AP FACT CHECK: Putin spins a fiction about Clinton donors
WASHINGTON » In his meeting with President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin falsely asserted that a clique of U.S. business associates steered $400 million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Political finance rules make such a whopping gift directly to her campaign impossible. And the number he cites doesn’t add up in political fundraising records.
Trump offered a variety of misstatements of his own at the summit.
A look at some of their remarks Monday:
PUTIN, referring to Bill Browder, a prominent Putin critic and investor charged with financial crimes in Russia: “Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia. They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia nor in the United States, and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent huge amount of money, $400 million, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”
THE FACTS: The notion of a $400 million donation to the Democrat’s campaign is a stratospheric exaggeration.
First, people can’t give more than $2,700 apiece to a candidate in a general election. They can give a maximum of $2,700 in a primary, for a total of $5,400 in an election cycle. The Clinton campaign committee raised less than $564 million — and $400 million of that or anything close did not come from a few businesspeople.
Second, it’s also inconceivable that Browder and partners steered that much money to political action committees supporting Clinton.
Donations to such groups are unlimited, so almost anything goes. But federal records show that Browder’s New York financial partners, Ziff Brothers Investments, donated only $1.75 million in the 2016 campaign, spreading it among candidates for many offices in both parties and favoring Republicans in congressional races. The watchdog site opensecrets.org shows it giving only $17,700 for Clinton’s election.
Altogether, Clinton’s effort drew $795 million in donations to her campaign and supportive PACs. The money, as usual, came from diverse sources: the financial industry, education interests, Hollywood, unions, the health and pharmaceutical sectors and many more.
TRUMP on his intelligence officials on Monday: “They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this — I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
TRUMP, reading from a statement, on his intelligence officials on Tuesday: “I accept our intelligence community conclusion that Russia meddling ... took place” and the “sentence should have been I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.”
THE FACTS: Trump has been a nearly solitary figure in his administration in holding onto doubts about whether Russians tried to sway the election. Trump’s top national security officials, Democrats and most Republicans in Congress say U.S. intelligence agencies got it right in finding that Russians secretly tried to sway the election. The special counsel’s continuing Russia investigation has laid out a detailed trail of attempts and successes by Russians to steal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign communications and to leak embarrassing emails and documents.
What is less established is the extent to which the Russian government, not just Russian citizens with varying ties to Moscow, became involved in this effort.
Special counsel Robert Mueller shed light on that question last week with an indictment against 12 Russian military intelligence officers, alleging a sweeping conspiracy to interfere in the election. The charges were the first to tie such alleged criminal behavior directly to the Kremlin.
Before that, Mueller brought charges against 13 Russians and three companies accused in a social media campaign to sway U.S. public opinion in 2016.
Putin denied anew that the Russian government interfered, regardless of what nongovernmental Russian actors might have done. But he was open about how he wanted the election to turn out. “Yes, I wanted him to win because he spoke of normalization of Russian-U.S. ties,” he said at the news conference, acknowledging a preference that is widely suspected in Washington.
But Trump did not see that motive in play. He made the untenable assertion Monday that “I have confidence in both parties” — his intelligence officials, who say Moscow interfered, and Putin, who says it didn’t. And he appeared on Monday to lean toward Putin on the matter, saying: “I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”
Afterward, Trump’s national intelligence director, Dan Coats, restated the consensus of U.S. intelligence: “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”
TRUMP on a Democratic National Committee server: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server . ... I’ve been wondering that, I’ve been asking that for months and months, and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?”
THE FACTS: Trump’s focus on a DNC server may or may not be a red herring. He is right that the committee did not turn its communications system over to the FBI as the agency investigated Russian hacking. It’s not at all clear that it matters.
As FBI chief, James Comey told Congress last year that although the DNC never directly gave the FBI access to its machines, the organization did hire a private cybersecurity firm that “ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.” He told lawmakers that while “best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves,” his colleagues at the FBI told him this solution was an “appropriate substitute.”