Until last week, the official story was that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, got drunk in a London bar and told an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, about a secret plot between Russia and the Trump campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race by anonymously releasing her emails. According to the official narrative, Downer took Papadopoulos’s information to the U.S. embassy in London, which then informed the FBI.
While Papadopoulos has always denied the story, the first official hint that something was amiss came when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his December 2019 report into the FBI’s handling of its investigation of the Trump campaign.
“We concluded that the FFG information [Australian diplomat’s tip] ... describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation,” he said.
However, although it was clear that the disagreement centered on whether what the Australian diplomat said was sufficient to open a full investigation, neither Barr nor Durham provided any details.
But now, after a 3 1/2-year wait, Durham’s report finally sheds light on the details of the dispute.
In what’s arguably the most important sentence of the entire 308-page report, Durham said, “According to [Alexander] Downer, Papadopoulos made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance.”
In one sentence, Durham crushed the FBI’s justification for the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. There was no mention of Clinton’s emails, no mention of any dirt, and no mention of an offer from Russia. The official narrative, which the FBI used not only to open the investigation but also to obtain FISA warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, to push Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, and to pressure Congress into investigating Trump, was plain false.
According to Durham, Papadopoulos had met an Australian career diplomat in London on May 6, 2016. According to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times, that diplomat was Erika Thompson. Thompson then arranged a second meeting on May 10, which included Downer.
The fact that Papadopoulos repeated a story that was being aired on Fox News on a topic that many people were talking about at the time was hardly newsworthy.
Tip Reaches FBI Office
According to Durham, the reason that Papadopoulos’s insignificant comment about Russia having information on Clinton suddenly prompted Downer to take the information to the U.S. Embassy in London was the July 22, 2016, release by Wikileaks of allegedly hacked Democratic National Committee emails. At the time, the Clinton campaign was quick to blame Russia for the leak.Downer’s tip reached FBI headquarters on July 28, 2016, and lead investigator Peter Strzok rushed to open a full investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31, before having even talked to Downer.
According to Durham, Strzok then interviewed Downer and Thompson in London on Aug. 2, 2016. Durham noted that Strzok’s own record of the interview is inconsistent with statements later made by the FBI investigator.
Specifically, Strzok wrote in his book and told Horowitz and TV interviewers that Downer was prompted to come forward when he heard Trump say during a campaign speech, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” However, Downer never said this and couldn’t have said it because he provided his information before Trump made his speech.
The inconsistency appears to have been an after-the-fact effort on Strzok’s part to address the deficiencies in opening the case against Trump by tying Papadopoulos to Clinton’s emails, emails that we now know were never mentioned by Papadopoulos. Strzok refused to be interviewed by Durham.
While some may argue that Durham’s conclusions related to Downer’s tip are made with the benefit of hindsight, the evidence presented by Durham proves otherwise. Strzok had all the information he needed to conclude that Downer’s tip was completely insignificant and yet went ahead with the investigation regardless.
Strzok’s own notes from his Aug. 2, 2016, interview with the Australian diplomats reveal that Papadopoulos “did not say he had direct contact with the Russians,” that “Papadopoulos acknowledged his lack of expertise,” and that Downer said he would have sniffed Papadopoulos out if he was a fraud.
Downer also told Strzok that he “did not get the sense Papadopoulos was the middle-man to coordinate with the Russians.”
Text Messages Reveal Bias
Durham also noted that before receiving Downer’s tip, Strzok and his FBI colleague Lisa Page were frantically texting each other about their loathing of Trump and shared desire to derail his campaign.On March 3, 2016, Page texted Strzok, “God Trump is a loathsome human.”
Strzok agreed.
On July 18, 2016, during the Republican National Convention, he texted, “Oooh, TURN IT ON, TURN IT ON!!! THE DOUCHE BAGS ARE ABOUT TO COME OUT. You can tell by the excitable clapping.”
Page replied, “And wow, Donald Trump is an enormous douche.”
On July 21, 2016, Strzok texted: “Trump is a disaster. I have no idea how destabilizing his Presidency would be.”
Most significantly, on July 27, 2016, which was before Strzok and Page knew of Downer’s tip, Page texted: “Have we opened on him yet? Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s Really a Thing.”
None of these things had anything to do with Downer.
Perhaps even more significantly, the FBI’s legal attaché in London, who accompanied Strzok to his Aug. 2, 2016, interview with Downer, told Durham that while they were being driven to the interview, Strzok told the attaché, “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”
The legal attaché also told Durham that when he ran Downer’s tip past British intelligence, he was told that whatever Papadopoulos had said wasn’t “particularly valuable intelligence.”
The British side further insisted that there had to be something other than Downer’s tip for Strzok to have opened a full investigation into the Trump campaign: “The British could not believe the Papadopoulos bar conversation was all there was, and they were convinced the FBI must have had more information that it was holding back.”
But there was nothing more. Downer’s tip about Papadopoulos’s repeating what Fox News was saying was all the FBI had.
On a final note, although we may never know why Horowitz determined that the FBI’s investigation was properly predicated when there was no basis for making that determination, the delay in disclosing how the FBI’s investigation really started means that most, if not all, statutes of limitation have now expired, meaning that it’s no longer possible to charge anyone within the FBI with any criminal offenses.
