Ever since WikiLeaks released thousands of emails from Democratic National Committee staff members, Hillary Clinton, her campaign and supporters have pushed a conspiracy theory that posits Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in cahoots.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that the release of emails is the first in a series called the “Hillary Leaks.” The first leak of nearly 20,000 emails was damaging enough to cause the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other senior staff members. (RELATED: ‘Sexist Pig’ And Other Eye-Opening Revelations In The DNC Email Leak)
Two days following the WikiLeaks release, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said, “What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually of helping Donald Trump.”
When pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper to back up this allegation, Mook said, “this isn’t my assertion. … I think we need to get to the bottom of these facts. But that’s what experts are telling us. Experts are telling us it is, in fact, the Russians who hacked these emails,” Mook added.
The FBI has announced it is investigating “a cyber intrusion involving the DNC” and has not said the Russians were involved with it. Anonymous U.S. officials have signaled that Russia is at fault.
On Sunday, Hillary said: “I think if you take his encouragement that the Russians hack into American email accounts, if you take his quite excessive praise for Putin, his absolute allegiance to a lot of Russian wish list foreign policy positions, his effort then to try to distance himself from that backlash — which rightly came not just from Democrats, but Republicans, independents, national security and intelligence experts — leads us, once again, to conclude he is not temperamentally fit to be president and commander in chief.”
Clinton in June attacked Trump saying we “don’t need conspiracy theories.” On Friday, the Trump-Russian conspiracy theory continued to be pushed.
In an opinion piece endorsing Clinton, former CIA Director Michael Morell claimed Trump was an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him,” Morell wrote. “He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.”
Later Friday, the Clinton campaign released an online advertisement titled: “What is Donald Trump’s connection to Vladimir Putin?”
“We don’t know why Trump praises Putin,” the video says. “We don’t know why Putin praises Trump.”
It goes to on to say we “don’t know how much [Russians] have invested in [Trump].” The ad finishes with “we don’t know what’s going on here,” adding, “we’ll let you guess.”
While we might not know how much Russian investment there is in Trump’s businesses, we do know that the Clinton Foundation has received more than $2.3 million from a Russian oligarch. Clinton also gave a speech in Moscow for half a million dollars.