Donald Trump on Wednesday urged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, setting off howls of outrage from across the political spectrum for actually soliciting foreign espionage on his opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said.
VIDEO: Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing…" https://t.co/NEGclzLXtP
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 27, 2016
But it’s not the first time he has endorsed hacking to uncover information that he wants. Trump previously asked for hackers’ help in his obsessive quest to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.:
Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check "place of birth"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2014
ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama's records,I might become a major fan
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2013
For the record, Obama released his birth certificate in 2011.
Meanwhile, Trump slammed Sony for getting hacked in 2014. “If North Korea has that sort of power that they can do things on the internet that we have no idea what’s happening, that is not a good thing,” Trump told Fox News.
As for the emails that Trump described as “missing,” there are 31,830 emails written or received by Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State that her staff determined to be “private, personal records” — not related to her work — and destroyed.
FBI Director James Comey said this month that investigators had “discovered several thousand work-related e-mails” sent or received by Clinton using her personal server that her staff had not turned over to the State Department.” While that encouraged Clinton’s critics to suggest she must be hiding something, Comey added that “we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
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