CIA report - Russia intervened in the 2016 election

[Borgholio]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... SKBN13Z05B

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that as the 2016 presidential campaign progressed, Russian government officials devoted increasing attention to assisting Trump's effort to win the election, the U.S. official familiar with the finding told Reuters on Friday night, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The president-elect's transition office released a statement that exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence community that Trump will soon command, but did not address the analysts' conclusion.

"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," the statement said. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are calling for a full investigation into Russia's election year activities.

"Protecting the integrity of our elections is hindered when President-elect Trump and his transition team minimize or dismiss the intelligence assessments themselves," Representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement issued on Saturday.

Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the White House said on Friday.

Obama's homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters the report's results would be shared with lawmakers and others.

"The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress," she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

As summer turned to fall, Russian hackers turned almost all their attention to the Democrats. Virtually all the emails they released publicly were potentially damaging to Clinton and the Democrats, not Republicans, the official told Reuters.

"That was a major clue to their intent," the official said. "If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicize the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump?"

A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts' conclusion about Russia's motives does not mean the intelligence community believes that Moscow's efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election.

Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.

A Central Intelligence Agency spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the matter.

The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency.
Also In World News

U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed "with high confidence" that at some point in the extended presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin's government had decided to try to bolster Trump's chances of winning.

The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said.

Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said.

In both cases, said the official, Putin's campaigns in both Europe and the United States are intended to disrupt and discredit the Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures.

In October, the U.S. government publicly accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Obama has said he warned Putin about consequences for the attacks.

"I don't believe they interfered," Trump told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. "That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, 'Oh, Russia interfered.'"

(Writing by David Alexander and John Walcott; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wis.; Editing by Louise Heavens and Matthew Lewis)

[The Romulan Republic]

You'd think the fact that America's single biggest geopolitical adversary basically engineered Trump's victory would make more members of the Electoral College reconsider where their duty lies, but no...

[aerius]

Really people. Really? You're still swallowing this narrative? How fucking gullible are you? Go read the linked article, there's even less evidence of Russians stealing the election than there was of WMDs in Iraq back in 2003.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/ano ... -evidence/

[K. A. Pital]

I think the evidence needs to be examined first. But as there's no evidence to examine and, as aerius correctly notes, putting trust in these claims is a bad idea... Let's wait for evidence.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ideally, they would release all the information to the public. But apparently they're reluctant to do that, for whatever reason.

Or, if nothing else, clear every member of the Electoral College to receive a copy before they vote.

[Dragon Angel]

Assuming this is true, what would happen if Trump is chosen by the electors, inaugurated, but then months later it is released officially that Russia did intervene? Would Trump be able to keep his ill-obtained office? Would the Democrats be given the position? Or would nothing happen, at all? (I'm assuming Pence won't be President since he, well, was Trump's running mate)

[Rogue 9]

In that scenario he wouldn't be automatically removed from office; he'd have to be impeached. And even if he was, Pence would assume the Presidency unless he was also impeached.

[The Romulan Republic]

Moreover, I can't imagine a report revealing such a thing ever being officially released under a Trump regime. Leaked, perhaps. But officially? Buried.

[Flagg]

Assuming this is true, what would happen if Trump is chosen by the electors, inaugurated, but then months later it is released officially that Russia did intervene? Would Trump be able to keep his ill-obtained office? Would the Democrats be given the position? Or would nothing happen, at all? (I'm assuming Pence won't be President since he, well, was Trump's running mate)

They would impeach them both and Paul Ryan would be POTUS.

[Tvpnbb]

But even if this is true, would this really be impeachable? I mean, a strategic effort by a foreign power to manipulate public opinion is pretty bad but the election process itself was fair and there's no evidence Trump collaborated with them or anything.

[Rogue 9]

But even if this is true, would this really be impeachable? I mean, a strategic effort by a foreign power to manipulate public opinion is pretty bad but the election process itself was fair and there's no evidence Trump collaborated with them or anything.

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down). At the very least, if it was proven that Russia influenced his election he'd be called upon to resign. He probably wouldn't, but I can't see something that explosive just being ignored.

