A Republican-Backed Senate Report Shows Trump and His Backers Are Russian Dupes

During the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, Republican House members led by Rep. Devin Nunes repeatedly declared that the real scandal was not President Trump’s attempt to muscle the Ukrainian president but Ukraine’s supposed intervention in the 2016 election to harm Trump. Other Trumpers, including Rudy Giuliani, Fox News hosts, and assorted right-wing partisans and journalists, have passionately decried the Trump-Russia affair as a hoax and insisted that Ukrainian interference was the true wrongdoing. And Trump himself has denied that Vladimir Putin attacked the election, and he has called for an investigation of Ukrainian meddling. In fact, Trump’s phone call to the Ukrainian president that led to his impeachment was partly prompted by his desire to find evidence to back up the Ukrainian conspiracy theory and to absolve Russia of assaulting American democracy. But Trump and the rest of the Ukraine-did-it crowd have been played by a clandestine Russian influence operation, and they have, wittingly or not, amplified this covert Moscow disinformation campaign. They have been useful idiots for Putin.

Who says so? The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.