The path to now…
(The author is a former Democrat, now Independent since 2012, who voted for Trump in 2016. He is a 10-year veteran of campaign, personal office, and professional committee staff in the United States Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. He earned his master’s degree in American Government from Georgetown University, where he was also a University Fellow)
Just the other day, I was challenged by a new reader who had looked at several articles I had written about Donald Trump, chastising me that I should also produce a three-year summary of what the FBI, CIA, State Department, and the entire liberal wing have attempted to do to the President since he took office.
A coup attempt was the reader’s conclusion.
The question that the new reader raises is a good question.
What does the record reveal about the three-year interaction of the FBI, CIA, State Department, and entire liberal wing with Trump look like?
Was this, or has this been, a concerted coup attempt on Donald J. Trump?
Perhaps, put more simply, what was the path to now?
How did we get to where we are with the epic struggle between American intelligence and the president of the United States?
Let me start with thanks to the reader for the question and a disclosure of my own biases:
I am no longer, by thoughtful choice, a member of the Democratic Party, even though I joined the party when I was first eligible to vote on my eighteenth birthday—a long, long time ago, I admit. John Kennedy’s vision and FDR’s foresight captured my political fancy. I even worked on Capitol Hill for ten years as a partisan politico and would not trade the experience for anything save the safety, security, and happiness of my family.
Since 2012, I have been a proud Independent. I chose not to be a Republican instead because it seemed to me that both political parties were missing the boat when it came to governing America.
I am a Jeffersonian because I embrace what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence and strongly subscribe to the tenets and intents of the United States Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
As I construct this article, I believe that America needs and requires evidence-based analysis from our intelligence agencies.
evidence-based intelligence
Many ongoing threats to the United States do not suggest that we should be letting our guard down anytime soon. We have all seen that the world is a dangerous place these days.
China continues pressuring the United States in the Pacific basin, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Russian bombers have challenged our sovereignty over Alaska these past weeks, requiring American military forces to respond. Intelligence reports indicate Russia has been putting a financial bounty on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan through the Taliban.
North Korea is, well, being North Korea. The threat of a missile attack on our mainland remains high and more probable with each passing day.
In my opinion, America needs intelligent people who can speak truth to power without fear of retribution or intimidation.
We need to protect the identities of our agents, especially overseas and among our declared adversaries.
America must have trusted relationships anchored by integrity with our allies and their respective intelligence agencies. Division does not serve our purposes either abroad or at home.
Non-partisan congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies is critically important to the health of American democracy, and it should not be dispatched as some might propose.
For whatever reason, President Donald J. Trump has been working to undermine, in my opinion, the CIA, NSA, FBI, FISA, NATO, Judiciary, Allies, and Congress. However, I can better understand his concern with the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
Since the closing days of World War II, traditional friends have been scratching their heads about what is happening on our side of the border. First and foremost, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, and Mexico. Even the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
None of this has been good for America. So, what happened?
the trump perspective
Why did President Trump bring us here?
Was it a coup attempt undermining 45 or is 45 undermining the United States for some undisclosed political or personal gain?
A review of the record does reveal the following:
During the 2016 campaign season, candidate Trump openly invited Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee servers to determine what happened to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails.
Candidate Trump even asked the fugitive Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, for help in tracking down his general election opponent’s “lost” emails.
“Lock her up” chants were encouraged by Candidate Trump, befitting, some have aptly noted, “a democracy in decay.”
This is not to say that President Trump’s predecessor was squeaky clean in his dealings with and through the American intelligence community.
The 44th President had his detractors as well, many of whom claimed Barack Obama misled Congress about spying on Americans, used unauthorized drone warfare to battle American adversaries, and even eavesdropped on our allies and at least on the United States Senate Committee.
Edward Snowden leaked these details to the world during the Obama Administration and then fled to Russia for sanctuary, which should raise ample suspicion among Americans.
By the end of the 2016 presidential election, candidate Trump, President-elect Trump, was accusing outgoing President Obama of wire-tapping Trump Tower even though no evidence was ever produced or found through subsequent investigation.
On January 5, 2017, FBI Director James Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the existence of the “Steele Dossier,” which made several salacious allegations against Mr. Trump. The Steele Dossier was allegedly started as a Republican primary opposition project against candidate Trump and then picked up and continued by the Democrats when Mr. Trump achieved his party’s nomination.
In the end, the Steele Dossier burned both sides of the political spectrum. That should have been a lesson to Republicans and Democrats alike.
By January 11, President-elect Trump had equated U.S. intelligence with Hitler’s Gestapo.
Then came FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page and their controversy. They wanted to stop Trump from winning the election and were fooling around on the side, to boot. American intelligence and our law enforcement community do not need to be involved in such partisan politics. Members are free to express their vote privately, not covertly.
To my reader’s point, the Strzok/Page scandal was indeed an abuse of office entrusted to them by their peers at the agency they served.
What about Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and the eventual Jeff Sessions recusal? Were those breakdowns in intelligence and law enforcement?
