A Teachable Moment: Separating facts from Russian fiction in election rigging
Russian rigging of our last presidential election is a fact.
Who was involved, and to what extent was there collaboration are the questions.
Below are facts as published and footnoted in Harper’s Magazine Weekly Review for April 6, 2017 available online and at newsstands. Here are extended excerpts.
The FBI, the Senate, and the House of Representatives continued their investigations into the Russian government’s possible collaboration with the campaign of Donald Trump…[1][2] White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the investigations had uncovered “no connection” between Russia and the Trump campaign, and U.S. officials said that the FBI had obtained records of phone calls, business transactions, and meetings suggesting that Trump campaign members coordinated with Russia over the release of information damaging to Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.[3][4] It was reported that the Kremlin had paid at least 1,000 people to create false news stories in swing states to tilt the election in Trump’s favor, and Trump’s longtime friend and former adviser Roger Stone, who refers to himself as a “dirty trickster,” who admitted to corresponding with the hacker responsible for leaking emails from Clinton’s campaign staff, and who, like Trump, was mentored by Roy Cohn [who worked with Sen. McCarthy during the notorious McCarthy Communist Witch Hunts and blackballing scandals], a former counselor for the Gambino and Genovese crime families, announced that he would not tell Congress who informed him ahead of time that WikiLeaks was going to release information stolen from the Democratic National Committee.[5][6][7] U.S. officials confirmed that the Kremlin had recalled a diplomat from the United States out of concern that his attempts to affect the outcome of the election would be exposed, an allegation previously made by a former British intelligence officer in a largely unsubstantiated dossier… and which Spicer called “fake news.”[8][9][10] Trump’s former national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, who resigned in February after he was discovered to have discussed U.S. sanctions withA Teachable Moment: Separating facts from Russian fiction in election rigging | Reclaim Reform: