Here is the second in my Newsvapor™ series. This is a distillation of everything that isn’t partisan cruft – i.e. is actual information – in a New York Times article issued on 2020-10-20, entitled, “How ‘Spygate’ Attacks Fizzled.” Note that the original article didn’t – couldn’t, of course – include any information that became available after that date. The distilled article gives you all the facts with none of the junk, saving you time and sanity.
The first in the series can be found here.
The investigation into possible Democrat spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, known as “Spygate,” may be dropped by the administration. U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr recently announced that a major report by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut will most likely not be released before the election.
Here’s a timeline of major events in the investigation:
- March 2017: Various blogs and media outlets began discussing theories, then referred to as “DeepStateGate” or “Obamagate,” which involved claims that President Obama had tapped then-candidate Donald Trump’s phone.
- May 2018: Trump claimed that an F.B.I. informant was sent to meet with members of his campaign staff, dubbing it “Spygate,” and said in a tweet that it “could be one of the biggest political scandals in history.”
- April 2019: Barr testified to Congress that he believed “spying did occur” on Trump’s 2016 campaign.
- December 2019: Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, released a report detailing his findings about the origins and conduct of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation.
- May 2020: The Justice Department dropped its criminal case against the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a central figure in Spygate, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat.
Later, a list of Obama administration officials who might have tried to “unmask” Flynn was declassified and released by Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence. One of the names on the list was former Vice President Joe Biden.
(“Unmasking,” in intelligence parlance, refers to a process by which officials can seek to reveal the identity of individuals who are referred to anonymously in intelligence documents. Unmasking is common, and such requests are made thousands of times every year.)
At this point, two reports were expected to be released. The first was the investigation led by Durham, who Barr tapped to look into the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia probe. The second was a smaller piece of the Durham investigation led by John Bash, a U.S. attorney whom Barr appointed to look into whether Obama-era officials had improperly “unmasked” Flynn and others.
- October 2020: Barr made his announcement about the delay in the Durham report.