michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: In the phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry, President Trump asked Ukraine for two different investigations. Scott Shane on the unexpected story behind one of them. It’s Tuesday, November 26.

archived recording We are joined right now — it is our great pleasure to welcome the president of the United States, Donald Trump, calling in. Mr. Trump, good morning to you. archived recording (donald trump) Good morning. archived recording Good to have you on “Fox & Friends” today. As you —

scott shane

So on Friday, President Trump called in to “Fox & Friends,” one of his favorite shows on Fox News, and what ensued was, really, a 53-minute stream of consciousness.

archived recording (donald trump) This was spying on my campaign, something that has never been done in the history of our country. They thought I was going to win, and they said, how could we stop him? You know, a lot of people say, deep state. I don’t like to use the word deep state. I just say they’re really bad, sick people. archived recording Mr. President, you said —

scott shane

And one of the things he talked about was a theory that’s really at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

archived recording (donald trump) It’s very interesting, they have the server, right, from the D.N.C., Democratic National Committee. archived recording Who has the server? archived recording (donald trump) The F.B.I. went in, and they told him, get out of here. You’re not getting it. We’re not giving it to you. They gave the server to CrowdStrike or whatever it’s called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian.

scott shane

And it was the same theory that he brought up with the president of Ukraine, President Zelensky, in this famous phone call on July 25. The theory, the false theory, is that Ukraine, and not Russia, was responsible for the hacking of the 2016 election, and that Ukraine was assisted in this by a company called CrowdStrike.

michael barbaro

Scott, what would make the president believe this theory and mention this company by name?

scott shane

Well, let’s start with the undisputed facts. Back in the spring of 2016, of course it was the middle of the presidential race, and the Democratic National Committee discovers that its computers have been hacked. So they call their cybersecurity contractor, CrowdStrike. And CrowdStrike is a California company that was co-founded by a fellow who immigrated as a child from Russia, and, really, one of the top cybersecurity companies out there. And the Democratic National Committee asked them to come to Washington and examine these computers and basically do what any cybersecurity company does, which is kick out the hackers, kind of clean up the computer servers, and make sure the organization can keep functioning. So essentially, CrowdStrike and the D.N.C. report this to the F.B.I. Hacking is, of course, a crime, so the F.B.I. begins its own investigation. And CrowdStrike is in communication the whole time with the F.B.I. And so they’re essentially working alongside each other and zeroing in, in part, on who did it by looking at, essentially, the fingerprints of the burglars who broke into the computer system, the sort of telltale signs that particular hacking groups leave behind. And all those telltale signs were pointing to Russia, and, in particular, to hackers who work for the Russian government. And they did it, American intelligence agencies conclude, to assist Donald Trump and especially to damage Hillary Clinton in this presidential race.

michael barbaro

So where does this Trump theory that he talks about on Fox News, that becomes part of impeachment inquiry, where does that intersect with the story that you just laid out, the undisputed fact story?

scott shane

Well, President Trump takes the players that exist in real life, but in each case sort of distorts the facts. And the main purpose of the distortions seems to be to bring Ukraine in at each point. So he says that CrowdStrike, this California company, is Ukrainian, owned by a rich Ukrainian. Not true. He says the F.B.I. dropped the ball on this investigation and turned everything over to CrowdStrike and let them essentially take over. Not true. And he says that as a result of CrowdStrike taking over, because he thinks CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company, the server, the D.N.C. server that he’s very focused on, has somehow ended up in Ukraine. It’s hidden in Ukraine. So the gist of what he’s saying to the American public is, you can’t believe what the F.B.I. told you about the hacking of the 2016 election. In fact, the F.B.I. messed up this investigation, and all signs point not to Russia, but to Ukraine.

michael barbaro

So this is a pretty unified theory that CrowdStrike is Ukrainian, CrowdStrike gets the computer servers, CrowdStrike places them in Ukraine. But none of it is true.

scott shane

Exactly.

michael barbaro

Why does Trump want Ukraine to be involved and not Russia?

scott shane

So Trump first mentioned this false theory about Ukraine and CrowdStrike back in April of 2017. It was in the middle of an interview with the Associated Press. It was the early months of his presidency. And I think in some ways he was still smarting from the implication that he had had Russian help and that maybe his victory was not legitimate. And I think he’s very worried about that. You see lots of signs of his concern about that. So if he can somehow disprove or divert attention from the notion that Russia helped him win, he’s psychologically and politically a lot better off. And Ukraine is sort of the perfect fall guy in this story. Russia and Ukraine are at war, and Ukraine, while I don’t think it’s fair to say that Ukraine interfered in the election, it is true that a few Ukrainian officials criticized Trump on the campaign trail, things that he was saying, and in some cases, praised Hillary Clinton. So if he can shift the blame from Russia to Ukraine, he can essentially burnish his victory and remove this cloud over his presidency and make the claim that his victory is all the greater, because not only did no foreign actor help him, but he had to overcome interference by these hostile Ukrainians, who, as he put it once, “tried to take me down.”

