There was widespread speculation before the election that Russians were behind the DNC hack. DNC was so concerned about Russian meddling that they did not even bother to cooperate with the FBI about it. What exactly was their reasoning here?
JoshL
3600
Well, I don’t think anyone should be terribly surprised that Russia tried to influence our election. I’m sure they’ve been doing it in one form or another for 50 years. As we probably have been doing to their political system. It’s espionage, it happens. We should do our best to prevent them from succeeding, of course, but even if we come up with positive proof that Russia did attempt to influence the election, that’s kind of a dog bites man story.
What would be important is we find out that Americans assisted Russian efforts, or if there was a quid-pro-quo between Russians and Americans. Certainly any American who helps Russian agents to influence our elections, whether for monetary or political gain, is a spy and should be treated as such. When there are serious allegations that this occurred, we should follow them up, investigate, and punish the guilty.
All of which is to say, yes, probably Obama knew that Russians were attempting to influence the election, because presumably everybody knew that. Hopefully, the intelligence community under his leadership did the best they could to prevent it. It would be a very hard stretch to say that he (or Clinton) benefited from that interference, especially since Clinton lost.
I guess the argument I hear most against the Russian interference investigations is that there is no serious allegation against Trump or his campaign; it’s all sour grapes, or fake news, or whatever. That’s not something I feel terribly competent to judge. However, if it is all a bunch of nothing, Trump could have done himself a big favor by not firing Comey, and not making enemies out of everyone in the media. Not to mention terrifying everyone who works for him. Now he’s got every journalist in the country working double time, and half the people in the executive branch ready willing and able to talk.
I don’t even remember why I started this rant now.
Obama may have made the wrong call, but to say he was unconcerned doesn’t seem accurate to me.
I’ll first in line to say Obama screwed up, but that isn’t the same as not caring. In an effort not to corrupt the sanctity of the election process, they allowed it to be destroyed. Time for subtlety and playing nice while expecting the other side to do the same is over.
Just imagine the Republican outcries of overreach and states rats if a Dem president set up a special federal elections commission that started demanding states hand over information such as voters’ electoral history, their addresses, their party membership, etc.
This one is only interesting (so far) for the potential Flynn connection, and seems more like name-dropping than anything else. As best I can tell, this guy has had a decades long hard-on for the Clintons, but no relationship to the campaign.
Subpoenas issued for Trump Dossier
BuzzFeed.
The online media outlet sent formal demands Thursday to the CIA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, seeking details on the distribution of an unverified intelligence dossier about Trump said to have been in the possession of Russian intelligence during last year’s presidential campaign, POLITICO has learned.
BuzzFeed is also seeking testimony from fired FBI Director James Comey, as well as former DNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, said a source familiar with the subpoenas.
BuzzFeed issued the demands for documents and testimony in connection with a libel suit the site is facing from Russian technology executive Aleksej Gubarev over BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the salacious intelligence dossier in its entirety in January.
Gubarev and two of his companies were mentioned in the document the website put online. Claiming that the references were inaccurate and defamatory, Gubarev and the firms filed suit in February in a county court in Florida. Buzzfeed had the case transferred to a federal court in Miami
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-activist-who-sought-clinton-emails-cited-trump-campaign-officials-1498872923
A longtime Republican activist who led an operation hoping to obtain Hillary Clinton emails from hackers listed senior members of the Trump campaign, including some who now serve as top aides in the White House, in a recruitment document for his effort.
The activist, Peter W. Smith, named the officials in a section of the document marked “Trump Campaign.” The document was dated Sept. 7, 2016.[…]
Officials identified in the document include Steve Bannon, now chief strategist for President Donald Trump; Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and now White House counselor; Sam Clovis, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department; and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was a campaign adviser and briefly was national security adviser in the Trump administration.
Damn it, Wittes, you promised.
If I never read another twitter tease again that would be good.
Is that guy just always wrong? What is the point of posting his tweets?
His “tick tick tick” thing has been pretty dependable but also frustrating. I’m hoping this one will have a shorter fuse.
Now @pwnallthethings is getting in on it. Just publish already!
Here it is. (Emphasis mine.)
As I mentioned above, Smith and his associates’ knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign were insightful beyond what could be obtained by merely attending Republican events or watching large amounts of news coverage. But one thing I could not place, at least initially, was whether Smith was working on behalf of the campaign, or whether he was acting independently to help the campaign in his personal capacity.
Then, a few weeks into my interactions with Smith, he sent me a document, ostensibly a cover page for a dossier of opposition research to be compiled by Smith’s group, and which purported to clear up who was involved. The document was entitled “A Demonstrative Pedagogical Summary to be Developed and Released Prior to November 8, 2016,” and dated September 7. It detailed a company Smith and his colleagues had set up as a vehicle to conduct the research: “KLS Research”, set up as a Delaware LLC “to avoid campaign reporting,” and listing four groups who were involved in one way or another.
[…]
My perception then was that the inclusion of Trump campaign officials on this document was not merely a name-dropping exercise. This document was about establishing a company to conduct opposition research on behalf of the campaign, but operating at a distance so as to avoid campaign reporting. Indeed, the document says as much in black and white.
The combination of Smith’s deep knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign, this document naming him in the “Trump campaign” group, and the multiple references to needing to avoid campaign reporting suggested to me that the group was formed with the blessing of the Trump campaign. In the Journal’s story this evening, several of the individuals named in the document denied any connection to Smith, and it’s certainly possible that he was a big name-dropper and never really represented anyone other than himself. If that’s the case, Smith talked a very good game.
I’m sure readers are wondering: why did I keep quiet at the time? Actually, I didn’t. In the fall, prior to the election, I discussed the events of the story first with a friend, and secondly with a journalist. The trouble was that neither I nor the reporter in question knew what to make of the whole operation. It was certainly clear that the events were bizarre, and deeply unsettling. But it wasn’t reportable.
Pretty important stuff here, further establishing a potential link between the Trump Campaign and Russian interference.
The establishment of a separate corporation to do oppo research with firewalls to shield the Trump Campaign proper from anything the oppo unit might get dirty with is an old favorite: it’s not at all dissimilar to Gordon Liddy and the Plumbers in the Nixon administration. This thing will have left a paper trail though, and I’m guessing that Mueller and company will be looking hard at it.
“People” do not care if the voting machines are easily hacked, have no paper trail or if they even register the correctly in the first place (or that a large number of people are unable to vote for various reasons) as long as they can keep chanting USA USA while they eat themselves to death.
That said:
Windows XP doesn’t need patches from Microsoft to run in an controlled environment, nor does Windows 2000.
