Fear: Trump in the White House(24)
The sources that Steele used for his dossier had not been polygraphed, which made their information uncorroborated, and potentially suspect. But Brennan said the information was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.
The dossier was in circulation among journalists, and Steele had given confidential off-the-record interviews to reporters. It had not yet been published.
On the second page it said: “According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.”
This was designed to obtain “?‘kompromat’ (compromising material) on him,” according to the dossier.
It was a spectacular allegation. There was no available indication who Source D might be.
Since the FBI had the dossier, Comey said, he ought to present it to Trump after their core presentation of the intelligence community assessment. It would be an annex, virtually a footnote.
The 35 pages were reduced to a one-and-three-quarter-page summary that focused on the allegation of coordination between the Russians and the campaign.
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Trump’s response to the growing chorus of news reports saying that the intelligence services had concluded Russia had interfered with the election was belligerence.
On December 9, Trump said those sounding alarm in the intelligence community were “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” He later told Fox News, “They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody sitting in a bed some place.” He tweeted, “Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before the election?”
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On January 5, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Russian hacking. Clapper, who was to brief Trump the next day, testified. Angry at the criticism Trump was leveling at the intelligence community, he stated, “There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement. Public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial. And I’ve received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about . . . the disparagement of the U.S. intelligence community.”
The next day, Kellyanne Conway said on CBS This Morning, “Why would Russia want Donald Trump to win the presidency here? Donald Trump has promised to modernize our nuclear capability.”
In a telephone interview with The New York Times, Trump said, “This is a political witch hunt.”
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Hope Hicks, 28, the public relations specialist who had been Trump’s press secretary during the campaign, was situated in a small 14th floor conference room in Trump Tower during the transition in early January 2017. She had two qualities important to Trump—loyalty and good looks. She had modeled as a teenager and now, with perfectly made-up eyes and long brown hair swept back on one side, she had the polished and glamorous look Trump liked. She also had genuine public relations skills.
Trump had asked her what job she wanted in the White House. Anxious to avoid the daily hand-to-hand combat with the press, she had picked strategic communications director so she could manage his media opportunities, which were, of course, now endless. She’d been the gatekeeper to his interviews. Everyone wanted Trump and she felt that he had lost some of his leverage with the media by being overexposed during the campaign. Exploiting those opportunities would now require careful calibration. As well as anyone, she knew that might be impossible with the president-elect.
Hicks was convinced the media had “oppositional defiance syndrome,” which is a term from clinical psychology most often applied to rebellious children. “Oppositional defiance syndrome” is characterized by excessive anger against authority, vindictiveness and temper tantrums. As far as she was concerned, that described the press.
Hicks was already working on a response to the reports of Russian meddling in the election. The excessive news reporting on what she called the “alleged hacking by Russia” only made the United States look weak and Russia more influential than she thought possible.
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On January 6, the intelligence chiefs came to Trump Tower. Comey met Trump for the first time. In his book, Comey offers a description, perhaps to demonstrate his keen eye: “His suit jacket was open and his tie too long, as usual. His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coiffed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. I remember wondering how long it must have taken him in the morning to get that done. As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”
In the Trump Tower briefing, Clapper summarized the Key Judgments, the heart of any intelligence assessment:
? Russia has had a long-standing desire “to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” but in the 2016 presidential election there was “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity and scope of effort.”