The right-wing scandal machine relies on confusing the public with references to an obscure cast of characters and a plethora of minute details which they claim prove their political foes engaged in nefarious deeds. But when you dig through the labyrinthine particulars they rail about, you often find that the core of their story is total nonsense. Here is one such case.
The right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden, as vice president, pushed for Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to aid his son Hunter’s business dealings is a pillar of House Republicans’ push to impeach him. Even some GOP members of Congress have pointed out there is “no evidence” to support this long-debunked narrative. But the hypothesis is further demolished by a document published last month by — of all people — the fabulist John Solomon, which indisputably confirms that at the time of that meeting, it was the policy of the U.S. government to seek that prosecutor’s removal.
The right has baselessly claimed for years that when Biden told Ukraine’s leaders during a December 2015 visit that the U.S. would not release $1 billion in loan guarantees unless they fired Viktor Shokin, the country’s prosecutor general, he was acting to benefit Hunter by halting Shokin’s purported probe of Burisma Holdings, on whose board Hunter served. Solomon, a former Fox News contributor and Washington Times editor, played a key role in concocting this pseudoscandal, alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and others, as they sought to damage Biden’s 2020 presidential run.
Their allegations were nonsense: Biden was carrying out U.S. policy, Shokin had been widely faulted by Western governments for failing to prosecute corruption, and his Burisma probe had stalled, as detailed in contemporaneous news reports and sworn testimony during then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. But House Republicans have revived the conspiracy theory as the core of their Biden impeachment plan.
The GOP’s narrative has now taken another hit: A briefing memo published by Solomon last month documents that it was U.S. policy to seek Shokin’s removal at that time. The memo, generated by the State Department for Biden in preparation for his meeting with then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko during a December 7-8, 2015, Ukraine trip reads in part under the heading “Background” (emphasis added):
Unity and Reforms: With local elections in the rear-view mirror and an economy that while still in difficulty, seems to have moved back from the precipice, the time is ripe for President Poroshenko to reanimate his reform agenda. You should recommend that he give a state of the nation speech to the Rada in which he reenergizes that effort and rolls out new proposed reforms. There is wide agreement that anti-corruption must be at the top of this list, and that reforms must include an overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s Office including removal of Prosecutor General Shokin, who is widely regarded as an obstacle to fighting corruption, if not a source of the problem.
Under “Talking Points,” the document states that “anti-corruption efforts … will also require changing the Prosecutor General who is damaging your credibility and obstructing the fight against corruption.” Similar language appears in a separate memo for Biden’s meeting with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, which Solomon also published.
Solomon, naturally, is unwilling to accept that these documents blow a hole in the narrative he and his allies have pushed for years. He stressed in an August 22 article for his Just The News site and on Fox that night that the same memos call for Biden to sign the $1 billion loan guarantee rather than using it as leverage to force Shokin’s firing.
“The Biden White House knew that this Shokin investigation posed a political threat to the family, a personal threat to Joe Biden’s son's company, the company paying him a million dollars a year,” Solomon told Hannity. “And it’s in that moment when all this is happening that Joe Biden flips the switch and goes from the recommendation giving the billion dollars to you’re not getting the billion dollars until you fire Shokin and son of a b, they fire Shokin.”
The reason for Biden’s divergence from the plan described in the memos is unclear. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler reported Friday that a source told him Biden had “called an audible” during the plane trip to Ukraine, but that “by the time Biden landed in Kyiv, four people with direct knowledge told The Fact Checker, the Obama White House was firmly on board with the plan.”
”Others,” Kessler wrote, “recall a more disciplined policy process preceding the trip that led to consensus on linking the firing to the loan.”
Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2015, and Victoria Nuland, who oversaw European affairs at the State Department at the time, both testified in 2020 congressional depositions that they recalled that conditioning the assistance on firing Shokin had been “U.S. government policy” developed through an interagency process. Pyatt further testified that the policy had already been conveyed to Ukrainian officials at the time of the trip.
Pyatt also downplayed the importance of the memos’ recommendations, saying they had been “written by a desk officer” and that in his experience, high-ranking officials would never “take a State Department product like this and sort of use that as their script.”
Nuland, meanwhile, stated that the interagency community had at the time been “dissatisfied that past investigations of Burisma had not been brought to conclusion” and thought that Shokin’s removal “would be counter to Burisma's interests.”
That’s consistent with last month’s testimony from Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner and fellow Burisma board member, who told congressional investigators he had not been aware of any Shokin investigation into the company and that Shokin’s firing “was bad for Burisma because he was under control.”
But ultimately, the tick-tock of how Biden came to use the particular strategy of leveraging the loan guarantee is fundamentally irrelevant: The memos show that Biden, in seeking Shokin’s firing, was acting consistent with U.S. policy rather than freelancing to help his son.
John Solomon, former President Donald Trump’s official representative to the National Archives and Records Administration, released a letter that reveals in plain detail that Trump and his legal team did not cooperate with the National Archives, and that the August 8 Mar-a-Lago search occurred only after they repeatedly sought to delay the FBI’s involvement. Despite these facts, Solomon has made numerousappearances in the right-wing media, including on Fox News, to spread misinformation and spin about the letter.
Dated May 10, the letter from acting National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran details the back-and-forth between Trump’s lawyers and the National Archives in retrieving over 700 pages of classified material from Mar-a-Lago. It clearly lays out how Trump did not fully cooperate with the National Archives and the Department of Justice, outlining the five-month process to retrieve the documents.
Solomon’s website Just the News was the first to publish the damning document late on August 22. The next morning, he appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room: Pandemic to put a confusing pro-Trump spin on the story.
