Trump slammed Russian election interference as a 'hoax' — but now uses it as a 'defense': analysis

29 November 2023

Former President Donald Trump and his defenders have repeatedly downplayed Russian interference in the 2016 election. But according to the Mueller Report, Russian interference in that election was quite real — although former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign's interactions with Russians did not rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy.

Trump and his allies used the phrase "Russia hoax" many times during Mueller's investigation. But in an article published on November 29, the Washington Post's Philip Bump stresses that Trump's lawyers have referenced Russia in special counsel Jack Smith's 2020 election case against the former president.

"In a court filing this week," Bump explains, "(Trump's) attorneys tried a novel argument. It wasn't really Trump's fault that people thought the election might have been subverted, they asserted. It was instead, at least in part, a function of the Russian interference effort in 2016. You know, that thing that Trump often likes to describe under the umbrella term 'the Russia hoax.'"

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Bump notes that Politico's Kyle Cheney has "picked out this little irony from the filing."

In a November 28 post on X (formerly Twitter), Cheney observed, "Trump wants people to know that it was Russia, not him, who caused Americans to distrust the election system. He will make this case by relying on intelligence community assessments he and his allies have constantly maligned and disputed."

Bump points out that Trump "didn't go out of his way to hold Russia to account for what happened in 2016."

"Now, though, the idea that he, his administration and his supporters were riddled with questions about the sanctity of American elections is a useful means of defending himself against federal criminal charges," Bump writes. "So now, it seems, he's at last willing to concede that Russia interfered. Or at least, his attorneys are."

Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

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