During the campaign, the Deep State had begun planting the seeds of a key strategy it would use to declare Trump’s victory illegitimate so as to bar him from the White House. “American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence,” the New York Times reported on July 26, 2016.8
This followed an article published by the Times on June 14, 2016, claiming, “Two groups of Russian hackers, working for competing government intelligence agencies, penetrated computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to emails, chats and a trove of opposition research against Donald J. Trump according to the party and a cybersecurity firm.”9 The newspaper further reported that the DNC had called in CrowdStrike, a private security firm, which identified “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” as the two Russian intelligence agencies culpable for the hacking, although the article failed to document precisely how CrowdStrike determined the hack was from Russian intelligence agencies. The New York Times assured readers that, again, unnamed “investigators” had attributed the hacks to a person who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” identified as an agent of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. The Times reporting quickly became the accepted version of events, such that anyone doubting that the Russians had hacked the DNC would be tagged as advancing a “conspiracy theory.”
Then on July 27, 2016, at a press conference in Miami, Florida, Trump commented, “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”10 This was in reference to the 30,000 State Department emails Hillary destroyed after deciding that they were “personal . . . and within the scope of my personal privacy,” despite knowing they were subject to preservation orders under a congressional subpoena.11 Trump concluded the press conference by stressing that he would treat Vladimir “firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now, so that we can go and knock out ISIS together.”
This was all Hillary campaign operatives and the mainstream media needed to charge that Trump had been the driving force behind the theft of DNC emails, in collusion with Russia to make sure Hillary lost the election. For damage control, the Trump campaign was forced to “walk back” Trump’s statement, claiming that all Trump meant was that if Russia had the 30,000 emails Hillary had destroyed, they should be turned over to the FBI.
Despite the lack of verifiable proof, Hillary and the mainstream media made the Russia narrative during the campaign one that suggested Trump had worked with Russia to win the election by hacking the DNC. According to the developing “Russian collusion” meme, Trump’s devious plan was to induce Russia to release to DC Leaks and WikiLeaks the purloined Democratic emails and other confidential Clinton documents stolen by Guccifer 2.0 and/or Russian intelligence agencies identified only as “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear.”
During the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, Hillary returned to the Russia meme. “There’s no doubt now that Russia has used cyberattacks against all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this,” Hillary said. “I know Donald’s very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin, but Putin is playing a really tough long game here.” Then a few minutes later, she added, “I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable.”
Notice that Trump’s initial statement did not invite Russia to hack the DNC computers. Trump was making an offhand quip, suggesting that if the New York Times’s unnamed intelligence sources were right and Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC computers, then maybe Russia had possession of the 30,000 emails Hillary had destroyed. The point that a Deep State narrative need not be true is important. Even distorted, as Hillary distorted Trump’s offhand press conference comment, a meme can take hold if it is repeated enough times without question or criticism. Over a relatively short time, the distorted version becomes the official version of what Trump said and what he meant. From this point on, the Deep State’s assertion that Trump was in collusion with Russia to steal the election from Hillary was firmly planted in the mainstream media narrative of campaign events.
The Deep State Resolves to Deny Trump the White House
On January 6, 2016, a partially declassified intelligence community assessment commissioned by President Obama and issued by the office of the director of national intelligence (DNI) concluded that Russia had interfered with the US presidential election in a bid to help Trump.
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the DNI report said. “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments,” the report continued. The report concluded that Putin “most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012 and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.”12
The DNI report stressed that the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency (NSA) all agreed with this judgment. With this report, the Deep State positioned the “Russian collusion” meme as its first-choice strategy for blocking Donald Trump from becoming president. In contrast, by December 13, 2000, Al Gore had abandoned his presidential bid, accepting the decision of the Supreme Court as a campaign-ending decision; in December 2016, the DNI intelligence report gave Democrats new hope that Hilary Clinton may yet be inaugurated as president—if Trump’s collusion with Russia could be proven. With the publication of this intelligence community assessment, the Deep State game to deny Donald J. Trump the presidency was on in earnest. As former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Meet the Press in March 2017, “We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, ‘our,’ that’s NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”
Paradise Lost
Hillary not only lost the opportunity to shatter the glass ceiling on Election Night 2016; her supporters also lost the opportunity to create a far-left utopia that they felt was certainly within their grasp. With Hillary as president, Obama could look forward to a continuation of his eight-year Saul Alinsky–like effort to fundamentally transform the United States into a socialist nation that warmly embraced radical Islamic extremists, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
With the Democrats thrown into disarray by Hillary’s defeat, the party resolved to move further to the left, determined to pursue a radical hard-left agenda consistent with the Deep State’s determination that Donald Trump must never be permitted to govern.
After eight years in office, Barack Obama had set the stage for a Hillary Clinton presidency that would once and for all time recast the American charter with new legislation and Supreme Court decisions that would transform what Obama had achieved into a final rewriting of the American covenant. Where our Founding Fathers desired to limit government power to protect and preserve individual liberties, the Democrats under Obama and Hillary sought to establish a Marxist-leaning social welfare state consistent with globalist one-world-government ambitions.
Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs left no doubt that her political philosophy called for statist control over an international bank–driven finance system supporting the development of international business dominating a global economy.