Long before Barr did that the whole of the RW got on board with 2 different misinformation campaigns that would prepare the ground for such a brazen misdirection.
They put a ton of effort into making people think the Russia investigations and the Steele dossier were the same thing. They knew they dossier could be discredited as not being rigorous enough to hang those sorts of allegations on and knew if they did that they would be able to discredit the entire investigation in the eyes of people who bought the conflation of the two things. But the investigation was never about the Steele Dossier. The FBI already had several lines of inquiry open before the dossier came to them and it played only a trivial role in directing or justifying any course they took. There are suggestions even that Russians gave this tactic to people in Trump world (Manafort) and the same people might even have made sure the most discreditable bits of the dossier got to Steele.
A focus on collusion, despite Comey being very clear from as soon as the investigations became public that collusion was not a concern of the FBI and so was not the focus of the investigations. They knew that if they made everyone focus on collusion then no matter what the resulting investigations could demonstrate they would be seen to fail on its core intent and make it easier to wave away the actual findings. That is essentially how Barr, who knew collusion was not an FBI focus, approached his part in brushing the findings under the rug.
The latter of these is a fascinating case study because it only works if the media pick up on their collusion framing. But not only did they do it, it’s also how most democrats and even outlets like MSNBC spoke about the investigations. It is a fantastic example of how the RW is somehow able to set the framing of most political conversations.
Trump was in discussions about a Trump Tower Moscow project during the campaign, but when it was raised he publicly denied it. Remember, this was during a period when people were supposedly taking seriously the issue of his need to divest from his businesses as previously thought required to be president, and was something he was paying lip services to agree to do. To get caught actively trying to officially entangle himself with Russian entities while running for president, in a cycle when there was clear evidence of their efforts to fuck with the election, would have been a properly major scandal.
Trump knew he had to protect that lie and that creates the opening for a legit influence operation. The ties to Russian intelligence may predate that, but that was the point where any deniability Trump may have had about what the relationship was between him and Russian contacts completely disappeared and he knew he was now being worked by them.
I just read the Guardian piece and feel compelled to point this out
McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020.
Reporting like this is not helpful as it misses key details that really illustrate how bogus the case against him was. It was not related to his work on the Russia case that saw the charges filed as you might think from reading that. It was for allegedly “leaking” info to the press about the existence of the Clinton server investigation. Just like Comey, the target was put on him because of his role on the Russia case, but the pretext that was found to remove him was that his conduct in the Clinton case had unfairly impacted the Hillary campaign. It is even more laughable in McCabe’s case because Republicans had already spend 2 years pursuing him for allegedly helping Hilliary’s campaign by his role on that investigation.
Trump in one sentence: It’s a disgrace. They way these people talk about me, calling me a danger to democracy, puts a target on my back and encourages sickos to try to take me out
Trump in the very next sentence: Well you know what. They are the danger. They are a danger to the country. If they win we will not have a country anymore. We must stop them. They must be stopped.
