What follows is a look at the first edition of a book published this month by Eagle View Books in Washington, D.C. The book focuses on a U.S. Special Counsel’s report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, submitted to the U.S. Attorney General on May 12 of this year, and provides a good deal of relevant context. For reasons stated below, this is more of a heads-up about the book than a review. It’s a pre-review. NOTE: This is the second entry today. — MCM
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A book pre-review by Mark Channing Miller
Some people are ideally positioned by training, smarts, skills and aptitude to record what they see going on in a way that contributes to a critically needed understanding of politics and history.
One of them is Andrew Kreig, whose ambitious new book, The Complete Durham ‘Russiagate’ Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud, came out this month. It contains not only the entire report of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel John H. Durham of “Russiagate” fame, but an illuminating author’s preface, a 50+-source bibliography, several related “official reports,” 20 pages of related “news and commentary, and mini-biographies of at least 50 “key figures in ‘Russiagate’ research.” (This blogger has read only the preface so far.)
Kreig (pronounced like the name Craig) was a Hartford Courant reporter for at least nine years before getting a law degree and clerking for a federal judge in Boston. At some point after going into private practice he co-founded the Justice Integrity Project in Washington, D.C., where he lives. JIP combines two of his passions, reporting and the law.
He writes that he has been keeping track of John Dunham since the latter was appointed U.S. Attorney for Connecticut in 2008 and as a reporter he was covering the justice system from Washington. A pre-“Russiagate” happening Kreig reviews in the book is the unprecedented 2006 dismissal by the Justice Department of at least seven U.S. attorneys, “allegedly for reluctance to use their law enforcement powers for White House-directed political reasons, such as criminally prosecuting prominent Democrats in dubious cases.”
These paragraphs are mostly about the book’s preface, which is all I have read at this point, which is why this is a “pre-review” and a media advisory about the book. I’m guessing its “news and commentary” section amounts to an annotation of parts of Dunham’s report, officially titled “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investgations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns.”
Russiagate is complex. As Kreig notes, the term, borrowed in part from the 1970s Watergate case that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency, is used by those who contend (as he does) that Russian government interference influenced the 2016 election sufficiently to determine Republican Donald Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, and also by those who regard the whole affair as something concocted by the Democratic Party and Clinton supporters.
The preface marches through Russiagate’s stages including the issuance in the spring of 2019 of two versions of a report on the findings of then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election (one of them redacted for the public). And it comments on the various ways news organizations and others have covered the matter through the years, often predictably, through a few weeks ago.
It’s appropriate that the hefty tome — the oversized pages include 306 of Durham’s report plus more than 100 of context and critique by others — has the look and feel of a textbook because it is likely to be required reading in college courses in politics, journalism, communications, history, and law. Some of it makes enjoyable reading; in addition to being supremely knowledgeable about the matter, Kreig is a natural raconteur.
One reason I “pre-review” the book here is that any number of articles linked to in this blog have taken the opposite view from Kreig’s, championing Dunham in articles and chiding Democrats and others who blame Clinton’s defeat on Moscow. Privately Kreig has referred to some in that camp as “the Consortium News crowd,” a reference to an online service of news and opinion whose contributors’ articles I have often linked to.
So whatever their views regarding the complex, sometimes misreported saga known as “Russiagate,” interested readers should welcome Kreig’s labor of love to set the record straight. Perhaps one day I’ll do a full review.
