The media and Clinton's Russia collusion hoax
Within hours of her 2016 presidential campaign loss, a devastated Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat not to the American voters who rejected her, but to Russia, echoing a campaign theme she had been developing for months. “Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss” and “kept pointing her finger” at Russia, according to Shattered, a 2017 book about her campaign—“Her team coalesced around the idea that Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign.”
The corporate media were also devastated, as they had spent the entire campaign mocking the idea that Trump and his anti-establishment positions on foreign policy, trade, and wokeness could appeal to voters. To the extent possible, they would help promote Clinton’s blame game.
In early January 2017, the Clinton campaign’s “Steele dossier”—a secretly funded collection of made-up stories and gossip alleging that Russia had dirt on Trump and that Trump was colluding with Russia against the United States—was published. Washington would be consumed by the Russia collusion hoax for the next two-and-a-half years. The investigations it spurred would bankrupt Trump associates, destroy lives, and hamstring Trump’s ability to govern. It led to draconian censorship campaigns against conservatives. It hurt Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 general election. But no evidence was found that a single American, much less Trump himself, conspired with Russia.
Fast forward to today. Six months into Trump’s second term, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have declassified and released long-suppressed documents detailing how President Obama and his spy chiefs laundered the Steele dossier and other falsehoods in an attempt to destroy Trump’s first presidency. The response from Democrats, the media, and many establishment Republicans has been to say that these suppressed documents contain nothing new or significant. Not true.
The Russia collusion hoax was anchored to two central claims: first, that Trump was a compromised agent of Russia, and second, that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. The first claim was completely debunked after years of investigation. It is on the second and far more plausible claim—which was just as key to the hoax—that the newly released documents shed new light. And the revelations are shocking.
The documents show that in early December 2016, the intelligence community planned to publish a top secret presidential daily brief holding that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” Once published, this brief would have been read by Obama and his top officials, as well as President-Elect Trump and his designated National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn. But the day before publication, the FBI—which had co-authored the brief—announced that it was pulling its support for the brief and would be drafting a dissent. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced that the brief would be held for the following week.
In the end, the brief was never published. Instead, Obama ordered his top spy chiefs to put together an Intelligence Community Assessment—known as an ICA—on “Russia election meddling.” The chiefs were directed to look at how Moscow sought to influence the 2016 election—including with hacking, leaks, cyber activity against voting systems, and “fake news”—and to answer the questions, “Why did Moscow direct these activities?” and “What have the Russians hoped to accomplish?”
Prior to this order from Obama, the spy agencies had assessed that Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election were consistent with Russia’s previous and long-standing election-year meddling and cyber-hacking efforts. They found that Russia’s goal was to mess with and decrease confidence in U.S. elections, rather than help elect particular candidates. But on the evening of December 9, 2016, The Washington Post published a story sourced to unnamed senior Obama officials claiming that the CIA had “concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.” That was a lie. The process by which such assessments are made by the CIA hadn’t taken place, much less concluded anything. The same false information was leaked to The New York Times: “American intelligence agencies,” it reported, “have concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia acted covertly . . . to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.” Both papers were awarded Pulitzers the next year for their willingness to participate, without a bit of skepticism, in this disinformation operation.
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There is much more to this political fraud that Hemingway exposes. While the claim by Clinton and others never made much sense to me, many in the media embraced it, as did many Democrats who were disappointed in Trump's win. If any FBI agents who went along with this political fraud are still in office, they may be vulnerable to losing their jobs. Those who embraced this political fraud should face consequences, and the media that went along with it, and even gave themselves prizes for the false reporting, owe Trump an apology.
The media that was pushing this fraud even gave themselves awards for pushing the false story.
See also:
Delicate Dems Are Struggling in a World of Sudden Consequences
And:
Weaponized Scoops: New Russiagate Documents Expose Media/Government Collusion
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