Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:46 pm

The NSA Chief Says Russia Hacked the 2016 Election. Congress Must Investigate.
It's up to Capitol Hill to protect American democracy.

DAVID CORN

NOV. 16, 2016 3:24 PM

Despite all the news being generated by the change of power underway in Washington, there is one story this week that deserves top priority: Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, "This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He added, "This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily."

This was a stunning statement that has echoed other remarks from senior US officials. He was saying that Russia directly intervened in the US election to obtain a desired end: presumably to undermine confidence in US elections or to elect Donald Trump—or both. Rogers was clearly accusing Vladimir Putin of meddling with American democracy. This is news worthy of bold and large front-page headlines—and investigation. Presumably intelligence and law enforcement agencies are robustly probing the hacking of political targets attributed to Russia. But there is another inquiry that is necessary: a full-fledged congressional investigation that holds public hearings and releases its findings to the citizenry.

If the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies are digging into the Russian effort to affect US politics, there is no guarantee that what they uncover will be shared with the public. Intelligence investigations often remain secret for the obvious reasons: they involve classified information. And law enforcement investigations—which focus on whether crimes have been committed—are supposed to remain secret until they produce indictments. (And then only information pertinent to the prosecution of a case is released, though the feds might have collected much more.) The investigative activities of these agencies are not designed for public enlightenment or assurance. That's the job of Congress.

When traumatic events and scandals that threaten the nation or its government have occurred—Pearl Harbor, Watergate, the Iran-contra affair, 9/11—Congress has conducted investigations and held hearings. The goal has been to unearth what went wrong and to allow the government and the public to evaluate their leaders and consider safeguards to prevent future calamities and misconduct. That is what is required now. If a foreign government has mucked about and undercut a presidential election, how can Americans be secure about the foundation of the nation and trust their own government? They need to know specifically what intervention occurred, what was investigated (and whether those investigations were conducted well), and what steps are being taken to prevent further intrusions.

There already is much smoke in the public realm: the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Also, Russian hackers reportedly targeted state election systems in Arizona and Illinois. Coincidentally or not, the Russian deputy foreign minister said after the election that Russian government officials had conferred with members of Trump's campaign squad. (A former senior counterintelligence officer for a Western service sent memos to the FBI claiming that he had found evidence of a Russian intelligence operation to coopt and cultivate Trump.) And the DNC found evidence suggesting its Washington headquarters had been bugged—but there was no indication of who was the culprit. In his recent book, The Plot to Hack America, national security expert Malcolm Nance wrote, "Russia has perfected political warfare by using cyber assets to personally attack and neutralize political opponents…At some point Russia apparently decided to apply these tactics against the United States and so American democracy itself was hacked."

Several House Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, have urged the FBI to investigate links between Trump's team and Russia, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has done the same. According to various news reports, Russia-related probes have been started by the FBI targeting Americans associated with the Trump campaign. One reportedly was focused on Carter Page, a businessman whom the Trump campaign identified as a Trump adviser, and another was focused on Paul Manafort, who served for a time as Trump's campaign manager. (Page and Manafort have denied any wrongdoing; Manafort said no investigation was happening.)

Yet there is a huge difference between an FBI inquiry that proceeds behind the scenes (and that may or may not yield public information) and a full-blown congressional inquiry that includes open hearings and ends with a public report. So far, the only Capitol Hill legislator who has publicly called for such an endeavor is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). On Tuesday, Graham, who was harshly critical of Trump during the campaign, proposed that Congress hold hearings on "Russia's misadventures throughout the world," including the DNC hack. "Were they involved in cyberattacks that had a political component to it in our elections?" Graham said. He pushed Congress to find out.

The possibility that a foreign government covertly interfered with US elections to achieve a particular outcome is staggering and raises the most profound concerns about governance within the United States. An investigation into this matter should not be relegated to the secret corners of the FBI or the CIA. The public has the right to know if Putin or anyone else corrupted the political mechanisms of the nation. There already is reason to be suspicious. Without a thorough examination, there will be more cause to question American democracy.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... 6-campaign


Graham, McCain want to investigate Russian hacks of the DNC

By Joan McCarter
Wednesday Nov 16, 2016 · 7:04 AM PST

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) (R-SC) listens as U.S. Sen. John McCain speaks on the recent bombings by Saudi Arabia in Yemen during a press conference on Capitol Hill March 26, 2015 in Washington, DC.
Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain might finally be doing something useful in the Senate.

WASHINGTON ― Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday said he wants Senate hearings to investigate whether Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the U.S. election, casting doubts on President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to improve relations with Russia.
“Assuming for a moment that we do believe that the Russian government was controlling outside organizations that hacked into our election, they should be punished,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Putin should be punished.” […]

Graham’s friend, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also cautioned against Trump’s steps toward Russia.

