any presumption that any criminal offense had even taken place:

“In my capacity as acting Attorney General, I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. “My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”

Mueller's appointment was never even an assertion that a crime had been committed, much less that President Trump had committed one.  This alone made Mueller's appointment something of a legal oddity, for the federal statute governing the appointments of Special Counsel, 28 CFR § 600.1, specifically references criminal investigations:

The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted....

Moreover, the investigation must be grounded in a specific crime (or at least the allegation of a crime), as 28 CFR § 600.4(a), requires some specificity as to the subject of investigation:

The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall be established by the Attorney General. The Special Counsel will be provided with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated....

Former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy highlighted these apparent defects of Mueller's appointment in a 2017 piece for the National Review, and I encourage those wanting a fuller understanding of the legal issues to read it.  I highlight these points merely to underscore the "Beria-esque" nature of Mueller's appointment: He was shown Donald Trump, and challenged to find the crime.

After a year (and an untold number of millions of dollars spent), the question now becomes: "What crime has Mueller found?"  What crime has anyone found? What credible accusation of criminal offense may now be laid at President Trump's feet?

The answer appears to be: none. There is no crime alleged. There is no accusation to be made.

Consider the tangible fruits of the Mueller probe to date:  

• George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
• Michael Flynn, President Trump's one-time national security advisor, pleaded guilty in December of 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
• Rick Gates, business partner and lieutenant to Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, plead guilty in February 2018 to one count of making false statements and one count of "conspiracy against the United States", both charges arising out of political consulting work Manafort and Gates provided to Ukrainian politicians several years ago--work wholly unrelated to either the Trump campaign or the 2016 election cycle as a whole.
• Richard Pinedo, someone with no known affiliation to either Donald Trump or the Trump campaign, pled guilty to a charge of identity theft, in connection with a series of indictments Mueller announced involving a number of Russian nationals and Russian-based companies.
• Alex van der Zwann, also with no known affiliation to Donald Trump or the Trump campaign, pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI.

These represent the sum total of prosecutorial "wins" Mueller has obtained as a result of his investigation.  Not one of these guilty pleas even hints at a larger crime or conspiracy having been perpetrated by President Trump or members of his campaign staff.  As regards President Trump, Mueller has failed to even allege any crime.

Mueller's investigation has also resulted in the following criminal indictments:

• One-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted in October of 2017 on a number of charges, including money laundering and making false statements, all in relation to work done long before his involvement with Donald Trump's Presidential campaign.
• Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik, was indicted in June of 2018 with obstruction of justice, purportedly by attempting to tamper with potential witnesses in the Manafort case.
• In February of 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges of conspiring to interfere with “US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” However, it must be noted that, in announcing the indictments, the Department of Justice explicitly excluded any allegation of any American--including Trump campaign operatives--being a willing party to the criminal acts alleged: "There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election. "
• In July of 2018, Rod Rosenstein announced indictments of 12 Russian GRU intelligence agents on charges surrounding the alleged hack of the DNC servers in the spring and early summer of 2016.  As with the February indictments, American involvement was specifically discounted: "There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity or knew they were communicating with Russian intelligence officers."

27 individuals and three companies indicted, and none of the indictments even hint at a crime committed by Donald Trump or his campaign staffs.  Moreover, in announcing both sets of Russian indictments, the Department of Justice specifically rejected the possibility that the alleged activities influenced the outcome of the election, stating outright that "there is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the vote count or changed the outcome of the 2016 election." Even if every single indictment results in a conviction, not a single one points to any criminal conduct by President Trump or his associates.  A year after Mueller was shown Donald Trump, he has failed to find any crime.

Nor has anyone else managed to find an actual crime.  Outside of the Mueller investigation, the most notable potential source of wrongdoing is the allegation that President Trump had an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels in 2006, and possibly another with Playboy model Karen McDougal. Because of payments made to Daniels and McDougal, arranged by Trump lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, during the fall of 2016, there has been some intimation of campaign finance violations, but even that becomes highly problematic given Cohen's revelation of recorded conversations with Donald Trump discussing such payments.  Even if the allegations themselves are true, adultery is not a crime.

