Second, Manafort counseled the White House to allege — albeit with no evidence to back up said charges — that the pro-Western Ukrainian government had colluded with the Democratic National Committee to try to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 presidential election. A source with direct knowledge of the matter told me that the White House adopted Manafort’s recommendation in the summer of 2017 to specifically target Alexandra Chalupa, a political strategist and consultant for the DNC, for allegedly working with Ukrainian officials to hurt Trump’s candidacy. Despite a torrent of allegations, no evidence has surfaced that Chalupa or the DNC did anything wrong.
Acting on Manafort’s advice, on July 10, 2017, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders encouraged reporters to investigate how “the Democrat National Committee coordinated opposition research directly with the Ukrainian Embassy.” That same week, Fox News’s Sean Hannity amplified the allegations evening after evening on his show. Likewise, Republicans on Capitol Hill called for investigations of the “Ukrainian matter.” On July 25, 2017, Trump tweeted: “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign – ‘quietly working to boost Clinton.’ So where is the investigation A.G.”
On August 9, 2017, Matthew Whitaker (now the acting attorney general) and a conservative advocacy group he then headed, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), formally asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the DNC’s dealings with Chalupa. The complaint was largely based on scant evidence and erroneous information; the FEC has given no indication since that it will investigate the matter further.
Even though the allegations had no factual basis to prove anything improper, they were effective propaganda. The White House made its claims shortly after the first public disclosures that Donald Trump Jr. had hosted a Trump Tower meeting between a self-described intermediary for the Russian Federation and himself, Jared Kushner, and Manafort, in which the Russians promised “dirt” on Clinton. The White House was attempting to draw a parallel between its meetings with foreigners and the DNC’s via Chalupa.
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