The story begins with Christopher Steele – a former MI6 officer turned private intelligence operative – who was initially engaged by a Republican donor and then subsequently by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the 2016 campaign. The resulting Steele dossier was incendiary. It alleged that the Russians had been cultivating and supporting Trump for at least five years, that Trump and his inner circle had accepted a regular flow of Kremlin intelligence on political rivals, and that Russian intelligence had compromising information on Trump himself. Steele passed on his conclusions to the FBI, which had already separately commenced an investigation into Russian election interference based on information provided (we now know) by Australia’s high commissioner in London, Alexander Downer.

Through a series of set pieces, Collusion establishes the diverse and extensive links between the Trump organisation and the Russian state, spanning more than three decades. Harding – author of The Snowden Files: The inside story of the world’s most wanted man (2014) and an engaging writer – paints scenes ably and sketches characters before proceeding to the substance of each chapter. Observations from Harding’s own experience as a foreign correspondent in Russia add colour and verisimilitude. Three areas of concern for Trump emerge from these episodes: financial links with Russia; collusion during the election campaign; and potential obstruction of justice charges.

‘Follow the money.’ Harding, embracing the famous (but apocryphal) Watergate credo, closely examines the financial ties between Trump’s team and Russia. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort all had extensive commercial dealings and relationships with Russia prior to, and in some cases after, taking office. Trump’s own labyrinthine finances and commercial interests escaped serious scrutiny during the 2016 election campaign because Trump refused to release his tax returns or make significant financial disclosures. Harding asserts that ‘Trump’s property empire effectively functioned as a laundromat for Moscow money.’

Even while he was campaigning for the presidency, Trump’s associates were seeking Russian approvals and financing to build a tower in Moscow. Harding also posits that Trump’s atypical financing arrangements with Deutsche Bank may be linked to the bank’s role as a harbour for Russian money. While these matters raise unprecedented conflicts of interest in the Trump administration, there is little hard evidence of illegality at this stage. However, special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s inquiry has recently widened to include financial assistance that Trump received from Russian sources.

There is no actual crime of ‘collusion’ in US law, as Trump’s lawyers point out. Yet, if Trump’s team abetted Russian intelligence or made use of information produced by Russian operations against the Democrats, this will have significant political (and potentially legal) implications. As Collusion details, both Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law and adviser) were eager to entertain approaches from Russian government intermediaries who offered damaging material on Hillary Clinton during the campaign. After the election, Kushner requested that then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, set up a secret, secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin, hidden from American intelligence agencies. The request was at once ‘staggeringly naïve’ and breathtakingly disloyal.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at the APEC summit in 2017 (source: kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons)

Collusion may not technically be a crime, but lying to federal investigators is. To date, Flynn and former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russia and other Trump advisers have been indicted. Mueller has recently announced his intention to interview Trump. In light of the president’s previous terminological inexactitudes (to borrow Winston Churchill’s phrase), any interview may present serious risks.

President Trump’s greatest exposure, however, may come from his firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, the event that prompted the appointment of a special prosecutor. In January, Trump told Comey: ‘I need loyalty; I expect loyalty.’ Two weeks later he asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn: ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, letting Flynn go. He is a good guy.’ After failing to receive the sought-after assurances, Trump fired Comey. The official reason given for Comey’s firing – that Comey mishandled the investigation into Clinton’s private email server during the 2016 campaign – was implausible, suggesting other motives.

Collusion effectively sets out the case against Trump but nevertheless suffers from several weaknesses. Much of the reporting will quickly be overtaken by events. Further, Harding’s tendency to speculate about mysterious deaths, potential meetings between Trump and senior Russian political and business figures, and the extent to which Trump associates were acting on higher orders weakens his core argument.

Collusion rarely considers the broader implications of the highly suggestive material that it depicts. The matters raised in Collusion portend a major test for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. Not since Watergate has a sitting president been so deeply involved in a criminal investigation. Watergate was a shock to the US political system, but in the end Richard Nixon was forced to resign. There were enough Republican senators to block Nixon’s conviction in any impeachment proceedings if they voted along party lines, but Nixon rightly assumed that many Republicans would still vote to convict. Would Republican Congressmen and Senators act with the same higher purpose today? What are the consequences if the Mueller investigation finds that President Trump engaged in unlawful behaviour, but the House refuses to impeach the president?

True to form, the president has described the Russia allegations as ‘fake news’, ‘a made up story’, and ‘a total political witch hunt’. By methodically setting out the extraordinary and altogether suspicious number of connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, Harding gives the lie to these claims. What the evidence will show in the end remains uncertain, but Collusion makes for fascinating reading in the interim.