Clinton camp blames Russia for emails leak
PHILADELPHIA — For decades, Republicans were the fiercest of Cold Warriors, fighting the spread of communism and, not incidentally, winning elections by painting Democrats as the party of fealty and fecklessness.
Even with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the GOP and its defense and foreign policy leaders warned against the threat posted by a revanchist Russia.
Four years ago, Republican nominee Mitt Romney portrayed President Barack Obama as too timorous to end the bullying behavior of Russian President Vladimir Putin and contain “our No. 1 geopolitical foe.”
But in one of the most startling turnabouts in a campaign filled with role reversals, it is now the Democrats brandishing fear of Moscow as a club, accusing Donald Trump of an oddly worshipful regard for the Russian leader and suggesting the Kremlin may be interfering in the U.S. election on his behalf.
On Sunday, on the eve of the party’s national convention, Democrats seized on the release of internal emails by the website WikiLeaks to assert that Russia was trying to undermine Hillary Clinton in hopes of boosting Trump’s November prospects. “Russian state actors broke into the (Democratic National Committee), took all these emails and now are leaking them,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Mook cited unnamed experts to support his claim, which has only circumstantial evidence as back up: A cybersecurity firm hired by the committee reported last month its computer systems had been hacked by two separate groups with ties, the firm said, to Russian intelligence organizations.
WikiLeaks has not said where it obtained the emails it revealed or whether they were linked to that hacking incident.
“They are pretty desperate pretty quickly,” Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trump’s campaign, told reporters in brushing off Mook’s assertion.
Politically, the allegation served a dual purpose.
Taken together with Trump’s friendly statements about Putin and his strong-man persona, his criticism of NATO and the GOP’s decision to abandon platform language critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it once more yoked the Republican nominee to one of America’s most enduring adversaries.
Trump told The New York Times last week that, as president, he would not automatically come to the defense of America’s NATO allies if they were attacked by Russia.
The assurance of all-forone assistance is a fundamental underpinning of the post-World War II pact between the U.S and its European allies and has been a bulwark against Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe.
Clinton’s strategists hope such statements will help drive security-conscious Republicans to the presumptive Democratic nominee; she already has gained endorsements from some of the party’s senior national security figures.
On Sunday, Manafort swatted back at suggestions Trump is too cozy with Putin.
“It’s absurd,” Manafort said on ABC’s “This Week.” “There’s no basis for it.”
Manafort, a longtime Washington insider, has his own ties to Russia, having worked as a political consultant for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine.
Obama said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Trump’s threat to curtail U.S. involvement in NATO was further “indication of the lack of preparedness” to oversee the country’s relationship with the world.
“Frankly, it’s sad,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have NATO, and we have many countries that aren’t paying for what they’re supposed to be paying, which is already too little, but they’re not paying anyway. And we’re giving them a free ride or giving them a ride where they owe us tremendous amounts of money.”