Much has been made of the fact that the Russian hack on the DNC was not yet public knowledge at the time. But I have yet to hear anyone identify which e-mails were being referred to. Keep in mind that although the public did not know about the hack at the time (and, indeed, even the DNC did not learn until three days later), what was public knowledge at the time was that Hillary had sent State Department e-mails on a private server that that (1) the private server was vulnerable to Russian hacking and (2) Hillary had deleted some 30,000 e-mails as "personal." It appears to have been little short of an article of faith among Republicans (1) that the Russians had hacked Hillary's server, (2) that the Russians had the missing e-mails, and (3) the missing e-mails contained something very incriminating. There is no evidence to support any of these beliefs. My guess (admittedly just that) is that Papadopoulos' contact never told him which e-mails the Russians had. Most likely, Papadopoulos simply assumed that this referred to Hillary's 30,000 missing e-mails, which contained "dirt." There is no reason to believe that Papadopoulos even suspected a hack before it became public knowledge.
On the other hand, our intelligence agencies did know about the hack. We know for a positive fact that our intelligence agencies knew about the hack by the Russian Civilian Intelligence because the Dutch observed it in real time and passed it on to us. And to judge from the amount of detail Mueller gives about the hack by Russian Military Intelligence, we may well have known about it as well. And, while it can be extremely difficult to prove a negative, it seems probably that our intelligence agencies by then had concluded that the Russians did not have Hillary's missing e-mails. In other words, most likely Papadopoulos did not understand the significance of what he was hearing. But when word reached our intelligence agencies, they knew all too well.
We do not know whether this information from Papadopoulos filtered up the Trump campaign. But there is ample evidence that other members of the Trump campaign believed that Russia had the missing e-mails and had no compunctions about either receiving stolen information or cooperating with a hostile foreign power.
- In mid-June, 2016, after the Russian hack of the DNC had become public knowledge, Peter Smith, a Republican donor and mid-level operative in regular contact with Michael Flynn, went cruising the Dark Web, communicating with unknown persons claiming to have Hillary's State Department e-mails and unconcerned whether he was receiving information from the Russians.
- Some time during summer of 2016, Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm for the Trump campaign, asked Wikileaks for the missing State Department e-mails so they could turn the e-mails into a searchable database. The request was refused, presumably because Wikileaks did not have the e-mails.
- And in September, 2016, Roger Stone reached out to Wikileaks (through an intermediary) to ask for the State Department e-mails in August, 2011. Clearly Stone was looking for something specific -- apparently confirmation of his belief that Hillary disrupted a Libyan peace initiative.
- It should be noted that none of these initiatives came from within the Trump campaign. All were from individuals or organizations close enough to the campaign to know what was or was not acceptable, but far enough away to allow for plausible deniability. But they provide vital context for Trump's notorious speech on July 26, 2016 in which he said: "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." Taken by itself, this might pass for a joke. In light of all these surrounding, entirely serious attempts by people close to (but not quite part of) the Trump campaign to get the e-mails, it becomes impossible to take this as anything but a serious request.
- According to Mueller's indictment of Russian Military Intelligence personnel (paragraph 22), it was the day after this speech that Russian Military Intelligence first attempted (apparently unsuccessfully), to hack directly into Hillary's personal office. Many others have interpreted the hacks to be in direct response to the request. I remain unconvinced, as before, because we are again talking about different sets of e-mails.
At the same time, I will have to admit in favor of Donald Trump, Jr. and his meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower that nothing in the introductory e-mail so much as hints at any hacked e-mails belonging to Hillary, and rather implies the opposite. Junior was offered "some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father." This implies that what was being offered was not the fruits of a hack, but information of some direct and shady dealings between Hillary Clinton and the Russian government that the Russians were now prepared to blow the whistle on. Junior's willingness to accept such information is at least somewhat understandable if he believed he was getting evidence of genuinely shady dealings that the Russian government knew about as participant.
Of course, looking at such an offer with a clear head, there are ample reasons to be suspicious. If Hillary and the Russians were engaged in shady dealings, why would the Russians want to publicize that fact? And why would the Russians want their co-conspirator to lose and instead favor her rival? An offer like this should have looked suspicious as hell.
But for even the most gullible, the initial message made clear that the offer was anything but innocent, "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
No comments:
Post a Comment