Jill Stein on the Senate Intelligence Committees Investigation of Her
Campaign for Russian Collusion: 'There Is No There There'
The former Green Party candidate calls the inquiry evidence of a "new
McCarthyism."
By Max Blumenthal / AlterNet
December 20, 2017, 8:42 AM GMT
This late November, the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered a request
for internal communications and documents to Green Party presidential
nominee Jill Stein. According to former members of Steins 2016 presidential
campaign, the request arrived through intellience commitee chairs Sen's
Richard Burr and Mark Warner, who are seeking information for the ongoing
Russiagate investigation. While the Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to
make the details of its inquiry into Steins campaign public, Republican
Sen. Richard Burr told reporter Emma Loop that he is looking for evidence of
Steins collusion with the Russians.
In recent weeks, the bipartisan investigation into Russian meddling has
strayed from its focus on Trump and begun targeting left-wing political
figures. Last month, the House Intelligence Committee sent a subpoena to
Randy Credico, a retired comedian, noted prison reform activist and local
New York political gadfly, seeking information on rumors that he had served
as a go-between for right-wing operative Roger Stone and Wikileaks founder
Julian Assange. And now, Senate investigators have trained their sights on
Stein, a veteran anti-war activist and pediatrician despised by Hillary
Clinton partisans, who blame her for throwing the election to Trump.
I spoke to Stein immediately after the news from BuzzFeed leaked of the
Senate inquiry into her campaign. She characterized the demand for Green
Party documents as clear evidence of a "new McCarthyism, which is the flip
side of a military madness that is stronger than ever in this country."
This is the continuing focus of empire and austerity and the assault on
democracy that goes with it, she continued. The silver lining is we will
get a chance at the microphone. A lot of people will be screaming at us but
some people will hear us.
Since news broke of the congressional inquiry into Steins campaign, she has
been a punching bag for hardcore Democrat partisans. Zac Petnacas, the
former rapid response director for Hillary Clintons campaign, proclaimed,
Jill Stein is a Russian agent eight times in one tweet until he reached
the maximum character limit.
The origins of allegations against Stein lay in the so-called Steele
Dossier, a collection of unverified claims cobbled together by a former MI5
agent named Christopher Steele, who was paid by the DNC and the Clinton
campaign. According to journalist Howard Blum, Steele relied on an army of
sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the
years. Under the watch of James Comey, the FBI also made a deal to fund the
dossier, but the arrangement fell apart, leaving it to the Clinton camp to
funnel fees to Steele through the opposition research firm, Fusion GPS.
In addition to claiming that Putin held compromising footage of sex workers
urinating on Trump on camera in a VIP suite at the Moscow Ritz, the dossier
accused Stein of having been funded by the Russian government to attend a
gala hosted by the Russian-backed news network, RT.
Stein told me this claim is false: I paid my own way to Moscow. They [the
Russian government] did not pay for my hotel or expenses, and I have the
receipts to prove it.
A gala dinner and collusion illusions
The RT gala was organized in November 2015 as a celebration of the
international networks 10th anniversary. Dignitaries, diplomats,
politicians, media professionals, and activists from around the world
gathered in Moscow for the event. I was among those invited to attend and I
accepted. I wanted to interact with colleagues from around the globe and had
long considered RT a valuable space in a conformist American media
environment that is increasingly hostile to dissenting opinions,
particularly where Western foreign policy is concerned.
During the two-day affair, I participated in a public panel discussion with
former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, historian Peter Kuznick and the
Christian Science Monitors Moscow correspondent, Fred Weir, among others. I
did not have a chance to collude with any Russian officials, though I did
attempt a selfie with Mikhail Gorbachev as he brushed by me in a hallway. As
far as I know, the only person who received a fee to attend the RT gala was
former Gen. Michael Flynn, who was previously unknown to guests and was
referred to dismissively as the "Obama general. Flynns one-on-one with RT
host Sophie Shevardzadze went over poorly; he was regarded as inarticulate
and uninformed by a range of audience members I spoke to (I did not attend).
The event culminated with a catered dinner featuring live music and a video
mash-up of RTs greatest hits over the years. I spent much of the time at a
table chatting with former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura and his family,
and Lee Camp, a left-wing political comedian who hosts the popular RT
program, "Redacted Tonight." None of us had any inkling that the festivities
would come to be seen as a de facto crime scene by packs of Beltway
reporters and congressional investigators. It would be months before Flynn
emerged as a wild-eyed Trump surrogate and a full year before the Russiagate
narrative was spun out of the ashes of Hillary Clintons presidential
campaign.
