Amateurs vs Pros
After Donald Trump went broke in the ’90s, he altered his business plan. He could no longer borrow money from American financial institutions, because he had stiffed too many of them. His companies evolved into a promotion scheme that sold naming rights, did property management, and did development management on earn-out deals. Without getting too technical, earn-out means the developer gets a percentage of the deal (or profit participation) after the folks who put up the money get an agreed upon level of return on investment. If the deal doesn’t work out well, the developer makes only a fee to cover overhead (or maybe nothing at all). A proper description of this business model could be “hype and hope”. That kind of operation tends to attract a gaggle of camp followers.
During the presidential campaign, one of those camp followers contacted Trump’s son claiming that he had a contact who could deliver dirt on Hillary. Young Trump responded enthusiastically and asked for a meeting. The messenger was a Russian born lawyer, who is credibly alleged to have ties to the Kremlin. The meeting took place in Trump Tower. Since the Tower was then the center of a media hurricane, it was a poor choice of location if the objective was to avoid the glare of publicity. The Russian did not bring dirt on Hillary. She came to lobby for repeal of a law that irritates Vlad and his merry band of Oligarchs. The meeting was so unproductive that Trump’s son-in-law walked out midstream. My label for this affair is amateur oppo research.
Now, we can look at a professional version of oppo research. Hillary and the DNC hire a law firm. That lessens the chance of detection, and, most importantly, creates the lawyer/client shield in the event of discovery. The law firm hires an oppo research firm, creating another cutout layer and another lawyer/client shield. The oppo research firm, whose staff included the wife of a senior FBI official, hires a retired British spy. The spy, who hasn’t been to Russia in 20 years, because his cover there was blown, hires a Russian contact to produce the so-called dossier. Cynical me will bet you $23 to a stale donut that the material in the dossier was generated by Russian intelligence personnel and vetted at the highest levels of the Russian regime.
The Trump dirt is now in play and needs to be deployed. It is successfully shared with the FBI, because the retired spy is also an FBI informant, and perhaps because the oppo researcher's husband is at the heart of a band of Hillary acolytes in the Bureau. It is used as part of a FISA warrant request to surveil a Trump campaign camp follower (which might lead to the production of more dirt). There is a huge fight over the relative importance of the dossier material as backup for the warrant request, which can’t be resolved, because the published material is so severely redacted. What is not redacted is the footnote characterizing the origin of the material. The term obfuscation is too charitable for that footnote.
The icing on the cake is that the dossier is leaked to the media, anonymously sourced.
Hillary and the DNC have covered their tracks with cutouts. They have sucked the FBI into the case, with the potential to dig up more dirt that doesn’t implicate them as the source. They have got the information out into the public domain without fingerprints. That’s how professionals do oppo research.
Looks to me like both camps were attempting to source oppo material from the Russians. Trump’s team failed to get any dirt, and got caught in the process, because they were amateurs. Hillary’s team got unverifiable dirt, and eventually their cutout system got exposed. My conclusion is: Depending on your definition of collusion, either both teams were guilty of attempting to collude with the Russians to win an election, or neither were. Aside from the corruption of the FBI (and the resulting hit to its reputation), I say it’s a tempest in a teapot.
