DISINFO: Mueller report gives no evidence of Russian meddling in US elections
SUMMARY
The recently published report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller cites no real evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Statements about Moscow’s alleged attempts to “subvert democracy” in the United States are a clear case of Russophobia. The Mueller investigation has found no Russia-Trump collusion.
RESPONSE
The story is the latest link in a chain of denials which Moscow has issued regarding its involvement in the 2016 presidential election in the United States and employs the long-established charge of Russophobia which the Kremlin uses to deflect criticism, however legitimate. Before the Mueller report was published, Russian meddling in the 2016 election had already been established by US intelligence agencies. Thus, the Special Investigation was primarily concerned with "whether any Americans […] joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election" (p.2). The claim that the report provides no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion is also spurious. The RT segment never clarifies that gathering evidence of "collusion" -- which is not a legal concept -- fell outside the scope of the investigation. The aim of the probe was not merely to ascertain contacts between the Trump Campaign and Russia-linked individuals during the election period, but to establish whether these interactions were deliberate enough on the part of Trump Campaign officials to sustain charges of conspiracy (p. 2). In fact, the report explicitly identifies "numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign" (p. 9). A number of these individuals later "made false statements about those contacts and took other steps to obstruct" the probe (p. 180). The report's conclusions therefore do nothing to absolve the Russian government.