Echo, Echo, Echo
Daily Caller 8/27/18 –China Hacked Hillary Clinton’s Email Private Server
Daily Caller 7/12/18 – Gohmert: Watchdog Found Cinton Emails Were Sent to Foreign Entity
It was supposed to be the “highlight” of the conservative right attack on the FBI. Peter Strzok, the disgraced head of the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton emails and of Trump and Russia, was publicly testifying in front of a joint session of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
It had a Freedom Caucus “all star” cast: Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Sam Gohmert along with fellow travellers Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte. They were poised to finally “get” the bête noire, the man who “let Hillary go” and went after the Trump campaign. Strzok was fatally flawed; he had an affair with a DOJ employee, they were both married to others, and they had a lot of the affair on government phones. There was a written record of their infidelity, and of their disdainful political opinions about Trump.
For ten hours Strzok was grilled. Democrats on the committees gave him some respite, but Republicans came back at him again and again. However, this former top agent in counter-espionage responded clearly and definitively, even in the face of Congressman Sam Gohmert’s personal attacks. Gohmert asked how Strzok could look in his wife’s eye and lie about the affair. That encounter led Democrats to ask if Gohmert had forgotten to take his medication.
The hearing was a letdown for the Freedom Caucus team. Strzok held his ground, and projected the aura of a competent intelligence officer. The hearing itself became a circus, ultimately embarrassing both committees.
But just before Gohmert’s snide remark, he asked a question about a meeting Strozk had with Frank Rucker of the Intelligence Community Inspector General Office (ICIG) regarding an anomaly on the Clinton server. Gohmert claimed that the ICIG knew that over 30,000 Clinton emails were being copied to a different address (30,000 is a “magic” number, the number of Clinton emails that were unavailable for FBI inspection. Trump famously asked the Russians to find them.)
The Daily Caller, Fox News Commentator Tucker Carlson’s online “newspaper,” picked up the story that day. Last week, Carlson himself repeated the charges on his Fox News show, and the Daily Caller re-echoed the charges in a “more specific” article. President Trump obviously watched Carlson, and repeated the story as “fact” in a series of tweets, claiming that all of Clinton’s emails were copied to the Chinese.
Since July 12th, there has been no independent confirmation of Gohmert’s claim. But his words have entered the “echo chamber” of Trump-supporting media, and have been bouncing back and forth. Today in a brief Google Search, there are more than eleven different sources reporting the story that “Clinton emails were hacked by China.” Like the proverbial “fly story” where millions can’t be wrong, each of these stories cite either Gohmert, or the original Daily Caller article from July 12th.
In fact, the only “new news” regarding this story is a blanket FBI denial: “The FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised.”
It is a prime example of the “echo chamber” effect. What real evidence Gohmert had has not been revealed or may not exist, and besides, that’s not the point. The Daily Caller cites him and unnamed sources, and all of the other publications ran with the story. The President then elevates it to national prominence, and, voila, it is now “fact.” The “missing” 30,000 Clinton emails are with the Chinese government, and the FBI investigators ignored the evidence. Trump cries: “Stop the Mueller investigation, there is NO COLLUSION!!!”
In our current crazy world, truly all things are possible. But what evidence we have now on this story is the word of a Congressman, Sam Gohmert, who has proven he will say anything to get Trump “off the hook.” It is interesting that even his “brother” Freedom Caucus members, Jordan and Meadows, haven’t taken up this fight. But the story continues to bounce around the internet, and for the thirty-percent “always-Trumpers” the repetition alone will create a “fact” out of this fiction.
