A friendly reminder that Rant! is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for making this newsletter possible!
In the past week, the Department of Justice announced two payouts to players in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Last week, the DOJ agreed to pay Michael Flynn $1.25 million. Flynn, you may recall, was Trump’s first national security advisor, a role he held for only 22 days, at which point his off-the-books meetings with Russians became too much of a liability for Trump, so Trump canned him. Flynn went on to plead guilty (twice!) to lying to the FBI during its investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia. He did a lot of other whacky shit, too involving QAnon and election denial, even calling on Trump to suspend the Constitution and hold a new election under military authority. Trump pardoned him in 2020. Flynn still has other litigation pending, so there may be other payouts.
On Wednesday, DOJ announced it had settled with former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, also for $1.25 million. Page (and a lot of MAGA) claim Obama politically targeted Page when the FBI got a FISA warrant to surveil him. While it is true an investigation found some bureaucratic disparities in how the FISA application was filed, multiple investigations concluded that the FBI’s investigation into Page was warranted. The back story as to why is a fun one.
In 2013, the FBI was investigating three Russian spies in New York: Victor Podobny, Igor Sporyshev—both operating under diplomatic cover at Russia’s mission to the UN—and Evgeny Buryakov, who was operating with non-official cover and posed as an employee of Vnesheconombank (VEB). VEB would later be sanctioned, but that wouldn’t stop Jared Kushner from meeting with the bank’s chairman, Sergei Gorkov, who graduated from Russia’s FSB academy.
As part of its investigation in 2013, the FBI interviewed Page and told him he was being targeted by Russian intelligence officers. Despite this, Page continued to meet with those very same Russians. He also provided them with documents about the energy industry.
Page claims it was no big deal, since the documents contained public information. It’s a naive or willingly ignorant response, since that’s how recruitment works: intelligence officers assess the target’s willingness to provide easy information and slowly ratchet up what they ask for and the risk they ask the target to take.
The three Russians were charged with spying in 2015. Podobny and Sporyshev used their diplomatic immunity to leave the US and were charged in absentia. Buryakov pleaded guilty, served some time, and was deported to Russia. Page went on to work for the Trump campaign.
The one bright spot of the Carter Page news is that it gives me the opportunity to repeat one of my favorite anecdotes. In building their case, FBI officers managed to listen in on Sporyshev and Podobny’s conversations, the transcripts of which were introduced in court.
Podobny referred to Page as “an idiot” and discussed how they, the Russian intelligence officers, were using business deals to manipulate Page, the guy who continued meeting with them and giving them documents even after the FBI warned him this was precisely what the Russians were doing.
But what is more entertaining is the two SVR officers lamenting their lot in life, bemoaning the fact that Russian spy life had totally failed to live up to the derring do they had anticipated when they joined the SVR.
“The fact that I’m sitting with a cookie right now at the…chief enemy spot. Fuck! Not one point of what I thought then, not even close,” Podobny said. He then referenced James Bond and said, “Of course, I wouldn’t fly helicopters, but pretend to be someone else at a minimum.”
Sporyshev agreed, saying he had thought he’d “at least go abroad with a different passport.”
I absolutely love imagining these guys hunched over their rickety desks in a sad office in New York, dreaming of James Bond while eating a cookie, crumbs scattering across boring, bureaucratic documents. It’s such a delightful image. Grown men, complaining about their staid, unadventurous life, feeding their sadness with cookies, and wishing they could be James Bond. My dudes! He’s British! Get your own spy icon! I like to imagine them now hunched over rickety desks in a decrepit and cold office in Siberia eating a raw potato and typing with mittens.
Not Just Defense. There Has To Be Offense.
Then there’s the matter of the guy who was in charge of the American spies who discovered that Russia had interfered in the US election and had the gall to inform the American people about it: former CIA Director John Brennan.
Trump has long pushed for the DOJ to charge Brennan with something, anything, just as he has done with others he considers political opponents. After the lead prosecutor on the case against Brennan said there was no evidence to charge Brennan with any crime, she was removed from the case and replaced by Joseph diGenova, who served on Trump’s legal team that tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. My guess is his job is more to build the narrative that Brennan is guilty (of something, anything), even if no charges are ever brought. The narrative is enough to keep MAGA frothing at the mouth and to punish Brennan with legal bills. After coming in hot and issuing a slew of subpoenas, diGenova backed off those subpoenas this week (maybe because there is no evidence of wrongdoing?).
These cases (and others!) are the continuation of Trump’s attempts to rewrite 2016 and Russian interference in the US in that election and beyond. Our tax money is being used to pay people who aided Russia in its election interference in the US and punish those who called out Russia’s adversarial actions. Put more succinctly, US tax dollars are being used to pay off Russian assets.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to aid Iran in targeting the US. Russia has provided intelligence and targeting data and drones to help Iran kill Americans. And Putin, a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court, continues to say the West, including the US, is an enemy of Russia.
Yesterday, Trump invited Putin to Miami for this year’s G20.
A roundup of things you should be reading
FBI Said to Have Investigated Times Reporter After Article on Patel’s Girlfriend (NYT)
Cashing in on the crown: How Trump turned the presidency into a personal money machine (The Insider)
Iran is winning the propaganda war against Trump — brick by brick (The Nerve)
Dutch Intelligence: Russia could strike NATO within a year after Ukraine war ends (Euromaidan Press)
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.