Michael Isikoff - Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

D onald Trump was suspicious from the start.

It was the afternoon of January 6, 2017, and for two hours, the president-elect had sat in a conference room at Trump Tower and listened to the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community brief him on an extraordinary document: a report their agencies had produced concluding that the Russian government had mounted a massive covert influence campaign aimed at disrupting the countrys political system and electing him president of the United States. Trump had controlled his anger during this meetingat times raising questions, expressing doubts, and clinging to the idea that it might all be a lie, part of some Deep State plot to taint his defeat of Hillary Clinton the previous November and undermine his authority as president.

When the spy chiefsDirector of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogersleft the room, one of them stayed behind. FBI director James Comey then handed Trump something else. It was a two-page synopsis of reports prepared by a former British spy alleging that Trump and his campaign had actively collaborated with Moscow. The memos claimed Russian intelligence had collected compromising material on Trump that could be used to blackmail him, including a tape of him engaging in sordid behavior with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. The FBI was not giving him this information because it believed the reports, Comey explained to Trump. In fact, the Bureau hadnt confirmed any of the lurid detailsand Comey told him that he was not personally under investigation. But the material was circulating within the media and might become public. The intelligence community, Comey said, merely wanted to provide him a heads-up.

When Comey left, Trump was incensed. Its bullshit, he told his aides. None of this was true. The discussion turned to why Comey had gone through this exercise. Suddenly, it all made sense to Trump. He knew exactly what this was.

Its a shakedown, Trump exclaimed. They were blackmailing him. Comeyno doubt, with the approval of the otherswas trying to send him a message. They had something on him.

Trump had seen this sort of thing before. Certainly, his old mentor Roy Cohnthe notorious fixer for mobsters and crooked polsknew how this worked. So too did Comeys most famous predecessor, J. Edgar Hoover, who had quietly let it be known to politicians and celebrities that he possessed information that could destroy their careers in a New York minute.

Now, as Trump saw it, Comey and the rest were trying to do this to him. But he was not about to let them.

Trumps anger that day helped set the tone for one of the most tumultuous presidencies in American history. His first year in office would be filled with fits of rage at his political enemies, bizarre early-morning tweet storms, and repeated denunciations of the purveyors of fake news who challenged his honesty, his competency, and even his mental stability. Much of this turmoil related to the relentless investigations of Russias attack on the 2016 electiona subject that infuriated Trump more than anything else. Russia had become a rallying cry for his tormentorsthe original sin of his presidency, a scandal that raised questions about both his legitimacy and the nations vulnerability to covert information warfare. Yet Trump defiantly refused to acknowledge Russias extensive assault as a real and significant event. In his mind, any inquiry into the matter was nothing but an effort to destroy him.

The Russia scandal, though, dated back decades. For years, Trump had pursued business deals in Russia, continuing to do so even through the first months of his presidential campaignand this colored how he would engage with the autocratic, repressive, and dangerous Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. The Trump-Russia tale was rooted in the larger postCold War geopolitical clash between the United States and Russia, a conflict that Moscow in 2016 shifted into the cyber shadows to gain a strategic advantage.

With Trump unable or unwilling to come to terms with Putins war on American democracy, it fell to government investigators and reporters to piece together the complete storyan endeavor that could take years to complete. This book is a first step toward that. No matter how Trump regarded the scandal, one thing was for certain: To prevent a future attack, the American public and its leaders had to know and face what had occurred. A thorough accounting was a national necessity.