It is disingenuous and facile to say that Donald Trump "may have" committed crimes, either in relation to Russian involvement in the 2016 election or with regards to his supposed mistresses.  Strictly as an hypothetical, that is always true, not just of Donald Trump but of anyone.  However, crime is not an hypothetical.  Crime is factual. Accusations of crime require there be a date, a place, a time, and a law that has been broken. Accusations of crime require there be facts.  So far, there have been no facts that even identify a crime that Donald Trump could plausibly have committed.

Lawyer after lawyer has been shown Donald Trump, and lawyer after lawyer has failed to find a crime. Maybe there is a crime lurking just out of sight, and maybe it will be soon brought to light.  Maybe.

For now, the reality is there are no crimes that can be alleged against Donald Trump.

Trump-Russia: Are There ANY Facts Out There?

The American political establishment has lost what little sanity it possessed.

After President Trump failed to publicly excoriate Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 election, pundits on both the right and the left went into epic meltdown mode. Words like "treason" and "surrender" were thrown around with total abandon.

To add insult to injury, much of the media hyperbole was based on a complete misrepresentation of what Donald Trump actually said. While he did not accuse Putin outright of election meddling, neither did he exonerate him.  As Tom Trinko cogently observed afterwards:

Trump never said the Russians didn't meddle – only that he discussed the issue with Putin and Putin denied it. Putin appears to be ready to back his claim up by providing Robert Mueller access to the 12 supposed hackers.

Putin could be lying, but nothing Trump said boils down to "the Russians didn't meddle." Rather, Trump was being diplomatic and didn't directly call Putin a liar.

All of this brings to the fore a simple yet rarely asked question: "What are the facts?"  What is the actual empirical data that is actually known about Russia's presumed interventions in the 2016 elections?

Is there any such data?  Frighteningly, the answer may very well be "no":

• As I wrote when the Intelligence Community Assessment was first published in January of 2017, the report itself is contradictory and problematic, and fundamentally fact free.  It was and is an opinion piece, and nothing more.
• In September of 2017, Facebook came forward to announce that a Russian entity, the Internet Research Agency, had purchased a number of ad pages on the platform. Yet when the ads themselves were disclosed, their political impact seemed uncertain at best, and their impropriety seemed almost nonexistent. As evidence of improper "meddling", the ads are simply laughable.
• In Mueller's first round of Russian indictments, the cases almost immediately imploded, first when it was revealed one of the companies named did not exist during the time frame covered by the indictments, and then when it was discovered that Mueller's investigators never translated the proffered "evidence"--largely uncorroborated social media posts--from their original Russian.
• Mueller's second round of Russian indictments appears not to have been much better. In addition to be built essentially around apparently hearsay testimony, some of the particulars in the indictment may very well have been cribbed from other, unrelated investigations.

Weak evidence, false evidence, no evidence--objective scrutiny of Russia's alleged malfeasance is for the moment impossible because there is no publicly available objective data--no factual evidence--to scrutinize.  Two years of investigation and endless hyperbole from hyperventilating pundits and politicians, and we have no facts.

By way of comparison, I submit a memorandum published on Counterpunch by a group called "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), suggesting that the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee's servers might have been an inside job and not an outside hack.  I do not know if their assessment is more or less accurate than the ICA from January of 2017.  I do know the assessment is factually grounded, where the ICA is not.

How is the VIPS memo factually grounded?

• Links and citations are provided to primary source materials.  We are not obliged to take the VIPS team at their word, but are allowed and even invited to scrutinize the primary source data for ourselves.
• The primary source data is a forensic study of an archive of DNC material, part of a hack of the DNC network performed on July 5, 2016.  The forensic analysis includes a link to the archive itself.
• The forensic study provides an explanation of the examinations and computations conducted on the archive, thus providing a clear logical basis for the conclusions reached.

Even if the VIPS memorandum should prove inaccurate, it is still a superior treatment of these issues because it makes repeated reference to objective data that can be independently verified and scrutinized.  Nothing from Mueller's prosecutorial efforts provides this level of comfort.  The ICA does not provide this level of comfort.  We are being asked to take these agencies at their word, while VIPS all but requests independent scrutiny.

