A Ukraine conspiracy theory embraced by President Trump has blurred the facts of the impeachment case against him for many Americans before it even reaches the Senate for trial.
FILE - This Thursday, April 18, 2019 file photo shows special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as released in Washington. An Associated Press review shows the idea of Ukrainian interference took root during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was spread online and then amplified by Putin before some of America’s elected officials made it their truth.
The discredited theory, spread online by GOP allies in interviews and tweets, has been embraced by a president reluctant to acknowledge the reality of Russian election interference, and anxious to show he had reason to be suspicious of Ukraine as the U.S. withheld crucial military aid last year. “The ultimate victim is democracy, is the stability of our nation,” said Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert at the nonpartisan Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank.As U.S.
Adding to the FBI’s concern was the revelation that a Trump campaign official had been told Russia had damaging information about Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. That July, the bureau opened an investigation into whether Russia and the Trump campaign were working together to sway the election in Trump’s favor, a probe eventually taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.As the Democrats’ stolen emails were published online and the U.S.
“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said last month on NBC’s “Meet the Press. He cited the Financial Times as evidence. The article said there was not a top-down effort by Ukraine to push voters toward Clinton, but some Republicans now point to the reporting to support their allegations of meddling.
It is the nebulous nature of the Ukrainian theory, which leaves room for both direct and indirect interference, that has given the idea a shape-shifting, evolving form that has contributed to its staying power. “As we all know, during the presidential campaign in the United States, the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral position in favor of one candidate,” Putin said in at a news conference that February with Hungary’s prime minister.It was convenient for the Kremlin to point the finger at another offender: Just weeks earlier, U.S. intelligence agencies had released a detailed report accusing Russia of interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf.
And the FBI didn’t need to physically take the DNC servers to confirm CrowdStrike’s findings that Russia was behind the attack, said Eugene H. Spafford, a computer science professor at the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security at Purdue University who has assisted the bureau in cases.
But Trump took his suspicions about the servers directly to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the newly elected Ukraine president in the now-infamous July 25 phone call that resulted in articles of impeachment against Trump. “You know, the FBI has never gotten that server,” Trump said “That’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”
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