Edit: New York Times

Trump, Mocking Claim That Russia Hacked Election, at Odds with G.O.P.
By DAVID E. SANGER
DEC. 10, 2016

WASHINGTON — An extraordinary breach has emerged between President-elect Donald J. Trump and the national security establishment, with Mr. Trump mocking American intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the election on his behalf, and top Republicans vowing investigations into Kremlin activities.

Mr. Trump, in a statement issued by his transition team on Friday evening, expressed complete disbelief in the intelligence agencies’ assessments.

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Trump’s team said, adding that the election was over and that it was time to “move on.”

Though Mr. Trump has wasted no time in antagonizing the agencies, he will have to rely on them for the sort of espionage activities and analysis that they spend more than $70 billion a year to perform.
Continue reading the main story
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At this point in a transition, a president-elect is usually delving into intelligence he has never before seen and learning about C.I.A. and National Security Agency abilities. But Mr. Trump, who has taken intelligence briefings only sporadically, is questioning not only analytic conclusions, but also their underlying facts.

“To have the president-elect of the United States simply reject the fact-based narrative that the intelligence community puts together because it conflicts with his a priori assumptions — wow,” said Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the N.S.A. and later the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush.

With the partisan emotions on both sides — Mr. Trump’s supporters see a plot to undermine his presidency, and Hillary Clinton’s supporters see a conspiracy to keep her from the presidency — the result is an environment in which even those basic facts become the basis for dispute.

Mr. Trump’s team lashed out at the agencies after The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. believed that Russia had intervened to undercut Mrs. Clinton and lift Mr. Trump, and The New York Times reported that Russia had broken into Republican National Committee computer networks just as they had broken into Democratic ones, but had released documents only on the Democrats.

The president-elect finds himself in a bind after strenuously rejecting for months all assertions that Russia was working to help him, though he did at one point invite Russia to find thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

While there is no evidence that the Russian meddling affected the outcome of the election or the legitimacy of the vote, Mr. Trump and his aides want to shut the door on any such notion, including the idea that President Vladimir V. Putin schemed to put him in office.

Instead, Mr. Trump casts the issue as an unknowable mystery. “It could be Russia,” he recently told Time magazine. “And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

The Republicans who lead the congressional committees overseeing intelligence, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security take the opposite view. They say that Russia was behind the election meddling, but that the scope and intent of the operation need deep investigation, hearings and public reports.

One question they may want to explore is why the intelligence agencies believe that the Republican networks were compromised while the F.B.I., which leads domestic cyberinvestigations, has apparently told Republicans that it has not seen evidence of that breach. Senior officials say the intelligence agencies’ conclusions are not being widely shared, even with law enforcement.

“We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy,” Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and was considered by Mr. Trump for secretary of Homeland Security, said at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “When they do, we must respond forcefully, publicly and decisively.”

He has promised hearings, saying the Russian activity was “a call to action,” as has Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the few senators left from the Cold War era, when the Republican Party made opposition to the Soviet Union — and later deep suspicion of Russia — the centerpiece of its foreign policy.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was little doubt that the Russian government was involved in hacking the D.N.C. “All of the intelligence analysts who looked at it came to the conclusion that the tradecraft was very similar to the Russians,” he said.

Even one of Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said on Friday that he had no doubt about Russia’s culpability. His complaint was with the intelligence agencies, which he said had “repeatedly” failed “to anticipate Putin’s hostile actions,” and with the Obama administration’s lack of a punitive response.

Mr. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the intelligence agencies had “ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to take more forceful action against the Kremlin’s aggression.” He added that the Obama administration had “suddenly awoken to the threat.”

Like many Republicans, Mr. Nunes is threading a needle. His statement puts him in opposition to the position taken by Mr. Trump and his incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has traveled to Russia as a private citizen for RT, the state-controlled news operation, and attended a dinner with Mr. Putin.

Mr. Nunes’s contention that Mr. Obama was captivated by a desire to “reset” relations with Russia is also notable, because Mr. Trump has said he is trying to do the same — though he is avoiding that term, which was made popular by Mrs. Clinton in her failed effort as secretary of state in 2009.

A president must sort out how to evaluate the evidence presented to him each day in the Presidential Daily Brief.

