On Monday, neither James Clapper nor Sally Yates could provide any evidence of “collusion” between President Donald Trump’s political team and the Russian government when invited to do so by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Both Clapper and Yates, former Director of National Intelligence and former acting Attorney General, respectively, were invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime & Terrorism, ostensibly to examine allegations of “Russian interference” in 2016’s presidential election.
Asked by Graham to offer evidence of “improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials,” both Clapper and Yates provided nothing.
In a March interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Clapper could not provide any evidence of “collusion” between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian state when invited to do so by Chuck Todd:
There was no evidence [of] collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Since October of 2016, Democrats and their news media allies (CNN, The New York Times, MNSBC, The Washington Post, NPR, et al) have pushed an innuendo-laden narrative of 2016’s presidential election having been compromised by foreign interference. Without evidence, the narrative’s proponents advance several interconnected assertions: (1) Americans were duped by “fake news” produced by the Russian state and spread across networks such as Facebook and Twitter for the purpose of politically damaging Hilary Clinton; (2) The Russian state directed illegal seizure of email records from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton loyalist John Podesta, subsequently releasing the stolen emails via WikiLeaks to politically damage Hillary Clinton; (3) Donald Trump and his political associates likely conspired with the Russian state during last year’s presidential election season in order to defeat Hillary Clinton.
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 8: Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates , right, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, left, listen to opening statements before their testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election, on May, 08, 2017 in Washington, DC.
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