Again, to my reader, they certainly did not help build confidence in our intelligence and law enforcement communities. Were they criminal in their behavior? I do not see it, but I do think they were politically inartful in the process.
Contradicting my reader’s point, rallying campaign audiences against the “Deep State” and “Enemy of the People” media is foolish and unfounded. There is no “deep state” conspiracy going on here, in my opinion.
The President refusing to read his classified intelligence reports or receiving traditional detailed daily briefings is irresponsible, even if Mr. Trump feels that these briefs are not as clear-cut as they are intended to communicate. Mr. Trump should have wanted to dig deeper into that opinion rather than dismiss those concerns out of hand. What if those assessments prove out?
In January 2017, U.S. intelligence argued that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections. Common sense indicated this was true, and it was indeed later confirmed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina. Putin ordered the interference personally, according to these intelligence findings.
President Trump labeled it all a “hoax” ginned up by Democrats. After firing his FBI Director, James Comey, because he would not swear allegiance to Trump, the President incurred the Mueller investigation because the Russia mess seemed too fishy.
Robert Mueller would ultimately counsel us that the absence of indictment was not akin to prosecutorial absolution, despite what Session’s successor, Attorney General William Barr, may have thought and said.
Candidate Trump and President Trump were found to be drumming up his base support by promising to “drain the swamp. Indictments, resignations, and dismissals would plague the Trump White House for months after making many Americans wonder, just who is the swamp?
It all looked terrible. The President met with high-ranking Russian officials in a private meeting in the Oval Office and reportedly gave up secrets during the conversation that possibly compromised high-value assets and Israeli intelligence.
Off-the-record conversations with no documentation notes traditionally generated when the President of the United States has discussions with foreign dignitaries raised eyebrows around official Washington. They should have, indeed.
The President and his Administration frequently blamed the intelligence community for alleged leaks about Trump, Putin, and Russian election interference as the weeks morphed into months and then years of controversy.
As I pointed out earlier, the Mueller Report would eventually conclude that Russia interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” with U.S. elections in 2016. However, the special counsel often noted that it “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” as outlined in his written report to the Trump Justice Department. Of course, to muddy the waters further, the Attorney General, Mr. Barr, again heavily redacted the report and still has not revealed exactly what the Mueller Report reported.
In the summer of 2018, July, Mr. Trump met with Mr. Putin at the so-called “Helsinki Summit.” At that meeting, Mr. Trump would curiously side with the Russian President over U.S. intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election and publicly shared with the whole world this conclusion, with no evidence to the contrary offered, of course.
In November 2018, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman overlords the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump also makes friends with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and embraces the idea that Kim would eventually give up his nuclear arsenal to escape U.S. sanctions. Mr. Trump has also dismissed North Korea’s ongoing short-range missile tests as irrelevant, even though the United States, South Korean, and Japanese intelligence analysts saw those missiles as evidence of the North’s growing capacity to launch strikes against Japan and South Korea and even against American forces stationed in both countries or possibly on the U.S. mainland itself.
Trump would go on in 2019 to ignore the Worldwide Threat Assessment before Congress, attacking Team Trump’s assessment that Iran, at that time, was living up to its commitments under the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated by President Obama and U.S. allies and that North Korea was unlikely ever to give up its nuclear weapons.
The President was ignoring cyber-attacks and social media troll farms invading the United States.
Charlottesville, Virginia, was the scene of domestic terror by white nationalists, whom Mr. Trump would say had some good people.
Immigration and child detention abuses ran rampant, inspired by the President and his advisors.
In August 2019, the President taunted Iran by tweeting a highly classified image from a U.S. spy satellite, complete with detailed annotations of a missile failure at an Iranian test site. As private-sector analysts immediately pointed out, the image was of immense value to American adversaries.
The Ukraine mess came next.
In 2019, obstruction of Congress, abuse of power, and Trump ignoring the interests of U.S. allies and intelligence partners when it suits his political interests were all alleged. The White House’s mysterious decision to withhold $400 in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine while President Trump was pressuring Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden was just too much for the political process in Washington to handle.
Mr. Trump further fanned the flames of corruption allegations by seeking to privatize U.S. foreign policy by sending his private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, to investigate the Bidens, both Joe and his son, Hunter.
Adam Schiff, a Democrat chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, investigated with relish. The House eventually impeached Trump after ignoring a series of Congressional subpoenas and refusing to turn over documents to congressional oversight investigators on demand.
The GOP-led Senate would ultimately refuse to call fact witnesses on the Ukraine affair to unveil the President’s true intentions in Ukraine. The President was acquitted, and the Impeachment thus failed.
But Attorney General Bill Barr is now investigating the CIA’s conclusions about Russia’s motivations for interfering in the 2016 election.
Skeptical of the agency’s finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump win the 2016 election and actively did so, Attorney General Barr and a prosecutor he appointed, John Durham, have been delving into the underlying intelligence that the event generated.
