House Intelligence witnesses ready to talk Russia

The hearing, which will focus on the first volume of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and what lessons can be gleaned from its counterintelligence findings, continues the committee’s hearings on the report.

Douglas and McCarthy each told the Washington Examiner they remain concerned about the ongoing threat Russia poses as 2020 draws closer. But the two diverged on several issues.

Russian election interference

Douglas said the Russians likely started laying plans as early as 2014. She said Russia successfully used sophisticated techniques “through social media, through very aggressive hacking, and basic criminal activity to steal private information and emails and to stage that out over a period of time where it really benefited them.” Their actions in 2016, however, were an escalation.

“I really do think the use of social media and the aggressive use of hacking was unprecedented for U.S. elections — maybe not totally, but to a certain extent,” Douglas said. “And what they illustrated was their ability to take advantage of vulnerabilities in our society. And their effectiveness was really unprecedented as far as election influence.”

While McCarthy said he already believed Russia was a threat to be taken seriously, his take on Volume One is it reveals some serious issues.

McCarthy stressed that this was “pretty typical Russian behavior,” and Russia’s activities in 2016 were “not unprecedented.”

“The Russians have been interfering in American elections for decades — that’s what they do,” he said.

And, he said, the Obama administration knew but chose to mute its response.

“There’s almost nothing about Russia’s interference in the campaign that wasn’t known to the president and the Obama administration in real time, and they didn’t think it was that big of a deal at the time that it happened,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s largely because everybody thought that Mrs. Clinton was going to win, and so this took on a greater dimension when she lost.”

Douglas, however, said that wasn’t clear. There might not be an answer to “the big question” of whether the Obama administration had done enough to counteract Russia’s efforts in 2016, Douglas said, because of the secrecy of the intelligence community’s actions. And she wasn’t sure when in 2016 the Obama administration had figured out the full extent of what the Russians were up to.

“We do know that they were aware of certain aspects of it, but I’m not sure if the greater government was,” she said.

Douglas said she worried that some Republicans’ hesitancy to acknowledge Russian election interference could hinder the nation’s ability to counter it in the future.

“Let’s understand the threats that currently exist and let’s start working on a plan to make sure that we’re in front of them, and, as best we can, prepare for 2020,” she said.

McCarthy said he was concerned that the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to counter Russia and that the U.S. needs to show foreign powers interfering is not in their best interest.

“That doesn’t mean we have to go to war with them,” he said, but “it certainly means that we have to exhibit to them that they can be hurt by this as much or more than we can.”

And while the U.S. should definitely protect itself from future interference, he said, “we shouldn’t get carried away like this is the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

Christopher Steele and FISA

McCarthy said he was astonished by the FBI’s use the unverified dossier, which was packed with salacious and unverified claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia and formed a key part of the FBI’s applications used to justify Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

McCarthy said that Steele, a former MI6 agent, was often “at least two hops away” from the sources in his dossier, yet the FBI relied upon his trustworthiness rather than fact-checking his allegations.

Douglas largely defended the FBI’s use of British ex-spy Steele’s unverified dossier, saying that Steele had provided reliable information in the past, which she was sure factored into the dossier’s inclusion into the Carter Page FISA.

“The FBI had obviously sourced it — they sourced it to a person who provided reliable information in the past,” she said.

DOJ’s investigation of the investigators

Douglas is skeptical of the probe into the original investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia being carried out by Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, especially while DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz hasn’t finished his own inquiry yet into alleged FISA abuse by the Justice Department and the FBI.

“I think it’s a little premature honestly with the IG continuing to do an ongoing investigation,” Douglas said.

McCarthy supported DOJ’s inquiry and critiqued what he saw as a largely incurious media. “Here we have foreign powers that were giving information to the Obama administration and we have foreign spies hired to give information to the Clinton campaign, and they’re not particularly interested.”

And McCarthy said he agreed that Trump’s friendly comments toward Putin and his skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community are troubling.

“I get it. I’m totally with you. We should look into all of that, but you don’t want to see what’s behind curtain number two?” he said.