Mr. Obama, for example, came to question the C.I.A.’s analytic skills after being briefed not long after the 2010 uprising in Tunisia.

Mr. Obama asked what the chance was that the street protests would spread to Egypt; he was told “less than 20 percent.” Tahrir Square erupted within days.

Intelligence can get politicized, of course, and one of the running debates about the disastrously mistaken assessments of Iraq that Mr. Trump often cites is whether the intelligence itself was tainted or whether the Bush White House read it selectively to support its march to war in 2003.

But what is unfolding in the argument over the Russian hacking is more complex, because tracking the origin of cyberattacks is complicated. It is made all the harder by the fact that the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. do not want to reveal human sources or technical abilities, including American software implants in Russian computer networks.

This much is known: In mid-2015, a hacking group long associated with the F.S.B. — the successor to the old Soviet K.G.B. — got inside the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. The intelligence gathering appeared to be fairly routine, and it was unsurprising: The Chinese, for instance, penetrated Mr. Obama’s and Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign communications in 2008.

In the spring of 2016, a second group of Russian hackers, long associated with the G.R.U., a military intelligence agency, attacked the D.N.C. again, along with the private email accounts of prominent Washington figures like John D. Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Those emails were ultimately published — a step the Russians had never taken before in the United States, though the tactic has been used often in former Soviet states and elsewhere in Europe. That moved the issue from espionage to an “information operation” with a political motive.

One person who attended a classified briefing on the intelligence said that the investigators had explained that the malware used in the cyberattack on the D.N.C. matched tools previously used by hackers with proven ties to the Russian government. That sort of “pattern analysis” is common in cyberinvestigations, though it is not conclusive.

But the intelligence agencies had more: They had managed to identify the individuals from the G.R.U. who oversaw the hacking efforts. That may have come from intercepted conversations, spying efforts, or implants in computer systems that allow the tracking of emails and text messages.

In briefings to Mr. Obama and on Capitol Hill, intelligence agencies have said they now believe that what began as an effort to undermine the credibility of American elections morphed over time into a much more targeted effort to harm Mrs. Clinton, whom Mr. Putin has long accused of interfering in Russian parliamentary elections in 2011.

But to hedge their bets before the election, according to the briefings, the Russians also targeted the Republican National Committee, Republican operatives and prominent members of the Republican establishment, like former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

But few of those emails have ever surfaced, save for Mr. Powell’s, which were critical of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for trying to draw him into a defense of her use of a private computer server.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Sean Spicer, disputed the report in The Times that the intelligence community had concluded that the R.N.C. had been hacked.

“The RNC was not ‘hacked,’ ” he said on Twitter. “The @nytimes was told and chose to ignore.” On Friday night, before The Times published its report, the committee had refused to comment.

[Flagg]

But even if this is true, would this really be impeachable? I mean, a strategic effort by a foreign power to manipulate public opinion is pretty bad but the election process itself was fair and there's no evidence Trump collaborated with them or anything.

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down). At the very least, if it was proven that Russia influenced his election he'd be called upon to resign. He probably wouldn't, but I can't see something that explosive just being ignored.

Edit: New York Times

Trump, Mocking Claim That Russia Hacked Election, at Odds with G.O.P.
By DAVID E. SANGER
DEC. 10, 2016

WASHINGTON — An extraordinary breach has emerged between President-elect Donald J. Trump and the national security establishment, with Mr. Trump mocking American intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the election on his behalf, and top Republicans vowing investigations into Kremlin activities.

Mr. Trump, in a statement issued by his transition team on Friday evening, expressed complete disbelief in the intelligence agencies’ assessments.

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Trump’s team said, adding that the election was over and that it was time to “move on.”

Though Mr. Trump has wasted no time in antagonizing the agencies, he will have to rely on them for the sort of espionage activities and analysis that they spend more than $70 billion a year to perform.
Continue reading the main story
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At this point in a transition, a president-elect is usually delving into intelligence he has never before seen and learning about C.I.A. and National Security Agency abilities. But Mr. Trump, who has taken intelligence briefings only sporadically, is questioning not only analytic conclusions, but also their underlying facts.