In Solomon’s version, the FBI mysteriously heard that the National Archives retrieved documents from Mar-a-Lago and wanted to look through them. The bureau asked President Joe Biden, who told the DOJ and the FBI to go right ahead and look through the documents, completely ignoring that Trump maintains executive privilege over them.
This is completely false. Here’s a breakdown:
CLAIM: “The White House counsel's office authorized the National Archives to send information they had gotten in the boxes of Trump – voluntarily returned to the archives – and send it to the FBI. That launches a criminal investigation.”
REALITY: Solomon conveniently leaves out that the Presidential Records Act not only allows, but requires this course of action. As Wall details in the letter, the National Archives’ initial review of the documents returned in January found “items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials” – a label given to the most sensitive secrets in government. This prompted the agency to inform the DOJ. The Presidential Records Act empowers the National Archives, the president, and the DOJ to oversee the handling of presidential documents, including the power of “the Archivist and the Attorney General [to] jointly investigate the unlawful removal or destruction of government and presidential records.”
CLAIM: Next, Solomon says that “President Trump would have had the right … to go to court and say, I have executive privilege, I might have declassified these documents,” but “the current president waives the executive privilege of the past president.” He repeated this point again later on in the interview.
REALITY: His argument that Biden and the DOJ should have allowed Trump to take his executive privilege claim to the courts is debunked by the letter itself. Wall consulted the Office of Legal Counsel, which advised her that “there is no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining from NARA Presidential records belonging to the Federal Government where ‘such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.’”
The precedent that Solomon and other Trump allies refer to when they argue this point applies only to congressional or judicial oversights, not executive branch examination and investigation. To be clear, a former president cannot exert executive privilege claims over a current president, the head of the executive branch itself, when the information pertains to the current business of the administration.
Then, referring to the same case as Solomon, Wall laid out what it actually means for Trump:
“To the contrary, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), strongly suggests that a former President may not successfully assert executive privilege “against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.” … The Court specifically noted that an “incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whim of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations.”
The Office of Legal Counsel advised that Trump had no privilege over these documents. There was no need to start a court fight to rehash the same issue; as Wall’s letter noted, “the question in this case is not a close one.”
CLAIM: Solomon claims that on May 8, “the Biden White House says it's over, we're passing privilege. We're giving the documents to the FBI.”
REALITY: This is false. Biden delegated the decision to Wall; he did not make it himself. From the letter:
The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported “protective assertion of executive privilege.”
As Politico’s Kyle Cheney explains, “there was no way a former president's claim could override an incumbent administration's need for the review. … Trump allies touted portions of this letter that were revealed by Solomon earlier in the evening, saying it showed Biden had been involved in the process. That's a requirement of any NARA matter involving privilege.”
CLAIM: Solomon argues that “there's an escalation driven by the Biden White House against its likely rival in 2024. … I think most Americans are going to be troubled to find out the current president [was] siccing the FBI on the former president, and I think that’s the way these documents read when you look at it. ”
REALITY: The letter makes clear that the “escalation” came only after numerous attempts by the Trump legal team to delay an FBI investigation. After being granted an initial delay until April 29, the Trump team requested an additional delay based on executive privilege claims, which the National Archives and the Office of Legal Counsel found to be legally unfounded. As the letter painstakingly explains, “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’”
CLAIM: Solomon says that “in mid-April, there's a discussion – the FBI hears from the National Archives that they got the boxes. They want to see what's in the boxes.”
REALITY: Solomon’s word choice is misleading. Rather than implying that a nosy FBI “want[s] to see what’s in the boxes,” it would be more accurate to say that the bureau needed to investigate the documents, as is procedure per the Presidential Records Act. Nonetheless, this is not what the letter says. It says that the National Archives informed the DOJ, “which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them.” The FBI heard “from the National Archives that they got the boxes,” because the National Archives and DOJ needed the bureau to investigate whether the boxes contained classified documents.
Under federal law, “The Archivist is not authorized to independently investigate removal or recover records.” Engaging the FBI was a necessary step.
CLAIM: Solomon claims that Trump’s team asked for time to sort out privileged materials and “within a few days of that, those conversations going on, the National Archives came back and said ‘We don’t care about your privilege claims.’”
REALITY: He is putting a false spin on the timeline here. Trump’s lawyers were advised on April 12 that the National Archives would allow the FBI to examine the returned records. They sought and were granted a delay until April 29.
The rejection he’s referring to is the second request for a delay on April 29, two and a half weeks after Trump’s lawyers were notified that the FBI needed to examine the documents. At the time of writing the May 10 letter, Wall noted, “It has now been four weeks since we first informed you of our intent to provide the FBI access to the boxes so that it and others in the Intelligence Community can conduct their reviews.”
CLAIM: Solomon closes by arguing, “This is a chilling potential fact for not only former presidents, but any future president – if any future president knows that the guy who beats him at the polls or succeeds him at the polls can then turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged because he got important advice to do his job, who's going to put anything on paper? Who's going to want to get that advice knowing that could happen?”
REALITY: Solomon ignores that the documents the FBI was sent to recover still legally belong to the federal government, not Trump. Rather than trying to “turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged,” Wall’s letter said that the classified documents in question would need to be reviewed by national security officials to assess “the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported” by the former president.
Responding to the Trump team’s objections, she explained that “there is no reason to believe such reviews could ‘adversely affect the ability of future Presidents to obtain the candid advice necessary for effective decisionmaking.’ … To the contrary: Ensuring that classified information is appropriately protected, and taking any necessary remedial action if it was not, are steps essential to preserving the ability of future Presidents to “receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of [their] duties depends.”
Further, what Solomon complains about has been possible since 1978; any president since the Presidential Records Act was put in place could release such documents. Trump does not hold executive privilege over the executive branch itself.
