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1/Critical to making sense of today's Stone news is for all of us to get to a more accurate place about the impact Russia's intervention had on the 2016 election. Many of the words used - hacking, meddled, interfere - are all far too benign to describe what happened.
2/On a Friday morning, hours after Trump became the nominee, delivering a speech which was wildly critical of America and its historic mission, Russia dropped a massive trove of emails designed to harm the Democratic Party and its Convention which was beginning in a few days.
3/Two days later DNC Chair and most DNC senior staff were gone. Old fissures resurfaced. Early days of convention dominated by negative messages, chaos, confusion, and clearly cost Ds 1-2-3 pts that week. Losing 1 pt alone through this one intervention gave Trump the White House.
4/But damage from direct Russian attack on an American political party and its leadership was much greater than a chaotic convention. Entire general election plan, operation wildly disrupted. Huge amounts of time devoted to mitigating damage sucked capacity fr normal campaign.
5/So it is my belief that the Russian attack on the DNC at the Convention was among most significant events to take place in modern American history. It alone threw the election to Trump, dramatically disrupted Dem campaign, costing 1-2-3-4 pts - the election.
6/But the Russian attack on the Ds didnt end there. Encouraged by Trump, his campaign and RNC, Russia escalated. Not content with taking out one DNC Chair they went after the interim Chair Brazile and Clinton Chair Podesta. High value targets, further degradation of capacity.
7/Every escalation by Russia was cheered on by entire GOP establishment. Almost every Fox News hit I did during the general was about a Wikileaks related event. Between Russia's attacks and focus on Clinton emails Clinton campaign had no news hole to fill w/positive stories.
8/By amplifying Russian attack on Clinton/DNC, Trump campaign was waging information warfare, denying the ability for Clinton to tell her story. Russia/Trump blocked her fr reaching voters, dramatically disrupted operations of campaign and DNC. But that is not all Russia did.
9/Russia also waged a MASSIVE social media campaign designed to further degrade Clinton with voters across the spectrum. It reached hundreds of millions of people, reinforced core Trump campaign narratives, created permission structure for Americans to believe things not true.
10/And what we know now is that at every step of this massive Russian attack on the Ds, Trump/his campaign/RNC knew it was Russia. They had met w/Russians in June who offered to go after Clinton. Family gave ascent in the mtg. Manafort changed Ukraine platform wording. Game on.
11/Looking back at news accounts fr 2016, news orgs reported abt suspicions Russia was behind Ukraine platform change, DNC attack. Was not a secret. Everyone knew. And we know now Trumpworld had been talking to Russia/Putin abt all sorts of stuff. So they all knew.
12/So Donald Trump knew in 2016 that a hostile foreign power was attacking the United States and what did he do? He encouraged it. He urged them to do more. He directly amplified the attacks. And he failed to tell FBI/Intel Community at that time when asked, lied abt it since.
13/What Donald Trump and his family did in 2016, coupled with the extraordinary efforts to cover it up since, is the greatest crime ever committed in the history of the United States. There has been no betrayal of our nation to come anywhere close to this.
14/But coming to this conclusion requires an accurate understanding of the enormity of the Russian attack on Clinton/DNC in 2016. There is no question, no question at all, that Russia gave Trump the Presidency. Which is why he is so beholden to Putin to this day. He owes him.
15/So please join me in correcting any effort to minimize what Russia did in 2016. It was a massive, multi-pronged, sophisticated effort to throw the election to Trump. And it worked. Our nation was penetrated by a hostile adversary, who continues to exert influence today.
16/I wrote abt all this for @usnews once. In working w/Donna Brazile in 2016, we tried to get the RNC to stop spreading Russian disinfo. Donna repeatedly asked Priebus to stop. He repeatedly refused. usnews.com/opinion/thomas… Role of RNC in all this not adequately understood.
