Does the Russiagate story still hold water? (VIDEO DEBATE)

Legal and media analyst Lionel of LionelMedia, and The Hill newspaper columnist Brent Budowsky, join RT to debate if the Russiagate narrative still hold water as allegations of Russian meddling in the US elections is steadily sinking without concrete evidence.

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The debate turned heated with Budowsky insinuating that Moscow was definitely engaged in a cyber invasion of the US in its attempts to “fix the election”

“What most Americans in the Senate would agree is there was significant meddling, the investigation has now expanded to Facebook and Twitter and I suspect will expand to Reddit and other social media,” said Budowsky.

“What is troubling to most Americans is playing race cards in American politics from Russian sources to try and divide Americans. There are allegations with some evidence, even of the NFL controversy involving President Trump, even the Department of Homeland Security has concerns about election hacking.”

His opponent Lionel said the entire narrative did not stand up to scrutiny, repeatedly challenging Budowsky to point to one piece of evidence as an example of the alleged influence of the Kremlin in the election.

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“I implore you. Anything! Just one little bit of... person X admits he broke into the election and stole votes, or someone from the Kremlin admits that “yes, we did something” or someone arrested or someone found,” said Lionel.

“The only thing I am hearing is Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook and Twitter actually colluding with and working with the Hillary Rodham campaign through John Podesta but we seem to be forgetting that.”

Budowsky's limp response was that intelligence agencies, members of Congress and US government agencies agree with him and that the Russian government should “stop it, whether it’s admitted or not, stop interfering in our system” without defining that “it” is.

As for the Clinton campaign's direct communication with Facebook executives, Budowksy believes the issue is only worth talking about “if there was an offer of something that was illegal.”

“If there was an offer to make a campaign donation there is nothing wrong with that,” Budowksy said. “It was not an offer to fix the news, and to fix the election which is what Russia is alleged to have been doing.”