Nonetheless, Solomon was not the only pro-Trump figure on War Room spinning the National Archives letter.
Former Trump adviser Boris Ephsteyn also appeared on Bannon’s August 23 show and claimed that Politico’s coverage of the letter somehow exonerates Trump: “The only thing that matters in the Politico article is that it proves once and for all, fully proves that A) there was full cooperation and compliance, as we've been saying consistently, and B) that the Biden administration absolutely and fully participated in this plan to raid and attack Mar-A-Lago. There's no two ways about it.”
The Trump team was not in “full cooperation and compliance.” They sought to delay the investigation at least twice and submitted challenges with no legal basis. The May 10 letter shows that the Biden administration, as Cheney again points out, was remarkably detached from the investigation: “The language about consultation with the White House shows Biden was *more hands off* with the Mar-a-Lago docs than he was with the Jan. 6 records held by NARA. In both cases, archivist consulted with OLC, but in latter Biden delegated privilege decisions to NARA.”
The previous day, president of the Article III Project and regular War Room guest Mike Davis complained that before ordering the Mar-a-Lago search on August 8, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not “take the time to go to the Office of Legal Counsel within his own Justice Department,” whose opinions “are binding on the executive branch.” Davis asserted this meant that Garland knew the Mar-a-Lago search was “unlawful” and “unnecessary.”
Of course, we now know that the Office of Legal Counsel was consulted by the National Archives before the May 10 letter, and its “binding” legal opinion rejected Trump’s defenses. But these facts haven’t stopped right-wing media from spreading other pro-Trump spin and misinformation around the Mar-a-Lago search.
In an August 23 article, Fox News adopted the same false framework with the headline “Biden signed off on FBI review of Trump records, National Archives letter reveals.”
And Solomon has introduced a dubious new line of attack blaming former President Barack Obama.
JOHN SOLOMON (JUST THE NEWS): Joe Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, actually managed to change the rules. After 9/11, George Bush had put a rule into place that a prior president got to protect his own privilege. If he and the president couldn’t – the sitting president – couldn’t agree on the release of records, that the prior president’s claim to executive privilege was predominant. Barack Obama came in in 2009 and he got rid of that and said, I, the incumbent president, I get the only say on this. … Barack Obama actually set in motion the raid that ultimately ended up in a raid at Mar-a-Lago on Donald Trump’s property.
1.Why did Trump choose to hide certain specific files and not others at Mar-a-Lago? What were the criteria that Trump used to keep some files concealed and not others? Who selected those files? Did Trump consult or direct anyone in his selection of secret files? Trump was notorious for being too impatient to read his briefing papers, even after they had been drastically shortened and simplified. Is there the slightest evidence that he spirited these papers away so that he could consult or study them? Who besides Trump knew of the presence of the files he had concealed at Mar-a-Lago?
2. Mar-a-Lago has an infamous reputation for being open to penetration even by foreign spies. In 2019, the FBI arrested a Chinese woman who had entered the property with electronic devices. She was convicted of trespassing, lying to the Secret Service, and sentenced and served eight-months in a federal prison, before being deported to China. Have other individuals with possible links to foreign intelligence operations been present at Mar-a-Lago?
3. Did members of Trump's Secret Service detail have knowledge of his secret storage of the files at Mar-a-Lago? What was the relationship of the Secret Service detail to the FBI? Did the Secret Service, or any agent, disclose information about the files to the FBI?
4. Trump's designated representatives to the National Archives are Kash Patel and John Solomon, co-conspirators in the investigations into Russian interference in the presidential election of 2016, the Ukraine missiles-for-political dirt scandal that led to the first impeachment in 2019, and the coup of 2020. Neither has any professional background in handling archival materials. Patel, a die-hard Trump loyalist whose last job in the administration was as chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense, was supposedly involved in Trump’s “declassification” of some files. Patel has stated, “Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves."
The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified.” If Pat Cipollone, the White House legal counsel, did not “generate the paperwork,” was he or anyone on his staff aware at all of the declassifications? The White House Staff Secretary Derek Lyons resigned his post in December 2020. Did his successor, who held the position for a month, while Trump was consumed with plotting his coup, ever review the material found in Trump’s concealed files for declassification? Or did Patel review the material? Can Patel name any individual who properly reviewed the supposed declassification?
5. Why did Trump keep his pardon of Roger Stone among his secret files? Was it somehow to maintain leverage over Stone? What would that leverage be? Would it involve Stone's role as a conduit with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers during the coup? Or is there another pardon in Trump’s files for Stone, a secret pardon for his activities in the January 6th insurrection? Because of the sweeping nature of the pardon clause, pardons can remain undisclosed (until needed). Pardons are self-executing, require no justification and are not subject to court review beyond the fact of their timely execution. In other words, a court may verify the pardon was valid in time but has no power to review appropriateness. A pardon could even be oral but would need to be verifiable by a witness. Do the files contain secret pardons for Trump himself, members of his family, members of the Congress, and other co-conspirators?
6.Was the FBI warrant obtained to block the imminent circulation or sale of information in the files to foreign powers? Does the affidavit of the informant at Mar-a-Lago, which has not been released, provide information about Trump’s monetization that required urgency in executing the warrant? Did Trump monetize information in any of the files? How? With whom? Any foreign power or entity? Was the Saudi payment from its sovereign wealth fund for the LIV Golf Tournament at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club for a service that Trump rendered, an exchange of anything of value or information that was in the files? If it involved information in the files was it about nuclear programs? Was it about the nuclear program of Israel? How much exactly was the Saudi payment for the golf tournament? The Saudi sovereign wealth fund gave Jared Kushner and former Trump Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin $2 billion for their startup hedge fund, Affinity Partners. Do the Saudis regard that investment as partial payment for Trump’s transfer of nuclear information? Were Kushner or Mnuchin aware of the secret files at Mar-a-Lago?
