Yes, there is. Also, as you note, the fact that leaks are hinted in advance to certain outlets. That also included the Trump campaign.
Reince Priebus was absolutely insistent with Chris Wallace that FBI investigated the Russia hacking on the RNC. According to the FBI they gained access to the network but were unable to access any senstive information. So they were unable to supply wikileaks with anything really juicy. According to Reince, the WaPo article that claimed differently is flat out wrong. The WaPo article was unsourced so he is correct on that point.
Now Reince, maybe parsing the story in a very careful way but I’m somewhat inclined to believe him.
Do you guys have links to credible sources with these claims? That’s the most difficult part to weed through.
Well for my added claim of the Trump campaign getting tipped off to Wikileaks stuff, my source is basically Guilliani and Trump themselves coming out and flat out saying ‘wait until you hear what Wikileaks has coming up tomorrow’. So, yeah, they were getting wind.
From whom and to what end? Only speculation.
The working theory on Russia not actually wanting Trump to win is that they wanted a weakened POTUS but one that would be reliable. They (with the help of a crappy campaigner in Clinton) overshot their goal.
Mission Accomplished
How close do you need it to get ?
The theory given by these two responses doesn’t fit the evidence unless you hand wave a whole lot of stuff. First of all, if they wanted a weakened POTUS, why would they release that stuff before the election and not after? Why not simply wait until Hillary won, then release it in the window between the election and the EC vote? Releasing it prior to the election runs the risk of a) getting drowned out by other election nonsense, b) becoming meaningless once the election is over, and c) not having the weakened party actually get elected. Likewise, if they were interested in weakening the President generally, not Hillary specifically, why haven’t they been leaking all sorts of stuff to weaken Trump now that he won? They were so shocked by his win that they’ve got nothing?
In addition to that, it requires that we ignore the way Trump himself and his surrogates have acted. We have to ignore all the pro-Russia policy stances he advocated. We have to ignore the people he hired or plans to hire who were deeply tied to Russia. We have to ignore his campaign communicating with a Russian bank server. It seems like a lot to ask to say that all these things are coincidental - it’s way too many coincidences for Russia to have just happened to be lucky with Clinton staffers but not Trump staffers, to just happen to have data to release right before election day, and to just happen to have the person they weren’t hurting do all sorts of things to help them before and after he won.
Wow, that was a seismic goalpost move from wanting to prove this beyond reasonable doubt to claiming that we shouldn’t judge someone guilty without a reasonable reason. I think we have ample reasonable evidence of Russia’s complicity. You can always create other theories of a crime, but in this case those theories are not credible. It’s like people who thought Nixon wasn’t culpable in Watergate prior to the “smoking gun” tape or those who absolved Reagan of Iran-Contra because he was “out of the loop” (i.e., old). Or the jury that failed to convict OJ because the glove didn’t fit.
Uh, I was just throwing out possible reasons other than helping Trump. I didn’t indicate that any were actually true, just that there are plenty of reasons that the Russians would want to influence a US Presidential election outside of trying to fix the election - those were just some off of the top of my head.
Espionage is traditionally defined as stealing classified information or other state secrets. So if Putin & Co merely spread propaganda or fake news, I don’t that think would qualify as espionage.
Stealing trade secrets has recently been outlawed as “economic espionage”, so perhaps the DNC hack would qualify. But this is the kind of thing that Volkswagen and Hilton Hotels get sued for, so we’re quite a few steps removed from the world of cloak-and-dagger.
What makes you think the CIA has none of these, or is using a lower standard of evidence?
I’m not a lawyer but reading the actual article it seems a little open to interpretation:
“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
Levying war against the United States is one scenario, adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort is another. Define enemy of course but a case could be made for the latter scenario if what we’re talking about is giving aid to an adversarial nation that is actively trying to undermine our democracy towards to further their political agenda.
Though that seems to speak against the second scenario, it could also be that espionage was an easier case to make. Espionage is probably treasonous in cases where a US citizen spies for an adversary but the espionage itself is likely a serious enough crime on its own to forego pursuing the more nebulous charge of treason.
The amount of stupidity described in that article is staggering. If the FBI has knowledge of an attack on a major corporation/institution, do they usually discuss that with the help desk?
I call bullshit on this. If they knew it wasn’t legit, there would have been no reason to change the password. And even if they thought it was a good idea, they would have expressly said not to click the button in the email.
This is no more than someone doing a terrible job of trying to cover their own ass from the stench of incompetence.
The Russians clearly did this, it’s silly to pretend otherwise.
In terms getting the concrete evidence from the intelligence agencies, you aren’t going to. They aren’t going to reveal that much.
But the fact that the agencies have said that they know it’s the Russians… Means it’s the Russians. Deal with it.
Well, and the fact that Wikileaks accidentally confessed it this week.
So the question, for those who agree about this, is how do we deal with it? Assuming the hacks were limited to the emails and not voting machines, what steps should be taken?
First of all sanctions or other actions against Russia are clearly in order, but can we trust Trump to continue them once in office if he’s benefitted so much from the thing he’s supposedly punishing?
What can be done about Trump and Russia? Will electors actually choose to vote for someone else if shown convincing evidence of him being compromised? Should they? Could he be impeached and convicted for this, or only if he tries to cover it up post-Inauguration? Does he have to have known ahead of time, or would knowing only afterward and not saying anything be bad enough?
This is an important point. While things may certainly be “treasonous” acts, like spying for a foreign government or the like, they are not actually Treason. Treason is very specifically defined. Thank the British for using it as a cudgel against all dissent.
Trump can’t really be tried for treason. He could probably be tried for some form of conspiracy/subversion/espionage or the like though. In the entire history of the nation only like 13-14 people have ever been convicted of treason. And even on a fair number of those it didn’t stick.
Not even remotely. He’s swapping out China for Russia, while also giving them the reigns to the world. It’s fairly obvious they have undue influence over him, probably financial, though it could be more standard blackmail type stuff.
You are aware that Wikileaks accepts submissions from anyone, right?