Rep. Ted Lieu suggested without evidence that former President Donald Trump is responsible for the death of Russian dissident Alexander Navalny.
When appearing on MSNBC, Lieu agreed Russia was responsible for Navalny’s death in prison but claimed Trump had given Russia a “green light” to kill him by comments a week prior calling on NATO nations to increase military spending.
“I first of all agree with President Biden that Russia is responsible for his death. Also, what happened in a few days leading up to his death? Well, we had former President Donald Trump essentially say that Russia should attack European countries,” Lieu said.
Lieu took Trump’s words out of context to falsely assert he encouraged Russia to attack Europe.
The California Democrat, a repeated promoter of debunked Trump-Russia collusion claims, used Navalny’s death as another opportunity to criticize Trump despite Mueller and Durham finding no evidence of collusion.
“That is crazy. That is traitorous language. Russia certainly was listening, and I think they thought, hey, we now have a green light to do all sorts of crazy stuff,” Lieu said of Trump’s previous statements. “And if Trump were to be president, Putin would have even more latitude.”
“I do support legislation that requires disclosure on ads and social media and so on so next time for example, if you see a pro-Trump ad, it might just say at the bottom ‘paid for by the Kremlin.’ And so that’s the kind of disclosure that we would like to see,” Lieu said.
Lieu has a history of advancing conspiracies about Trump and Russia unrelated to the actual topics being discussed.
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