Hillary Clinton and the mastermind behind the Russia hoax caution against GOP disinformation campaigns

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just did an interview with Marc Elias, a top Democrat operative who helped construct the Russia collusion hoax. They warn of Republicans waging a “disinformation campaign” to influence the election — eight years after the duo ran the disinformation campaign of the century.

In the interview, Clinton also praised Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for fighting President Trump’s attempt to locate illegal votes in the 2020 contest, continued to insist the 2016 election was stolen, and said Democrats shouldn’t trust any election systems that aren’t run by Democrats.

It’s “good news” that Democrats are running or in key positions overseeing the election systems in crucial swing states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada, Clinton and Elias agreed. Because of this, Clinton said, “I think you’ll get fair results, and we have to accept those results because Democrats are basically trying to call the shots. That’s not the case in Georgia, but the governor there rose to the occasion in 2020 and let’s hope that he does again.”

Clinton, whom Elias calls a “true American hero” although she left four American heroes to die in Benghazi, also claimed Republicans were trying to “purge” the electorate and “make it difficult” for people to vote.

“Probably can’t even imagine what they’re going to do with artificial intelligence and other cyber attacks on voters in terms of the messages that they will get, sometimes deliberately, to confuse them. You know, different polling places, different days to vote, different times of voting — I mean, whatever they can do to mess people up,” Clinton said.

“We already had an example of that in the Democratic primary with, you know, somebody doing a phony robocall from President Biden telling them, you know, not to vote on a certain day,” Clinton claimed. “So I think they’re going to dramatically increase their confusion operation in terms of, aimed at voters to get them you know, somewhat discouraged by the complexity of voting, or they’re not knowing what they should do.”

Clinton failed to mention the man behind the fake robocall is a longtime Democrat operative who says he did it as an act of “civil disobedience” to call attention to the electoral dangers of AI manipulation. Clinton is right that internet election interference happens — except Democrats aren’t the only victims.

For example, Apple’s “Siri” digital assistant told voters that Wisconsin’s Republican presidential primary would take place on April 3 — one day after the actual primary. Users were correctly told the Democratic presidential primary was on April 2. The issue appeared to be fixed before the primary date.

“They’re going to be very effective in their disinformation campaigns and, you know, they were good, they were good against me and they’re still repeating the lies they told about me in 2016 to rev up their base, you know?” Clinton continued, unironically.

“Whether it’s Pizza Gate or, you know, all these other crazy, you know, things they said. So I think there’s going to be a three-prong strategy to shrink the electorate, make it difficult to vote, confuse people about voting — make it hard for them to understand what they’re supposed to do, discredit mail-in votes all of that — and then just flat-out disinformation,” Clinton speculated.

Elias echoed these claims later in the interview, saying Republicans use mis- and disinformation before repeating the false claim that Clinton was “cheated” out of the presidency due to Russian interference. To allege that a candidate with high negatives and one of the worst political messages in history — “I’m With Her” — was “cheated” out of an election without mentioning the massive “cheating” by that same candidate takes a Clinton-level willingness to lie.

Elias served as Clinton’s top lawyer in 2016. He has been sanctioned by judges for lying in court. It’s he who commissioned the discredited Steele dossier that the Clinton camp funded, likely using actual Russian disinformation, to create false allegations the Russians were helping former President Donald Trump. Later-uncovered U.S. intelligence information indicated that Russia actually preferred Clinton to win in 2016.

Elias hired Fusion GPS to get dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS then used funding from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to hire former British spy Christopher Steele. Steele put his name on the so-called “Steele Dossier” containing the uncorroborated allegations against Trump and disseminated it to reporters and U.S. spy agencies.

The dossier relied on information from Igor Danchenko, who was later indicted for lying to the FBI and whom a special counsel investigation showed was tied to Russian intelligence. Danchenko, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted in a detailed breakdown of the Russia-collusion hoax, “fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented and then passed on to Danchenko.”

The FBI then began illegally spying on the Trump campaign on behalf of his political opponents using the “uncorroborated evidence” provided by a likely Russian asset, in what became known as “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller later found no evidence that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russian operatives. Special counsel John Durham later released a report vindicating Trump and others who insisted the FBI acted improperly in its investigation.

Mueller and Durham’s reports were blistering indictments of corporate media and their willingness to push election-affecting political hoaxes without independent evidence. The New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for their false reporting furthering the Russian collusion propaganda operation that also led to Trump’s impeachment and hamstrung Republican control of Congress and the presidency.