{"id":402376,"date":"2019-04-02T11:04:35","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T10:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/no-4-the-democratic-money-behind-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2019-04-02T11:04:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T10:04:35","slug":"no-4-the-democratic-money-behind-russia-gate-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/no-4-the-democratic-money-behind-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 4\u2014\u201cThe Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate\u201d \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the \u201cscandal\u201d started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, wrote Joe Lauria on Oct. 29, 2017.<span id=\"more-34672\"\/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 24pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><strong>By Joe Lauria<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><em>Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in the 2016 election \u2014 without providing convincing evidence \u2014 were both\u00a0<em>paid for<\/em>\u00a0by the Democratic National Committee, and in one instance also by the Clinton campaign: the Steele dossier and the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC servers. Think about that for a minute.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">We have long known that the DNC did not allow the FBI to examine its computer server for clues about who may have hacked it \u2013 or even if it was hacked \u2013 and instead turned to CrowdStrike, a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian. Within a day, CrowdStrike blamed Russia on dubious evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">And, it has now been disclosed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier\/2017\/10\/24\/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_dossier-630pm:homepage\/story&amp;utm_term=.707164d050ef&amp;tid=a_inl\">paid for<\/a><\/span> opposition research memos written by former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele using hearsay accusations from anonymous Russian sources to claim that the Russian government was blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump in a scheme that presupposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw Trump\u2019s presidency years ago when no one else did.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_34675\" style=\"width: 516px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/dem-convention.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/dem-convention-400x267.jpg\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34675\" class=\"wp-image-34675 \" alt=\"\" width=\"506\" height=\"338\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34675\" class=\"wp-image-34675 \" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/dem-convention-400x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"506\" height=\"338\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-34675\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">2016 Democratic National Convention <span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">(Flickr)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has struggled to corroborate Steele\u2019s allegations, but those suspicions still colored the thinking of President Obama\u2019s intelligence chiefs who, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, \u201chand-picked\u201d the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 \u201cassessment\u201d claiming that Russia interfered in the U.S. election.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">In other words, possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">If for a moment one could remove the sometimes justified hatred that many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2019\/04\/02\/consortium-news-record-on-russia-gate-how-cn-covered-the-scandal-no-4-the-democratic-money-behind-russia-gate\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the \u201cscandal\u201d started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, wrote Joe Lauria on Oct. 29, 2017. The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}