7.Did Trump destroy any of the files? If so, when? Did those files contain incriminating information? Did he destroy any files after he received the June subpoena?
8.Were any of the secrets of our allies compromised? Has the U.S. government provided an inventory of breaches or potential breaches to our allies?
9.Does the resort maintain a copying machine near the classified documents that Trump hid? Were any of the documents copied or scanned? Are Trump’s documents at Mar-a-Lago originals or copies? Were any copies shown or given to anyone?
10.Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb has revealed that a video surveillance system covers the places where Trump hid the files at Mar-a-Lago, and that the system is connected to a system at his other residences at the Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey and Trump Tower in New York City. According to Bobb, Trump and members of his family observed the FBI search and seizure of his files at Mar-a-Lago, “actually able to see the whole thing” through their surveillance system. Who has that surveillance system recorded entering the rooms where the files were kept?
Today we publish the second article in a three-part series by Sidney Blumenthal on the origins of the "Obamagate" conspiracy theory promoted by the Trump White House, its media allies, and Republicans on Capitol Hill -- notably Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. In the first installment Blumenthal explained how Johnson came to serve as Trump's instrument in the creation of "multiple untruths" to distract from the criminal realities exposed by the Mueller Report and the prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. It concluded with Johnson's bizarre visit to Moscow in July 2018, where he advanced Trump's coverup of Russian interference in the 2016 election -- and opposed the extension of US sanctions on Russia. The second installment examines Johnson's role in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's impeachment.
This series was first published by Just Security, an electronic journal based at the Reiss Center for Law and Security at New York University Law School, and is reprinted with permission.
The Ukraine Scheme
In April 2018, Trump hired Rudy Giuliani, as his personal attorney, who in turn hired two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Russian born businessmen living in Florida, where they had contrived a variety of sketchy schemes. (One of Parnas' firms, Fraud Guarantee, which had no identifiable customers or office, paid Giuliani a $500,000 consulting fee.) At a dinner at the Trump Hotel on April 30, Parnas reportedly told Trump that the U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was "unfriendly to the president and his interests," that her presence stood in the way of the Giuliani operation. Trump vehemently replied that she should be fired.
The effort to discredit and oust Yovanovitch was launched immediately. On May 9, Parnas and Fruman got Congressman Pete Sessions, a Republican of Texas, to write a letter to the State Department demanding her dismissal, claiming she had "spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration," in exchange for a promise to raise $20,000 in campaign contributions through a pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action. Sessions appeared as "Congressman-1" in the federal indictment of Parnas and Fruman. "Parnas and Fruman committed to raising those funds for Congressman-1. Parnas met with Congressman-1 and sought Congressman-1's assistance in causing the US Government to remove or recall the then-US Ambassador to Ukraine," the indictment stated.
Giuliani's group quickly added new partners, who reportedly met regularly to plan their strategy, using the Trump Hotel as their headquarters. There was, secretly, Congressman Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee with an incorrigible penchant for arcane conspiracy theories, and his aide, Derek Harvey. There were the conservative husband-and-wife team of lawyers, Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, Fox News talking heads, who represented not only Parnas and Fruman but also the Ukrainian oligarch Dimitri Firtash, who had been Putin's man in Kyiv and was under indictment for corruption by a U.S. federal court. And there was John Solomon, the ubiquitous right-wing journalist, who, according to theColumbia Journalism Review, "has a history of bending the truth to his story line" and "distorting facts and hyping petty stories." As it happened, DiGenova and Toensing were his attorneys, too.
Beginning in March of 2019, the team instigated Solomon to produce a series of convoluted articles in his venue, The Hill newspaper in Washington, that asserted that Ambassador Yovanovitch had conspired with Hillary Clinton's campaign and George Soros and his agents to leak damaging information about Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman and the former political consultant for the Russian backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, and that the ambassador conspired to suppress Ukrainian investigations into corruption in order to cover up Joe Biden's involvement in his son's business. Solomon also wrote that Firtash was a victim of "the Soros group" and framed by Robert Mueller to get "some dirt on Donald Trump." "I said," Giuliani explained, "'John, let's make this as prominent as possible. I'll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.'"
Trump's personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, provided Giuliani with contact information for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. "God almighty I have a lot of stuff in writing," Giuliani said, and on March 28 sent over to Pompeo a dossier containing Solomon's articles trashing Yovanovitch. On April 5, six former U.S. ambassadors sent the State Department a letter expressing deep concern about "recent uncorroborated allegations" against here that are "simply wrong."
Yovanovitch sought advice on how to handle Solomon's onslaught from Gordon Sondland, Trump's ambassador to the European Union, a former hotelier who had given Trump's inaugural committee a large donation. Sondland told her, "You need to go big or go home," suggesting that she "tweet out there that you support the president." She also consulted Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. "It will all blow over," he said.
Meanwhile, William Barr, Trump's attorney general, prepared to go where his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, had not.
On April 10, 2019, Barr announced that he was launching an investigation into "both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign," and emphatically added that "spying did occur." Four days later he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to conduct the probe. "I think it's a great thing that he did it," Trump said. "I am so proud of our attorney general that he is looking into it. I think it's great." On April 24, Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News that in fact an investigation had unearthed evidence of a plot on the part of Ukraine to help elect Hillary Clinton, "sounds like big, big stuff, and I'm not surprised." Giuliani tweeted, "Keep your eye on Ukraine."
