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  • 2019-10-21 (xsd:date)
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  • Did James Clapper 'Out' Barack Obama as the 'Mastermind' Behind the 'Russia Hoax'? (en)
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  • A video circulated on social media in October 2019 bore a misleading caption: James Clapper Outs Barack Obama as Mastermind Behind Russia Hoax. The caption accompanied a video of former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in an interview with CNN, discussing the Trump administration's decision to investigate the origins of inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The video appeared to have been uploaded to a video-sharing blog platform. Clapper did not say what the video caption claimed: He did not out Obama as the mastermind behind the Russia hoax. Clapper instead aired his dismay at the turn of events in which Obama's successor, Donald Trump, had essentially compelled the government to launch an investigation into its own findings that the Kremlin had manipulated the 2016 presidential election. The original CNN video can be viewed by following this link. Here is a transcript of the exchange between Clapper and CNN host Jim Sciutto: Multiple investigations have concluded that Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and that their activities were aimed at helping Donald Trump to get elected. Even though Trump repeatedly called those investigations witch hunts, he appeared to admit in May 2019 to at least knowing that Russians had interfered in the election: Trump and his supporters, however, have undertaken an aggressive campaign to discredit investigations that have concluded the Russians interfered in the 2016 election with the aim of helping Trump win, to the extent that Trump has leveraged his own administration to investigate the inquiry that led to that finding. In October 2019 President Trump was facing an impeachment inquiry over a phone call he had with the Ukrainian president, with Trump being accused of holding back key military aid in exchange for Ukraine's assistance in obtaining damaging information about a Trump political rival. But in that call, Trump also asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into a debunked conspiracy theory positing that the hacked Democratic National Committee server from 2016 was in Ukraine — a conspiracy theory that exculpates the Russians in the hacking operation. In other words, the Obama administration conducted an investigation based on evidence which led to the conclusion that Russians had manipulated the 2016 presidential election. To say Obama was the mastermind of a hoax amounts to political propaganda favoring Trump while distorting reality. (en)
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