“To have the president-elect of the United States simply reject the fact-based narrative that the intelligence community puts together because it conflicts with his a priori assumptions — wow,” said Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the N.S.A. and later the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush.

With the partisan emotions on both sides — Mr. Trump’s supporters see a plot to undermine his presidency, and Hillary Clinton’s supporters see a conspiracy to keep her from the presidency — the result is an environment in which even those basic facts become the basis for dispute.

Mr. Trump’s team lashed out at the agencies after The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. believed that Russia had intervened to undercut Mrs. Clinton and lift Mr. Trump, and The New York Times reported that Russia had broken into Republican National Committee computer networks just as they had broken into Democratic ones, but had released documents only on the Democrats.

The president-elect finds himself in a bind after strenuously rejecting for months all assertions that Russia was working to help him, though he did at one point invite Russia to find thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

While there is no evidence that the Russian meddling affected the outcome of the election or the legitimacy of the vote, Mr. Trump and his aides want to shut the door on any such notion, including the idea that President Vladimir V. Putin schemed to put him in office.

Instead, Mr. Trump casts the issue as an unknowable mystery. “It could be Russia,” he recently told Time magazine. “And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

The Republicans who lead the congressional committees overseeing intelligence, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security take the opposite view. They say that Russia was behind the election meddling, but that the scope and intent of the operation need deep investigation, hearings and public reports.

One question they may want to explore is why the intelligence agencies believe that the Republican networks were compromised while the F.B.I., which leads domestic cyberinvestigations, has apparently told Republicans that it has not seen evidence of that breach. Senior officials say the intelligence agencies’ conclusions are not being widely shared, even with law enforcement.

“We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy,” Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and was considered by Mr. Trump for secretary of Homeland Security, said at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “When they do, we must respond forcefully, publicly and decisively.”

He has promised hearings, saying the Russian activity was “a call to action,” as has Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the few senators left from the Cold War era, when the Republican Party made opposition to the Soviet Union — and later deep suspicion of Russia — the centerpiece of its foreign policy.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was little doubt that the Russian government was involved in hacking the D.N.C. “All of the intelligence analysts who looked at it came to the conclusion that the tradecraft was very similar to the Russians,” he said.

Even one of Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said on Friday that he had no doubt about Russia’s culpability. His complaint was with the intelligence agencies, which he said had “repeatedly” failed “to anticipate Putin’s hostile actions,” and with the Obama administration’s lack of a punitive response.

Mr. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the intelligence agencies had “ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to take more forceful action against the Kremlin’s aggression.” He added that the Obama administration had “suddenly awoken to the threat.”

Like many Republicans, Mr. Nunes is threading a needle. His statement puts him in opposition to the position taken by Mr. Trump and his incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has traveled to Russia as a private citizen for RT, the state-controlled news operation, and attended a dinner with Mr. Putin.

Mr. Nunes’s contention that Mr. Obama was captivated by a desire to “reset” relations with Russia is also notable, because Mr. Trump has said he is trying to do the same — though he is avoiding that term, which was made popular by Mrs. Clinton in her failed effort as secretary of state in 2009.

A president must sort out how to evaluate the evidence presented to him each day in the Presidential Daily Brief.

Mr. Obama, for example, came to question the C.I.A.’s analytic skills after being briefed not long after the 2010 uprising in Tunisia.

Mr. Obama asked what the chance was that the street protests would spread to Egypt; he was told “less than 20 percent.” Tahrir Square erupted within days.

Intelligence can get politicized, of course, and one of the running debates about the disastrously mistaken assessments of Iraq that Mr. Trump often cites is whether the intelligence itself was tainted or whether the Bush White House read it selectively to support its march to war in 2003.

But what is unfolding in the argument over the Russian hacking is more complex, because tracking the origin of cyberattacks is complicated. It is made all the harder by the fact that the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. do not want to reveal human sources or technical abilities, including American software implants in Russian computer networks.

This much is known: In mid-2015, a hacking group long associated with the F.S.B. — the successor to the old Soviet K.G.B. — got inside the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. The intelligence gathering appeared to be fairly routine, and it was unsurprising: The Chinese, for instance, penetrated Mr. Obama’s and Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign communications in 2008.

