In May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, that Russia had damaging information about Trump’s political rival Hillary Clinton.
That conversation in a London bar eventually triggered the Trump-Russia case, a sprawling counterintelligence and criminal inquiry into Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Trump win.
The Russian covert operation included the hacking of emails and related documents from Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party, and the spreading of anti-Clinton disinformation on social media.
The Russians worked hard to try to get Trump elected, and Trump and his campaign knew about it and welcomed the help. Famously, Trump used his platform at a campaign event in 2016 to publicly ask Moscow to provide even more help.
Today, the U.S. intelligence community believes that Russia wants to help Trump win again in 2024. That means that it is vital that Americans finally understand the truth about the Trump-Russia case, and about the dangerous relationship between Trump and Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
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