Spies and lies

There are two Trump-Russia ‘conspiracies’. In one, the US President is bought or blackmailed by the Kremlin. In the other, the FBI and the intelligences agencies — the ‘deep state’ — commit a monstrous abuse of power to try to overturn the election result. The first conspiracy is described in the ‘dossier’ written by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele; the second, in a series of memos and leaks over the past week, from Congressional Republicans defending Donald Trump.

They accuse Steele of setting out to destroy Trump for money. They want to see him prosecuted for ‘lying’ to the FBI about his contacts with journalists. They say the FBI used Steele’s information to get a surveillance warrant from the US secret intelligence court without telling the court he was being paid by the Democrats. They support the President’s claim that the Obama administration broke the law to spy on his campaign: ‘Obama tapped my phones!’ The real collusion, they say, was not between Trump and Russia, but between Clinton loyalists in the FBI.