Fact-checking Trump's ABC interview--on his comment about Hillary Clinton......

Fact-checking Trump's ABC interview


https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/politics/fact-checking-trumps-abc-interview/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_term=image&utm_content=2019-06-17T14%3A57%3A03&utm_source=twCNNp


By Holmes Lybrand and Marshall Cohen, CNN

Updated 2:03 PM ET, Mon June 17, 2019


Washington (CNN)In an extensive interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday evening. President Donald Trump made several factual blunders and repeated many of his favorite incorrect claims.
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Clinton colluded



Stephanopoulos pressed Trump on the most damning portions of the Mueller report, including the dozens of contacts between Trump's team and Russians. The report said numerous Trump associates were drawn into the Russian web and took meetings with Kremlin-tied figures who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, but they did not cross the line into a criminal conspiracy.

In his answer, Trump ignored these findings and attacked his 2016 opponent.

"What about Hillary Clinton?" Trump asked. "Hillary Clinton conspired with Russia. She had somebody that came out of Russia. They got information from Russia. Excuse me. Hillary Clinton was totally involved with it. If you talk about collusion with Russia take a look at Christopher Steele, all his contacts with Russia which by the way she paid for, and turned out to be a phony deal, which everyone is now admitting that. No George, all I want is the truth."


Facts First: Trump is lying about Clinton by making up allegations that she colluded with the Russians in 2016. He's also twisting the facts about the Steele dossier, and is creating a false equivalency between his team's contacts with Russians and Clinton's ties to the dossier.
For starters, there is absolutely no evidence that "Clinton conspired with Russia" like Trump claimed. Mueller's mandate was to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether any Americans - not just Trump aides -- were involved in those efforts.

The report said nothing about connections between the Clinton campaign and the Russian government or the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-connected troll farm that spread propaganda to US audiences.

Trump then turned to the infamous Steele dossier, the series of private intelligence memos that former British spy Christopher Steele wrote in the final months of the 2016 campaign.



The memos contained details about Russian meddling that pre-dated public announcements about Russia's activities by the US government. They also alleged that Trump colluded with the Kremlin. Some claims have been debunked, while others have held up over time; some remain unproven while others are partially true. Trump is wrong when he says it was all "phony."

One of the main claims in the Steele dossier -- that the Trump campaign engaged in a widespread conspiracy of collusion with the Russians -- was not established by Mueller.

But the President is wrong that Steele is "somebody that came out of Russia." Steele is a British citizen. He lived in Russia as an undercover spy, but his allegiance was to the United Kingdom. The UK is one of America's closest allies for intelligence-sharing.

Steele's strong track record made him a trusted and valuable informant for the FBI and other US government agencies.
Trump is also wrong that Clinton "was totally involved" in the Steele dossier. There is no evidence that she was directly involved, and her campaign chairman testified to Congress that he didn't know about it before the 2016 election. But Clinton's campaign funded Steele's work. They paid a law firm, which hired an opposition research company, which brought on Steele.


On Monday morning, Clinton tweeted a response to Trump's claims she colluded with Russia, calling them "outlandish."................................

Link to tweet