Here’s a question: What if the FBI had a lot to do with that fake Trump ‘dossier’?
J. Edgar Hoover’s abuse of power as FBI director led
Congress and the Justice Department to put new checks on that most powerful and
secretive of offices. By the time Congress finishes investigating James Comey’s
role in the 2016 presidential election, those safeguards may be due for an
update.
Powerful as Hoover was, even he never simultaneously
investigated both major-party candidates for the presidency. Mr. Comey did, and
Americans are now getting a glimpse of how much he influenced political events.
Mr. Comey’s actions in the Hillary Clinton email probe
are concerning enough. He made himself investigator, judge and jury,
breaking the Justice Department’s chain of command. He publicly confirmed
the investigation, violating the department’s principles.
He announced he
would not recommend prosecuting Mrs. Clinton, even as he publicly excoriated
her—an extraordinary abuse of his megaphone. Then he rekindled the case only 11
days before the election.
An inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee
has now shown that Mr. Comey’s investigation was a charade. He
wrote a draft statement exonerating Mrs. Clinton in May, long before he
bothered to interview her or her staff. This at least finally explains the
probe’s lackluster nature: the absence of a grand jury, the failure to follow
up on likely perjury, the unorthodox immunity deals made with Clinton aides.
But the big development this week is a new look at how
Mr. Comey may have similarly juked the probe into Donald Trump’s purported ties
to Russia. The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation took a sharp and
notable turn on Tuesday, as news broke that it had subpoenaed the FBI and the
Justice Department for information relating to the infamous Trump “dossier.” That
dossier, whose allegations appear to have been fabricated, was commissioned by
the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and then developed by a former British
spook named Christopher Steele.
But the FBI had its own part in this dossier, and
investigators are finally drilling down into how big a role it played, and why.
The bureau has furiously resisted answering questions. It ignored the
initial requests for documents and has refused to comply with the House committee’s
subpoenas, which were first issued Aug. 24. Republicans are frustrated enough
that this week they sent orders compelling FBI Director Christopher Wray and
Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appear before the committee to explain the
obstruction.
One explanation is that the documents might
show the FBI played a central role in ginning up the fake dossier on Mr. Trump. To
this day, we do not know who hired Fusion GPS to gather the dirt. The New York Times early this year reported,
citing an anonymous source, that a wealthy anti-Trumper initially hired Fusion
to dig into Mr. Trump’s business dealings, but the contract was later taken
over by a Clinton-allied group. That’s when Fusion shifted its focus to
Russia and hired Mr. Steele.
The question is when the FBI got in on the act. The
Washington Post in February reported that Mr. Steele “was familiar” to the FBI,
since he’d worked for the bureau before. The newspaper said Mr. Steele had
reached out to a “friend” at the FBI about his Trump work as far back as July
2016. The Post even reported that Mr. Steele “reached an agreement with the FBI
a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his
work.”
Who was Mr. Steele’s friend at the FBI? Did the bureau
influence the direction of the Trump dossier? Did it give Mr. Steele material
support from the start? The timing matters because it could answer the vital
question of why the FBI wanted the dossier. Here’s one thought: warrants.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which
oversees spying activities, is usually generous in approving warrants, on the
presumption law-enforcement agencies are acting in good faith. When a
warrant is rejected, though, law enforcement isn’t pleased.
Perhaps the FBI wanted to conduct surveillance on someone
connected to a presidential campaign (Carter Page?) but couldn’t hit what
was—and ought to be—a supremely high bar for getting such a potentially
explosive warrant. A dossier of nefarious allegations might well prove handy in
finally convincing the FISA court to sign off. The FBI might have had a real
motive to support Mr. Steele’s effort. It might have even justified the
unjustifiable: working with a partisan oppo-research firm and a former spook to
engineer a Kremlin-planted dossier that has roiled Mr. Trump’s entire
presidency.
Now that’s power.
Mr. Comey’s meddling has never seemed to stem from some
hidden partisan impulse, but rather from an overweening self-righteousness. But
power can be misused as much in the hands of the sanctimonious as the corrupt. And
it’s overdue for congressional investigators to get to the bottom of precisely
how much power Mr. Comey was exercising.
