Trump Repeats Falsehoods in Celebrating Acquittal
A day after his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump made celebratory remarks in the White House on Feb. 6, thanking many Republican politicians and repeating several false and misleading claims, many of which we’ve checked before.
The president twisted the facts on the Russia investigation, former FBI officials, European contributions to Ukraine, the stock market, Medicare for All and drug prices.
Russia Investigation
Recounting what he described as ongoing and unfair attempts to overturn his presidency, Trump provided this blunt assessment of the Russia investigation: “And you have to understand, we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bullshit.”
But there was plenty to the Russia investigation.
On Jan. 6, 2017, two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released a declassified intelligence report that said: “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and the goal of the campaign was “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”
In addition to a clandestine social media campaign to discredit Hillary Clinton, the report said Russian military intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee computers from July 2015 to June 2016 and then used WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and “Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker,” to publicly release hacked emails and documents. The cyberattacks and public release of hacked material were part of larger “Russian propaganda efforts” to hurt Clinton and help Trump, the report said.
The special counsel’s office in February 2018 secured anagainst 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for their role in that interference. The indictment says the defendants conspired to defraud