At a table immediately in front of the stage, Stein was seated beside Willy
Wimmer, the former foreign minister of Germany. Also at the table was Czech
former Deputy Prime Minister Cyril Svoboda, a Serbian filmmaker named Emir
Kusturica and Flynn. Stein said her only substantive conversation was with
Wimmer, and it lasted about two minutes. In the middle of the event, Russian
President Vladimir Putin strode into the room alongside his chief of staff
and spokesman. They briefly seated themselves at the dignitaries table
before Putin appeared on stage for a few remarks, then shuffled toward the
exit.
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I asked Stein what took place when Putin arrived at her table. Putin
briefly ran around the table and shook everyones hand. No names were
exchanged, it was an impersonal greeting, she recalled. There was nothing
about that table that facilitated any communication of any sorts. The one
person there who spoke English and Russian fluently was sitting next to
Michael Flynn and translated what he said was the conversation between Flynn
and Putin. It amounted to something to the effect of, 'How are you? Im
fine.'"
Stein told me she had requested a moment with Putin or Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss US-Russian cooperation on nuclear
non-proliferation and de-escalating the conflict in Syria. Hillary Clinton
was promoting a no-fly zone in Syria, which would have put us in the
position of shooting down Russian planes when we have 2,000 nuclear weapons
on hair-trigger alert. So communication with your adversaries was important
and we were in a crisis at the time. Our [Green Party] communications were
exemplary, she asserted. They were content-focused, not about quid pro quo
or any backroom deals. They were on target and in the words of JFK, I
believe we should never negotiate out of fear, and never fear to negotiate.
In the end, Stein was able to meet only with the foreign affairs chair of
the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. A statement posted on
Steins campaign website outlined her agenda for the meeting: a new
commitment to collaborative dialogue between our governments to avert
disastrous wars for geopolitical domination, destruction of the climate, and
cascading injustices that promote violence and terrorism.
Steins visit to Moscow was part of a wider itinerary that brought her in
contact with like-minded political figures across the Atlantic. She had just
visited Paris, where she participated in a conference on climate change and
rubbed shoulders with Jeremy Corbyn, now the leader of the UK Labour Party.
Corbyn had pretty much the same stance on the need for a peace offensive in
the Middle East, a weapons embargo in the region, the dangers of a no-fly
zone in Syria and on the need for nuclear non proliferation, she recalled.
These arent fringe ideas and most of the world sees them as absolutely
critical.
Picture of a pseudo-scandal
In the weeks after Hillary Clintons election loss, a photograph of Stein
seated at the table with Putin and Flynn began making the rounds. For many
frustrated Democrats, the image was clear evidence of a nefarious conspiracy
between a fringe third-party candidate, a Trump aide and Putin to deprive
Hillary of her historic destiny. In their minds, Stein was not just a
spoiler, but a spy.
The fact that they got a photo out of this allowed them to launch a
baseless smear campaign, Stein said. And they distorted the event itself.
It was practically a whos who of the peace community on hand.
In July, Steins name was added to a Senate Judiciary Committee letter
demanding communications between Donald Trump Jr., Russian officials and
members of Trumps presidential campaign. There was no indication that Stein
had ever interacted with Trump Jr., and she denounced the letter as an
obvious smear designed to generate a fake news feeding frenzy.
So far, no material has turned up to validate the committees unusual line
of inquiry. In the face of the Senate Intelligence Committees request,
Stein pledged cooperation. We intend to provide any documents that are
relevant, she maintained, but we had very little communications with
Russia other than through RT for our appearances and limited logistics
around the RT conference.
But in the frenetic atmosphere of Russiagate, even Steins interviews with
RT America have become grounds for suspicion. An error-laden report released
by the Director of National Intelligence this January cast RT as a key
aspect of Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Among the
transgressions the DNI accused RT of committing was hosting a third-party
debate that gave a platform to candidates like Stein. The report also
complained that RT was guilty of promoting "radical discontent.
Despite the storm of accusations, Stein remains confident that her name will
eventually be cleared. Real people are not buying this effort to demonize
us and [the investigation has] lost the thread. There is simply no there
there, she stated. But there will be a lot of damage done before it comes
out on the other end.
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath, Republican Gomorrah, and The 51 Day
War. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. Follow him on
Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.
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