THE PLOT TO KILL THE PRESIDENT

This is the Russia investigation retold as a political thriller, with the paper trail front and center: who paid for the dossier, how it reached the FBI, and what the watchdog reports later found. Readers who followed the headlines but never the chain of custody will finally see the whole machine assembled. It will inflame Trump loyalists and enrage his critics, which is exactly why it's worth reading critically from either camp.

1. 1

   Act 1

   A Worried Spy Walks Into a Pub

   In spring 2016 at a London pub, former MI6 officer Christopher Steele meets with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and Ohr's wife Nellie, a Russia analyst for Fusion GPS. Steele says he is 'very worried' about Donald Trump's ties to Russia and that his research has uncovered 'a big story.' In early 2016, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is hired by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. After Trump secures the Republican nomination, the Free Beacon stops funding the research, and Simpson approaches the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign through lawyer Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, who retains Fusion GPS on their behalf. In June 2016, Glenn Simpson hires Christopher Steele, who runs the London-based intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. Steele's first memo, dated June 20, 2016, alleges that the Kremlin has been 'cultivating, supporting and assisting' Trump for at least five years and that Russian intelligence has compromising material on him, including 'perverted sexual acts' at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. Steele, a Russia expert who ran MI6's Moscow desk, writes a series of memos that become the 'Steele dossier.' Fusion GPS hired Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and the dossier was circulated to the FBI, State Department, and media during the campaign.

2. 2

   Act 2

   Crossfire Hurricane

   In July 2016, Steele meets with his FBI handler Michael Gaeta, the FBI's legal attaché in Rome who had previously worked with Steele on a FIFA corruption case, in London. Steele tells Gaeta that his sources say Trump campaign adviser Carter Page met with Kremlin officials in Moscow. The FBI opens a counterintelligence investigation, code-named 'Crossfire Hurricane,' on July 31, 2016, based in part on a tip from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the UK. Downer reports that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos told him over drinks at a London bar in May 2016 that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails. Downer reported the conversation to his government, which then passed it to the U.S. On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. The meeting was arranged after Trump Jr. was promised 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.' In September 2016, Steele meets with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec at the State Department. Kavalec later writes a memo noting that Steele's claims about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen meeting with Kremlin officials in Prague are contradicted by evidence that Cohen was in the U.S. at the time. In October 2016, the FBI obtains a FISA warrant to monitor Carter Page. The application relies heavily on the Steele dossier, despite the FBI's knowledge that Steele was working for the Clinton campaign and had been terminated as an FBI source for leaking to the media.

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Machine Turns

   In January 2017, just before Trump's inauguration, BuzzFeed publishes the full Steele dossier. CNN reports that Trump was briefed on the dossier's salacious allegations by then-FBI Director James Comey. Steele had met with multiple journalists, including from Mother Jones and The New York Times, in the fall of 2016. On May 9, 2017, President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. In a memo written after a February 2017 Oval Office meeting, Comey says Trump told him, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,' referring to the investigation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate 'any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.' Mueller assembles a team of prosecutors, many of whom donated to Democrats. In December 2017, Michael Flynn, Trump's first National Security Adviser, pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition. Flynn's sentencing memo later reveals that FBI agents, including Peter Strzok, deliberately did not warn Flynn he could be charged with a crime during their January 2017 interview. In December 2017, the Justice Department's inspector general releases text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. Strzok writes, 'We'll stop it,' referring to a Trump presidency, and calls Trump an 'idiot' and a 'loathsome human being.' The 'insurance policy' phrase from a Strzok-Page text is interpreted as proof the FBI intended to prevent a Trump presidency from the start.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Collapse