On April 24, Yovanovitch received an abrupt telephone call from Carol Perez, director general of the State Department's foreign service. "She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington. And I was like, 'What? What happened?' And she said, 'I don't know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane. And I said, 'Physical security? I mean, is there something going on here in the Ukraine?' Because sometimes Washington has intel or something else that we don't necessarily know. And she said, 'No, I didn't get that impression, but you need to come back immediately.' And, I mean, I argued with her. I told her I thought it was really unfair that she was pulling me out of post without any explanation, I mean, really none, and so summarily."
"I do wonder why it's necessary to smear my reputation falsely," Yovanovitch testified before the impeachment committee, "Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want."
George Kent, the deputy assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, confirmed her account in his testimony. "Mr. Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information about Ambassador Yovanovitch, so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies." About John Solomon and his stories, Kent was scathing. "It was, if not entirely made up in full cloth, it was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs." But the State Department ordered Kent not to complain. "I was told to keep my head down and lower my profile in Ukraine," he said. The intimidation signaled that the Giuliani operation was in charge.
On May 19, Trump gave an interview to Fox News brazenly laying out the conspiracy theory he wanted to be affixed to Biden. "Biden, he calls them and says, 'Don't you dare persecute, if you don't fire this prosecutor'—The prosecutor was after his son. Then he said, 'If you fire the prosecutor, you'll be okay. And if you don't fire the prosecutor, 'We're not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees, or whatever he was supposed to give. Can you imagine if I did that?"
Johnson's Front Row Seat
A day after Trump's interview on Fox News, Ron Johnson wandered into the scene. On May 20, in Kyiv, he attended the inauguration of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the company of Sondland, Volker, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas. Perry seems likely to have had his own ulterior agenda. He would secure a lucrative oil and gas deal from Ukraine for two of his political supporters, who also happened to have hired Giuliani's law firm, after Perry proposed that Zelensky take one of them as an "adviser." At the same time, Giuliani was rooting around Kyiv, trolling for disinformation to use against Biden and meeting with people close to Yuri Lutsenko, the prosecutor general, embittered at Yovanovitch and Biden for their anti-corruption efforts. Lutsenko had met previously with Giuliani and Parnas, volunteered himself as a source for Solomon's stories, but finally had a falling out with Giuliani when he failed to initiate an investigation into Biden.
Johnson came to Kyiv brandishing credentials as a close observer of the state of play. Serving as chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation and vice chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, he had advocated military aid since the Russians had invaded eastern Ukraine in 2015. He arrived amidst the upheaval at the embassy, the orchestrated publicity campaign against Yovanovitch and her sudden removal under the cloud of a false threat to her security. Johnson was surely aware of the broad nature of these events but apparently made not a murmur of protest. He presented himself as an expert on the ground and influential figure in his own right, but he was beginning his career as an innocent abroad.
Upon the delegation's return to Washington, the four men met on May 23 with Trump in the Oval Office. Their agenda, according to Johnson, was to secure a statement in support of Ukraine, an invitation to Zelensky to the White House and the appointment of a new ambassador with "strong bipartisan support." Trump was having none of it. "He said that Ukraine was a corrupt country, full of terrible people," Volker testified. "He said they 'tried to take me down.' In the course of that conversation, he referenced conversations with Mayor Giuliani. It was clear to me that despite the positive news and recommendations being conveyed by this official delegation about the new president, President Trump had a deeply rooted negative view on Ukraine rooted in the past. He was clearly receiving other information from other sources, including Mayor Giuliani, that was more negative, causing him to retain this negative view." "It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President's mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani," Sondland testified. When the meeting was raised during the impeachment, Johnson's mind went blank on Sondland's account. "I am aware that Sondland has testified that Trump also directed the delegation to work with Rudy Giuliani," he wrote. "I have no recollection of the president saying that during the meeting. It is entirely possible he did, but because I do not work for the president, if made, that comment simply did not register with me." After the meeting, Sondland, Volker and Perry, anointed to work with Giuliani, dubbed themselves "the three amigos."
Indeed it was that Oval Office meeting, Ambassador William Taylor testified, in which "the irregular channel began," with the three amigos, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Giuliani in pursuit of Ukraine investigations of Biden in exchange for military aid and a White House visit.
One other man was present at the May 20 meeting, Charles Kupperman, deputy to National Security Advisor John Bolton, who reported back to Bolton. "It was a classic," Bolton wrote in his memoir, The Room Where It Happened:
"I don't want to have any fucking thing to do with Ukraine," said Trump. "They fucking attacked me. I can't understand why. Ask Joe diGenova, he knows all about it. They tried to fuck me. They're corrupt. I'm not fucking with them." All this, he said, pertained to the Clinton campaign's efforts, aided by Hunter Biden, to harm Trump in 2016 and 2020. Volker tried to intervene to say something pertinent about Ukraine." Trump replied, "I don't give a shit." "Perry said we couldn't allow a failed state, presumably a Ukraine where effective government had broken down." Trump said, "Talk to Rudy and Joe." "'Give me ninety days,'" Perry tried again." Trump interrupted, "Ukraine tried to take me down. I'm not fucking interested in helping them," although he relented to say Zelensky could visit him in the White House, but only if he was told how Trump felt in the matter. "I want the fucking DNC server," said Trump, returning to the fray, adding, "Okay, you can have ninety days. But I have no fucking interest in meeting with him."
Trump's violent obscenities, contempt for Ukraine's precarious security, obsession with conspiracy theories, bottomless sense of personal grievance, and complete knowledge and command of the Giuliani operation somehow escaped Johnson's memory and were airbrushed from his account.
Two weeks earlier, Trump had summoned Bolton to a meeting in the Oval Office with Giuliani. Also present were Trump's chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and legal counsel Pat Cipollone. Trump ordered Bolton to work with Giuliani in dredging up material to be used against Biden and influencing Zelensky to start an investigation. Bolton simply ignored Trump's directive. He wanted no part of what he called a "drug deal." "Even after they became public, I could barely separate the strands of the multiple conspiracy theories at work," Bolton wrote in his memoir.
