FBI Officials: No Link Between Trump and Russia

For months, Hillary Clinton has insinuated that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to get Donald Trump elected, stopping only barely short of accusing Trump of working directly with Moscow to gain an advantage in the race.

But according to a new article in The New York Times, FBI officials have found no evidence linking Trump to the Russian government:

For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

This news throws a wet blanket on one of Hillary’s unofficial 2016 slogans: “When Cornered, Blame Russia.” The campaign has used this strategy to avoid talking about the damning revelations published by WikiLeaks that have shown, among other things, that the Democratic National Committee worked closely with Clinton to make sure she defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primaries. Hacked emails also gave voters insight into Clinton’s paid speeches, where she told a group of Brazilian financial experts that her vision for the future included “open borders.”

The article is also humiliating for Sen. Harry Reid, who embarrassed himself this weekend with an angry letter to FBI Director James Comey.

“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,” Reid wrote. “The public has a right to know this information.”

What has “become clear” is that Democrats are now panicking, having lost an enormous polling advantage in a matter of just a few days. With the FBI now re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, national polls show that Trump has pulled even with the former secretary of state.

We don’t know how Putin feels about that, but we’re certainly happy.