Two years of investigation and endless hyperbole from hyperventilating pundits and politicians, and we have no facts. We have no objective data which we may independently verify and analyze. We have only opinion and allegation.  This is the objective reality of the multiple investigations into the alleged malfeasances of Russia.

Absence of proof is not necessarily proof of absence.  We cannot automatically infer from this lack of objective data that Russia is innocent of any wrong doing with regard to the 2016 election.  However, the longer we are faced with an absence of proof, the less likely the claim of Russia malfeasance becomes, and the more likely that the truth of the 2016 election is something far different than the current hysterical and histrionic narratives of the media.

WARNING: Special Counsel Investigations Have A Long Tradition Of Failure.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller

When former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel to pursue the investigation of alleged ties between Donald Trump's Presidential campaign staff and the Russian government, Democrats were elated. The headline in Politico summed the liberal sentiment succinctly: "Trump’s Worst Nightmare Comes True". In the Democrat universe, Robert Mueller is the Beowulf come to slay the Trumpian Grendel, something the Democrats (Geats) under Chuck Schumer (Hrothgar) are too weak and timid to do themselves.

Just as Beowulf is great epic poetry, the Democrat view of "Russiagate" is great political drama--at least to the Democrats.  Alas for the poor Democrats, the history of Special Counsels and the actual facts of Russiagate tells a much different--and much less gripping--tale.

Invariably, all Special Counsels are compared to the archetypes of the office, Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, the attorneys who ran the Watergate investigations that toppled President Richard Nixon in 1974. Arguably, all Special Counsels have visions (or delusions) of grandeur whereby they achieve results as monumental and historic as Cox and Jaworski.  Unfortunately, for both Special Counsel and Democrat in Congress alike, Special Counsels since Watergate have spent much, proved little, and accomplished less.

Moreover, Cox and Jaworski had perhaps the easiest mandate to fulfill, as that scandal's timeline of events makes clear.

Watergate began with a burglary--a mundane crime but indisputably a crime--and also an arrest, as the "Plumbers" were caught in the middle of the break-in. That Nixon specifically and explicitly attempted to thwart investigation into this burglary was the malfeasance that ultimately drove him from office. In Watergate, the answer to the imperative first question for all Special Counsel was simple and straightforward: burglary and obstruction of justice.

Watergate was made an even easier task for Cox and Jaworski due to the Plumbers themselves having been indicted (in September, 1972) and convicted (in January, 1973) for the break-in. Crimes were not merely alleged, but positively proven.

The scope of the Watergate scandal was also amply demonstrated prior to the Cox' initial appointment. L. Patrick Gray, who succeeded J. Edgar Hoover as FBI Director in 1972 and was confirmed in 1973, testified during his confirmation hearings that White House Counsel John Dean has "probably lied" to FBI investigators. Gray also was forced to resign in April of 1973 after acknowledging that he had destroyed files (arguably evidence) from Plumber operative E. Howard Hunt's safe.

All of these events occurred before Archibald Cox' appointment as Special Prosecutor on May 19, 1973. The shape and even scope of the scandal were thus well defined long before his investigation could even begin.

In the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Reagan's second term, the first reporting of the events occurred in November of 1986, While the public recitation of the matter was both salacious and scandalous--with United States selling arms to the same Iranian government that had seized the American embassy in Tehran not ten years prior, the proceeds of which were used to lend aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels despite a Congressional ban on such aid--the outlines of any actual criminal offense were at best imprecise and at worst nonexistent. In addition, the Democrats wasted no time in appointing a Special Counsel, with Lawrence Walsh receiving his mandate in December of 1986, while the essential events themselves were still being learned.

It comes as no real surprise that Lawrence Walsh secured no convictions on the substantive issues of Iran-Contra, with most of the guilty pleas being for either perjury or withholding information from his investigation.  The biggest convictions in that scandal were almost all overturned on appeal.

