Never Trump-ers, Please Reply

[snoscythe]

Boise, we need to clarify some things here. Most importantly, Wikileaks has had three or more batches of documents, and evidence ("digital fingerprints") only points to possible Russian involvement in one of those three leaks.

1) The Russian involvement has only been indicated by any data in the DNC hacking, which led to the ouster of DWS and may have alienated some Bernie voters. It also impugned the media to some extent, showing their leaking of debate questions to Hillary's campaign.

2) Some of Hillary's personal emails from her server were leaked early this year, and Guccifer has claimed responsibility.

3) The most damaging leak, the Podesta emails were the third and final batch. This is the one where the Obama administration got so worried that they severed internet access to Wikileaks to try to shut it down. On this one specifically, Wikileaks denies that there was any Russian involvement. In an interview yesterday Assange hinted that the leaks came from within Hillary's inner circle. When asked why there was nothing on Trump coming out, Assange said no one had given them anything they felt was newsworthy. He said, in paraphrase, that "in 4 years when Trump has made people inside his circle upset, we may see something like this again", which hinted, perhaps a slip on his part, that the source of the Podesta emails and other docs came from inside Hillary's campaign, not from a foreign actor.

So, "digital fingerprints" implicating the Russians only show up in the DNC emails, a lone hacker has convincingly claimed credit for another (he was the one, after all, to reveal the existence of the homebrew server), and the third one appears to be an internal leak.

The Russians' impact, therefore, seems to be limited to alienation of Bernie voters and fueling internal discord within the DNC, and that's only if you believe that the Russians really did it.

[jvquarterback]

Too much talking past each other. A. If you believe the White House and the Intelligence community, Russia hacked the DNC etc. . . . B, which is that the CIA at least says it was Putin's intent to influence the election.

They have provided no evidence of this. None. The days of believe me they're the bad guys need to be done. Look what happened last time the government tried to pull a stunt like this. If any intelligence office wants to claim Russia did this they need to provide verifiable data to that effect.

[BoiseBYU]

Sno and JV, I agree that more needs to be seen and evaluated before defninitive conclusions can be drawn by any of us. And if someone does not want to believe that the Russians were behind the hacks or just a few of them and their subsequent releases to the publicin one way or another, I understand that. There is much we the public do not know. BUT to the degree you give any credence to what the CIA and others in the intelligence community is saying--that Russia was behind the various hacks--then we have a problem here in River City. And my overall point remains: whether that happened and what to do about that is a different issue than whether it materially affected the election.

[McY]

Though I agree with a lot of what Sno and JV said, I do not see the basis for saying there is zero evidence of a Russian hack. This might be a minor disagreement with that assertion. But my point is there are a number of reports stating that at least from a circumstantial standpoint, the manner in which the hack appears to have been accomplished mimics previous hacks by Russia. That may be relatively little in the form of detailed evidence, but it is not "zero evidence." Certainly, you could choose to believe that until more information is provided, the lack of evidence is not enough to persuade you that a hack occurred. It is not surprising necessarily to have little or limited information, particularly if any investigation or other actions are pending. I personally believe there is much more information that the public is not given. I have no idea whether that means Russia actually committed hack(s), if any, or whether there is concrete evidence of the extent to which it changed the election. I believe it is highly likely that various U.S. Government Officials have an exceedingly greater amount of information about those topics than will be disclosed to the public, at least for the foreseeable future.

On a side note, I don't feel a whole lot of sympathy for Podesta or Hillary or their cohorts at the DNC for the results of having their information disclosed to the world, though to the extent the disclosures were made illegally, I disagree with the method by which the information was obtained. If you don't want your email to appear on the top half of the fold or a billboard (or any media, etc.), don't put it in writing.

[snoscythe]

What's most concerning to me is that the Obama administration reaction seems to be "we accept that everyone is hacking each other and taking each other's information, but we take umbrage in how Russia used the information we knew they were taking, because that crosses a line."

Essentially, the Obama administration was okay turning a blind eye to this stuff, until it hurt their certain individual interests. I think that is why we are seeing them try to rush the review--so that they can control the narrative. Devin Nunes said it pretty well:

Russia's cyber-attacks are no surprise to the House Intelligence Committee. Unfortunately the Obama administration, dedicated to delusions of 'resetting' relations with Russia, ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to take more forceful action against the Kremlin's aggression. It appears, however, that after eight years the administration has suddenly awoken to the threat.