Giuliani continued his gyrations for an investigation of Biden, but Zelensky did not start a probe and Trump withheld the nearly $400 million in military aid that the Congress had approved. The stalemate led to Trump's notorious "perfect" phone call to Zelensky on July 25. Trump's statement at the top of the conversation was often cited: "I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it." But what followed, the part spelling out the "favor," was his demand for confirmation of his conspiracy theory and for Ukraine to work with Barr to pursue it. "I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible." In short, the object of the Trump-Zelensky call, a key piece of evidence in Trump's impeachment, is the same object that is central to the overarching conspiracy theory of "Obamagate."
Two weeks earlier, on July 11, Johnson jumped down a rabbit hole to follow the trail of the Trump conspiracy theories. The White Rabbit that Johnson chased was a heavy set and shady Ukrainian named Andrii Telizhenko, a former low-level employee at the Ukrainian Embassy to the U.S. who had parlayed himself into Giuliani's fixer, boasting of smoking fine cigars and sipping expensive whiskey with him from Kyiv to New York. Telizhenko was a man of many dubious deals. He had offered a Ukrainian magazine editor cash to lobby Republican senators on behalf of two pro-Russian media outlets in Ukraine that broadcast propaganda in favor of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, according to a CNN report. Telizhenko was also the consultant for "international relations" for Pavel Fuks, the Ukrainian oligarch who had reportedly been Trump's partner to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. (Fuks was also Giuliani's client.)
Telizhenko was a fertile source of conspiracy theories for Giuliani, which he retailed to an avid Trump, who insisted to everyone from his attorney general to his national security advisor that they prove to his satisfaction. Telizhenko's tales ranged from Biden's corruption to how the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. ordered him to work with the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up damaging information on Paul Manafort. (Telizhenko's talent was featured on numerous programs broadcast by the pro-Trump, far right One America News Network, including "The Ukraine Hoax: Impeachment, Biden Cash, and Mass Murder" and "Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff's Case – Exclusive with Rudy Giuliani," in which Giuliani interviewed him.) Borys Tarasiuk, Ukraine's former foreign minister, familiar with Telizhenko's antics for years, told theKyiv Post, "I don't think that this person deserves much attention. He's a crook."
"I was in Washington," Telizhenko recalled, "and Senator Johnson found out I was in D.C., and staff called me and wanted to do a meeting with me. So I reached out back and said, 'Sure, I'll come down the Hill and talk to you.'" Telizhenko told the Washington Post that he and Johnson discussed a whole range of theories, particularly "the DNC issue," focusing on what the Post described as his "unsubstantiated claim" that the Ukraine Embassy directed him to find "incriminating material" on Manafort. Seeking a comment from Johnson, the Post received this strange and uninformative response: "An individual close to Johnson confirmed that staff members for one of his committees met with Telizhenko as part of an ongoing investigation into the FBI and its probes of the 2016 election. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to say whether the senator was involved." Telizhenko resolved that mystery, posting a picture of himself meeting with Johnson on his Facebook page. How Johnson knew that the peripatetic Telizhenko was briefly in Washington was left unexplained.
Johnson returned to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky on September 5, this time accompanied by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and the new U.S. ambassador William Taylor. Zelensky's "first question to the senators was about the withheld security assistance," Taylor testified before the impeachment inquiry. "Both senators stressed that bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington was Ukraine's most important strategic asset and that President Zelensky should not jeopardize that bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics." Yet that day Trump extended the hold on the aid.
The whole affair burst open on September 9. Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community notified the House and Senate intelligence committees that a whistleblower had filed a complaint on August 12 about Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate Biden as the price for releasing military aid. The House demanded the release of the complaint and announced it would investigate Trump and Giuliani's operation. On September 10, Bolton resigned. On September 11, Trump released the Ukraine aid. On September 25, the White House released a version of Trump's "perfect" call asking Zelensky to "do us a favor, though." On September 27, Volker resigned. That day, Johnson and Grassley sent a joint letter to Barr, citing Telizhenko as their source, demanding, "Are you investigating links and coordination between the Ukrainian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee? If not, why not?"
Johnson Digs a Hole
On October 3, Trump held an impromptu press conference on the South Lawn of the White House. "Mr. President, what exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call?" asked a reporter. "Well," he replied, "I would think that, if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer." Then he added, "And by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine." Trump's remarks caused an uproar, taken as a brazen confession about Ukraine and committing another offense in his call for China to interfere for his political benefit.
Visiting the Middleton, Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, Ron Johnson immediately defended Trump's comments. "I want to find out what happened during 2016," he said, adding about Trump's call for China to investigate Biden, "I don't think there's anything improper about doing that." The next morning, moving on to Sheboygan, Johnson tried to clean up his statement. "No, and I'm not sure that's what's happening," he said, denying Trump was calling on China to interfere in American politics.
Then Johnson leaped into the breach in a valiant effort to absolve Trump. He seemed to believe that by disclosing previously unknown stories he could be the hero. But in two interviews he gave on October 4, one to the Wall Street Journal and the other to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Johnson seemed to provide further evidence of Trump's guilt and dissembling, and made himself appear to be playing the fool.
To the Wall Street Journal, Johnson claimed that in a phone call on August 31 Trump flatly denied any quid pro quo of Ukraine political assistance for U.S. military aid. "He said, 'Expletive deleted—No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?" Johnson explained that he had learned about the quid pro quo from Sondland the day before. Sondland, he said, told him Ukraine would appoint a prosecutor to "get to the bottom of what happened in 2016—if President Trump has that confidence, then he'll release the military spending." Johnson went on: "At that suggestion, I winced. My reaction was: Oh, God. I don't want to see those two things combined."
