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Donald Trump is trying to make his Russia scandal about Hillary and Bill Clinton

President Trump Participates In Roundtable With Women Small Business Owners
President Trump Participates In Roundtable With Women Small Business Owners
Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images

Mired in scandal over possible political ties to Russia, President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday night to turn the blame to his former political adversary Hillary Clinton.

Rattling off a list of the Clintons’ ties to Russia, Trump raised a widely debunked pay-for-play allegation that Clinton personally profited from a 2009 Uranium deal with Russia during the Clinton-led State Department’s “reset” campaign to soften relations with the country.

USA Today tied Trump’s tweets back to Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash and an April 2015 New York Times article — both of which Trump was known to turn to during the campaign:

The Times reported the Russians directed $2.35 million — which the Clintons failed to disclose — to the Clinton Foundation at a time when the Russian atomic energy agency was seeking approval for a deal to buy a company that controlled one-fifth of America’s uranium production capacity. During this same period, a Russian investment bank tied to the Kremlin paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.

However, as Politifact reported, the accusations against Clinton have been deemed “mostly false,” as Clinton “didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal” and led one of nine agencies that signed off on the deal.

Meanwhile, there are already four separate scandals involving Trump and Russia that arose because of the 2016 election: the resignation of Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US; the Russian hack of the DNC; a largely unsubstantiated dossier of Trump’s ties to Russia, which circulated the upper echelons of government; and Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusal from all further Trump-Russia investigations, after it became apparent that he had misled the Senate during confirmation hearings over his meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Last week, FBI Director James Comey confirmed it was investigating whether the president’s campaign or associates coordinated with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election.

Trump has denied every allegation connecting his political operation with the Russian government. On Monday, the White House confirmed Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee over the allegations.

Further reading:

-As the Trump-Russia story continues to develop, Vox’s Alvin Chang and Javier Zarracina made a visual guide to all the different allegations.

-Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explains the three biggest Trump-Russia scandals, including the DNC hack, Flynn’s resignation, and the elusive, and largely unproven dossier.

-There are a lot of loose ends surrounding the Trump-Russia allegations. Vox’s Matt Yglesias lays out 33 questions still unanswered.

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