House TV

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, said Democrats were trying to use the impeachment process to “stop the investigation by the US Department of Justice and Ukraine into the corruption of Ukraine interference into US election in 2016.”

Immediately after Gohmert finished speaking, Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said, “I am deeply concerned that any member of the House would spout Russian propaganda on the floor of the House.”

This criticism triggered a heated response from Gohmert, who returned to the podium, shouting, but the microphone had been turned off.

Facts First: By raising the specter of “Ukraine interference” in the 2016 election, Gohmert was spreading Russian propaganda. Russia, not Ukraine, meddled in the 2016 election. The US intelligence community believes this conspiracy was concocted by Russia to blame Ukraine for its actions in 2016. Republicans have also embraced this counter-narrative, but it just isn’t supported by the facts.

Here are the facts: The Russian government and military, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, launched an unprecedented attack on the 2016 presidential election. They spent millions of rubles on hackers and trolls who systematically tried to weaken Hillary Clinton and boost President Trump. It's impossible to know if their efforts tipped the scales, but Trump won by a razor-thin margin.

But Trump has questioned, dismissed and contradicted these findings from the US intelligence community. Instead, Trump has promoted an alternate reality that it was the Ukrainian government who meddled in the 2016 election, and they tried to help Clinton win. In this telling, Ukraine framed Russia for the hacks and coordinated with Democratic operatives in the US to smear Trump.

There is no evidence to support Trump’s conspiracy theories of a Ukrainian government operation against him. At worst, it appears that Ukrainian leaders may have hoped Trump would lose, especially after he publicly embraced Russia-friendly policy positions.

In fact, CNN reported that US intelligence officials briefed senators this fall that Russia has engaged in a years-long campaign to push these conspiracy theories, which would shift the blame away from Moscow and onto Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 election.

Even with this information in the public ledger, supposed “Ukrainian interference” became a primary talking point for Republicans throughout the impeachment inquiry. GOP lawmakers pointed to op-eds published by Ukrainian officials, and news articles describing alleged contacts between Ukrainians and Democratic operatives, as proof of what they claimed was a wide-ranging conspiracy.

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