   In August 2017, Glenn Simpson testifies before the House Intelligence Committee. He reveals that Fusion GPS was paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and that Steele told him he was 'desperate' to prevent Trump from becoming president. Simpson says Steele's sources were 'a random group of people.' In June 2018, the Justice Department inspector general's report reveals that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe authorized two FBI officials to speak with a Wall Street Journal reporter about the Clinton Foundation investigation in October 2016. McCabe later lies about the leak to investigators and is fired in March 2018. In 2016, the FBI sends a confidential human source, Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to meet with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Halper invites Papadopoulos to London in September 2016, pays him $3,000 for a paper, and asks if the Trump campaign is working with Russia. The Mueller Report, released in April 2019, concludes that 'the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' On obstruction of justice, the report does not reach a conclusion but lists episodes for Congress to consider. In July 2019, Robert Mueller testifies before Congress. He appears confused and unable to answer basic questions about his report. When asked about Fusion GPS, he says, 'I'm not familiar with that.' The hearing is widely seen as a disaster for Democrats hoping to build momentum for impeachment. In December 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz releases a report on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. It finds 17 'significant errors and omissions' in the FISA applications for Carter Page, including that the FBI knew Steele's dossier was unverified and that Page had been a CIA source. In 2020, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassifies transcripts showing that Obama administration officials, including Joe Biden, requested the 'unmasking' of Michael Flynn's name in intelligence reports during the transition. The list of officials includes Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and UN Ambassador Samantha Power. In September 2021, Special Counsel John Durham indicts Michael Sussmann, a Perkins Coie lawyer who worked for the Clinton campaign. The indictment alleges Sussmann lied to FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he said he was not acting on behalf of any client while sharing data about Trump and Russia. In May 2022, a jury acquits Michael Sussmann after a trial in Washington, D.C. Durham's prosecution fails to convince jurors that Sussmann lied. The verdict is a major setback for Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. In the epilogue, Smith argues that the Russia investigation was a 'plot' by Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials to undermine Trump's presidency. He writes that the scheme relied on the Steele dossier, which was 'a collection of rumors and unverified allegations' paid for by the Clinton campaign and fed to the FBI and the press. The plot's goal was to 'nullify the 2016 election' and 'remove Trump from office' by framing his campaign for colluding with Russia — a 'soft coup' attempt by the 'Deep State.' The plot failed to remove Trump from office but succeeded in crippling his presidency and damaging public trust in U.S. institutions. Smith argues the ultimate goal was not just to remove Trump but to re-establish the foreign policy consensus of the 'Blob' (the bipartisan foreign policy establishment) that Trump threatened.

• CChristopher SteeleEx-MI6 Russia hand running Orbis Business Intelligence in London, hired to prove Trump's ties to Moscow. He becomes 'desperate' to stop Trump, and his unverified memos end up powering an FBI investigation he can no longer control.
• GGlenn SimpsonFormer Wall Street Journal reporter who co-founded Fusion GPS and shopped the Trump opposition file from the Free Beacon to the Clinton campaign. Under congressional testimony he concedes his star spy's sources were 'a random group of people.'
• JJames ComeyFBI Director who briefs Trump on the dossier and runs the early Russia probe. Fired by Trump in May 2017, his dismissal detonates the special counsel investigation.
• RRobert MuellerFormer FBI Director appointed special counsel in May 2017 with a team heavy on Democratic donors. After two years and no conspiracy finding, he stumbles through his own congressional testimony.
• MMichael FlynnTrump's first National Security Adviser, caught in an FBI interview where agents never warned him lying was a crime. He pleads guilty and becomes the plot's first scalp.
• PPeter StrzokFBI agent who interviewed Flynn and texted Lisa Page that the bureau would 'stop' a Trump presidency. His messages turn the investigation's bias from suspicion into evidence.
• DDonald TrumpThe target: a candidate the Kremlin allegedly 'cultivated,' then a president hunted by his own intelligence agencies. He survives the plot but spends his term crippled by it.

The dossier

A stack of unverified memos paid for by a political campaign, treated as gospel by the FBI and the press. Its journey from opposition research to FISA evidence mirrors the whole plot: rumor laundered into state power, then exposed as rumor.

The London pub

Where Steele confesses he is 'very worried' about Trump. The scene stands for the plot's origin: not an American courtroom but a foreign meeting of spies, lawyers, and analysts, the establishment conspiring offstage before the public ever hears of it.

Crossfire Hurricane

The code name itself suggests a storm aimed at a campaign. It stands for the moment private opposition research becomes a state investigation, the point where the plot stops being a story someone wrote and starts being one the government pursues.

The text messages

Strzok's 'We'll stop it' and the 'insurance policy' are the plot's confession, bias preserved in the FBI's own words. Their release marks the turn from Smith's narrative of suspicion to one of proof, the instant the investigators become the investigated.

The ending is deliberately anticlimactic: no one is convicted of the plot itself, and Durham's one trial ends in acquittal. Smith reads this not as vindication but as escape, the scheme succeeded in crippling a presidency and shredding public trust even though it failed to remove the man. The competing reading is obvious and worth holding: the same facts can be told as an intelligence community responding to genuine Russian interference, with sloppy tradecraft rather than conspiracy. What makes Smith's version land is the accumulation of small, documented failures, the FISA errors, the unwarned Flynn, the texts, rather than any single smoking gun. Whether that adds up to a 'plot' or to institutional arrogance is the question the book leaves you arguing about, which is arguably its real purpose.

1. 1.Does the distinction between 'opposition research' and 'intelligence' collapse once a campaign's paid product enters a FISA application, and where exactly should the line sit?
2. 2.If the FISA court received seventeen erroneous applications, what structural reforms could actually prevent the weaponization Smith describes, or is the problem unfixable?
3. 3.Smith calls the affair a 'soft coup'; his critics would call it accountability. What evidentiary standard should separate the two labels, and does this book meet it?

Anyone who lived through the Russia headlines and wants the whole chain, from a London pub to a D.C. jury verdict, in one gripping account. Essential for political junkies of every camp, and for readers who like their conspiracies footnoted.

FAQ