As murky and confusing as Iran-Contra was, Whitewater was murkier still. While the core of the scandal read as run-of-the-mill real-estate, bank, and wire fraud, which was caught up in the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s, the extent of President Bill Clinton's involvement was and is a matter of debate and conjecture.  A report on Whitewater and the related failure of Madison Guaranty Saving and Loan prepared for the Resolution Trust Corporation described Bill Clinton as a "passive" investor, which is to say the Clinton's invested money but were not involved in the decision-making; as they lost money on the venture, this would make them more victim than perpetrator.  Yet the swirl of questions and confusion surrounding the matter did not stop Congress for pushing for an independent counsel even as Bill Clinton was taking office--Robert Fiske was appointed by Clinton Attorney General in 1993, and was replaced by Ken Starr shortly afterward to remove any possible conflict of interest taint.

The failed real-estate venture itself produced a number of convictions, including that of then-governor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, Madison Guaranty owner Jim McDougal and his wife Susan. However, the major accomplishments of the Ken Starr investigation were securing a guilty plea from Webster Hubbell, one-time Associate Attorney General and law partner of Hillary Clinton, for overbilling clients--a matter wholly unrelated to Whitewater itself--and the impeachment show trial of President Bill Clinton for his perjured testimony in relation to his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment proceedings were demonstrably more damaging to Republicans than to either the Democrats or Bill Clinton, being seen publicly as petty and vindictive.

The Valerie Plame Affair, a presumed national security brouhaha arising from the potentially unlawful disclosure of the name of a CIA employee, is perhaps the murkiest and most confusing scandal for which special counsel was named. To this day, it is by no means certain that a criminal act even occurred; the only conviction secured by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was that of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury committed during Fitzgerald's investigation.

Russiagate shares more in common with the Plame Affair than it does Watergate. When a proud Hillary Clinton supporter such as noted law professor Alan Dershowitz states repeatedly that any interaction between Donald Trump and Russia was not criminal, when former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Senator Dianne Feinstein state publicly there is "no evidence" of collusion between President Trump and the Russian government to win the election, the obvious question must be asked: "where is the crime?" So far, as Dershowitz reminds us, there is no provable crime even alleged, much less proven.

A review of these histories of Special Counsel investigation also highlights their epic failure to bring substantive prosecutions, or even to meaningfully impair a Presidency. Watergate did end in Richard Nixon's resignation, but Iran-Contra did not stop Ronald Reagan from meeting with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavic, nor from completing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1987. Iran-Contra did not stop President George H. W. Bush from bringing the Cold War to an end with a strategic alliance with Russia in 1991 (coming on the heels of the dissolution of the Soviet Union), nor from assembling the multi-national coalition to push Iraq out of Kuwait in Desert Storm. Whitewater did not prevent President Bill Clinton from signing the North American Free Trade Agreement, his signature Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, nor the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The Plame Affair did not prevent President George W. Bush from completing a transition to representative government in Iraq, nor from executing the "surge" strategy in 2007 under General Petraeus.

Far from imperiling or even damaging a Presidential term of office, the existence of a Special Counsel is a curious harbinger of Presidential success.  Every President between 1981 and 2009 endured a special counsel investigation; each had significant policy successes during and after the Special Counsel's investigation. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush won reelection despite the presence of a Special Counsel. Contrast that with the tenure of Barack Obama, whose signature domestic achievement, "Obamacare", is already being undone by the GOP Congress even as it collapses in a death spiral of ever increasingly unaffordable insurance premiums and deductibles, and whose signature foreign policy achievements--the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the controversial nuclear arms deal with Iran--seem to have exacerbated Middle East tensions rather than ameliorated them.

It is always possible that Robert Mueller will unearth some damning bit of evidence that will topple President Trump. It is always possible that he will at last prove the Trump-Russia "collusion" narrative that Democrats continue to push despite a complete lack of evidence. It is far more likely, however, that Robert Mueller will either exonerate Donald Trump completely, or at worse indict a few people close to him for perjury, withholding information, and other arbitrary offenses arising more from the investigation itself than the underlying scandal.

Special Counsel do a lot of investigating, a lot of chasing after suspects, a lot of issuing of subpoenas. What they do not do a lot of is winning. That is the history of Special Counsel in this country.

The Great Russian Hacking Hoax

How much new information have we learned since the Intelligence Community Assessment regarding Russian "interference" in the 2016 elections was published at the beginning of January?

None.

