Feb 20: Bernie Sanders says his 2016 team saw effects of Russian anti-Clinton campaign

[ehrnst]

100. Weaver is denying Mueller's assertion that Russian Bots backed Bernie at all:

Bernie Sanders blamed Hillary Clinton for for allowing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in a Vermont Public Radio interview

He aftewards sent out a statement that backed off from that - link to the statement is in the tweet below:

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

While his 2016 campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, denied special counsel Robert Mueller’s assertion that the Russian’s backed Sanders campaign, according to Politico.


Asked why Sanders would blame Clinton for not intervening, Weaver said, “Uh, I don’t know. They [Clinton's campaign] did have more information.”

Sanders went on to indicate that he was at least vaguely aware of the operation that Mueller detailed in his indictment of 13 Russian nationals last week: “What Mueller reported, he had more specificity than we’d seen before. Not exactly new.”

The findings that Sanders is referring to:

Mueller’s indictment states that the 13 Russians indicted “engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”

Among the evidence the indictment cites is a message from the day after Sanders and Trump won their New Hampshire primaries. "Specialists were instructed to post content that focused on ‘politics in the USA’ and to ‘use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them.),” the document read.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/21/bernie-sanders-trump-russia-interference-420528

So - Bernie is stating that he "vaguely knew" and was "not surprised" at the above findings. But also said:

The Vermont senator was adamant that he did not benefit from Russian bots urging voters to support him. “I did not know that Russian bots were promoting my campaign. Russian bots were not promoting my campaign,” he said

Is that clearer? His campaign ended at the convention in July 2016. The Mueller indictment (which Bernie references directly as "not surprising him&quot , as well as some who worked on Sanders' campaign, confirm activity through the General Election.

Sanders described how an aide handling his social media accounts noticed an uptick in “horrific and ugly things” directed at Clinton beginning around September 2016 — long after the Democratic nomination had been decided, and while Sanders himself was traveling the country campaigning on her behalf.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2018/02/20/bernie-sanders-mueller-indictment-hillary-clinton-2016/356453002/

So if an aide confirmed this, and as Bernie claims, went to the Clinton campaign with it, why was Bernie silent about it until now? Do you believe that the Clinton campaign would not have come to him with this? Because the best way to neutralize damage that Sanders supporters were doing sharing bot propaganda from his FB pages would have been for him to have spoken publicly about it.

That was not the job of the Clinton campaign to manage Bernie's FB pages - imagine the long knives coming out if there was even a perceived attempt by HRC to stop people from posting on his FB pages......