michael barbaro

So in this theory, which, as you just said, is not true, but in this theory, he’s not the beneficiary of an election surreptitiously aided by Russia. He is the victor over an obstacle course laid out by Ukraine?

scott shane

Exactly. So it wasn’t until this same false theory about CrowdStrike in Ukraine turned up in the White House reconstruction of his July call to the president of Ukraine that everybody began focusing on it. So everybody asked, why did Trump come to believe that Ukraine and not Russia was somehow involved in the hacking? And where did this bogus theory come from? But I couldn’t find the origin of that story. And so it remained a little bit of a mystery. And then new evidence came to light. And it turned out that its origin was even more nefarious than we had imagined. [MUSIC]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Scott, what have you found out about where this theory actually came from?

scott shane

So Trump’s false theory came, it turns out, not from some wacky website or from Twitter. It may have actually originated with the Russians.

michael barbaro

Wow. How would that have worked?

scott shane

So we learned this new information from F.B.I. documents obtained by BuzzFeed, the news organization, under the Freedom of Information Act. And it turns out that Trump heard from his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, that Ukraine and not Russia might be responsible for the hacking. And Manafort, apparently, according to these new F.B.I. documents, heard this from Konstantin Kilimnik, who was an associate of his, who was a dual Russian-Ukrainian national with very close ties to Russian intelligence.

michael barbaro

So a man with ties to Russian intelligence who works closely with Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, gives the information to Manafort, and, our understanding goes, Manafort would have then passed that on to Trump. And if what we know about Russia and the way it handles information is true, this would have potentially been a deliberate misinformation campaign?

scott shane

That’s right, because it was certainly in Russia’s interest to shift the blame for interference in the 2016 election away from its intelligence agencies — to anywhere, but to its enemy, Ukraine, that’s all the better.

michael barbaro

And why would Manafort believe this man who’s telling him that it’s Ukraine, not Russia, behind this meddling?

scott shane

Well, Manafort, folks might remember, was a longtime political operative in Ukraine, but he was working Ukraine on behalf of a pro-Russia political party. So his political sympathies were on the Russian side. So in that sense, it would make sense for him to try to turn the Ukrainians into a scapegoat for Russia’s hacking.

michael barbaro

So everyone in this chain of information has some motivation to support this theory. The Russians, of course — they want to distract from what they’ve just done. This man who gives it to Manafort, because he works with the Russians. Manafort, because he works for Ukrainian businesspeople who support Russia, and, finally, Donald Trump, who wants anyone other than the Russians to be responsible for this.

scott shane

Exactly. I think we don’t know whether any of these parties actually believes any of this stuff in their heart of hearts. But it’s certainly in their political interest to pass it along.

michael barbaro

Scott, were you surprised that two years after President Trump first publicly raises this theory about Ukraine, he brings it up in a phone call with a foreign leader, despite all of the evidence that it wasn’t true?

scott shane

Yes, I was, because there had been a very important development.

archived recording (rod rosenstein) Good afternoon. Today, a grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment presented by the special counsel’s office. The indictment charges 12 Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

scott shane

And that was the indictment by Robert Mueller’s investigators of a number of Russian military intelligence officers.

archived recording (rod rosenstein) The defendants worked for two units of the main intelligence directorate of the Russian general staff.

scott shane

And this indictment was exquisitely detailed, down to the point of, like, what they googled before they carried out the hacking.

archived recording (rod rosenstein) First, they used a scheme known as spear phishing, which involves sending misleading email messages and tricking the users into disclosing their passwords and security information.

scott shane

And it had their names, it had their ranks, it had their locations.

archived recording (rod rosenstein) And we need to keep moving forward to preserve our values, protect against future interference, and defend America.

scott shane

So it seemed to remove all doubts about the role not only of Russians, but of specific Russian intelligence officers and the Russian state in carrying out that operation. And nevertheless, here the president was, once again reviving the notion that somehow Ukraine had carried out the hack, and presenting this theory of his not just to anyone, but to the president of Ukraine, and essentially trying to pressure the president of Ukraine into launching an investigation into this completely baseless theory.

michael barbaro

So of course, this pressure that the president puts on Ukraine’s president becomes central to the impeachment inquiry. So how has this theory factored into and been talked about in the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry?

archived recording (adam schiff) Today, we are joined by Dr. Fiona Hill and David Holmes.

scott shane

So there was really a standoff between the diplomatic professionals and the real experts on Russia and Ukraine and the Republicans on the committee.

