Russia investigation origins conspiracy theory

"Russia hoax" redirects here. For other uses, see Russiagate hoax.

The Russia investigation origins conspiracy theory or Russia counter-narrative is a conspiracy theory created by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Republican Party leaders, and right-wing conservatives that attacks the legitimacy and conclusions of multiple investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and the public and secretive links between Russian intelligence and Trump associates. Trump in particular has attacked the origins and conclusions of the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller investigations and ordered Attorney General William Barr and U.S. attorney John Durham to conduct reviews of the investigations.

The narrative includes conspiracy theories such as Trump's Spygate theory, accusations of a secretive, elite "deep state" network, descriptions of the Russian interference investigations as an illegal "Russian collusion hoax", that the "real collusion" was between Hillary Clinton, Democrats, and Russia – and later, Ukraine.

Giuliani and Trump alleged the Russian government had been framed, and that it was the Ukrainian government that had interfered to benefit Hillary Clinton. It was later revealed in court by lawyers for Julian Assange that Dana Rohrabacher, acting on behalf of Trump, had made a quid pro quo offer of a presidential pardon to Assange, in exchange for Assange covering up Russian involvement by declaring that "Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks".

A further investigation by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee published in 2020 confirmed the intelligence community's claim that Putin's "interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election" in favor of Trump was unprecedented in its "manner and aggressiveness". The following allegations have been publicly corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies, the January 2017 ODNI report, and the Mueller report: "that the Russian government was working to get Mr. Trump elected"; that Russia sought "to cultivate people in Trump's orbit"; that Trump campaign officials and associates had secretive contacts with Russian officials and agents; that Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; and that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.