“With the U.S. presidential transition underway, Vladimir Putin has said in recent days that he wants to improve relations with the United States,” McCain said in a statement on Tuesday. “We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies, and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker is decidedly less concerned, saying that basically this happens all the time. Sure, Russia interfered in the election. That was obvious. But: "In the world of covert activities, countries, large sophisticated countries do things against each other to understand what’s happening within those countries. I think people who have been around for awhile understand that’s what happens," he said on MSNBC. Oh, but there's more:

Intelligence officials believe Russia is responsible for hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee as part of an effort to influence the election results. Russia has also been linked to hacking emails belonging to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Despite this, Corker said the effort to interfere had “backfired” because the election appeared to be rigged for Clinton but Donald Trump won.
Um, Bob. You got that kind of backwards—they were trying to rig it for your guy. So it's not entirely clear that there will be hearings, at least not in Corker's committee. Relatedly, Corker has been floated as a possible secretary of state in the Trump administration and says he's "in the mix" for the post. So, yeah, he's not going to be too concerned about how this all came to be.

The upside in all of this is that Graham and McCain might use their hawkishness for good, for once, to block the Trump administration where they can. Maybe.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/1 ... of-the-DNC
Last edited by stillrobertpaulsen on Wed May 23, 2018 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: changed title at OP poster's request
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Nov 16, 2016 7:19 pm

Yes, Congress should definitely investigate. But that investigation should not be limited to Russian influence - it should also examine the abnormal exit poll discrepancies, caging and other areas of voter disenfranchisement that stole the election for Trump. It's nice that some in the GOP care enough to look into foreign influence, but that doesn't negate their own guilt in the matter.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 16, 2016 7:29 pm

democrats rolling over and "getting along" with the new "president" is not going to help with that.....they keep letting the republicans get away with everything from bush/cheney lying us into permanent war to blocking Supreme Court nomination to stolen elections....who is going to stand up and finally do something

at least we have a republican willing to at least look into the Russian aspect seemingly to slow Trump's roll and that is fine by me
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Nov 16, 2016 7:43 pm

seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:29 pm wrote: at least we have a republican willing to at least look into the Russian aspect seemingly to slow Trump's roll and that is fine by me


True. Good to get the ball rolling first. Methinks that will result in the ascendancy of President Pence, unless Trump goes completely apeshit.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Grizzly » Wed Nov 16, 2016 9:34 pm

Is it possible to get links to these posts SLAD?
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 16, 2016 9:37 pm

they are there at the bottom of the quotes
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Grizzly » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:03 am

I think it's gotten to the point, no one cares, or believes these, fucks ... It doesn't seem to have any effect.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:12 am

Russia isn't the only country with incredible "cyber" capacities. Some are more acceptable to scapegoat than others... *cough*

I think traditionally all the trappings of the democratic process would have been dear to the political centre, and the centre-left, and centre-right

all that's been massively hollowed out of course

of course the "one percent" are probably down with US-style democracy or a system like China or many other alternatives

I do get why some would prefer Hilary. I don't. Disturbing that Sanders basically seems to have been deployed as a foil to her - contesting any "rigging" against him was a dead end since he immediately switched to supporting Clinton
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby OP ED » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:28 am

She did the same for Trump, essentially. Red shift easier to ignore that way. If the candidate doesn't personally object, there is no case. I wonder now if that wasn't her purpose all along. I look back and see the plausible deniability, she'd been getting increasingly negative news coverage from the "liberal" media for over a year, establishing her as the Establishment's candidate. Spins simpler if it contains some fact.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:33 am

I don't disagree but I think they could have played it either way.

SOME parties seemed desperate to have Rubio or Jeb beat out Trump.

Who knows maybe it was all planned consciously years ago - that I doubt.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Nov 17, 2016 2:15 am

The election was fixed, of course, by the corporate media's set-up of the nominees in the first place, by attempts at suppression of black and brown votes (just like all other elections), by the two-party duopoly, by the media frenzy about security protocols as opposed to what the e-mails actually said or what Trump actually stands for, and by the Dead Hand of 1787 that bestowed an arbitrary mechanism for reversing the popular vote by making my vote worth between 1/5 or 1/3 of someone in Wyoming or Kansas. If Rogers as the man of the official deep state now wants instead to spin more tales in the New Cold War mode about the Evil Putin and Assange fixing it for Trump, and even speak of a "hacked election" (when at most it was a hack of DNC/Podesta servers, which itself is highly doubtful), wherein about the most he will accomplish (as SRP comments above) is to get the reliable right-wing Christianist unapologetic pro-imperialist and equally misogynist Pence as our WW3 leader in place of the unstable faux-populist gangster Trump, well fuck Rogers. He ain't no friend of democracy or justice. This is a distraction from the fact that the loser is being installed anyway, at best. Worse, it is an attempted further coup d'etat on Pence's behalf.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Nov 17, 2016 4:49 am

stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Nov 16, 2016 11:19 pm wrote:Yes, Congress should definitely investigate. But that investigation should not be limited to Russian influence - it should also examine the abnormal exit poll discrepancies, caging and other areas of voter disenfranchisement that stole the election for Trump. It's nice that some in the GOP care enough to look into foreign influence, but that doesn't negate their own guilt in the matter.


