Contrary to the ‘Russian interference’ narrative that marred President Donald Trump’s first term in office, Russian intelligence had damaging information about Hillary Clinton’s health in the lead up to the 2016 election but Russian President Vladimir Putin chose not to release it.
The stunning revelations were part of a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report stemming from an investigation into the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election meddling ordered by then-President Barack Obama that was withheld from the public until Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified it this week as part of her ongoing effort to reveal the depths of the Russiagate hoax.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Matt Taibbi, founder of Racket News, to discuss the bombshell information about Clinton and what it says about Putin’s motives in 2016.
The Russian Intel
According to the House report dated September 18, 2020, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, “possessed [Democratic National Committee (DNC)] communications that Clinton was suffering from ‘intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness’” that required her to be placed on “a daily regimen of ‘heavy tranquilizers.'”
Additionally, SVR intel said the then-69 year old was being treated for “Type 2 diabetes, Ischemic heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
The House report noted Russian intelligence also had DNC information that President Obama and party leaders found the state of Clinton’s health to be “extraordinarily alarming” and felt it could have “serious negative impact” on her chances of winning. “Her health information was being kept in ‘strictest secrecy,'” the report stated, “and even close advisors were not being fully informed.”
Russia concluded that “while afraid of losing” the election, Clinton “remained ‘obsessed with a thirst for power.'”
Conflicting Reports
While the Obama-ordered ICA did note that “Moscow had additional information it obtained from cyber collection against U.S. government and nongovernment targets,” the House report concluded that “the ICA’s generic description of the material Putin held back makes the reader unaware of significant information available to Moscow to denigrate Secretary Clinton.”
The House report – which the Intelligence Committee based on 20 interviews with intel agents and a review of source material for the 2017 ICA – determined that “Putin’s decision not to leak additional derogatory information on Secretary Clinton as the polls narrowed undermines the ICA’s claim that he ‘aspired’ to help Trump win and ‘never entirely abandoned hope for a defeat of Secretary Clinton.'”
Ultimately, the House believed Putin’s decision to stop leaking was “consistent with alternative explanations – omitted by the ICA – that Putin didn’t care who won because he saw weaknesses for Russia in both candidates.”
What It Reveals
Taibbi called out another piece from the House report that noted the Russian GRU warned Putin Trump likely would not win the election absent a “remarkable” intervention of derogatory information against Clinton. While it remains unclear if the health information was true, there is no denying it would have qualified as a “remarkable” development.
“They had that kind of direct derogatory information, or at least thought they had it… and he doesn’t release it,” Taibbi explained. “They had a lot of stuff they could have leaked about Hillary and they chose not to do it largely because it appears they expected Hillary to win and were holding in reserve the best stuff for the presidency.”
As you may recall, there was plenty of speculation about Clinton’s health at the time after video showed her appearing to nearly collapse and need the help of several aides while leaving a 9/11 memorial event in New York City months before the election. She had also suffered a concussion in 2012 that led to the discovery of a blood clot.
And while the Clinton campaign attempted to dismiss questions and concerns about the Democrat nominee’s condition as conspiracy theories, the Russian intel, if true, confirms that concern spread all the way to the highest levels of the Democratic Party.
Megyn said all of this corroborates the initial intel that Putin was not looking to help Trump. “He had a bunch of stuff he could have released on Hillary Clinton that would have made her look terrible and was in the news cycle,” she noted. “There were tons of speculations going on about her health. He could have dropped that sh-t and blown up her campaign, but he didn’t.”
“And now we’re finding,” she added, “there wasn’t one piece of the Russia narrative that (A) was true or (B) wasn’t understood to be false when it was getting peddled to us by John Brennan, and Jim Comey, and [James] Clapper, and Obama.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Taibbi by tuning in to episode 1,115 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.