Jill Stein caves in Trump-Russia scandal
Back when it was revealed that the Russians had been running phony Facebook ads in support of third party candidate Jill Stein for the sake of trying to siphon liberal votes away from Hillary Clinton, we saw a public reaction from Stein that was almost cartoonish in nature. She called the entire thing a hoax. She defended Russia. She painted herself as a victim of a two-party conspiracy. Now it turns out she’s caved in a big way.
Jill Stein has turned over documents and evidence to Trump-Russia investigators after all. We know this because Richard Burr, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is telling BuzzFeed that Stein has done so. We don’t know when this happened. It could have been yesterday. It could have been way back when the committee first requested documents from Stein. But we do know it happened, because if Burr were somehow lying, his Democratic counterpart Mark Warner would be calling him out on it. So just how important is this development?
It’s still difficult to figure out what to make of Jill Stein and Russia. She attended a dinner banquet in Moscow just as the 2016 election cycle was ramping up, and she sat at the head table with Russian President Vladimir Putin and soon-to-be Donald Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn. We don’t know what Putin and Flynn talked about during that dinner, but based on where Stein was seated, she surely participated in or overheard some of it. Stein has praised Russia on her campaign website in an almost cartoonish manner.
However, we’ve seen no direct evidence that Jill Stein was actually conspiring with Russia to alter the outcome of the election. It’s entirely possible that she merely cozied up to Putin because she was a no-name candidate just to elevate her visibility. But we do know that, even if Stein wasn’t in on it and didn’t know about it, Russia did work to help Stein during the election by running ads for her. In any case, we now know that Stein is cooperating with the Trump-Russia investigation, which can’t be good news for Trump or Russia.
