17 Jul 2017 4:10 pm
I would be outraged if that had happened, but it didn't.Termin8tor » 16 Jul 2017 8:22 am » wrote:Where's your outrage over the HRC campaign's collaboration with Ukraine, psycho?
When Democrats do the same, you don't care one bit.
No one from the Clinton campaign ever met with anyone from the government of Ukraine.
That is just the latest TrumpCo. talking point lie that is being used to defend Fredo actions.
They are taking something that was done by some low level consultant at the DNC on her own, and twisting it into being the same thing.
And I see that you are more than happy to disseminate this lie.
Trump and Russia, Clinton and Ukraine: How do they compare?
Politico reporters said that top Ukrainian diplomats deny any interference, but they cited a former Ukrainian embassy staffer who said that he had been told to "research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia."
He said he coordinated with the key person in the Politico story, a Ukrainian-American consultant to the DNC named Alexandra Chalupa.
Chalupa told Politico that she took it on herself to dig into Manafort’s past and reached out to the embassy.
She had a network of sources in Washington and Ukraine, and as she learned things, she would sometimes share them with colleagues at the DNC.
By the summer of 2016, more and more journalists were interested in Manafort, and Chalupa said she and people at the embassy would guide them in the right direction.
If the broad outlines are similar, some key elements distinguish these episodes from each other.
The Politico article highlighted a major one.
"Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (and) involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services," the article said. "There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine."
So, according to American intelligence agencies, the Kremlin shaped and directed the email hacking of Democrats and subsequent distribution. In contrast, a variety of actors on the Ukrainian side responded to American queries and provided public documents.
Which leads to the other big distinction: The Russians got their materials through cyber-attacks, while the only telling document revealed by a Ukrainian lawmaker was the product of an official investigation.
"There’s a difference between dealing with the embassy and dealing with a covert intelligence operation," Wittes said. "Are you dealing with government records, or are you dealing in stolen dirt?"
To be clear, we do not know if the hacked emails had any ties to contacts the Trump campaign did or didn’t have with Russians. But hacked emails are different from the results of a public investigation.
Taking that difference one step further, there was nothing inherently illegal in the quest for information on Manafort and how that might link Donald Trump to Russia. Wittes noted that from a research perspective, since Manafort’s work took place in Ukraine, "you pretty much have to go to the Ukrainians to get that."
Other details also separate the two narratives.
Ukraine is seen as an ally to the United States, while Russia is at best a competitor and often called an enemy.