In the spring of 2016, a second group of Russian hackers, long associated with the G.R.U., a military intelligence agency, attacked the D.N.C. again, along with the private email accounts of prominent Washington figures like John D. Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Those emails were ultimately published — a step the Russians had never taken before in the United States, though the tactic has been used often in former Soviet states and elsewhere in Europe. That moved the issue from espionage to an “information operation” with a political motive.

One person who attended a classified briefing on the intelligence said that the investigators had explained that the malware used in the cyberattack on the D.N.C. matched tools previously used by hackers with proven ties to the Russian government. That sort of “pattern analysis” is common in cyberinvestigations, though it is not conclusive.

But the intelligence agencies had more: They had managed to identify the individuals from the G.R.U. who oversaw the hacking efforts. That may have come from intercepted conversations, spying efforts, or implants in computer systems that allow the tracking of emails and text messages.

In briefings to Mr. Obama and on Capitol Hill, intelligence agencies have said they now believe that what began as an effort to undermine the credibility of American elections morphed over time into a much more targeted effort to harm Mrs. Clinton, whom Mr. Putin has long accused of interfering in Russian parliamentary elections in 2011.

But to hedge their bets before the election, according to the briefings, the Russians also targeted the Republican National Committee, Republican operatives and prominent members of the Republican establishment, like former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

But few of those emails have ever surfaced, save for Mr. Powell’s, which were critical of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for trying to draw him into a defense of her use of a private computer server.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Sean Spicer, disputed the report in The Times that the intelligence community had concluded that the R.N.C. had been hacked.

“The RNC was not ‘hacked,’ ” he said on Twitter. “The @nytimes was told and chose to ignore.” On Friday night, before The Times published its report, the committee had refused to comment.

Exactly. This isn't wild-eyed conspiracy theory bullshit. There is actually there, there.

[FireNexus]

It's fun to hear the nevertrump electors try to convince themselves they can get an alternative GOP pres. Like, Trump is going to win any House vote you force. And the only way to not install him and sidestep the House is to suck it up and vote Hillary. But they keep telling themselves they can have dessert without eating their vegetables. I wonder what has to come out on this Russia shit to get somebody to change that calculus.

[FireNexus]

But even if this is true, would this really be impeachable? I mean, a strategic effort by a foreign power to manipulate public opinion is pretty bad but the election process itself was fair and there's no evidence Trump collaborated with them or anything.

This technically doesn't have to be impeachable. It just has to upset folks enough that the GOP is willing to find and acknowledge some other grounds for impeachment. Of which there almost certainly will be some on day 1.

[FireNexus]

I think the evidence needs to be examined first. But as there's no evidence to examine and, as aerius correctly notes, putting trust in these claims is a bad idea... Let's wait for evidence.

By the time the evidence comes out, it'll be too late to accomplish anything with it. At this point the last line of defense has to decide whether this is enough to do something unprecedented in a modern election. And to do so at no small personal and political risk.

Even if enough decide to, they're going to do it in such a way as the decision is punted to a group which has made very clear that they are not going to risk pissing off the Trump bloc by defying the nominal outcome. So this whole conversation is kinda meaningless unless there is actual video of Trump kissing putin on the lips ala Alec Baldwin.

But waiting for evidence when there are ten days to act is a little much. This is plausible, and even if it's not true, Trump will be a disaster for a whole bunch of different reasons.

[Flagg]

I think the evidence needs to be examined first. But as there's no evidence to examine and, as aerius correctly notes, putting trust in these claims is a bad idea... Let's wait for evidence.

By the time the evidence comes out, it'll be too late to accomplish anything with it. At this point the last line of defense has to decide whether this is enough to do something unprecedented in a modern election. And to do so at no small personal and political risk.

Even if enough decide to, they're going to do it in such a way as the decision is punted to a group which has made very clear that they are not going to risk pissing off the Trump bloc by defying the nominal outcome. So this whole conversation is kinda meaningless unless there is actual video of Trump kissing putin on the lips ala Alec Baldwin.

But waiting for evidence when there are ten days to act is a little much. This is plausible, and even if it's not true, Trump will be a disaster for a whole bunch of different reasons.

