FBI caused ‘lasting harm’ to our nation with Donald Trump investigation

Herodotus wrote that Croesus, king of Lydia, once asked the oracle at Delphi what would happen if he made war on Persia. The oracle told him that, should he do so, he would “destroy a great empire.” Croesus embarked on his war, and the oracle was correct, in its way: An empire was destroyed, but it was Lydia, not Persia.

It’s a timeless lesson of a man whose own actions — actions he thought necessary to preserve his country — brought about its destruction.

Many officials in the Obama administration — including in the FBI — believed that if Donald Trump were allowed to become president, the republic as we know it would fall. And they may have been correct, just as the Delphic oracle was, but correct in the wrong way. Because as much harm as Trump caused to the rule of law at the riotous close of his four-year term, the FBI’s own actions in the 2016 election did, in its way, even more lasting harm to the institutions of the republic.

All of this is made clear this month in the release of the report by special counsel John Durham on his investigation into the “Russiagate” allegations, including whether the Trump campaign worked with Russia to influence the election.

The Durham investigation came about to answer the questions opened by the Mueller investigation. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller found, after two years of investigating, that he could “not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Despite the political and media obsession with Russian “collusion,” Mueller found the factual basis of it all to be lacking.

How, then, did the FBI act so quickly on its suspicions, which were ultimately unfounded? Why did it investigate something that had seemingly no basis in reality?

Why did it investigate something that had seemingly no basis in reality?

Attorney General William Barr appointed John Durham to get to the bottom of these questions, and now we know: The investigation “revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.”

That is to say: They got some extremely flimsy evidence against a guy from people who hated him, and they ran with it. And by “ran with it,” I mean testified to its veracity to a secretive surveillance court judge to get warrants to investigate their fellow Americans, a thing so contrary to our system of justice that it is meant to be reserved for the most serious counterterrorism cases.

During the 2016 campaign, the FBI received several tips about foreign interference in the election. In those involving the Clinton campaign, the FBI followed up on the rumors. It was able to dismiss some of them, and on others it gave “defensive briefings” to the Clinton team, warning them of the dangers foreign actors posed to them. But when a rumor of Russian collusion with Trump reached the FBI, it opened an investigation immediately, doing so without confirming the information through other sources or using any of the “standard analytical tools” that are typically employed.

The FBI got word of this alleged collusion from Australian authorities in July 2016 “concerning comments reportedly made in a tavern” by George Papadopoulos, someone in Trump’s orbit as an unpaid adviser. This “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” alone led to full investigations of four members of Trump’s team. No defensive briefing was provided to the Trump campaign.

» READ MORE: Special prosecutor ends Trump-Russia investigation, saying FBI acted hastily

Then came the so-called Steele dossier: a collection of reports generated by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent running his own private security firm. Who hired Steele to do this? Fusion GPS, a different private investigation firm. Who hired them? Perkins Coie, a law firm. And who did Perkins Coie work for? The Clinton campaign. So, laundered though it was, the FBI was basing its investigation of one major party nominee on rumors collected by his opponent, plus some stuff someone in Australia heard in a bar.

All this occurred while the FBI was aware of a supposed plan approved by the Clinton camp “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

This gave no one at the bureau cause for alarm?

It’s a common problem: The FBI heard something that sounded true about a person it already knew was bad, and it was too good to check. In Durham’s words: “The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence.”

Believing misinformation is bad enough. Using it to start an investigation in a manner that ran contrary to its own standard procedures is worse still. Applying that lack of judgment only to one side is detrimental to the rule of law, a perversion of the mission of the U.S. Department of Justice, and a grave misuse of government power.

Let’s give the Clinton campaign and its friends in the FBI the benefit of the doubt — deserved or not — and say they really thought Trump would bring down the American republic. Even if that is true, their grossly unethical actions to stop him are every bit as detrimental to this nation.

Trust in all institutions is falling, and this report will make the FBI’s reputation fall still further. Undermining the rule of law and perverting the administration of justice used to be seen as obviously wrong, even when the weaponization was directed against a “bad guy.” That’s an essential part of how liberal democracy works. In subverting that, it may yet bring about its greatest fear: taking down this republic by its own actions.