The Russian Conspiracy Continues
On Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on a House intelligence committee, delivered his opening statements at a hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Schiff repeatedly raised questions about alleged collusion between Moscow and members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Here are four serious problems with Schiff’s charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source:
1) Throughout his opening statement, Schiff repeatedly and openly relied on information provided by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who was reportedly paid by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to investigate Trump and was the author of a controversial, largely discredited 35-page dossier on Trump. Steele’s information served as a central part of Schiff’s allegations.
Schiff ignores the fact that Mike Morell, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and twice as acting director, has questioned Steele’s credibility. Morell currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global Strategies LLC. Beacon was founded by Phillippe Reines, who served as Communications Adviser to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. From 2009-2013, Reines also served in Clinton’s State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications. Reines is the managing director of Beacon.
NBC News reported on Morell’s questions about Steele’s credibility: “Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
Regarding Steele’s dossier, Morell stated, “Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information — you just can’t.” Morell charged the dossier “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”
“I had two questions when I first read it,” he said. “One was, How did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.”
- There is no evidence that so-called fake news actually influenced the election, and Schiff fails to make the case that Russia was behind the release of e-mails from Democratic officials and operatives.
Schiff further charged: “While at first, the hacking may have been intended solely for the collection of foreign intelligence, in mid-2016, the Russians ‘weaponized’ the stolen data and used platforms established by their intel services, such as DC Leaks and existing third party channels like Wikileaks, to dump the documents.”
Firstly, there has been no concrete evidence linking Russia to Wikileaks or DC Leaks. Wikileaks has denied any ties to Russia and has claimed that Moscow was not the source for the hacked Democratic e-mails it published.
Second, data shows so-called fake news stories did not significantly impact the 2016 presidential election. Even the Poynter Institute, the group helping Facebook determine whether certain news stories are “disputed,” has stated that it is worth considering the possibility that “fake news” stories did not sway the election.
Many would argue that the majority of “fake news” actually favored Clinton, but even a study that found that “fake news” stories favored Trump concluded that such stories didn’t significantly affect the outcome of the election. “Did fake news help elect Trump? Not likely, according to new research,” was the title of an article by Poynter’s Chief Media Writer James Warren.
- Schiff pushed the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had the Republican Party platform changed on the issue of Ukraine to aid Russian interests.
He stated: “Just prior to the convention, the Republican Party platform is changed, removing a section that supports the provision of ‘lethal defensive weapons’ to Ukraine, an action that would be contrary to Russian interests. Manafort categorically denies involvement by the Trump campaign in altering the platform. But the Republican Party delegate who offered the language in support of providing defensive weapons to Ukraine states that it was removed at the insistence of the Trump campaign. Later, JD Gordon admits opposing the inclusion of the provision at the time it was being debated and prior to its being removed.”
The charge, which comes mostly from a Washington Post opinion piece, remains so unproven that even the left-leaning PolitiFact so-called fact checker failed to reach a judgment on the issue.
The entire issue revolves around one platform committee member, a Ted Cruz supporter, who wanted to use language calling for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military. Instead the platform eventually called for “appropriate assistance” to Ukraine – which leaves open the possibility of providing “lethal defensive weapons” – and called for “greater coordination with NATO defense planning.”
That was enough for the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin to pen an opinion piece titled “Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine.”
Writing at the Washington Examiner, media critic Byron York noted: “Missing from all the talk is what the Republican platform actually said before it was allegedly ‘gutted’ by Trump. What did the original draft of the platform say about Russia and Ukraine? Was it, in fact, changed? If so, how?
“As it turns out, a look at the original draft of the platform – which has never been released publicly – shows that it always had tough language on Russian aggression in Ukraine. And not only did that language stay in the final platform – nothing was taken out – it was actually strengthened, not weakened, as a result of events at the convention….
“Not only that, the later, final platform contained a few additional words on Russia and Ukraine that weren’t in the original draft. To the first passage cited above, after ‘from the Baltic to the Caucasus,’ the GOP platform committee added this:
We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning.
- To support Russian interference charges, Schiff relies on CrowdStrike, the third-party company utilized by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency never had direct access to the DNC’s servers to confirm the hacking.
National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers also stated the NSA never asked for access to the DNC hardware. “The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job.”
As this journalist reported, CrowdStrike, led by a Russian expat, was financed to the tune of $100 million from a funding drive in 2015 led by Google Capital.
Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.
CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by experts George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch.
Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. The Council takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression.
The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., the U.S. State Department, and NATO ACT.
Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which in turn has received financing from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.