How much new detail on President Donald Trump's "improper contacts" with Russia during the election and since have we received?

None.

In the ten months since revelation of the DNC email leaks (or "hacks", depending on whom you believe), how much actual evidence has been developed either about Russia's involvement in that event, Donald Trump's supposed collusion with Russia surrounding that event, or any other form of "collusion" between Donald Trump or his associates and Russia?

None.

The great lie permeating the Fake News Media is that there is any evidence of any actionable improper conduct by Russia in the 2016 election. There is none--none whatsoever.

The entire "Russia Hacking" narrative is in fact the Great Russian Hacking Hoax.

First, read once more the ICA from January: when one strips away the formal verbiage and government doublespeak, the ICA is still nothing more than opinion. It is no more than that. It has no empirical data, it cites neither witnesses nor provides forensic detail of the presumed DNC server hack. It provides no external citation of any report, document, or statement by any Russian official. Far from being a damning indictment of Russian malfeasance, it is merely unsupported assertions by Intelligence Community officials that Russia is the ultimate bad actor behind everything that went "wrong" with the 2016 elections. It is their opinion, and only their opnion, that we should blame Russia for everything.

Opinions are not evidence. Opinions are not facts. Unless they are at the conclusion of a valid chain of logical reasoning based on facts and objective evidence, opinions cannot be taken as any form of conclusion at all.

As of this date, the Intelligence Community Assessment is the sum total of "evidence" of "Russian Hacking".

This is fundamentally confirmed by leaders of that very same Intelligence Community. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on national television in March that there was "no evidence" of any collusion between Donald Trump's election campaign and Russia. Former Acting CIA Director Mike Morrell said substantially the same thing: 

"On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all.... There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it."

Senator Dianne Feinstein bluntly conceded to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that, following a classified CIA briefing, there was no evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia. 

Take a moment to view the links I have provided. They are links to televised statements made by specific individuals, attesting to their knowledge--or, more precisely, their lack of knowledge--of any substantive facts indicating Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the election. Moreover, these statements are made not by Trump allies, but by Trump adversaries. Senator Feinstein is certainly no friend of Donald Trump, and Mike Morrell has been a Trump critic since the beginning of Trump's election campaign. Whatever bias they might have in this matter tilts away from Trump, not towards him.

These statements are facts. These facts advance but one hypothesis, lead to but one conclusion: there is no evidence that Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia during the election. Logic admits of no other conclusion.

Did Russia "interfere" with the election on its own, without Donald Trump? Certainly that is possible as an hypothetical. However, what data can be summoned to support that contention?  None.

Even the ICA acknowledges that no Russian malfeasance interfered with voting systems or resulted in any fraudulent or spoiled ballots. No Russian actor stuffed ballot boxes on behalf of either President Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Did the Russian government "hack" the DNC server? Again, as an hypothetical that is possible, but what evidence is there for that assertion? There is but one item submitted in that regard: a forensic analysis by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike in the aftermath of the DNC email leaks. However, Crowdstrike's analysis is subject to challenge. In an unrelated forensic report, Crowdstrike attributed the same Russian hacking group, known only as "Fancy Bear", to a cyberattack that resulted in devastating losses of Ukranian field artillery in that country's ongoing civil war--losses that the Ukranian government as well as others say never even happened. Simply put, Crowdstrike's assessment of "Fancy Bear" hacking activities is provably wrong in at least one instance completely separate from anything related to the 2016 election cycle. The FBI never conducted its own forensic examination of the DNC systems, because the DNC declined to grant them access. Thus FBI assessments of the hack are little more than restatements of the Crowdstrike analysis, and if Crowdstrike is wrong, the FBI is also wrong. With no independent forensic examination, either by the FBI or another cybersecurity firm, the Crowdstrike report stands uncorroborated--and thus is not conclusive proof of anything.

Again, review the links. The Crowdstrike analysis exists, and makes the statements that it makes. The agencies and officials refuting Crowdstrike's analysis regarding Ukrainian field artillery made the statements they made. The refusal of the DNC to allow the FBI to conduct an independent forensic investigation is a matter of public record.