CNN also put it succinctly: "The US and many other nations use cyberhacking to spy on each other.... Administration officials determined [alleged Russian hacking] had crossed the line because they were releasing documents the administration believed were intended to undermine the US elections."

So, to me the bigger issue is that Obama let this happen--his non-reaction to the North Korean hacks and Chinese hacks of military secrets would have emboldened the Russian involvement, and according to his own timeline he is now asserting, they knew this was happening the Summer before the election but took no action to slow or stop it (other than severing Wikileaks internet connection). There was no state action or consequence to Russia until now. Only now, when Obama asserts it cost his horse the race is he FINALLY talking about a proportionate response for a foreign state's cyberhacking.

Add to that he's insisting that the review be comprehensive and pull all threads, but that it be completed before he's out of office (before his nominees are ousted).

When the report comes out before I leave office, that will have drawn together all of the threads. I don’t want to step on their work ahead of time.

That's what is being lost here--no response to China taking our military secrets, no response to North Korea hacking Sony and others, no response to Russia hacking the DNC (if they did), but suddenly Hillary loses the election and now we care enough to do something about this.

I don't blame Russia for trying to influence our election--even those who argue Russia did it acknowledge that Putin's motivation would have been the US (specifically Hillary and Obama) interfering with his election. That's what they do--they try to help their cause by supporting favorable candidates in foreign elections. We do it all over the world as well to further our interests--remember when Obama tried to undermine Bibi Netenyahu??

The real controversy here is how Obama's failed policies and neutered foreign-relations have made the US vulnerable to this type of interference.

[hawkwing]

Actually Sno, from my standpoint that is the point. Either the US is against hacking of US interests or it isn't. This idea that so many Trump supporters seem to be espousing is that as long as it helps them or hurts the democrats it's okay. I think the Government must take a hard line against any foreign government hacking any American institution and using that information for it's personal gain.

[snoscythe]

Actually Sno, from my standpoint that is the point. Either the US is against hacking of US interests or it isn't. This idea that so many Trump supporters seem to be espousing is that as long as it helps them or hurts the democrats it's okay. I think the Government must take a hard line against any foreign government hacking any American institution and using that information for it's personal gain.

Exactly. This isn't a "Russia and the election" thing. It's much bigger than that--it's a president who didn't care to do anything about it when he knew this stuff was going on. They caught China, but did nothing but complain at the UN. They caught North Korea, but somehow we ended up apologizing for a James Franco movie and talking about gender-inequality in Hollywood instead of putting together a response. The "Russian fingerprints" showed up in the Summer, DNI Clapper talked about Russia trying to influence the elections in July as retribution for perceived interference by Clinton and Obama in his re-election, but Obama did nothing about it. Instead he worked to disabuse Americans of the notion that the elections could be manipulated even weeks prior to the election:

[W]hen you suggest rigging or fraud without a shred of evidence, when last night, at the debate, Trump becomes the first major party nominee in American history to suggest that he will not concede despite losing the vote and then says today that he will accept the results if he wins — that is not a joking matter.

I want everybody to pay attention here. That is dangerous, because when you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people's minds about the legitimacy of our elections, that undermines our democracy. Then you’re doing the work of our adversaries for them. Because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters, that those who occupy the seats of power were chosen by the people.

And suddenly two months later, the election was rigged and he's concerned about the legitimacy of our elections.

Yes, I don't want Russia meddling, but that's what they do. That's what we do. It's like when I get mad at my dog for barking at the Elf on the Shelf. It's her nature, and it's my job to deter her from following her instincts, and it was Obama's job to protect American interests and elections from foreign meddling he knew was happening, and he just let it go until it bit him in the rear.

[snoscythe]

update: Obama today claims he called Putin in September and told him "cut it out", so I guess we did have a response after all.

[hawkwing]

So anyone who says it's okay because they just revealed "crooked hillary" stuff is just flat out wrong in my opinion. The ends do not justify the means.

[SpiffCoug]

Obama also needs to be blamed. He is so feckless. He has zero leadership skills. He failed to respond to this cyber attack because he was so arrogant and confident that Hillary would win that he felt that he could do nothing and let her deal with it. He played politics with our electoral system.

He is so paralyzed with indecision that he makes our country less safe. He has no clue how to deal with Russia.

He was so focus on getting a deal with Iran - at any and all costs - that he was willing to give the Russians and Putin any and everything they wanted so that he could give the Iranians any and everything they wanted.

I can't wait until this sorry excuse of an American is gone from the highest office in the land.