Making nothing look like something. The anatomy of a farce!

At National Review, Andrew McCarthy writes about Glenn Simpson.

The former Wall Street Journal reporter is a superb investigative journalist. More notoriously these days, he is the founder of Fusion GPS. It was he, in cahoots with his friend and collaborator, former British spy Christopher Steele, who orchestrated the compilation and dissemination of the so-called Steele dossier — the fons et origo of the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. We now know the dossier was covertly commissioned by the Clinton campaign, which dealt with Fusion through a layer of lawyers.

Yet, we were not aware of that nearly five months ago. That was when Simpson gave nine hours of articulate but dodgy testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee investigators. The 312-page transcript of the session was released this week by the committee’s senior Democrat, Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.). Significantly, Simpson’s dodges included for whom and with whom he was working. Simpson has explained, unwittingly I think, both why there is a collusion narrative and why Trump has refrained from ordering his subordinates to cooperate with Congress’s probes. We’ll get to that. It is of greater moment to observe that Simpson’s testimony is the most enlightening information we have seen in over a year of collusion craze. To cut to the chase: Simpson has explained, unwittingly I think, both why there is a collusion narrative and why President Trump, who could blow up the narrative by declassifying intelligence records, has refrained from ordering his subordinates to cooperate with Congress’s probes.

See, Simpson’s got nothing. Even if we had not learned that the dossier is a partisan opposition-research screed, the Trump–Russia narrative it spouts is a house of cards. But here’s the thing: Good investigative journalists who dabble in partisan politics can be great at making nothing look like something.

I know this from my former life. All trial lawyers must be versed in this dark art — hopefully more to guard against than practice it. It is a particular danger with prosecutors. That is why the law builds in due-process safeguards like reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence, and the right to counsel. The ability to make nothing look like something sinister is why it is famously observed that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich in the grand jury, where these safeguards do not apply. You know where else those safeguards have no application? In the black hole we call “counterintelligence investigations” — such as Trump–Russia. And in investigative journalism.

...While Simpson poses as the gold standard of objectivity, his actions tell the story of a fellow powerfully swayed by whoever happens to be paying him. He is outraged by debauched character, but it is selective outrage.

Ours is a messy democratic process, which comes down to a choice between two nominees. This brings us back to Simpson’s blind spot: Trump’s opponent was the Democrat who was paying for Simpson’s second round of research: The May–November 2016 Trump–Russia project. That is a fact Simpson chose to conceal in his testimony. No wonder: Hillary Clinton matched Trump sleaze for sleaze. That doesn’t make Simpson’s concerns about Trump any less real, but it does sap much of their dispositive force.

Second, what Simpson was able to prove might establish that Trump was unfit to be president, but it does not establish that Trump colluded with Russia. The voters, not Simpson, get to decide who becomes president. Thus, the only pending question on which Simpson matters is whether there is a Trump–Russia conspiracy. On that question, Simpson’s showing cannot bear close scrutiny.

Steele may have had a good career, but our snapshot of his work is not flattering. In the dossier, some of the work is dated, some not, and at least one key date is wrong. Once his work was publicized, people he implicated vigorously denied his allegations and sued for libel. Far from refuting their protestations, Steele’s reaction has been to say his reports were “raw” and “unverified.” In truth, the dossier was never meant to see the light of day. He is not claiming that its allegations are true; rather, they were passed along to him by sources of varying levels of reliability. It is Simpson who vouches for Steele, not Steele himself. The latter says his rumor-ridden reports need to be run down by trained investigators. Except the FBI has been running them down for a year and a half now and, according to what former director James Comey said in Senate testimony last June, the bureau still has not corroborated Steele’s key allegations.

...Meanwhile, Simpson and Steele decided that America was at risk, so Steele went to his friends at the FBI. Like Simpson, the FBI had already concluded that Trump was dangerously unfit and that Steele (who helped them on their FIFA soccer investigation) was an impeccable investigator. Interestingly, Simpson insisted to the committee that going to the FBI was Steele’s idea — that Simpson and Fusion absolutely did not contact the bureau. What Simpson conveniently left out was that Nellie Ohr, one of the Fusion staffers he refused to identify, was a Russia expert who worked on Steele’s project and just happened to be married to top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. We now know that Ohr had personal meetings with Steele and Simpson.

It is the anatomy of a farce. The frantic churning of hearsay and innuendo about bad guys who, being bad guys, must have been doing bad things. But at the core, there is no concrete, admissible evidence of an espionage or corruption conspiracy; no solid identified sources, no verifiable wrongdoing. A circle of relentless suspicion with a hole in the middle where the crime is supposed to be.

That being the case, why doesn’t President Trump just expose it? Why doesn’t he tell the intelligence agencies to declassify the relevant data? If the Justice Department and FBI abused their intelligence-collection authority by seeking a FISA-court warrant based on unverified information, if they in any way gulled a federal judge into believing that Steele’s rumor-mongering was refined U.S. intelligence reporting, why not disclose that misconduct and put the collusion chatter to rest? Because, while Steele’s allegations may have been part of the Justice Department’s application for spying authority, perhaps even an essential part, you can bet the house that it is not the only information in the application. Remember what we said: If you don’t have evidence of an offense, you must compensate with evidence of bad character. Here, the Justice Department and the FBI are in the same posture as Glenn Simpson: They may not have had a collusion case on Donald Trump, but they surely had lots of intelligence tying him to bad people and unsavory activity. Repeatedly in his testimony, Simpson said he and Steele were most alarmed that the Putin regime had blackmail material on Trump — information so egregious that it could enable the Kremlin to control the president of the United States. That, they insisted, is why it had to be investigated.

Now, there is always a chance that this is not true. Maybe Simpson overstated what the documentary record says about Trump. Maybe the FBI doesn’t have extensive evidence of organized-crime contacts and shady dealing. But let’s be real: Even people who supported Donald Trump, or at least the many who grudgingly voted for him because the alternative was Hillary Clinton, are under no illusions. And just as Steele figured the public would never see his dossier, the Justice Department and FBI must have figured the public would never see their classified FISA-court application, especially after President Hillary Clinton took office. Thus, they had a strong incentive to load it up with anything they thought they had on Trump. If, echoing Simpson and Steele, the Justice Department and FBI told the court that an investigation was necessary because Trump was vulnerable to blackmail by Putin, what kind of information do you suppose must be in the FISA application?

Even if that information doesn’t prove collusion, and even if some or all of it is suspect, would you want such an application disclosed if you were the president?

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