Again, these statements are facts. Again, these facts advance but one hypothesis, lead to but one conclusion: there is no evidence that Russian hacking to influence the election even occurred. Again, logic admits of no other conclusion.

I shall be clear on one point: Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and lack of evidence of guilt is never proof of innocence. We cannot say--and I do not say--that Russia categorically did not hack the DNC server, nor do I say that Russia categorically did not engage in activities to influence the election. We can say, we should say, and I do say, that there is absolutely no evidence to support the contention that Russia did either of these things, with or without the aid or cooperation of President Trump.

Without evidence, how to properly apprehend the hysteria in the Fake News Media regarding Trump and Russia? Call it what it provably is: The Great Russian Hacking Hoax.

The ICA Report Is Fake News

The words "high confidence" abound in the Intelligence Community Assessment on purported Russian attempts to influence American electoral politics. Unfortunately for the Intelligence Community, their "highly confident" assessment is demonstrably and provably false. Worse, their own assessment is the best evidence demonstrating their commitment to the Fake News paradigm.

The summary assessment at the start of the report reads as follows:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

These simple declarative sentences certainly appear eminently reasonable. No one can credibly deny that the activities ascribed to Vladimir Putin are measures he is quite capable of undertaking, and the thuggish, authoritarian nature of his regime makes the possibility he did undertake them itself highly credible. However, the simplicity of the grammar creates the core problem with the assessment: they are merely an arbitrary conjoining and conflation of disparate actions and motives to fit a predefined narrative. 

Let us unpack these sentences and consider them separately:

• We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.
  
  
  This is the most defensible claim, as it is merely a claim of fact. Putin either did or did not issue such orders. While the report does not contain any absolute and conclusive evidence of such orders, it does make a circumstantial case that at the least does not contradict this assertion.

• Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. 
  
  This is a tad more problematic than the first assertion. Circumstantial evidence can make a highly credible case as to actions taken or not taken, but it is far less likely to suffice for imputing motive. Note that a motivation of denigrating Hillary Clinton is demonstrably distinct from a consequence of denigrating Hillary Clinton.
  
  It is not unreasonable to conclude the consequence of a particular act is the desired consequence, and in this fashion we often impute motive to actions in virtually every circumstance. However, if we restate this sentence by focusing on presumed impacts of the actions averred in the previous sentence, immediately we run into a significant problem of logic: "The impact of Russia's influence campaign was to undermine public faith in the US democratic process...."
  
  That is an extraordinary statement, and bears extraordinary scrutiny. How has the US democratic process been undermined, or America's faith in that process? What demonstrable damage has been done? These are the necessary questions one must make regarding such a statement, and at least within the ICA, the answers are conspicuous solely by their absence. Further, the actions and activities ascribed to Putin simply lack the capacity to undermine any democratic process, let alone the distributed state-by-state system America uses to elect its President.

• We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
  
  Again, the ICA imputes motive from presumed consequence. While far from impossible (and in fact relatively probable, given various pro-Trump statements made by Putin since the election), the popular vote outcomes among the several states were sufficiently close as to render the clarity of a preference for any candidate far more mythical than real.

Thus, even before any examination of the supporting discussion within the report, we are presented with significant challenges to the credibility of the report as a whole. Worse, the imputation of motive is in every context a quintessentially political position: Political figures of all leanings regularly demonize and denigrate their opponents by questioning if not outright attacking their motives; in politics, that is ever the order of things.

The report's segue into supporting discussion does not improve its credibility: 

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him

Again, we are faced with the innately political imputation of motive, coupled with another extraordinary statement which begs extraordinary questions: How could Putin--or indeed anyone--discredit Hillary Clinton? Did the Russians make false statements about her? Were scurrilous and demonstrably false accusations leveled against her?

