First, the next six weeks, mid-August to September 26, when the first debate with Hillary was scheduled. “If we can get within five to seven points, that can build a bridge to win.”
Second was the three weeks of debates. This was the period of extreme danger. “He’s so unprepared for the debates,” Bannon said. “She’ll kill him because she’s the best” at debating and policy. Bannon said the way to handle debates was spontaneity. Trump had no problem being unpredictable. “We’re going to call nothing but audibles in these debates. That’s the only thing we’ve got . . . where he can walk around and connect.” Still he was pessimistic. “Look, we’re going to get crushed. . . . We’re going to lose ground here.”
Third was the final three weeks to election day, from the final debate to November 8. Bannon saw the fundraising by Steve Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs alumnus and national finance chairman for the campaign, as an inadequate joke. They were going to have to turn to Trump himself. A candidate could spend unlimited amounts of his or her own money.
Bannon said he had seen data suggesting that Ohio and Iowa could be winnable. Also they had to win Florida and North Carolina. Then Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota could come back to the Republicans. It all seemed like a giant fantasy.
“This is G?tterd?mmerung,” the final battle, he said.
Manafort’s departure was announced on August 19.
On August 22, Time magazine ran a cover illustration of Trump’s dissolving face headlined: “Meltdown.”
CHAPTER
4
Signs of Russian “reconnoitering,” or digital intrusions as the National Security Agency called them, first appeared in local and state electoral boards’ computerized voter registration rolls—lists of voters’ names and addresses—in the summer of 2015. The first showed up in Illinois, then spread across the country to include 21 states.
As the NSA and FBI picked up more information on these cyber intrusions, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper worried that Russia might use the data to change or manipulate votes in some way. Is this just Russia, he wondered. The Russians were always trying to make trouble.
Clapper made sure the initial information was included in Obama’s President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the highest-level top security briefing. Obama read it each day on a preprogrammed iPad, which he returned. Similar iPads were distributed by designated PDB briefers to the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the CIA director, although in these cases the briefers remained in the room while the principals read the PDB and then reclaimed the iPads.
In July of 2016, WikiLeaks and DC Leaks, another site known for releasing hacked government and military materials, began publishing emails taken from a Democratic National Committee server by groups of Russian hackers identified as “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear.”
Intelligence about Russian meddling caused deep concern in Obama’s National Security Council. Over time, the intel got better and more convincing.
Should President Obama go on prime-time national television and announce these findings? Would it look like he was attacking Trump, linking the Republican nominee with Russia? Could it backfire and look like he was meddling in the U.S. election, trying to tip the scales?
To remain silent had its perils: Oh my God, we know about this Russian meddling and we’re not acting, we’re not telling the public? There could be a backlash directed at Obama and his national security team after the election.
In the very unlikely, almost inconceivable chance that Trump won, and the intelligence became public, the questions would come: What did they know? When did they know it? And what did they do?
John O. Brennan, director of the CIA, argued vehemently against showing their hand. Brennan was protective of the agency’s human sources. “Now you see the dilemma,” he said, for him personally and the CIA institutionally. The mantra always was PROTECT THE SOURCES. Yet, he wanted to do something.
Brennan needed to speak to his counterpart, Russian FSB intelligence chief Alexander Bortnikov, about Syria and harassment of U.S. diplomats. He asked Obama if he could raise the election meddling issue with Bortnikov.
Obama approved the under-the-radar approach.
On August 4, Brennan told Bortnikov, You’re meddling in our election. We know it. We have it cold.
Bortnikov flatly denied it.
The next day, August 5, Mike Morell, who had been deputy CIA director from 2010 to 2013 and twice acting director, published an op-ed in The New York Times. The headline: “I Ran the CIA. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.” Morell accused Trump of being “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
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Clapper was chosen to brief the so-called Gang of Eight in Congress—four Republican and Democratic leaders in both the Senate and House plus the four chairmen and vice chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Clapper was stunned by how partisan the leaders were. Republicans disliked everything about the briefing. The Democrats loved every morsel, peppering him with questions about the details and sourcing. He left the briefing dismayed that intelligence was increasingly another political football to kick around.
By fall, the intelligence reports showed that Moscow—like almost everyone else—believed that Clinton was likely to win. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s influence campaign shifted strategy to focus on undermining her coming presidency.
Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson were the most anxious to alert the public to the Russian interference. At 3 p.m. on Friday, October 7, they released a joint statement officially accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the U.S. election, although they didn’t name Putin in the public release.
“The U.S. intelligence community is confident the Russian government directed the recent compromise of emails from U.S. persons and institutions. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. Russia’s senior-most officials are the only ones who could have authorized the activities.”
Clapper, Johnson and the Clinton campaign expected this to be the big news of the weekend, as did the reporters who began working on the story.
But one hour later, at 4:05 p.m., David Fahrenthold at The Washington Post released a story headlined, “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
The Post released an audio outtake recording from the NBC show Access Hollywood of Trump bragging crudely about his sexual prowess. He said he could grope and kiss women at will. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said. “You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”
The Access Hollywood tape was a political earthquake. The Russia story essentially disappeared.
“I expected it to be something that would have a lot of currency over the following days,” Jeh Johnson later said. “And that it would be a continuing conversation with more questions from the press.” But the press went “off to the other end of the pasture ’cause of greed and sex and groping.”
Trump issued a brief statement to the Post: “This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
Less than a half hour later, at 4:30 p.m., WikiLeaks capped the day’s news by dumping thousands of emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account online. They revealed excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street financiers, which she had refused to release, Podesta’s emails with campaign staff and correspondence between the Clinton campaign and DNC chair Donna Brazile regarding questions and topics to be raised at upcoming debates and events.
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