GOP’s ‘real Russian collusion’ story doesn’t add up
WASHINGTON — President Trump and his allies like to claim the real “Russia collusion” story involves Justice Department and FBI officials, investigators hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Russians who were feeding them information.
After reviewing scores of documents and messages released by Trump supporters in Congress, I find that this GOP counternarrative doesn’t add up. It doesn’t undermine the credibility of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller — or the guilty pleas and convictions he has racked up. And it doesn’t discredit Mueller’s key witnesses.
Yet the GOP’s evidence does reveal some puzzling interconnections among major players in the Russia probe. The FBI and the Justice Department were sometimes conducting negotiations with the same people they were also investigating for possible wrongdoing. Contacts between private investigators and government officials were occasionally incestuous.
The most intriguing example of overlapping relationships involves three key players who were represented by a peripatetic American lawyer named Adam Waldman. This unlikely trio includes: Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who once did business with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort; Christopher Steele, a British former MI6 officer who wrote the famous dossier alleging connections between Trump and Russia; and Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, which released Clinton campaign and other Democratic emails that U.S. intelligence agencies say were hacked by Russia.
In April 2017, Waldman texted Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., with an update on all three: “Hi. Steele: would like to get a bipartisan letter from the (Senate Intelligence) committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w/ DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w/ Manafort.” These efforts appear to have come to naught.
Waldman is a character Hollywood couldn’t invent. His clients have included Deripaska, Steele and Assange, but he has also represented movie-star Johnny Depp. He’s friendly with Warner — a Martha’s Vineyard neighbor — but also with GOP grandee C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush. As a personal disclosure, I should note that I’ve known Waldman since the 1990s.
Waldman wouldn’t talk for the record about his contacts, citing attorney-client privilege. But he doesn’t challenge the accuracy of a series of texts and emails about his activities that have been published by columnist John Solomon in The Hill.
The most intriguing chapter of this story may be Waldman’s effort to negotiate a deal on behalf of Assange. At the same time the WikiLeaks founder was being investigated last year as a conduit for Russian-hacked documents attacking the Clinton campaign, he was also trying through Waldman to negotiate a secret “risk mitigation” deal with the Justice Department.
Waldman’s contacts with Assange began in mid-January 2017. On his way to meet Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Waldman called Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s number in Washington and left a voicemail message describing what he was doing, according to a knowledgeable source who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive legal matters. Ohr later asked Waldman to contact other Justice officials, the source said. Sarah Isgur Flores, the DOJ director of public affairs, wouldn’t comment.
Assange offered through Waldman to help vet potential dangers in a cache of leaked CIA documents WikiLeaks was about to release under the rubric “Vault 7.” In exchange, Assange wanted some form of “safe passage” to leave the embassy. The mediation collapsed: On April 7, WikiLeaks revealed some especially sensitive details about CIA hacking, and Justice quickly ended its contacts.
Deripaska offers a final example of how characters in the Russia tale sometimes appear to walk both sides of the street. In September 2015, Deripaska talked to the FBI about Russia issues, and in September 2016, he talked with the bureau about its nascent Trump-Russia investigation, according to the knowledgeable source. The 2016 meeting came just a month after Manafort — then running Trump’s campaign — allegedly tried to send Deripaska a message, which Deripaska’s lawyer says he never received.
The oligarch now takes the same line about the Russia investigation as Trump and his defenders in Congress: Deripaska argued in a March 2018 op-ed that it’s all the work of a “deep state” conspiracy, centered on Fusion GPS, the company that hired Steele to compile his dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
The players in the Russia story are intertwined like the strands of a double helix. This might someday make a lively noir thriller for one of Waldman’s Hollywood friends. But none of it affects the center line of Mueller’s investigation. That probe continues, as the evidence and convictions mount.