We are also faced with a far more serious problem of logic and understanding. The ICA is saying that Putin and the Russians injected into the public discourse a variety of statements about Hillary Clinton, arguably of an unfavorable nature and specifically intended to portray her in an unflattering light. Yet even if we assume for the moment the absolute veracity of this assertion, in what way does this represent an undermining of the US democratic process? The mainstream media injects statements favorable and unfavorable into the public discourse--indeed, that is their explicit role in American electoral politics. Further, the American political system is predicated on there being a wide ranging articulation and contemplation of such statement; such public dialog is part and parcel of the rights categorically defended in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

If we take the ICA at face value, we are presented with a narrative of Putin speaking out and in essence making a case arguably for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton as best suited to be the 45th President of the United States. Putin, far from undermining US democratic process, is in fact participating in it. Putin has his opinions as to whom he would rather see in the Oval Office, as do all foreign leaders; one can argue with conviction that the opinions of foreign leaders should be of no consequence and given no weight in deciding how we will vote on election day, but that argument quite properly focuses on what the prudent response should be to such opinions. To say that we should not heed the opinions of foreign leaders is a legitimate position to take, and it is wildly different from saying that foreign leaders should not have (or express) their opinions--that would simply be an unrealistic position to take.

We have an additional problem arising from this aspect of the ICA: How does a foreign leader expressing his or her opinion on our electoral politics delegitimize those politics? How does Putin having a presumed preference for Donald Trump invalidate the votes of tens of millions of Americans for Donald Trump? A moment's reflection is all that is needed to realize that Putin's opinions have no bearing on the legitimacy of our elections, nor on our voting choices. The only thing that would question the legitimacy of an election is if vote totals were altered to present a false result--and the ICA states that did not happen:

DHS assesses that the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying. 

By the logic of the ICA itself, the Russians were not compromising either ballots or votes by their actions. And thus the ICA has immediately disproven its own central thesis, that Putin and the Russians sought to undermine Americans' faith in American democratic process. Whatever else the Russians may have done or desired to do, that clearly was not one of the goals and objectives. 

The remainder of the ICA supporting discussion details Russian propaganda efforts. Examples cited include Russian-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik producing and promoting pro-Trump content, the celebratory reception Trump's election received in the Kremlin, and the amplifying of Trump campaign themes via Russian media. Yet such activities are not only legal and permissible, but preferable and desirable in our political system. Media outlets such as RT and Sputnik do not lose their right to broadcast their messages to the the American public simply because they are not native to these shores--certainly not when the Islamist/ISIS-friendly Al Jazeera America cable news channel is also widely available in the United States. Propaganda may be distasteful, but it is hardly undemocratic--merely because the journalism is Russian Red as opposed to William Randolph Hearst Yellow is a bad reason to silence that voice.

Even the key assertion of the ICA that the Russian propaganda efforts utilize stolen ("hacked") data an personal information carries significant problems. The mere fact that information was obtained illegally is not itself a valid bar to its publication. This was the conclusion of the US Supreme Court in Bartnicki v. Vopper (532 U.S. 514) in 2001. It was the defense of the New York Times both in publishing the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s (stolen by Daniel Ellsburg) and again in 2016 in publishing portions of Donald Trump's tax returns (also allegedly stolen, by persons as yet unnamed). While the ICA includes a throwaway statement of Russian intelligence operatives publishing altered or false personal information, as regards the 2016 election cycle itself the ICA concludes no such tampering took place:

We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries

Stealing personal data and hacking computer systems are unquestionably crimes, and unquestionably deserve to be investigated and guilty parties punished. Yet as regards public discourse, the American tradition is essentially a rather blunt and uncompromising stance that all information is fair game. The ICA offers no evidence of demonstrably false factual statements being released via WikiLeaks or by any other purportedly Russian-affiliated actor. The DNC email system was hacked, John Podesta's Gmail password was surreptitiously and illegally retrieved, yet the materials obtained by these illegal activities are, per the assessment of the ICA, real and authentic correspondence of the Democratic National Committee and persons affiliated with Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign.  While it is criminal and unacceptable to steal such information, it is neither criminal nor unacceptable within American political traditions to publish such information.

Again, even if one assumes for the sake of argument the veracity of the ICA, the assertions made and the related defenses simply do not amount to anything resembling an assault on US democratic process; rather, they amount to Putin desiring to participate in that process. The ICA makes a detailed and substantive case regarding Russia's ambitions of having influence within American political processes--but aside from isolated instances of cybercrime, it offers up neither allegation nor substance of Russia and Russian-owned media doing anything that is contrary to our system of electoral politics, or even outside our laws.

