In op-ed, Trump says Russia probe paved way for war in Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump claims in a new op-ed that the federal investigation into possible ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russia government helped lead to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

In the essay for Newsweek, Trump wrote that the investigation prevented his administration from developing stronger relations with the Kremlin. 

“Instead of having a better relationship with Russia as I worked to build, we now have a proxy war with Russia, fueled in part by the lingering fumes of Russiagate delirium,” the former president wrote. “Ukraine has been utterly devastated. Untold numbers of people have been killed. And we could very well end up in World War III.”

The front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Trump has repeatedly claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been president at the time.

In the op-ed, Trump listed various impacts the Russian investigation had, and he called the American people “the real victims” of the probe.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” but did not yield sufficient evidence the campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. 

The investigation, however, led to 34 people and three companies being indicted. Six Trump advisers were convicted of crimes that included making false statements to the FBI or Congress or committing financial offenses.

In May, John Durham, the special counsel appointed during the Trump administration to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, released a report criticizing the FBI for opening a full investigation without sufficiently scrutinizing information. 

While Trump and his supporters promised for years that Durham would expose a “deep state” conspiracy, the special counsel did not prosecute any high-level officials or charge anyone with conspiracy. He brought two cases to trial, both ending in acquittals. 

Durham did secure a guilty plea by an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email used to renew a court-approved wiretap of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Durham’s team negotiated a plea deal with Clinesmith that resulted in no jail time.

Regardless, Trump wrote that the Durham report was clear evidence that “the Russia Hoax was the most atrocious weaponization of our government in American history,” adding, “It was a crime like no other.”

“The destruction this hoax caused to America is almost incalculable,” Trump said. “It subverted our democracy, it threatened our security, and it endangered our freedom.”

He also said it opened the door for Democrats to attack free speech by calling for online censorship “under the guise of combatting so-called ‘Russian disinformation’—which they quickly defined to include any content they did not like.”

Trump did not acknowledge that the U.S. intelligence community and a bipartisan Senate report concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 president election using a vast disinformation campaign authorized by Putin with the goal of helping Trump win.

The former president also accused intelligence agencies, the media and tech companies of using Russian disinformation as a pretext to try to censor reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election.

Now facing federal and New York state criminal charges — with additional indictments possible in the coming days and weeks — Trump said the “Russia Hoax normalized the weaponization of law enforcement against the Left’s political enemies.”

“These corrupted agencies have interfered in every election since 2016—and they are interfering in the 2024 election before our very eyes,” Trump wrote.

“There must be a reckoning. Accountability now lies in the hands of the voters. The Durham Report has made the stakes abundantly clear, and now the choice is ours: either the Deep State destroys America, or we destroy the Deep State.”

A 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general found flaws with the Russia investigation but concluded there was an adequate basis to open the inquiry and there was no evidence the probe was influenced by political bias.