THE INTERCEPT
October 28 2016, 3:35 p.m.
TOP
DEMOCRATS HAVE repeatedly
waved off substantial questions arising from their hacked emails by falsely
implying that some of them are forgeries created by Russian hackers.
The problem
with that is that no one has found a single case of anything forged among the
information released from hacks of either Clinton campaign or Democratic Party
officials.
The strategy
dates all the way back to a conference call with Democratic lawmakers in
August. Politico reported that a number of Democratic strategists suggested
that Russian hackers — who have been blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for supplying the
emails to Wikileaks and other web sites — could sprinkle false data among
the real information.
Since then,
despite the complete lack of evidence to support such a claim, it’s become a
common dodge among leading Democrats and the Clinton campaign when asked
questions about the substance of the emails.
Clinton
strategist Joel Benenson, asked about an email in which Clinton campaign staffers decide to accept foreign
lobbyist money, used that line on MSNBC on Sunday.
“These
emails, we have no idea whether they’re authentic or not,” he said. “Or whether
they’ve been tampered with. I know I’ve seen things that aren’t authentic, that
we know aren’t authentic, and it’s not surprising.”
Clinton’s
running mate, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, also suggested that the
emails may have been doctored during an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday.
“The one
[email] that has referred to me was flat-out completely incorrect,” he said.
“So I don’t know whether it was doctored or whether the person sending it
didn’t know what they were talking about. Clearly, I think there’s a capacity
for much of the information in them to be wrong.”
Kaine
appeared to be referring to a July 2015 email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta from political
consultant Erick Mullen. In the email, Mullen claimed a man named Bob
Glennon has informed two Democratic senators that Clinton “has personally
told Tim Kaine he’s the veep.”
Clinton may
or may not have selected Kaine as her running mate a year before announcing
it publicly. However, that doesn’t mean the email is a
forgery. It was simply Mullen’s view of things. Podesta’s response to the email
is itself jovial: “And here I thought it was going to be me.” No one
has alleged the email as it was published on Wikileaks is a forgery.
The Intercept
contacted Benenson to point to any emails he believes are inauthentic. He
did not respond.
Jennifer
Granholm, a senior adviser to the pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, was
asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether the Clinton campaign should be responding to
revelations revealed by Wikileaks.
“There are
reports that these have been doctored,” she told Tapper on October 19.
“And Newsweek had found that, in fact, that was happening.”
Granholm was
referring, inaccurately, to a blog post by Kurt Eichenwald where the Newsweek writer
pointed out that the English-language, Russian-owned news website Sputnik had
misreported the contents of one of the emails. But there was no evidence that
the email itself as it existed on the Wikileaks website was false or doctored.
Eichenwald himself added to the misunderstanding by posting a series of tweets imputing that the email had been forged — by
Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
In an
interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on October 18, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a
ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, was asked if the Russian
government would impact the election by hacking voting systems.
“What worries
me the most … is between now and the election the Russians dump information
that is fabricated,” Schiff warned. “To get a last minute dump of emails
that contain fabricated emails that are widely reported in the press, and there
isn’t enough time to fact check and demonstrate the forgery, that is what really
concerns me.”
CNN host Wolf
Blitzer pushed back, “But have you confirmed that any of these emails
released over the past two weeks, if you will, by Wikileaks are fabricated or
doctored?”
“You know I’m
not in a position to be able to do that,” Schiff demurred.
The
Democrats’ muddy-the-waters strategy has had some success. For example, the
popular fact-checking website Politifact wrote an article on Sunday titled: “Are the Clinton WikiLeaks
emails doctored, or are they authentic?”
The article
cited numerous claims by Democrats that they cannot verify the authenticity of
the emails and a number of experts who claimed that it is in fact possible that
false information is in the emails. But the writer also noted that the Clinton
campaign has not offered any evidence that any of the emails have been
doctored.
Ordinarily,
if there is no supporting evidence for a claim, PolitiFact has no problem
declaring it false. But in this case PolitiFact reached no conclusion — and
actually went so far as to raise the possibility that the Clinton campaign
does have proof that the emails have been doctored, but isn’t sharing it for
political reasons.
(Ironically,
the website has no problem citing the emails to fact-check other statements).
The strategy
has not been entirely effective. There has still been discussion about the
contents of Clinton’s private speeches to megabanks like Goldman Sachs, her campaign team’s coordination with Super PACs, and the candidate’s affinity for Wal-Mart, among other topics.
The
Washington Post published a lengthy article on Tuesday delving into the internal squabbling
among Clinton aides and allies over the candidates use of a private email
server. And the Wikileaks disclosure of a 13-page memo by former Bill Clinton
aide Doug Band formed the basis of a Post article Thursday that showed how Band co-mingled the clients of
his for-profit consulting firm Teneo with the former president’s speaking
clients and financial backers of the Clinton Foundation.
Top photo:
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange prepares to speak from the balcony of the
Ecuadorian embassy in London, on Feb. 5, 2016.
CONTACT THE
AUTHOR:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.