For all of its substance and seeming detail, the ICA presents a false narrative and a red herring argument. It implies, but does not answer, one overarching question: How can Vladimir Putin undermine America by acting as an ordinary American?

REALITY CHECK: Russia Voiced Her Opinion About Our Politics. No More. No Less.

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

So begins the US Intelligence Community's briefing to President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump regarding alleged Russian interventions into the 2016 Presidential Election cycle.

For the most part, the reaction to this conclusion should be a colossal and universal "so what?" Russia under Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian borderline fascist dictatorship. Putin's preferred model of governance is about as antithetical to the principles of republican representative democracy as can be had this side of Josef Stalin--but, perversely, outside of certain cyber-intrusions of the Democratic National Committee, the mechanisms he has to "undermine" the "liberal democratic order" are simply the institutions of the American "liberal democratic order." The only way for Putin to influence our democracy is to participate in it.

To appreciate Putin's alleged tactics and the processes he wishes to undermine, we must begin at the core of those processes--the United States Constitution. Of particular note, we must bring to the fore the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In the United States, rights are boundaries which enclose and delimit the powers of government--with the freedoms of the people ranging far and wide beyond. In the United States, the supreme civic virtue is that voices be heard. People may be right or wrong in their ideas, successful or unsuccessful in their exhortations, but what they should never be is silent. The American ideal of public discourse is raucous, noisy, chaotic--and above all, free from restraint.

How is this relevant? Consider the assessed mechanisms by which Putin purportedly sought to influence American elections:

We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks. 

Disclosing information via DCLeaks.com, WikiLeaks, and the mainstream media is itself speech. It is a participation in the public discourse, a voice crying out to be heard. It is presumably a Russian voice, a voice that has little standing in American political discourse, but it is still a voice. Moreover, as a voice it could only be heard because of our "liberal democratic order." Far from undermining that order, Putin's alleged activities demonstrate its elemental and undiminished strength.

We are also reminded the material released was "victim data." Whether obtained by hack or by unauthorized insider, the materials released on DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks were obtained illegally. This much is absolutely certain. Still, history shows our society prefers to hear even criminally informed voices. The Pentagon Papers were initially stolen, as were the snippets of Donald Trump's income tax returns published by the New York Times during the election.

Moreover, as Newsweek rather conveniently rationalized, the laws criminalizing the acquisition and publication of this material are, arguably, a restraint on speech and, as such, not possible under the First Amendment. In defending the New York Times' decision to publish tax information stolen from Donald Trump, Newsweek paid homage to Bartnicki v Vopper (532 U.S. 514), which struck down a federal statute barring the publication of information obtained by illegal means. By the same logic that made it acceptable for the New York Times to publish Donald Trump's illegally obtained tax returns, it it is equally acceptable for DCLeaks and WikiLeaks to publish the illegally obtained email archives of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta.

Despite the hyperventilations of the Obama Administration, the most that can be said of Vladimir Putin's activities during the election cycle is that he arrogated to himself a voice with which to participate in the public debate over whom should be America's 45th President. There are many pejoratives that attach to such an effort--"invasive", "arrogant", "rude" just to name a few--but, ironically, "undemocratic" really is not one of them. If Putin weighing in on American electoral politics is wrong, then it was wrong for Barack Obama to have weighed in on Britain's Brexit referendum. If Putin is wrong, then the US State Department was wrong to have spent $350,000 of taxpayer money in an effort to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.

People may not like that Putin has sought a voice in American electoral politics, but it is disingenuous if not deceitful to pretend that anyone--even a despotic dictator such as Putin--seeking a voice is antithetical to America's "liberal democratic order," and it is dangerously naive to pretend that the intrusion of such foreign voices into the "liberal democratic order" is not very much the establish political order of things.

Absent the alleged cybercrimes (and we must remember they are "alleged" because conclusive proof of anyone's guilt in the penetrations of the DNC networks is for now an elusive commodity), all Putin has done is express an opinion. In our "liberal democratic order", we prefer that opinions be expressed rather than excluded.

Opinions are not the enemy of democracy, but the foundation of it. If Putin truly seeks to undermine American political processes, he is going to need better tactics than participation in political discourse.