In April 2020, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded that Trump was attempting to intimidate U.S. intelligence through browbeating and lies.
Earlier this year, on April 3, 2020, the President fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Inspector General Michael Atkinson, it was reported, because Atkinson followed the law that required him to inform Congress of a whistleblower complaint. That complaint, of course, led to the president’s impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.
It seemed to me, at the time, that the President’s impeachment was motivated by his stonewalling of legitimate congressional oversight of the executive branch and U.S. foreign policy and defense abuses. The whistleblower complaint was secondary, in my observation.
The rapidly growing list of intelligence officials who have been recently pushed out of office by the President due to their perceived lack of loyalty to Mr. Trump and their unwillingness to act based on political pressure is startling. That list now includes a U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, a Director of the FBI, James Comey, a Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, the Director of National Intelligence, former U.S. Senator Dan Coats, an acting Director of National Intelligence, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and many others.
The National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon have reportedly been urged by the White House not to share information about Russia and Ukraine with American lawmakers. Even the famed “Gang of Eight,” the most senior members of Congress, have been circumvented, leading up to at least one major intelligence operation conducted without their prior knowledge, the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
The Gang of Eight, comprising U.S. House and Senate leaders, is traditionally briefed on extremely sensitive intelligence before events such as the assassination. In this case, the decision not to prior brief both parties highly criticized the members as “evasive” and “unsatisfactory.”
President Trump has replaced key intelligence officials with “politically loyal stooges,” such as John Ratcliffe, the junior Congressman whose previous short-lived nomination to serve as Director of National Intelligence was withdrawn following revelations that he had falsified his resume. He was ultimately appointed again by Mr. Trump and confirmed by the GOP-led Senate.
Complicating matters are credible allegations that President Trump may have received sizable undisclosed loans from Russian and Chinese banks to help prop up the financially failing Trump Company. The President’s tax returns would help clarify this scandal, but he has refused to release his tax returns since 2016. Mr. Trump uses the feeble excuse that has been audited since 2016.
In recent days, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has claimed that President Trump asked Chinese President Xi to help his re-election in 2020.
Is President Trump actively seeking China’s help in his 2020 re-election effort? In our opinion, it would appear so.
Did President Trump obstruct Congress? In our opinion, yes.
Did President Trump abuse his power as commander-in-chief to withhold congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine to investigate the Bidens? In our opinion, yes.
Should the Attorney General investigate the underlying evidence that was used to conclude that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and may be doing so again in 2020? In our opinion, yes.
Is Donald J. Trump giving his adversaries plenty of ammunition to sink his boat politically? In our opinion, yes.
Was Trump Tower bugged by the Obama White House, as alleged by the 45th president? In our opinion, no.
Should the President meet privately, behind closed doors, with foreign and military adversaries? In our opinion, no.
Is the intentional erosion of institutional trust propagated by President Trump playing into the able hands of China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin and the tortuous hands of Kim of North Korea and the Ayatollahs of Iran? In our opinion, yes.
Is Iran cheating on the nuclear agreement? In our opinion, it appears so.
Did Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election? In our opinion, yes.
Is Russia interfering in the 2020 presidential election? In our opinion, it appears so.
Is President Trump too lenient on President Putin and Russia? In our opinion, yes.
Why? We do not know and cannot fathom the reason.
Should the United States be distancing from traditional allies like the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, and others? In our opinion, no.
Was the Strzok and Page incident stupid? In our opinion, yes.
Were McCabe and Rosenstein competent in handling the Trump controversies? In our opinion, no.
Should the President have fired James Comey? In our opinion, no.
Should Jeff Sessions have recused himself from investigating the Russian interference while Attorney General? In our opinion, yes.
Should the Mueller Report be un-redacted and released so the American public can judge these events for themselves? In our opinion, yes.
Should the President of the United States, or any president, read and pay attention to their daily brief? In our opinion, yes.
That said, for American Democracy to persist and prevail, the next president of the United States should:
1. Read the daily threat assessments and investigate their findings and recommendations.
2. Recognize that the global strategic landscape is shifting tectonically.
3. Restore strategic focus and collaboration within the intelligence community.
4. Abide by the U.S. Constitution and the American rule of law.
5. Reaffirm Congressional oversight authority, cooperation, and transparent briefings.
6. Stop disparaging career officials who are committed to public service.
7. Reward truth for speaking to power.
8. Retire “America First” and replace it with more fantastic “five eyes” collaboration and coordination.
9. Restore, expand, and leverage U.S. intelligence capability for the benefit of the nation, not a politician or political party.
10. Strengthen, not weaken, the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, DOJ, and NSC with proper oversight and clear presidential direction.
11. Govern responsibly, ethically, and more transparently.
The question is: will he? Or will she?
read about thomas’ principles
& recommended policies
Finally, to go back to the original challenge that motivated this article: Is there a “deep state conspiracy trying to overthrow the President with a coup?
In our opinion, no.
That is a Trump-manufactured myth—the real hoax in this long, complicated, and winded story.