The Economist - USA (2021-11-13)

36 United States The Economist November 13th 2021

TheDurhaminvestigation

You’re in trouble

O

noctober17thChristopherSteele,a

formerBritishintelligenceofficerwho

nowrunsa privateresearchconsultancy,

appearedonabcNews.MrSteelewasbe­

inginterviewedabouta dossierthathehad

providedtotheDemocraticPartyandtothe

fbiintherun­uptothe 2016 presidential

election.It reported onDonald Trump’s

businessinterestsinRussiaandhisteam’s

relationshipsthere.Butmostexplosively,

italsoallegedhehadpossiblybeencap­

turedonvideo indulgingcurious sexual

tastes in the presidential suite of the Ritz­

Carlton hotel in Moscow in 2013. Mr Steele,

asked  whether  he  believes  that  this  video

exists, said, “I think it probably does.”

That seems less and less likely. On No­

vember  4th  John  Durham,  the  special

counsel for the Department of Justice, who

was  appointed  by  William  Barr  in  2019  to

investigate  the  fbiinvestigation  into  Mr

Trump’s  supposed  links  with  Russia,  in­

dicted Igor Danchenko, a Russian national

and  professional  Russia  expert  based  in

America. Mr Danchenko is alleged to have

lied  about  how  he  collected  information

for  the  Steele  dossier  (knowingly  lying  to

fbiagents is a crime). According to the in­

dictment,  Mr  Danchenko  got  some  of  the

rumours he sent to Mr Steele from a Russo­

phile American pr executive, named by the

New York Times as Charles Dolan, who pre­

viously worked on Clinton campaigns. Mr

Danchenko allegedly hid this from the fbi

when he was interviewed (he denies it).

Right­wing  media  in  America  have

turned this into a storm. Kimberley Stras­

sel, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal,

wrote  that  the  indictments  show  that  the

Steele dossier ought to be called the “Clin­

ton  Dossier”,  and  argued  in  effect  that  Mr

Trump was a victim of a giant orchestrated

conspiracy  to  make  out  that  he  was  in  (a

rather damp) bed with Russia. Others, such

as Fox News, have made much of Mr Dan­

chenko’s  work  from  2005  to  2010  for  the

Brookings  Institution,  a  centrist  think­

tank in Washington, dc. Many also suggest

that  the  Mueller  investigation,  a  federal

probe  which  looked  into  Mr  Trump’s

team’s  links  with  Russia,  began  with  the

Steele dossier. Mr Trump himself said in a

tv interview that the findings are “only go­

ing to get deeper and deeper”—and would

implicate Democrats.

In reality, the conspiracy is not so deep.

An  earlier  investigation  by  Michael  Horo­

witz,  the  Inspector­General  of  the  Depart­

ment of Justice, revealed many  of  the

shortcomings  of  the  Steele  dossier.  But  it

also  showed  that  it  was  not  what  sparked

the  fbi’s  investigation  into  the  former

president’s  Russian  links.  A  tip­off  from

the Australian government in July 2016 did

that.  The  Mueller  investigation,  which

emerged  from  the  original  fbiinvestiga­

tion, made almost no mention of the alle­

gations from the Steele dossier. Instead, it

focused  on  the  activities  of  various  of  Mr

Trump’s associates, who certainly did meet

Russian  officials,  and  also  communicated

with  WikiLeaks  over  the  release  of  emails

hacked  from  the  Democratic  National

Committee by the Russian state. A biparti­

san  Senate  report  released  last  year  as­

sessed that Mr Trump was aware of this. In

April, the Treasury department sanctioned

an  associate  of  Paul  Manafort,  one  of  Mr

Trump’s  campaign  managers,  for  feeding

information to Russian intelligence.

So Mr Durham has very much not exon­

erated Mr Trump from having shady deal­

ings  with  Russia.  But  he  has  underlined

that  the  most  lurid  allegations  were,  at

best, unsubstantiated rumour. That is em­

barrassing to the fbi, which used the Steele

dossier  in  part  to  justify  a  wiretap  on  one

Trump adviser, Carter Page. 

But it is also damning of many journal­

ists and Democrats. The Steele dossier was

presented  by  many  in  the  more  left­lean­

ing  media  as  a  highly  credible  investiga­

tion  by  a  highly  respected  British  former

spook,  involving  “deep  cover  sources  in­

side  Russia”  (in  the  words  of  one  msnbc

anchor). In fact it was outsourced to people

outside Russia such as Mr Danchenko, who

seemingly  gathered  information  by  read­

ing newspapers and drinking with pals.

What  happens  next?  Mr  Durham’s  in­

vestigation has been going on for over two

years and, so far, has produced only three

indictments:  as  well  as  Mr  Danchenko,

there is Michael Sussmann, a cyber­securi­

ty  lawyer  also  alleged  to  have  made  false

statements to the fbi, and a junior fbilaw­

yer who has admitted altering a document

to strengthen a wiretap request. There may

well be more. Yet the main outcome of the

investigation  will  be  to  help  Mr  Trump

move  the  conversation  about  his  Russian

links  on  from  his  own  actions  to  the  ten­

dency  of  liberal  journalists  to  believethe

absolute  worst  about  him.  For  theformer

president, that is a pretty good result.n

CHICAGO

The special counsel arrests one of the

sources of the infamous Steele dossier

Less than meets the eye

Newnukes

Energy deficient

T

he diablo canyon nuclear  power

plant lies about 200 miles north of Los

Angeles  on  California's  central  coast.  Its

twin reactors sit between the Pacific Ocean

on one side and emerald hills on the other.

The Golden State’s only remaining nuclear

plant  provides  nearly  9%  of  its  electricity

generation,  and  accounts  for  15%  of  its

clean­electricity  production.  Yet  despite

California’s aggressive climate goals and a

national push to reach net­zero emissions

by 2050, Diablo Canyon is set to close down

by 2025. A new report from researchers at

Stanford University and the Massachusetts

Institute  of  Technology  (mit)  reveals  just

how detrimental that would be. 

Diablo Canyon came online in 1985 and

has  operated  without  incident.  But  the

plant is controversial. Diablo sits near sev­

eral major fault lines, and locals have long

feared  that  an  earthquake  could  trigger  a

nuclear  disaster.  America’s  Nuclear  Regu­

latory Commission (nrc) ordered utilities

to  evaluate  their  plants  for  flooding  and

seismic risk after the meltdown at the Fu­

kushima Dai­ichi nuclear plant in Japan in

2011. Diablo Canyon was found to be safe. 
Even  so,  in  2018  the  California  Public
Utilities Commission approved a proposal
put  forward  by  Pacific  Gas  &  Electric,  the
state’s largest utility and the operator of Di­
ablo  Canyon,  and  environmental  and  la­
bour  groups  to  close  the  plant.  pg&ear­
gued  that  there  was  reduced  demand  for

D ENVER

Will the climate crisis force America to reconsider nuclear power?