This week, Washington has been stirred by newly declassified documents tied to the origins of the Russian investigations. These documents hint at a covert scheme by the Clinton Campaign, suggesting they collaborated with the FBI and various media outlets to falsely portray Donald Trump as a Russian asset. For the public, this revelation sheds light on how officials and journalists may have perpetuated what could be termed one of the largest hoaxes in American political history.
There was no actual Russian conspiracy. Instead, what we have here is a deliberate effort to fabricate a narrative that effectively overshadowed many aspects of Trump’s first term.
The documents reveal carefully scripted political fantasies created by ambitious public officials and media. The underlying trick allowed journalists to indulge in these fabrications, as if they were part of an audience captivated by the illusion.
This operation meticulously followed the classic steps of a magic trick: the pledge, the turn, and the reveal.
Pledge
The initial phase is the pledge, where something ordinary is presented with the promise of being transformed into something extraordinary. Here, the Clinton Campaign enacted that strategy through the financing of a dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele, casting Trump as a Russian agent.
At the heart of this funding was Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, who pushed the narrative surrounding the fictitious Alpha Bank conspiracy. His colleague Michael Sussman faced indictment for his role but was ultimately acquitted.
Throughout the campaign, several journalists inquired about ties to the Clinton team, but officials dismissed Steele’s role in the documentation. After the election, it came to light that Steele’s funding was masked as “legal costs”; a sum of $5.6 million was funneled to Perkins Coie, under Elias’s direction.
When New York Times reporter Ken Vogel attempted to investigate, he faced vehement pushback from Elias, who reportedly told him that he was mistaken. Further, another prominent reporter noted that people involved in the fundraising had deceived the public for over a year.
Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, later testified before Congress regarding Steele’s documents, insisting that they had severed ties with Fusion GPS, all while Elias remained beside him without correcting any misleading statements.
The Federal Election Commission eventually permitted the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee to manage their document funding via third-party firms.
Turn
The next phase—the turn—involves elevating a standard scenario into something remarkable, necessitating government action. The Clinton team covertly supplied the FBI with pertinent documents to launch a criminal probe. They transformed mundane interactions, like Carter Page discussing matters in Moscow, into an intricately spun Russian conspiracy. Early on, the FBI was informed that Page was a CIA asset, not a Russian one, but the Clinton team garnered support from enthusiastic officials in the Obama administration to maintain the facade.
Newly revealed evidence illustrates how this turn unfolded. In July 2016, John Brennan shared Clinton’s “plan” to link Trump to Russia with President Obama, simply as a diversion from the private email server controversy. Not long after, the original Russian investigation, financed by the Clinton campaign, was initiated.
Months later, despite internal CIA analysts disputing the legitimacy of the Steele dossier, Brennan ordered a last-minute reevaluation that aligned with the ongoing Russian inquiry, undermining crucial decisions due to flaws in the documents presented.
Fame
The final stage is fame, where the magician confronts the most challenging aspect of the trick. As noted in the film The Prestige, audiences often search for an illusion but, deep down, they prefer to be deceived. The goal of this endeavor was to sidetrack Trump, and it indeed accomplished that, though ultimately, both the special counsel and inspector concluded there was no Russian conspiracy. In the end, the electorate re-elected Trump, while the CIA’s hidden insights may soon come to light.
Recent disclosures indicate that the CIA is attempting to keep under wraps details about foreign sources that were aware of the manipulation to orchestrate a Russian collusion narrative, which anticipated the FBI’s involvement prior to launching the controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe. It’s suggested that foreign intelligence had eerily anticipated the direction of events.
Furthermore, newly declassified documents reveal that in the run-up to the 2016 election, a hack of Open Society Foundations’ emails showcased a broader network of activists cognizant of Clinton’s strategy.
According to Leonard Bernard at the Open Society Foundation, the decision was made early on to leverage the FBI as a conduit for information due to the lack of direct evidence. He noted that Clinton’s team believed crafting a narrative that demonized both Putin and Trump could yield long-term advantages.
As the media, including prominent outlets that have received Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting, continue to downplay these revelations, they have not fully acknowledged their role in propagating political fabrications. The crux of the matter is that they presented this trickery as truth rather than illusion. The shocking revelations from CIA Director John Ratcliffe hang heavily in the air, leaving everyone curious about the extent of the deception.
It seems that almost everyone had a hand in this deception, from government officials and the press to foreign agencies—the only ones left out were the American public. Now, there’s a palpable concern about how this all transpired.