Just part of the campaign to bury things like the Podesta emails.

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/in-the-democratic-echo-chamber-inconvenient-truths-are-recast-as-putin-plots/
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Morty » Thu Nov 17, 2016 5:47 am

I was going to say, why doesn't the NSA tell us which Russians did the hacking, and when, and then there would be no need for a congress investigation? After all, it's like a plumber telling you there's shit everywhere the pipes run and suggesting an investigation be undertaken by the cleaning ladies. Apologies for the unnecessarily sexist analogy.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:53 am

I have sat through republicans holding hearings on dems forever...from the 1978 Carter's Peanutgate to 20 years of Clintongate

so what the fuck ...can we have one fucking hearing on Russia?


maybe we'd get a little something on Trump out of it ...what's the harm in that?


White House Confirms Pre-Election Warning to Russia Over Hacking
By DAVID E. SANGERNOV. 16, 2016


Voting in the Bronx on Nov. 8. There is no evidence that voting or counting of ballots was disrupted on Election Day. Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Over the past month, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has received two starkly different messages about hacking into American computer networks from the current and future presidents of the United States: Don’t you dare, and don’t worry, we’re not even sure it was you.

The White House confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that eight days before the presidential election, the United States “contacted the Russian government directly regarding malicious cyberactivity” that was “targeting U.S. state election-related systems.” It sent the message over a rarely used system: a hotline connecting the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers in both countries, which they had agreed three years ago could also be employed to deal with major cyberincidents.

The pre-election warning — only the latest after verbal cautions by President Obama, his defense secretary and the director of national intelligence — was reported by The Washington Post.

The warnings to Russia against further hacking into polling or registration systems, or any further effort to affect the outcome of the election, are being hailed by the Obama administration as a success in deterrence. After all, they argue, a year and a half of Russian hacking activity seemed to slow, or halt, and there is no evidence that voting or counting of ballots was disrupted on Election Day.

But more than a few experts in deterring cyberattacks take a more skeptical view. They say the Russians had already achieved their main goal: to demonstrate how they could disrupt the American electoral process with the leak of hacked emails, including from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta.

Mr. Putin suffered nothing worse than a warning, they note — no sanctions, no counter cyberstrikes, no embarrassing revelations engineered by the United States. And he now has the satisfaction of dealing with President-elect Donald J. Trump, who during the campaign praised him, promised to build a more productive relationship with Russia and maintained there was no evidence that the Russians were behind the hacking.

“Anytime anything wrong happens they like to” blame the Russians, Mr. Trump said in an Oct. 10 debate with Mrs. Clinton. “She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking.”

Mr. Trump contended that the allegations of Russian activity were intended to “tarnish me” for advocating a new relationship with Moscow. He frequently repeated similar sentiments in the last weeks of the campaign, suggesting the hacking was a fabrication. The leaks of emails worked largely to his advantage, embarrassing Democratic leaders like Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who was forced to resign as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Trump’s larger strategic message is that the United States and Russia need to cooperate on a range of issues.

But for now the situation underscores the uncertainty around the world about the direction of American foreign policy and gives Mr. Putin the opportunity to exploit differences between the current president and his successor until Mr. Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20. It is also raising the question of whether the Obama White House pushed back hard enough when American intelligence agencies concluded on Oct. 7 that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

James A. Lewis, a computer expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, dismissed the administration’s claim that it had deterred Russia’s hacking.

“It seems a little bold to claim this is a success for deterrence, since the Russians weren’t deterred from doing anything,” he said. “Their hacking work was mostly complete. The issue now is whether they will be deterred in the future, and the guessing is they will not. Strong private warnings aren’t enough to constitute deterrence.”

In fact, the Russians appear to have paid less of a price for their hacking around the election than North Korea did for its attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014. That attack melted down about 70 percent of Sony’s computers and servers at its studios, wreaking considerable damage, and embarrassed many Sony executives. It was in response to the release of a movie, “The Interview,” that imagined a C.I.A. plot to kill Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.

After the Sony episode, the United States issued more sanctions against North Korea and encouraged China to limit the North’s internet access, all of which runs through Chinese switching centers. Many experts had expected the White House to follow a similar path with Russia.

Instead, the White House concluded that the warnings, and the unstated suggestion that the United States had the power to reach inside Russian networks and see the origin of attacks, might suffice. It is not clear if the administration plans any other actions against Russia before Mr. Obama’s departure from office, but that seems less and less likely.

The Oct. 31 warning did not deal with the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or Mr. Podesta’s account, which James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, had previously said was conducted with the knowledge of the Russian leadership. Instead, it referred only to the concerns about hacking around the election process itself, and the fear it was originating from Russian territory, though it stopped short of saying it was a state-sponsored attack.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/po ... cking.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Harvey » Thu Nov 17, 2016 12:09 pm

I notice they still offer not one iota of evidence. File along with WMD in Iraq.
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