Yeah, any hope that some last minute miracle will happen to prevent Trump from becoming President is really misplaced. This should of course still be investigated but it won't be once Donnie Douchebag is inaugurated and orders the agencies to bury it. The only real hope is the US news media so don't anyone hold their breath.

[MKSheppard]

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Trump’s team said

He's got you there.

[aerius]

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down). At the very least, if it was proven that Russia influenced his election he'd be called upon to resign. He probably wouldn't, but I can't see something that explosive just being ignored.

So you're saying this piece of snark proves Russian collusion with Trump. Really? Pull my finger.

[Simon_Jester]

I consider Trump's history of saying dumb and horrible things about himself that are basically true (joking about groping women because he gropes women). And it would totally fail to surprise me if he joked about Russian interference in the election on account of knowing (but not imagining anyone could ever prove) that such a thing was actually happening.

I'm not treating this as "must be true." But I'm seriously considering this possibility, that Trump called in old favors from a foreigner at some point to influence this election. It would not be out of character for a man with his business record. Given that he started running in part on his business record, I don't think he has rights to complain if people suspect him of fraud and criminality.

...

With that said, I'm going to acknowledge Shep's point that it is in fact true that the Trump campaign has a point, when noting that these are the same guys who said there were WMD in Iraq. Although they said so in large part at the behest of a guy from "his own" party, so advancing that argument seems to be critting yet another hippo. Trump goes through a lot of those.

[aerius]

Ideally, they would release all the information to the public. But apparently they're reluctant to do that, for whatever reason.

Because there isn't any. This is another bullshit fake news narrative from the mainstream media. Even the title on this thread is bullshit. There is no CIA report. It's unsupported claims with no evidence from an anonymous official who claims to be in government intelligence. He could be some guy who's watched too many X-Files episodes for all you know.

[Rogue 9]

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down). At the very least, if it was proven that Russia influenced his election he'd be called upon to resign. He probably wouldn't, but I can't see something that explosive just being ignored.

So you're saying this piece of snark proves Russian collusion with Trump. Really? Pull my finger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa2B5zHfbQ

Of course not. I'm saying that if Russia is independently proven to have done exactly what he asked them to do, him doing the asking looks really bad in hindsight, as opposed to just bad as it is.

[Lord Revan]

Of course it's possible that's exactly why the Russian did it. Ask yourself what would be easiest way to make sure that USA would a non-player in international politics for the next 4 years, to make seem like the US president was "serving another master" thus making sure there was constant friction in in the US admistration. Hell Moscow doesn't even need to have actually signigantly effected the elections the mere dout that they might have is enough.

[Grumman]

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down).

As I pointed out at the time, this is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The files Trump was asking the Russians for were never on any government server, and Trump was asking the Russians to provide the files for that precise reason.

[Rogue 9]

Trump is on camera asking for Russia to hack government servers until they found Secretary Clinton's e-mails from when she was Secretary of State (since the Clinton private server that caused all the furor had long since been taken down).

As I pointed out at the time, this is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The files Trump was asking the Russians for were never on any government server, and Trump was asking the Russians to provide the files for that precise reason.

If she was e-mailing things to people using government e-mail addresses even if she herself was not, then yes they were on government servers; just in a significantly more fragmented form. And the fact remains he was openly asking Russia to hack his opponent's campaign, even if he didn't specify government servers out loud by name.

[Flagg]

Of course it's possible that's exactly why the Russian did it. Ask yourself what would be easiest way to make sure that USA would a non-player in international politics for the next 4 years, to make seem like the US president was "serving another master" thus making sure there was constant friction in in the US admistration. Hell Moscow doesn't even need to have actually signigantly effected the elections the mere dout that they might have is enough.

I think the fact that Trump is a lot like Putin in that they have no problem lying through their teeth and looking at Trumps cabinet picks are both Oligarchs is very disturbing

As for the validity of this story, I believe the Russians would do it since aside from being chummy with Putin, Trump is an ignoramus and will undoubtably be a weak leader who will harm America. But while there is "there, there", it's far from proof and any evidence (if any exists) would need to be released and disseminated.

So I guess I'm at "I believe they could and would, but I need quite a bit more to believe they did." And I hope they didn't. Because if they did I would consider it an act of war and I don't want to die in nuclear fire.