What Really Happened

The Meuller Report is due out in a few hours. In advance of it, here's what really happened that led up to it.

Let's start with Putin. He misses the old USSR and has been trying to reassert Russian as a dominant world power since the Bush administration. But Putin was afraid of Hillary Clinton. It was no secret that she was the hawk in the Obama administration. She was the one who talked Obama into carrying out the raid that killed bin Ladin and into overthrowing Libya. Putin worried that without Obama to restrain her, he'd be the next one she toppled. So, when Bernie Sanders emerged as Hillary's chief rival, he took some actions to help Bernie. Specifically, he had the DNC's mail server and Clinton's campaign chief's email account hacked.

Julian Assage, founder of Wikileaks has been praised as a truth-teller and a journalist. Actually he's nothing but an anti-American crank who delights in publishing anything that will embarrass the US, regardless of who gets hurt. He wasn't working for the Russians but he was all too happy to publish any dirt they could dig up. Most of it was published early in the campaign and did more to help Bernie than anything else.

But the game was rigged from the beginning. The Clintons owned the DNC. In exchange for bailing them out from potential bankruptcy, the Clintons got control of the party. Poor Bernie never had a chance.

Enter Donald Trump. He was one of a gaggle of candidates. When Putin said something complimentary about him, Trump refused to disown it. And Trump had done some business before in Russia. Since Russia is corrupt, you can't do any business there without working with people who have ties to the Kremlin. Plus, Trump wasn't expected to win so he continued to pursue business deals including some already in progress in Russia (which fell through in part because they didn't have any direct ties to the Kremlin).

That was enough for the Clinton campaign. They started floating rumors about Trump and Russia. Then they used a shell company to hire Fusion GPS to find some Russian connections. They subcontracted an ex-British spy named Steele who subcontracted the work to some contacts in Russia. They collected a bunch of salacious stories which became the Steele Dossier. This was shopped around to members of Congress including Sen. John McCain who passed it on to the FBI and to several newsrooms. The Justice Department already had a copy of the Dossier because a top Fusion officer was married to a top DOJ official and she passed it to him.

For good measure, Fusion had some Russians offer information to the Trump campaign.

During his presidency, Obama had staffed the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA with people who were personally loyal to him. They didn't care much for Hillary Clinton but they recognized her as Obama's chosen successor so they moved against the Trump campaign. They chose a low-level staffer and used the Steele Dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy electronically eavesdrop on the Trump campaign.

None of this was used because Trump was expected to lose the election. A few rumors were floated but no serious charges were made.

At the same time they conducted a show-investigation of Hillary's use of a private email server. This was difficult because they found several actual felonies. In order to keep from discrediting the Clinton campaign they were generous in granting immunity in exchange for testimony. They also had to rewrite the laws concerning handling confidential information to include intent. And they had a last-minute problem when an unrelated investigation into Anthony Weiner for  child-porn discovered that Clinton and her assistant had been forwarding emails to Weiner to print. After putting off the field agents for weeks, James Comey, the head of the FBI, made a show of reopening the investigation. It was all a show and Comey lied about the results, hiding the fact that Hillary had forwarded confidential emails to someone who didn't even work for the government so he could print them off at home.

Besides their involvement with Wikileaks, the Russians bought some targeted ads through social media. They spent less than $1 million. More than half the ads were anti-Clinton but they also ran anti-Trump ads, too. The purpose was not to swing the election. It was to create divisiveness. If you will remember, Putin hated Hillary, and she was projected to win anyway so they ran more anti-Hillary ads than anti-Trump ones but they an both. This is what the Russians do - they run ads to try to disrupt elections and weaken their rivals.

Unexpectedly Trump won. The Clintons couldn't just let it go that she lost a race that was hers to lose. So the day after the election they invented an excuse - it wasn't her fault, it was Comey and the Russians. You heard Hillary say variations of that again and again.

The Russians continued to push divisiveness. The weekend after the election they were pushing pro and anti Trump rallies.

This left FBI Director Comey with a dilemma.He now worked for a man he hated. So he started undermining Trump. He knew that all the major newsrooms had the Steele dossier but that it was too unsubstantial to print without a hook. So he had a private briefing with the president-elect and informed him that the Russians claimed to have a tape of him hiring prostitutes to pee in a bed that Obama had slept in. Then he told the press that he had informed Trump that the Russians had possible blackmail material on him. This would have totally undercut Trump's presidency except Buzzfeed got carried away and printed the entire Steele Dossier. Once it became public, it was easily disproved.

Regardless, the FBI went after Trump's security advisor, Ret. General Flynn and engaged in possible entrapment. Trump made a comment to Comey about hoping that they went easy on Flynn. Comey later claimed that this was obstruction of justice..

Comey was playing a double game. The FBI revived their investigation into Russia and began investigating Trump personally. They leaked that to the press while repeatedly telling the White House that Trump was not being investigated. Eventually Trump got fed up and fired Comey.

But Comey had one last shot. He took some confidential memos with him and leaked them to a friend who in turn leaked them to the press. The goal of all of this was to get a special prosecutor appointed. Comey must have known that there was no Russian collusion but once a special prosecutor starts, he seldom wraps up his investigation without finding something.

And yes, Meuller did find some things. None of them were related to the Trump campaign but he did get some people indicted.

Which brings us to the upcoming release of the Meuller report.