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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

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Following the revelation of emails confirming the New York Times Monday story about Donald Trump Jr. being told about Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign, conservatives, Trump backers, and Trump Jr. himself resurfaced the findings of a January Politico story about Ukranian efforts to aid Hillary Clinton, arguing that Clinton allies had been just as willing to work with a foreign power as Trump Jr. seemed to be.

The widely shared Daily Caller post about the Politico story asserts that Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa was involved in an effort by Ukraine to provide Democrats with opposition research on Paul Manaforts work as a pro-Russia political adviser in Ukrainea strategy Trump supporters claim is analogous to the Trump campaigns apparent effort to gather research on Clinton that was potentially furnished by the Russian government.

The first thing to note about thePolitico piece is that it goes to considerable lengths to differentiate the activities of Ukrainian officials during the election and the broad and evidently Kremlin-led efforts to assist Trump. Russias effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the countrys military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Politicos Kenneth Vogel and David Stern wrote. Theres little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the countrynot to mention its ongoing strife with Russiawould render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another countrys election.

That said, Politicos story did raise questions about the willingness of Clinton allies and the DNC to work with foreign officials in securing information damaging to the Trump campaign, although the parallels to what Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort were involved in are thinner than Trump backers claim.

The Politico story doesnt implicate the Clinton campaign directly so much as it does the DNCwhich, Vogel and Stern wrote, was briefed on Manafort following a meeting between Chalupa, Ukrainian Ambassador Valeriy Chaly, and one of the ambassadors aides at the Ukrainian embassy in March 2016. Its not clear whether DNC officials were aware that Chalupa was working with Ukranian officials at that point. The story does, however, say that DNC officials encouraged Chalupa to ask for a meeting with Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko to gather more information about Manafort, a meeting that never happened:

The story goes on to quote embassy official Andrii Telizhenko as saying that the embassy was additionally working with the Hillary team itself, but the allegation isnt elaborated upon in the piece.

Its important to remember that whats ultimately concerning about Russiagate is the possibility that the Trump campaignincluding staffers now employed in the White House by the presidentworked with a hostile government whose leaders attempted to influence and disrupt the election with cyberattacks. The Chalupa story is about officials in an embassy passing along opposition research to a Democratic operative and reporters. The two episodes are not close to being the same, but that fact obviously wont stop Trumps supporters from deploying the story for yet another round of Clinton whataboutism.

Read the original:
Did the Clinton Campaign Really Collude With Ukraine? - Slate Magazine (blog)