Blame Russia Rather Than Discuss Those Emails

Rather than address the damaging emails leaked by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration prefer to distract U.S. voters by blaming the incident on the Russians, despite the fact that the U.S. has produced no evidence to indicate anything other than a hacker stole embarrassing emails that reveal the true thoughts of those in power.

By Sophia Meyer

In the third installment of an ongoing series of email “data dumps,” on Oct. 10, WikiLeaks published nearly 1,200 emails from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims the organization now has about 50,000 emails from Podesta’s account, of which approximately 5,300 have been released.

The hack was reportedly the work of an individual known as Guccifer who wrote Oct. 4 on his blog: “I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ databases,” including “donors lists of the Democratic committees, PACs, etc.”

One of the documents displayed on Guccifer’s blog is a spreadsheet showing financial institutions with a list of the banks’ PAC donations as well as the amount of TARP funds each received.

TARP refers to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, an official U.S. program signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 3, 2008. It effectively had the U.S. government purchasing so-called toxic assets from financial institutions in order to boost banks’ bottom line. TARP was an attempt to strengthen the U.S. financial sector but it led to U.S. taxpayers losing trillions of dollars.

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Despite Guccifer’s claim of responsibility, Podesta—formerly Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and an advisor to Barack Obama—tweeted, “I’m not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump,” and, “Don’t have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked.”

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump sent a tweet of his own: “I hope people are looking at the disgraceful behavior of Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. She is unfit to run.”

The Trump campaign claims emails show Brian Fallon, formerly a Justice Department (DOJ) staffer before becoming a Clinton spokesman, had updated Clinton aides on litigation pertaining to her emails and reveal “collusion” between the Clinton Campaign and DOJ.

In an obvious attempt to focus the conversation on Russia rather than what is revealed in the emails, Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin expressed outrage—while not denying the authenticity of the emails.

“It is absolutely disgraceful that the Trump campaign is cheering on a release engineered by Vladimir Putin to interfere in this election,” said Caplin.

“Earlier today the U.S. government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy,” Caplin continued. “We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents . . . . Guccifer 2.0 has already proven the warnings of top national security officials that documents can be faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign.”

A group of former national security officials including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke told the media, “What is taking place in the United States follows a well-known Russian playbook . . . .”

It is important to note that none of the claims of Russian involvement include supportive evidence, nor have the so-called experts explained their analysis that the hacks are Russia’s effort to disrupt U.S. elections. In fact, The Washington Post notes, “The FBI did not immediately say if the Russians were behind the alleged hack.”

Regardless of the lack of evidence, a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence reads, “The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails . . . . [and are] consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process”

The statement continues, “We believe . . . that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

The statement might as well read, “Evidence be damned. It’s those pesky Russians, no doubt.”

The emails include excerpts of transcripts from some of the speeches Mrs. Clinton delivered to Wall Street financial institutions after she left the State Department. In one she discusses her “dream” of a “hemispheric common market,” in spite of her campaign statements suggesting she opposes free trade agreements.

A 2014 email from then-Secretary of State Clinton to Podesta outlined her plan to defeat ISIS, noting, “Qatar and Saudi Arabia . . . are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” reports The Daily Caller, which adds, “Qatar has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and Saudi Arabia has donated upwards of $25 million dollars to the foundation.”

ZeroHedge reports that another email thread was generated in response to an email from Bloomberg reporter Mike Dorning. He wrote to Jake Siewert, head of corporate communications for Goldman Sachs and former White House press secretary, to ask about the role Podesta played in the “push to use executive actions to further agenda” during Bill Clinton’s second term. Siewert emailed Podesta and Mrs. Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri asking for guidance.

“I can make stuff up but happy to emphasize whatever you’d like. Was thinking of stressing the deep knowledge and expertise around executive power and what can be done independent of congressional action,” he wrote.

Originally from the Midwest, Sophia Meyer is a freelance writer and editor, small farmer and avid gardener now living on Florida’s sunny east coast.