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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer criticized CNN Thursday for reporting that U.S. officials are investigating that associates of the president communicated with suspected Russian operatives to coordinate the release of information that damaged the Hillary Clinton campaign. “So let’s actually look at what CNN reported. They reported that anonymous U.S. officials have told them that information indicates that association of the campaign and suspected operatives coordinated, which they admit is not conclusive of anything, is bordering on collusion. The last line of the thing said, ‘The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place,’” Spicer said in response to a reporter’s question. Spicer said there’s more evidence that CNN colluded with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to give her the questions to CNN’s presidential debates against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) than any type of collusion from the Trump campaign.
“I think there’s probably more evidence that CNN colluded with the Clinton campaign to give her debate questions than the Trump campaign gave any kind of collusion. So I think when it comes down to that reporting, it is filled with a bunch of subjective terms about this person may have done this, possibly could have done that,” Spicer said. “And at the end of the story, if you wade to the very bottom it says, ‘The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place.’ So I’ve addressed this type of reporting in the past, and this fits right in,” he added. Emails from March 2016 showed Brazile advising Clinton’s campaign that Hillary Clinton would get questions about the death penalty at one debate and the Flint water crisis at another debate. Former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile admitted recently that as a CNN contributor, she helped Clinton’s campaign by providing her with “potential town hall topics,” the NY Daily News reported.
“Among the many things I did in my role as Democrat operative and DNC vice chair ... was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign,” Brazile wrote in a piece published in Time magazine this month. “My job was to make all our Democrat candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen,” she wrote. “But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.”