By Kristen Mitchell
The slow drip of news about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and the role Donald Trump’s campaign played in those actions has made developments a challenge to follow. In today’s fast paced information age, readers are bombarded with a “firehose of data” every day, said David Corn, chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones.
Mr. Corn and his writing partner, Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo! News, recently published “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.” Mr. Corn and Mr. Isikoff talked about the new book at a Tuesday event sponsored by Politics and Prose and George Washington University.
The book guides readers through what is publically known so far about the Russia investigation, including many of the smaller details the most attentive newspaper reader may have forgotten over the past year and a half.
“Putting together, as comprehensive as it could be, this midway-stage narrative of the story and tying together the various threads is really something that the House Intelligence Committee should have done,” Mr. Corn said at Jack Morton Auditorium. “They chose not to, they gave us a really big opening.”
The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, controlled by Republicans, ended its investigation into Russian election meddling earlier this month. The committee determined there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election. Multiple former Trump campaign officials have been indicted as a result of the parallel investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The new book aims to illustrate the big picture of the unfolding Russia investigation and Mr. Trump’s and his associates’ ties to the country. The book details how Mr. Trump came to an agreement to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but the deal fell apart after President Barack Obama’s administration imposed sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea and intervening in Ukraine in February 2014.
Mr. Trump has criticized these sanctions because they ruined his business deal and his long-desired Moscow property, Mr. Isikoff said. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump maintained a friendly posture toward Russia, cultivated a circle of advisers who were softer on Russia than mainstream Republican leaders and repeatedly asserted that contrary to United States intelligence, there was no Russian interference in the election. Why these advisers flocked to Mr. Trump and why he embraced them is still puzzling, Mr. Isikoff said.
“It is true that there is no smoking gun that proves…an active campaign and campaign of conspiracy to collude during the election,” he said. “Yet when you look at all the dots that are there, it’s quite a bit.”
The book argues Mr. Trump’s campaign participated in a form of “aiding and abetting” Russian interference in the political process, Mr. Corn said. The binary framework advanced by Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Mr. Trump’s administration has washed away opportunities for nuanced discussion on the subject. The administration insists there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia.
In the months following the election, senior officials from the Obama administration said they should have done more to push back on Russian interference. Russian President Vladimir Putin was emboldened by what he was able to get away with during the election, Mr. Isikoff said.
“Whether their goal was to elect Trump or just to sow discord and discredit Hillary [Clinton], that’s a judgement that will probably never be completely settled, but either way they achieved their purposes,” he said. “They got what they wanted.”
Any number of twists and turns in the ongoing investigation could be a headline-grabbing scandal, Mr. Corn said. The book barely scratches the surface on the former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is facing money laundering and conspiracy charges, and has faced scrutiny for his business ties to Russia.
“That in itself is a movie,” Mr. Corn said. “That’s a limited series, you could get seven hours out of that, and in our book it’s two pages.”
