How Team ____ Helped Putin Conceal His Attack On Our Election

So, we’re all clear on the fact that _____ colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 campaign, right?

I mean, maybe he didn’t know he was doing it, because, as I believe, he’s basically an idiot with the attention span of a fruit fly who surrounds himself with smart people to do the work and take the heat for him.

But, let’s be completely queer, knowing about it or not, _____ aided and abetted Russia’s war on US democracy by continuously ignoring evidence and denying Moscow’s role in the criminal hacking of  the Democratic National Committee and the release of stolen emails.

Basically, as I said, he played dumb, because he is dumb; but even dumb guys go to jail because, as my friend Judge Judy says, “Ignorance is not a defense.”

And now the news last week of Junior’s emails revealing that he, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort joined what they believed was a secret Russian government meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton shows that the _____ campaign went far beyond creating a political climate favorable to Putin’s assault on democracy; the _____ team actually protected Russian intelligence while it was hacking computers and stealing information and it’s clear that many in the _____ camp knew it was happening all along and did nothing.

The emails prove that in the first week of June 2016, Junior, Kushner, and Manafort, who the previous month had been named _____’s campaign chairman and chief strategist, learned of a Russian plot to help _____ become president. Each of these men received an email from Rob Goldstone—a talent manager who helped broker the deal for _____’s Miss Universe contest to be held in Moscow in 2013—and the message was clear: ______’s business partner in Russia—and remember _____ has said he has no business dealings with Russia—billionaire developer Aras Agalarov, had been told by Russia’s national prosecutor that the Putin regime wanted to give _____ negative material on Clinton.

Goldstone said:

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. _____.” 

After the email, came a June 9, 2016, meeting between Junior, Kushner and Manafort and a Russian attorney that Junior now claims yielded no useful information. But how can we believe him when he blatantly lied for months that a meeting with Russians ever took place?

Still, let’s say the meeting was a bust, but _____’s henchmen still learned that Putin was Team _____ and looking to help him win releasing allegedly damaging material about Clinton.  That’s a fact; it was in an email to Junior. And then, five days later, the news broke that the DNC had been hacked and cyber experts, hired by the DNC pointed to Russian intelligence as the culprit.

So, how did _____ respond? With this statement:

 “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

Think on that ... Junior, Kushner and Manafort had learned days earlier that the Russians were targeting Clinton and when it actually happened, the _____ campaign suggested the hack was a hoax cooked up by the DNC.

On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released 22,000 hacked DNC emails, causing havoc at Democratic convention. But, with even more cyber experts concluding that Russian intelligence was behind the hack, the DNC and Clinton campaign officials immediately raised the issue that Putin was meddling in the election.

The _____ campaign, however, began spinning the story differently ... two days later Manafort went on ABC’s This Week  and, when asked if there were connections between the _____ campaign and the Putin regime, said:

“No, there are not, and, you know, there’s no basis to it.”

It had been six weeks since he met with the Russians who told him they wanted to help _____ win the election, so clearly, he was lying. But Junior was even angrier; when asked by CNN about the Clinton campaign’s theory that Russia hacked the DNC as part of a plot to benefit his father, he said:

“It’s disgusting. It’s so phony … I can’t think of bigger lies. That exactly goes to show you what the DNC and what the Clinton camp will do. They will lie and do anything to win.”

Again, this was six weeks after being told Russia wanted to help Daddy. Both of these men knew Putin wanted to help _____, and had been to a meeting where they were told they would receive such information, and yet they both lied about it, saying there had been no contacts.

So, what we have is Paul Manafort and Junior, and Kushner by his silence, providing cover for Putin’s operation to steal an election. That’s clear. And the next day, _____ himself did what he does best, Tweet:

“The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”

Say what? Putin likes you? You said before you’d never met him, and now you’re saying he likes you? Is that because Junior told you so after his secret meeting? A day later, he tried to spin it differently:

“In order to try and deflect the horror and stupidity of the Wikileakes [sp] disaster, the Dems said maybe it is Russia dealing with _____. Crazy!”

Now, to be fair, as of now, there is no evidence that _____ knew about the June 9 meeting or the email chain that brought it about, though it does seem highly unlikely that no one mentioned it to him even once, especially since we know the meeting had been put in motion by _____’s Russian business partner. So at the time of these Tweets, _____ could have known that the Putin regime had informed his campaign he was on _____’s side and wanted to assist him secretly.

But, again, if _____ didn’t know, those Tweets of his show that Junior, Kushner and Manafort were allowing _____ to make claims that the Russian connection was false when they knew otherwise. Manafort kept up the disinformation campaign on July 27 while appearing on CBS This Morning:

“We have no relationship [with Russia]. The real issue isn’t even the Democratic National Committee’s server being hacked; the real issue is her server.”

And so, in the following months, the _____ campaign stuck to that narrative; in each debate, _____ claimed Russia was not behind the hack and, after the election, he refused to accept the US intelligence community’s finding that Russia had meddled in the election to help him win the White House and that’s where he began his “fake news” mantra.

But, again, Junior’s emails prove that _____’s advisors had direct inside information that Putin was willing to do whatever necessary to ensure a _____ victory. And every time they discounted that idea they were lying, plain and simple.

Now, while it’s unclear, to some, that the _____ team committed any crime, the law maintains that a person who helps a criminal conceal a crime, or who even fails to report a crime, is known as an accessory after the fact.

Another fact? Junior, Kushner, and Manafort helped keep Russia’s operation a secret by not reporting what they knew; they were, and here’s that word again, complicit. And whether _____ knew about the meeting beforehand—and remember it was inside his building in New York and he was in the building at the time—or found out about it later, he, along with Junior, Kushner, and Manafort, held back that information, allowing the Russian interference to continue and the election to be hacked.

That’s clear. That’s collusion. That should be enough to remove this buffoon from office.

Mother Jones