And who better than to repeat all the craziness Republicans have been circulating than California Congressman David Nunes, who, at the impeachment hearings this week used his time to air, (from Will Sommer of The Daily Beast, "conspiracy theories that are little-known outside of Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem, and were widely divergent from what witnesses Ambassador William Taylor and State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent were at the hearing to discuss."
From the Republican point of view, Nunes is the perfect guy to spread their cuckoo-bananas nonsense, as he has a lot of experience in the craft. Earlier this year, during the Mueller Special Counsel investigation, Nunes offered up far out (and debunked) theories regarding a "deep state" conspiracy between Democrats, rogue US government officials and Russia to discredit Trump.
As sometimes happens with current events, the article I intended to write today has already been written by someone else. In this case, the debunking of the conspiracy theories Republicans are using to prop up Trump has been covered very well by Grace Panetta of Business Insider in an article titled, Congressional Republicans are repeating many baseless conspiracy theories in Trump's impeachment inquiry. Here's why they're all bogus.
From the article:
Here's a breakdown of the conspiracy theories many Republicans are pushing and why they don't hold up:
Hunter Biden committed corrupt activity in Ukraine, and his father tried to cover for him
The entire impeachment inquiry centers around Trump and the GOP's discredited claim that in his capacity as vice president, Biden tried to help his son by calling for the firing of Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor they say was investigating Burisma.
Despite Trump and Giuliani's allegations, both US and Ukrainian government officials have confirmed there's no evidence that the Bidens did anything improper.
(Note from Joe: Read the article if you'd like to read a lot more about the complete lack of any reason for further investigation of Hunter Biden.)
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Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit the Democratic party
On the July 25 call, Trump also referenced a discredited conspiracy — also heavily pushed by Giuliani — that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that Ukraine was somehow in possession of a DNC server.
"I would like you to do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it," Trump said on the call.
The US intelligence community has conclusively established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to undermine Hillary Clinton by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
In the call, Trump was referencing the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the DNC retained to help them respond to Russia's breach of its servers during the 2016 election.
"The server" refers to an unfounded conspiracy theory that the DNC hid an incriminating server from the FBI while the bureau was investigating Russia's hack, and that the server contains information about who was really responsible for the breach.
In reality, there is no single, physical DNC server, and there is no evidence that Ukraine's government "hid" it from investigators or was in any way involved in the 2016 US presidential election.
CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that Trump's reference to CrowdStrike in the Zelensky call was "unintelligible, to be honest."
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A DNC operative named Alexandra Chalupa conspired with Ukraine to spread dirt on Trump
As part of the conspiracy that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, some have also claimed that a DNC operative named Alexandra Chalupa coordinated with the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Trump.
In reality, Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American Democratic political consultant and operative, ran a minority engagement program for the DNC in 2016 and communicated with Ukrainian officials about Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who served as an advisor and lobbyist on behalf of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
There is no evidence Chalupa conspired with Ukraine to conduct any kind of opposition research with regard to Trump. Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign in August of 2016, and is currently serving a seven-and-a-half year federal prison sentence for financial fraud, failing to register as a foreign agent, and witness tampering.
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Democrats tried to collaborate with Ukraine to obtain nude pictures of Trump
The Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, twice claimed that Democrats collaborated with "people they thought were Ukrainians" to get nude photos of Trump. Nunes made these statements in the September 26 public testimony of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and in the November 15 testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine.
In 2018, The Atlantic reported that two Russian pranksters posing as members of Ukraine's parliament prank-called House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff claiming to have "pictures of naked Trump" from a purported encounter Trump had with a famous Russian woman.
While Schiff said on the call that the information was "helpful," his staff told The Atlantic in a statement that they had alerted law enforcement before and after the call that it was "probably bogus."
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Future articles in this series will cover subjects including Trump's mischaracterizations of his infamous call with President Zelensky, and the lingering possibility that impeachment of Trump will include obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation. Of course with public hearings just getting rolling, who know what kind of crazy nonsense Republicans will be throwing out there? I'll be covering that too.
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