Top Democrats have repeatedly waved off substantial questions arising from their hacked emails by falsely implying that some of them are forgeries created by Russian hackers.
The problem with that is that no one has found a single case of anything forged among the information released from hacks of either Clinton campaign or Democratic Party officials.
The strategy dates all the way back to a conference call with Democratic lawmakers in August. Politico reported that a number of Democratic strategists suggested that Russian hackers — who have been blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for supplying the emails to Wikileaks and other web sites — could sprinkle false data among the real information.
Since then, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such a claim, it’s become a common dodge among leading Democrats and the Clinton campaign when asked questions about the substance of the emails.
Clinton strategist Joel Benenson, asked about an email in which Clinton campaign staffers decide to accept foreign lobbyist money, used that line on MSNBC on Sunday.
“These emails, we have no idea whether they’re authentic or not,” he said. “Or whether they’ve been tampered with. I know I’ve seen things that aren’t authentic, that we know aren’t authentic, and it’s not surprising.”
Clinton’s running mate, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, also suggested that the emails may have been doctored during an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday.
“The one [email] that has referred to me was flat-out completely incorrect,” he said. “So I don’t know whether it was doctored or whether the person sending it didn’t know what they were talking about. Clearly, I think there’s a capacity for much of the information in them to be wrong.”
Via The Intercept