The truth about Russia, Trump and the 2016 election There have been four major investigations into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election and the FBI's handling of the subject — a 2019 report released by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report, a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee issued in 2020 by a GOP-controlled Senate, and now a 2023 report released by special counsel John Durham. All told, the reports add up to about 2,500 pages of dense prose and sometimes contradictory conclusions. But broad themes can be deduced from a close reading of the evidence gathered in the lengthy documents, as well as indictments and testimony on related criminal cases. We took a long look and wrote a comprehensive report that explores four key takeaways: - Russia tried to swing the 2016 election to Trump
- The FBI had reason to investigate a tip suggesting Trump campaign involvement
- The Trump campaign welcomed help from Russia
- The 'Steele dossier' proved to be a red herring
Please click the link to learn more. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Which president deserves the most blame for the national debt problem? As President Biden heads to a showdown with House Republicans over raising the national debt limit, he has sought to add context to the discussion over the nation's $31 trillion in debt. While Republicans peg Biden as being a big spender, he has pointed the finger at his predecessor, Donald Trump. "The last administration alone — the last guy who served in this office for four years — increased the total national debt by 40 percent in just four years," Biden said on May 10. Not so fast. More than half of the $7.9 trillion increase in the national debt came in the last 10 months of Trump's term, as the coronavirus pandemic emerged, and massive government spending was needed to mitigate the economic fallout. Biden has not questioned the level of government spending needed to combat the pandemic. In reality, policy choices made long ago are more responsible for the fiscal state of the nation. For instance, Lyndon B. Johnson enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, and then Richard M. Nixon in the early 1970s expanded both programs and also enhanced Social Security so that benefits were indexed to inflation. An exhaustive study of budget reports concluded that LBJ's share of the nation's fiscal imbalance is 29.7 percent. Close behind is Nixon, with 29.2 percent. There's much more in our detailed report on the roots of the national debt, including the surprising finding that a Barack Obama tax cut was twice as large as Donald Trump's tax reduction — which Trump keeps falsely claiming is the biggest tax cut ever. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down to read other fact checks on the Trump-Russia investigation | 
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