archived recording (fiona hill) Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Nunes, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. I have a short opening statement. Based on questions and statements I’ve heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.

scott shane

The professionals, in particular Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council —

archived recording (fiona hill) This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

scott shane

— were emphatic that there was absolutely no truth to the idea that Ukraine was somehow responsible for the hack.

archived recording (adam schiff) [GAVEL BANG] Committee will turn to order. Mr. Jordan, you’re recognized for five minutes. archived recording (jim jordan) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ambassador, thank you for being here —

scott shane

But the Republicans on the committee, while not entirely embracing Trump’s theory, kept trying to open the door to it.

archived recording (jim jordan) Ambassador, should ambassadors ever try to influence host country elections? archived recording (fiona hill) No.

scott shane

Representative Jim Jordan, one of the most aggressive defenders of the president, said, well —

archived recording (jim jordan) But that’s exactly what happened in 2016. In August of 2016, the very month you went to Ukraine as our ambassador, the Ukrainian ambassador here in the United States, Ambassador Chaly, wrote an op-ed in The Hill, said this, “Trump’s comments send wrong message.”

scott shane

Wasn’t it true that there were some Ukrainian politicians who had criticized Trump? In other words, isn’t it possible that some Ukrainians were trying to, as the president said, take him down?

archived recording (jim jordan) You see why maybe, maybe the president was a little concerned about what went on in Ukraine?

scott shane

They weren’t completely embracing his theory, but they were bolstering it as well as they could.

archived recording (chris wallace) Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator, welcome back to Fox News Sunday. archived recording (john kennedy) Thank you, Chris.

scott shane

And this has actually continued after the last testimony at the hearings. You had Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who, when pressed by Chris Wallace of Fox News —

archived recording (chris wallace) Senator Kennedy, who do you believe was responsible for hacking the D.N.C. and Clinton campaign computers, their emails? Was it Russia or Ukraine? archived recording (john kennedy) I don’t know, nor do you, nor do any of us.

scott shane

— said, well, I don’t know, and you don’t know.

archived recording (chris wallace) Let me just interrupt to say, the entire intelligence community says it was Russia. archived recording (john kennedy) Right, but it could also be Ukraine. I’m not saying that I know one way or the other. I’m saying that Ms. Hill is entitled to her opinion. But no rebuttal evidence was allowed to be offered.

scott shane

He continued to insist that it’s all a little bit fuzzy, it’s a little murky, we don’t really know.

archived recording (john kennedy) We don’t know if Ukraine did that. We don’t know to what extent, because they won’t let the president offer his evidence. And that’s —

scott shane

In other words, we’ve left behind the crystal clarity of the Mueller indictment last year that said exactly who was responsible for the hacking, and we’ve entered this sort of twilight zone, where we don’t really know what’s true and what’s untrue. And that sort of is a license for President Trump to say whatever he wants.

michael barbaro

Scott, what have we learned from the journey of this conspiracy theory? And just how many people seem to be willing to tolerate it?

scott shane

Well, I mean, first of all, this conspiracy theory concerns something of really the utmost importance, which is the biggest interference by a foreign power in American democracy in history. And so it would seem very important that we get the facts straight and keep them straight. But what we’ve learned from the durability of this conspiracy theory is that when false beliefs arise and linger, not on the fringes of the internet but right inside the Oval Office, and you have the president of the United States repeatedly stating them from the biggest bully pulpit in the world, it becomes a sort of force field that warps everything around it. And the politics of the impeachment are such that Trump’s Republican allies see their own political futures as very much tied to his, so they can’t confront him and say, Mr. President, what you’re saying is not true. So this false conspiracy theory lingers. And the president keeps talking about it. [MUSIC]

michael barbaro

Scott, thank you very much.

scott shane

Thank you, Michael.

archived recording (john kennedy) The only evidence I have, and I think it’s overwhelming, is that it was Russia who tried to hack the D.N.C. computer. I’ve seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it.

michael barbaro

On Monday night, during an interview on CNN, Republican Senator John Kennedy backtracked on his comments about Ukraine, saying he was wrong to suggest that Ukraine might have hacked the D.N.C. servers.

archived recording (chris cuomo) Let me stop you for a second. You just did something we’ve never heard this president do, which was say, hey, I know I said that. I was wrong. So good, let’s check a big honking box. You don’t think Ukraine was the one to look at the server. Then why do you think the president keeps saying something that he also knows is not true?

michael barbaro

But Kennedy insisted, without evidence, that Ukraine tried to interfere in the 2016 election.

archived recording (john kennedy) Well, here’s why. There is a lot of evidence, proven and unproven, everybody’s got an opinion, that Ukraine did try to interfere, along with Russia and probably others in the 2016 election. archived recording (chris cuomo) What evidence? archived recording (john kennedy) In January —

michael barbaro