The Russiagate scandal may have seen its official conclusion with Special Counsel John Durham’s final report, but it is far from over. The scandal, which involves efforts by the Democratic Party, the FBI, the CIA, and major news outlets to push the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump worked with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election, has become a form of governing, with the Washington bureaucracy punishing enemies, protecting friends, and interfering in elections without repercussion.
The scandal unfolds in a continuous thread that connects efforts to deny the results of the 2016 election, cover up the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and now tarring President Biden’s opponents as extremists or racists. Despite the vastness of these machinations, none of the major players have been held accountable, and some are even employed by leading media organizations.
The roots of the scandal go back to July 2016, when then CIA Director John Brennan informed President Obama about intelligence reports indicating that Hillary Clinton’s campaign planned to tie Donald Trump to Russia to distract from email scandal controversy. The FBI launched a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign a few days later, and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer warned Trump not to challenge the intelligence community’s claims of Russian interference.
On January 5, 2017, in his final days in office, Obama held a meeting with high-level officials to strategize responses to alleged Russian interference and Trump’s victory. This led to Comey’s briefing of Trump on the Steele dossier, a series of memos paid for and disseminated by the Clinton campaign that sought to tarnish Trump’s character while tying him and his campaign associates to the Kremlin. This briefing led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel.
On April 18, 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign. However, much of this coverage was filled with “false and misleading claims,” according to RealClearInvestigations colleague Aaron Maté.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller submitted a report on his investigation that did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. However, he did not examine the role Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Obama, and other high-ranking Democrats played in ginning up charges of treason against Trump.
Attorney General William Barr appointed John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia probe on May 13, and Durham’s final report detailed the Clinton campaign’s central role in the conspiracy while concluding that “the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.” Durham’s investigation also undermined the claim that the Russians had hacked DNC servers, a theory that also originated from associates of the Clinton campaign.
The scandal continued with efforts to impeach Trump on the claim that he sought foreign influence in America’s elections by holding up aid to Ukraine for a short period to pressure the country into looking into its potential connection to the Russiagate hoax and the Biden family’s work in Ukraine. The House approved two articles of impeachment in 2019 along party lines, and the Senate acquitted Trump in 2020.
In October 2020, the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. A letter signed by former intelligence officials, including Brennan and Clapper, dismissed the allegations as a Russian information operation.
Despite this vast and ongoing scandal, none of the major players have been held accountable, and some are even lauded by leading media organizations. The Russiagate scandal has become an insidious form of governing, with entrenched forces punishing enemies, protecting friends, and interfering in elections without repercussion, posing a dangerous threat to American democracy.
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