Schmidt S. - Donald Trump V. the United States - Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

Two days after the press conference, Jim went up to Capitol Hill to testify before the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee—a panel dominated by members who had made their bones on Benghazi, often appearing on Fox News to push their latest theory of how Democrats were corrupt. The committee’s Republican chairman, Jason Chaffetz, lambasted Jim for deciding there would be “no consequence” for the handling of Clinton’s emails.

“I’m here because we’re mystified and confused by the fact pattern you laid out and the conclusions that you reached,” Chaffetz said. “It seems there are two standards, and there’s no consequence for these types of activities and dealing in a careless way with classified information.”

Jim tried to explain the nuances of federal prosecutions to the audience of angry Republicans, who were unmoved.

“We did not find evidence sufficient to establish that she knew she was sending classified information beyond a reasonable doubt, to meet the intent standard,” Jim said. “I understand why people are confused by the whole discussion. I get that, but you know what would be a double standard? If she were prosecuted for gross negligence.”

In explaining his conclusions, Comey also provided even more sound bites of him criticizing Clinton, which in Washington’s vicious cycle made his conclusions that much more assailable.

“She should have known not to send classified information,” he said. “That’s the definition of negligent. I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent. That I could establish. What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.”

Despite the backlash from Republicans, Comey headed into July believing the press conference had been a success. Getting knocked by partisans was far better than if the Department of Justice had sought to end the investigation silently and unaccountably. And any involvement by Loretta Lynch or other top political appointees would have given the chattering class more ammunition to push more mainstream Republicans to go after the Justice Department. So, while it would live on in the conservative media echo chamber, Comey was convinced that it would have only so much appeal and little of the criticism would stick.

“By doing the announcement alone, I was spending some of my credibility and the FBI’s to protect both the bureau and all of DOJ,” Jim would later say. “I actually think that the goal was achieved, in large part, because the attackers were forced to come through me and focus on the FBI’s decision making. There was very little of the ‘Loretta Lynch is corrupt’ stuff that summer. Instead, they had to say I was wrong and the bureau was wrong, which was harder for them. It meant that I had to spend a lot of time testifying and fighting their bullshit, but it shifted the ground of the battle from political to tactical.”

So as July wore on, Jim thought the Clinton matter was behind him and that he could return to regular FBI work, like looking for funding for a new headquarters to replace the collapsing one. On the tactical side, he knew the bureau and the country still had major challenges. The FBI’s top priority was thwarting attacks from Islamic-linked terrorists and homegrown violent extremists. A horrific example of that type of violence was still fresh in his mind. Three weeks before the press conference, a twenty-nine-year-old man who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State had killed forty-nine people at the Pulse nightclub in Florida, marking the deadliest attack on Americans since 9/11. Such mass violence had become sickeningly routine in the United States, and federal law enforcement had been impotent in the face of it. This was the important work that the FBI could now focus on. Comey was confident that he and the FBI could now leave the politics to the politicians, and do just that.

But whatever punches he had taken from the Far Right would be nothing compared with what was awaiting him.

★ ★ ★

JULY 27, 2016

177 DAYS BEFORE DONALD TRUMP IS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT

TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL MIAMI RESORT IN DORAL, FLORIDA—As most eyes in the political world were on Philadelphia—where Obama was set to cap off the third night of the Democratic National Convention with a much-anticipated speech—Trump gathered reporters and television cameras for a press conference at his golf course in Doral, Florida. It had been less than a week since hacked Democratic National Committee emails had been released, and intelligence officials pointed to Russia as the culprit. And because Trump would be taking questions, the Republican candidate was bound to be asked about the Russian hack. Late in the morning, standing in front of flags of the United States and the State of Florida, and just thirteen minutes into the press conference, Trump addressed himself directly to a foreign adversary in a way that no reputable presidential candidate ever had before.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, referring to those of Hillary Clinton’s personal emails that had been deleted. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He made other comments about Russia that day, too. Some contradicted things he had previously said, like when he said he had “never spoken to” Putin. And some were starkly in opposition to U.S. foreign policy, as when he was “looking at” recognizing the disputed Crimea region as a Russian territory—an act that would, astonishingly, encourage Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions and reward the menace Moscow posed to its neighbors and to Europe.

But the headline of the day was clear: here was the Republican Party’s nominee encouraging— soliciting —Moscow’s interference in his race against Clinton.

At the bureau, Comey and other top officials were struggling to understand Trump’s bizarre overture and were deeply bothered by it. At this level of American politics, such a pronouncement could not simply be dismissed as a joke, as some apologists tried to do. The behavior was so far outside acceptable norms—and was so vexing in its challenge to geopolitical realities—that it commanded the attention of American officials at the highest levels, who were already beginning to see evidence that Putin and his government were up to something that appeared designed to upend the American election. “Russia is a sworn adversary of the United States, committed to degrading our country’s power, influence, and reach,” Jim would later tell me. “The United States intelligence community, of which the FBI is a part, devotes billions of dollars and countless hours each year to trying to understand and thwart the threat Russia poses. And yet, in the middle of an unprecedented Russian effort to erode the legitimacy of our electoral process, the Republican presidential candidate openly called for their assistance and participation in that electoral process. The conduct is so outrageous that the mind struggles to even categorize it, which is why I suspect so many people underreacted to it at the time, and maybe still do.”

What no one knew at the time was just how seriously the Russians had taken Trump. Less than five hours after Trump’s comments, that night marked the first time a Russian intelligence unit nicknamed Fancy Bear attempted to infiltrate email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office. Russian hackers sent “spear phishing” emails—a common way to infiltrate specific accounts—to fifteen different email addresses associated with Clinton, none of which were publicly searchable. They also attacked seventy-six separate email accounts under the Clinton campaign’s domain.

The comment was so outlandish that it was enough, some former FBI officials now acknowledge, for them to open up a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was coordinating with a foreign adversary to undermine the United States. But they did not do that because Trump was a major-party candidate and such a move was politically precarious. While the Obama administration was required to investigate any potential election interference, no one in the administration wanted to be seen as interfering in the election themselves. It was an unprecedented and untenable situation. How had it come to this moment? How was it that the Russians were interfering in the election and one of the two major-party candidates was asking them for help? How had the Russians burrowed so deeply inside the American system that they could follow through on Trump’s request within five hours? How had the American intelligence community and national security apparatus been caught so flat-footed again—only fifteen years after the tragic failure of imagination in advance of the 9/11 attacks? And how had a foreign adversary undertaken a sprawling campaign to disrupt an election? The failures dated back to the end of the Cold War and included countless decisions taken by Republican and Democratic presidents. I was shocked by Russia’s success, dexterity, and understanding of America’s vulnerabilities and capacity to exploit them. But I knew from a reporting experience I’d had only three years earlier just how unprepared official Washington was for Russian aggression.