To the Journal-Sentinel, Johnson elaborated on the August 31 call with Trump. "I tried to convince him to give me the authority to tell President Zelensky that we were going to provide that. Now, I didn't succeed." The Milwaukee paper reported, "Trump said he was considering withholding the aid because of alleged corruption involving the 2016 U.S. election. Johnson stood by the president, saying he was sympathetic to his concerns and didn't see any bad motives on his part. 'What happened in 2016? What happened in 2016? What was the truth about that?' Johnson said about Trump's concerns."
With his stumbling interviews, Johnson revealed that he had been aware of the internal discussions about a quid pro quo before they were made public with the disclosure of the whistleblower's complaint, that rather than seek the truth of the matter he accepted Trump's falsehoods, and confirmed that Trump's motive involved not one but two conspiracy theories, one about Biden and the other about DNC server. Johnson also appeared to have inadvertently made himself into a material witness in an impeachment inquiry with a conflict-of-interest in serving as a juror in a Senate trial. "Republican Sen. Ron Johnson just did Trump no favors on Ukraine," ran the headline on an analysis in the Washington Post by Aaron Blake. Johnson "apparently thought [he] might help President Trump weather his Ukraine problem. But what he said was decidedly unhelpful for Trump."
Instead of rescuing Trump, Johnson had created more trouble. His effort to wipe up his little mess trying to justify Chinese interference had led to a bigger mess that seemed to implicate Trump in all the charges against him. Johnson now tried to contain his muddle with more damage control. He booked himself on NBC's Meet the Press for Sunday, October 6. His performance was an overlooked minor absurdist classic, half Samuel Beckett and half Abbott and Costello. Johnson was waiting for Godot to arrive with the answer to his quandaries while explaining who was on first.
The dialogue started with Chuck Todd, the host of Meet the Press, playing himself as an earnest journalist asking the question that should be asked, in other words, the straight man. "Let me start with something you told the Wall Street Journal late last week. You had said when Mr. Sondland — Gordon Sondland seemed to imply that — the frozen military aid was connected to a promise by Zelensky for investigations, you said, 'At that suggestion, I winced. My reaction was, 'Oh God. I don't wanna see those two things combined.'" Why did you wince and what did you mean by 'those two things combined?'"
Johnson's opening lines established a tone of whining victimization followed by a non sequitur. "Well, fir– first of all, your setup piece was –you know, typically, very unbiased. But, you know, le — let me first, before I started answering all the detailed questions, let me just talk about why I'm pretty sympathetic with what President Trump has gone through. You know, I'm 64 years old. I have never in my lifetime seen a president, after being elected, not having some measure of well wishes from his opponents. I've never seen a president's administration be sabotaged from the day after election. I — I've never seen — no– no measure of honeymoon whatsoever. And so what President Trump's had to endure, a false accusation — by the way, you've got John Brennan on — you oughta ask Director Brennan what did [FBI agent] Peter Strzok mean when he texted [FBI agent] Lisa Page on December 15th, 2016?" (Strzok had been removed from the Mueller investigation after his text messages to Page, which contained anti-Trump sentiments, were disclosed.)
With the formalities of throat clearing out of the way, the interview took off. It is worth quoting at some length to convey the full extent of the Trump defender dissolving into dogmatic incoherence in the face of the skeptical reportorial question.
CHUCK TODD: –I have no idea why— SEN. RON JOHNSON: We're gettin'– no, that's– that's— CHUCK TODD: –why— SEN.RON JOHNSON: –a setup. It is entirely— CHUCK TODD: — why a Fox— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –relevant to this point. CHUCK TODD: –why a Fox News conspiracy, propaganda stuff is popping up on here. SEN.RON JOHNSON: It is— CHUCK TODD: I have no idea— SEN. RON JOHNSON: It is not. That is— CHUCK TODD: I have no idea— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –that is– that is exac— CHUCK TODD: –why we're going here. SEN. RON JOHNSON: –that is ex– that is— CHUCK TODD: Senator, I'm asking— SEN. RON JOHNSON: Because this is underlying— CHUCK TODD: –about– SEN. RON JOHNSON: –exactly why— CHUCK TODD: I'm as— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –President Trump is upset and why his supporters are upset— CHUCK TODD: All right, w— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –at the news media. CHUCK TODD: Oh, okay, this— SEN. RON JOHNSON: You know– you know, Chuck— CHUCK TODD: –is not about the media— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –here's the deal, here's the deal— CHUCK TODD: –Senator Johnson — Senator Johnson, please!
At this point, Johnson launched into a lengthy discussion of how the Ukraine government supposedly tried to help Hillary Clinton, ending with the assertion, "There is potential interference in– in the 2016 campaign—"
CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you this— SEN. RON JOHNSON: That's what Trump wants to get to the bottom of. But the press doesn't want to. CHUCK TODD: Ambassador— SEN. RON JOHNSON: The people who wrote this article are being pilloried. I'm being called a conspiracy theorist. John Solomon's being called a conspiracy theorist because the press is horribly biased. And Trump and his supporters— CHUCK TODD: Hey, look— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –completely understand that. CHUCK TODD: –I understand that a way to avoid answering a question is to attack us in the press. I'm well aware of that. SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, no, well— CHUCK TODD: And that doesn't work. SEN. RON JOHNSON: –I'm tr– I'm trying to lay— CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you something— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –the groundwork in order to answer your question— CHUCK TODD: So Senator, do you– do you not believe the Russians interfered in the presidential elections to benefit Donald Trump? SEN. RON JOHNSON: They– they abs– they absolutely did. They absolutely did. And I don't know to what extent the Ukrainians did. I don't know to what extent DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign were involved in kinda juicin' up the– the Ukrainian involvements as well. CHUCK TODD: Do you just ask those— SEN. RON JOHNSON: There are a lot of unanswered questions. Chuck, I just want the truth. The American people want the truth. CHUCK TODD: So, do you not trust the Amer— SEN.RON JOHNSON: Trump– President Trump's supporters— CHUCK TODD: –do you not trust the FBI? SEN. RON JOHNSON: –want the truth. CHUCK TODD: You don't trust the CIA? I'm— SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, no I don't— CHUCK TODD: –I'm just very confused here SEN.RON JOHNSON: Absolutely not— CHUCK TODD: You don't trust any of those—
Round and round went Johnson, repeating the names of officials of the FBI and CIA he said he did not trust, while Todd vainly attempted to return the interview to a standard question-and-answer format.
SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, I don't trust any of these guys in the Obama administration. I don't trust any of 'em. CHUCK TODD: Senator, let me ask you this. SEN. RON JOHNSON: I– I– I've got— CHUCK TODD: 'Cause one of the things— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –a lotta questions that have remained— CHUCK TODD: –one of the things— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –not answered. CHUCK TODD: –that you came on here to do— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I just want the truth, Chuck. CHUCK TODD: I– so would I— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I just want the ch– truth. No, you— CHUCK TODD: So would I— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –you — you set this thing up totally biased. I could never really get into the full narrative. We don't have enough time to go through all the things I can talk about in terms of— CHUCK TODD: You're right. Because you came here— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –my interaction with the president— CHUCK TODD: –and chose to bring up something about Lisa — SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, you– you s– you started— CHUCK TODD: –Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. SEN.RON JOHNSON: –the piece with something incredibly biased that– I– I would never be able to get the truth out. CHUCK TODD: Senator, I– I– I don't know why you just came on here to personally attack the press and avoid answering questions— SEN. RON JOHNSON: Be– because of your setup piece— CHUCK TODD: –about what's happened here. SEN. RON JOHNSON: Because of your setup piece. CHUCK TODD: Senator, it's pretty clear– we're only dealing with the facts that we have, not the facts— SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, that– that– that's what I wanna— CHUCK TODD: –that you wish them to be. SEN. RON JOHNSON: –deal with and I can't get the answers. And I can't get the answers. The American people can't get the answers. Something pretty fishy happened during the 2016 campaign. And in the transition, the early– the early part of the Trump presidency, and we still don't know. Robert Mueller was— CHUCK TODD: We do know the answer. SEN. RON JOHNSON: –completely blinded and he– he'd never— CHUCK TODD: You– you're choosing— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –he never looked into any of that. CHUCK TODD: –you're choosing not to— SEN. RON JOHNSON: And he should've. CHUCK TODD: You're— SEN. RON JOHNSON: Ho– hopefully— CHUCK TODD: –you're just making a choice— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –hopefully, William Barr will. CHUCK TODD: You're ch– you're making a choice— SEN. RON JOHNSON: Hopefully, William Barr— CHUCK TODD: –not to believe— SEN. RON JOHNSON: –will get to the bottom of this. CHUCK TODD: You're making a choice not to believe the investigations that have taken place, multiple— SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, I'm– I'm trying to get to the truth. I wanna look at the entire truth, Chuck. CHUCK TODD: Does the truth— SEN. RON JOHNSON: The media doesn't. CHUCK TODD: And the truth is only when it– when it benefits– when you believe— SEN. RON JOHNSON: No, but that's— CHUCK TODD: –it politically— SEN. RON JOHNSON: You're totally false— CHUCK TODD: –comfortable with you? I don't understand— SEN. RON JOHNSON: You're– you're totally incorrect— CHUCK TODD: –what truth are you looking for— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I want the complete truth. CHUCK TODD: So– well, so are we— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I want the complete truth. CHUCK TODD: I'm sorry that you chose— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I doubt that. CHUCK TODD: –to come on this way, Senator. Thanks very much. Joining me now— SEN. RON JOHNSON: I'm– I'm sorry you started the piece that way.
And, so, Johnson's effort at damage control was concluded, but only at the commercial break. He resumed explaining himself a month later. Once again, attempting to help Trump, he got himself into more trouble.
(To be continued.)
Author's note and full disclosure: When Sen. Johnson disclosed his list of people he intends to subpoena in his "Obamagate" probe, my name appeared on it. Apparently, this involves the most obscure conspiracy theory within the larger conspiracy theory, a "second dossier" to Christopher Steele's Dossier originating with the Clinton campaign. There is, in fact, no such "second dossier," which is not a "dossier" at all but two emails consisting of raw notes of an inquiring journalist that he collected from conversations about Trump's Russian relationships, sent to some friends, including me, which I shared with another longtime friend, who unbeknownst to me happened to share it with his longtime friend, Christopher Steele, who unbeknownst to that friend sent a paragraph he found interesting in one of the emails to the FBI. None of this had anything to do with the Clinton campaign; no one in this chain knew who the next person would share it with; and none of it had any relevance to anything significant that subsequently occurred. I debunked this conspiracy theory in testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 16, 2019. It seems that Johnson and his crack staff have failed to properly acquaint themselves with the work of that Republican-led but bipartisan committee.
Sidney Blumenthal is the author ofAll the Powers of Earth, the third volume in his five-volume biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, published in September 2019 by Simon and Schuster. the first two volumes are A Self-Made Man and Wrestling with His Angel. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post and Washington editor and writer for The New Yorker. His books include the The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, and The Permanent Campaign. He has been a senior fellow of the NYU Center on Law and Security and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.
