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One of Donald Trump\u2019s tells is his talk of the \u201cRussia hoax.\u201d When that phrase passes his lips, it\u2019s a sign that the president is agitated about something.<\/p>\n
In the past two weeks, for example, as questions about the administration\u2019s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have dominated headlines, Trump has been talking often about \u201cthe Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and many other hoaxes too,\u201d as he put it in an interview with Newsmax on Friday. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, also released documents last week that her office said shed new light on this \u201cRussia hoax.\u201d Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly ordered a grand-jury investigation into claims that Obama-administration officials broke laws while investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n
The DNI\u2019s office doesn\u2019t explain exactly what the \u201cRussia hoax\u201d is, and for good reason. First, although the phrase has achieved talismanic status in Trump world, it has no set definition, because Trump keeps changing the meaning. Second, and more important, it\u2019s not a hoax.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what is not in dispute: The United States intelligence community concluded that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election and, according to a GOP-led Senate investigation, wanted to help Trump. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote in a report summarizing his findings, \u201cThe Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.\u201d Trump\u2019s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his campaign chair Paul Manafort met at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russians who they believed would hand over \u201cdirt\u201d on Hillary Clinton. (Steve Bannon\u2014Steve Bannon!\u2014called the meeting \u201ctreasonous.\u201d) A Trump 2016-campaign aide boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia was trying to help the Trump campaign, and then lied about his Russian contacts to FBI agents. Trump publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton\u2019s emails in July 2016\u2014jokingly, he has since said\u2014and Russian agents attempted to do so that very day, according to the Justice Department. Hackers who the U.S. government believes were connected to Russia obtained emails from a number of Democratic Party officials and leaked them publicly, and Trump pal Roger Stone was apparently forewarned about some. Major tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter (now X), also confirmed that they had detected dubious Russian activity.<\/p>\n
In spite of all of this evidence, or perhaps because of it, Trump has loudly insisted that it\u2019s all a hoax. He\u2019s used the phrase off and on since spring 2017, though he\u2019s changed what he means. For a time, he made the claim\u2014without evidence then, and without any since\u2014that the federal government under Barack Obama had wiretapped or improperly surveilled him. At other times, he has claimed that the whole thing is a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d Often, he generically used the term hoax to refer to any allegations about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. He even sued the Pulitzer Prize Board over a statement honoring reporting on connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. (The case is ongoing.)<\/p>\n
His attempts to instill doubt have been assisted by the fact that some of the wilder rumors and reports concerning his campaign didn\u2019t turn out to be true. Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, was a bit of an eccentric character but not a traitor, as some suggested, much less the key to unraveling any grand conspiracy. Trump was probably not communicating with a Russian bank via a mysterious server. He was almost certainly not a longtime Russian-intelligence asset. The so-called Steele dossier was full of falsehoods. I argued at the time that BuzzFeed\u2019s decision to publish it was a grievous error, and it warped conversation about the Trump campaign\u2019s ties to Russia.<\/p>\n
Mueller\u2019s highly anticipated investigation also landed with a big thud. First, expectations for his report had been inflated by an overeager circle of Trump critics who had expected shocking new revelations; the revelations were indeed shocking, but by the time Mueller published them, most had already filtered out in press accounts. Second, debate over Trump\u2019s ties to Russia had focused on \u201ccollusion,\u201d which is not a specific crime. This produced a semantic sideshow argument in which Trump insisted that he couldn\u2019t have colluded, because he wasn\u2019t charged with it. Third, Attorney General Bill Barr misrepresented Mueller\u2019s findings. Fourth, Mueller did not recommend charges against Trump, thanks to Justice Department guidance against charging a sitting president, which meant that although the special counsel produced an unmistakable implicit accusation, Trump claimed vindication.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s use of pardons may have induced some of his confederates\u2014including Stone and Manafort\u2014to not cooperate with prosecutors, or to only partly cooperate, thus depriving the public of a chance at receiving a full accounting. This was a kind of legalized obstruction of justice.<\/p>\n
Plenty of authorities have pointed out that Trump\u2019s claim of a hoax is nonsense. In 2017, PolitiFact named that its lie of the year. In 2018, The Washington Post reported: \u201cTrump\u2019s Russia \u2018Hoax\u2019 Turns Out to Be Real.\u201d In 2019, a report by the Justice Department\u2019s inspector general concluded that, as my colleague Adam Serwer put it, \u201cthe \u2018Russia hoax\u2019 defense is itself a hoax, and a highly successful one, aimed at reassuring Trump supporters who might otherwise be troubled by the president\u2019s behavior.\u201d Still, the idea that the whole thing was a chimera has taken hold even within some precincts of the mainstream press, where the whole thing is treated as a weird passing obsession. The journalist Ben Smith, who made the decision to publish the Steele dossier, now contends, vaguely and in passive voice, that \u201cTrump was in retrospect treated unfairly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Trump world continues to cook up new iterations of the hoax claim. The most recent ones are driven by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has a history of weaponizing intelligence, to use a term he\u2019s a fan of, and Gabbard, who has for years repeated Kremlin talking points. Last month, Ratcliffe alleged that in 2016, three of the nation\u2019s top intelligence officials \u201cmanipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals\u2014all to get Trump,\u201d but as my colleague Shane Harris reported, he didn\u2019t have evidence to back that up. Gabbard has released a dribble of documents intended to bolster it, but still nothing that matches the claims.<\/p>\n
In recent days, MAGA allies have pushed a new and shocking allegation: that emails show Clinton actually approved a plan to smear Trump by claiming he was colluding with Russia. The problem is that, once again, investigations have debunked it. A special counsel appointed by Barr during Trump\u2019s first term, with the goal of ferreting out political skulduggery in the Russia investigation, found that messages about Clinton being treated as a smoking gun were, in fact, likely concocted by the Russians. As The New York Times reported, \u201cThe special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Durham\u2019s finding of a Russian forgery is ironic: Someone has finally turned up a real Russia hoax. Rather than working to fight it, however, Trump\u2019s aides are once more colluding with Russia to mislead the American people and further Trump\u2019s political fortunes.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n House Republicans issued subpoenas to the Justice Department and high-profile figures such as the Clintons, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and several former top Justice Department officials over Jeffrey Epstein\u2013related files and testimony.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Ryan Haskins. Source: Getty.<\/p>\n What\u2019s Really Behind the Cult of Labubu<\/p>\n By Valerie Trapp<\/p>\n A furry fiend with rabbit ears and a maniacal grin has recently been spotted twerking next to the singer Lizzo, baring its teeth on the former soccer star David Beckham\u2019s Instagram, and flopping against a woman\u2019s Chanel bag while wearing its own Tic Tac\u2013size Chanel bag. The creature in question is Labubu\u2014a soft-bellied plushie that the Chinese company Pop Mart began distributing in 2019, and that has, in the past year, gained hordes of admirers. In 2024, Pop Mart reported a more than 700 percent increase in the stuffie\u2019s sales. People have been doling out anywhere from about $30 to $150,000 a toy. At Brooklyn raves, adults hop around under neon lights with Labubus clipped to their belt loops. The devotion, at times, has turned almost ferocious.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n JPL \/ NASA<\/p>\n Explore. These photos celebrate the 13th anniversary of NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover landing on the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n Read. Hillary Kelly examines how Virginia Woolf captured the challenges and triumphs of middle age through her writing.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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