President Donald Trump has enlisted parts of the U.S. government and key allies in the pursuit of unproven or disproven conspiracy theories, some incubated in the dark and anonymous corners of the internet. Text messages between U.S. diplomats, a whistleblower complaint and a series of public statements
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has enlisted parts of the U.S. government and key allies in the pursuit of unproven or disproven conspiracy theories, some incubated in the dark and anonymous corners of the internet.
The president's tendency to say untrue things, particularly on Twitter, has caused headaches for his administration before. Until now, however, the government had largely taken pains to distance itself from such statements. Trump referenced that view during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, mentioning CrowdStrike by name, and saying"The server they say Ukraine has it." Ahead of that call the U.S. special representative to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, suggested in a text message to a Zelenskiy aide that Zelenskiy might score a White House visit if he promised to"get to the bottom of what happened" in 2016, a reference to the election meddling.
The FBI opened its Russia probe in 2016, after an Australian diplomat reported that a Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos had boasted that Russia had obtained email"dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic opponent, weeks before the hack of the Democratic National Committee became public. Papadopoulos told the FBI that he learned that from a Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.
Trump has accused Democrats of secretly ghostwriting the whistleblower's complaint. He described the whistleblower's sources as"spying on our own president," and said they deserve"Big Consequences."
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