If you watch CNN, MSNBC or one of the other left-wing news outlets in the United States, you would be forgiven for thinking that an Iron Curtain has descended across the United States, cutting off the East and West coast of America from its often forgotten middle. The story of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign has been told on many mainstream media channels in America for almost a year now. The Special Counsel appointed to investigate these claims, headed by former F.B.I director Robert Mueller filed their first indictments this week. Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for the Trump camp and his long-time business partner Rick Gates have been indicted on charges of money laundering and attempting to conspire against the United States.
George Papadopoulos, a member of Trump's foreign policy team was charged with lying to the F.B.I about some of his contacts with Russian officials and has since pled guilty to this charge.
21st Century McCarthy witchhunts
The first murmurs of Trump's alleged collusion with members of the Russian government, began just before Trump was elected last year. WikiLeaks published over 50,000 emails that were hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Self-styled hacker Gucifer 2.0 is said to have been responsible for the hack. Soon after this took place, members of Hillary's campaign began to level accusations of collusion with Russian operatives towards the Trump camp. Julian Assange has been on record as saying to Fox News's Sean Hannity that Russian's were not responsible for leaking the emails to WikiLeaks and that a nation-state was not responsible for the hack.
This story was not widely reported on during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, but soon after that momentous November 8th day, the story began to gain some traction in sections of the left-wing media.
The first big talking point in the Russian story came in the figure of Lt. Gen Michael Flynn who was appointed as Trump's National Security Advisor.
After Flynn's appointment, stories began to surface which reported that Michael Flynn had received payments from R.T, the Russian state-backed media outlet to appear at an event in Moscow in which he was pictured sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In early February 2017, the New York Times reported that Lt. Gen Michael Flynn had met with the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on several occasions.
Flynn denied to the interim Attorney General Sally Yates that he discussed the issue of sanctions, which had been placed on Russia by the U.S but this turned out to be untrue. AG Yates later went on to say that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail, and soon after this story broke, Michael Flynn resigned his post on 13th February 2017.
Since then, the Russia story has rarely been off the T.V screens and the newspapers of the left-wing media outlets in the U.S. Over the course of several months, we have seen President Trump fire the F.B.I director James Comey, an action that led to accusations of obstruction of justice. Next was President Trump's meeting with the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov just days after the controversial firing, and the revelations of Donald Trump Jr.
meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, allegedly to gain information that could be damaging to the Russian campaign. Many high-ranking members of Trump's cabinet have had their own links to Russia exposed by the media, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had to recuse himself from the Russian investigation due to his meetings with Russian officials. Even Trump's own son-in-law Jared Kushner has been under fire.
The culmination of this investigation has now led to the first indictments in the Mueller investigation. Even though the allegations of the crimes levelled against Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates do not relate to the Trump investigation, this has led some, particularly on the left to begin to believe that the potential impeachment of Donald Trump may occur sooner rather than later.
Did Trump collude with Russian officials to gain victory in the 2016 Presidential Election? I don't know, none of us know. In America today, your answer to that question seems to be indicative of where you stand on the political spectrum. As a reporter, I can only report the facts we know. One thing is for certain, the level of hysteria surrounding Russian operatives lurking in the shadows waiting to undermine American Democracy is reminiscent of the darkest days of the McCarthy Witchhunts of the 1950's. But there is another story that is getting less traction from many of the big news outlets, and that is the accusation that Hillary Clinton did collude with Russian sources during the 2016 election campaign.
The dirty dossier.
Last week, amid the daily chatter on stations such as CNN, eluding to the allegations of Trump's collusion with the Russians, a story broke which threw new doubt into the validity of the claims altogether. The "Dirty Dossier" as it came to be known, was an intelligence report that was compiled by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele on behalf of the company Fusion GPS. It was done to investigate Trump's ties with Russia. Christopher Steele is believed to have consulted numerous Russian sources to acquire the information in the dossier. In the explosive report, it claimed that Donald Trump engaged in "golden showers" with prostitutes in a Russian hotel room and that Trump had been filmed during the course of this act.
None of the claims in the report have been verified.
Last week, it was reported by several news outlets in the United States that it actually turned out that Hillary Clinton was responsible for commissioning the report. Clinton's lawyer Marc Elias and his law firm Perkin's Coie, continued to fund the research in the dossier until October 2016. The initial funding for the report came from a long time GOP supporter and anti-Trump Republican, billionaire Paul Singer.
According to the Daily Mail, the Clinton campaign paid $5.6 million dollars in legal fees to Perkin's Coie from June 2015 to December 2016 while the DNC paid $3.6 million in fees for consulting, but it is unclear how much of that was money that was used for the funding of the dossier.
On the Daily Show on Comedy Central, Hillary Clinton downplayed the revelations about the dossier. On CNN, some reporters referred to the dossier as merely being "opposition research."
Since these claims have been revealed, it is hard to see the difference between what Donald Trump is accused of doing and what Fusion GPS did on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Many of the salacious accusations in the Steele dossier have never been confirmed, and now that it has been revealed that the Hillary campaign was heavily involved in the publishing of the Dossier, the story doesn't seem as black and white as it once did.
The Trump campaign will undoubtedly have many questions to answer as the Special Counsel investigation begins to gather pace.
But the revelations regarding the dirty dossier and Hillary's involvement should mean in the interest of fair and equal justice under the law, that should have to answer her own questions in regards to her involvement in this affair.
