Election 2016, Russian Hackers Possible Senate Inquiry

rugcat · Dec 17, 2016

Alessandra Kelley said:
Trump's involvement or not seems to me of far, far less significance than that the Russians clearly seem to have actually meddled in the US elections.
I
It almost feels like the argument over the level of Trump's involvement is itself a distraction from the fact of that breach of sovereignty.

Yes and no. It's disturbing that Russia attempted to influence the US election, but honestly, it's hardly unexpected.

What is troubling is that Trump, and many of the Republicans, are just trying to shrug it off as no big thing. I've even heard some of his spokespersons floating the idea that since the information in the hacked emails was true, where it came from really isn't that important. They are more afraid of evidence showing that Putin wanted Donald Trump to be president, which is damaging, than they are of the Russians being able to hack the DNC, and possibly the RNC as well.

I personally doubt that anyone on the Trump campaign was actively involved, though I would not be surprised to find out that some of them knew about it. Paul Manafort in particular. I can actually see him as being involved, but seeing that he was basically forced out of the Trump campaign early, that certainly gives Trump sufficient cover.

But if it were to come out that Trump was actively involved with the Russian government in helping to encourage the hack and disseminate the information, I think we could well end up with an impeachment. I don't expect that to happen. Despite Trump's buffoonish persona, he's not stupid. He's cunning and crafty. If nothing else, he would never put himself in such a dangerous and vulnerable position.

MaeZe · Dec 17, 2016

AW Admin said:
I'm going to let this first post slide, but we expect actual engagement, not drive-by one liners.

Wasn't intended to be a drive by. It was an exchange with me stepping up to the plate because I wrote the post raburrell and nighttimer were doubtful of in post #169. William and I were cross posting.

MaeZe · Dec 17, 2016

William Haskins said:
let me attempt again for clarity.

i do not believe that obama has any solid evidence that trump has engaged in any act of treason because i believe obama to be an honorable man who would not jet off to hawaii on the eve of the electoral vote and mere days before a traitor would have the nuclear codes if he sincerely believed that trump was engaging, or had engaged, in treason.

therefore, i believe those who believe that they have solid evidence are engaging in folly and in their hyperbole undermining the credibility of trump resistance, which i believe to be of paramount importance.

please let me know if this is still not clear and i will happily try again. it is an important point.

I don't disagree with any of this. Perhaps I should be clear, I've never claimed there was any solid evidence.

My doubt Trump was involved is less certain if one were to look at it on a continuum.

William Haskins · Dec 17, 2016

i appreciate the civil discussion and, for what it's worth i don't think AW Admin was addressing you (or at least i certainly hope that's not the case).

Roxxsmom · Dec 17, 2016

rugcat said:
But if it were to come out that Trump was actively involved with the Russian government in helping to encourage the hack and disseminate the information, I think we could well end up with an impeachment. I don't expect that to happen. Despite Trump's buffoonish persona, he's not stupid. He's cunning and crafty. If nothing else, he would never put himself in such a dangerous and vulnerable position.

He's crafty, but he's also pretty arrogant and has a history of getting away with things that would destroy another politician (or businessman, for that matter). That can make someone start to think they're invincible.

AW Admin · Dec 17, 2016

Richard Hurts 730 said:
Russia looks Guilty but they are smart enough to cover their tracks. Duhh

I'm going to let this first post slide, but we expect actual engagement, not drive-by one liners.

AW Admin · Dec 17, 2016

MaeZe said:
Wasn't intended to be a drive by. It was an exchange with me stepping up to the plate because I wrote the post raburrell and nighttimer were doubtful of in post #169. William and I were cross posting.

Sorry MaeZe; wasn't talking to you, but my reply decided to omit the quote from the poster in question.

You're fine; no worries, and sorry for the confusion

MaeZe · Dec 17, 2016

Just going to put some evidence down here, not claiming proof or certainty:

Fortune: What We Actually Know About Trump's Relationship with Putin and Russia

We know about Trump's comments during the campaign. We know about Manafort and Tillerson. We know about the hacking.

But this detail has been lost in the wind:

In August, The New York Times reported that a hand-written ledger of cash payments made by Ukraine’s ousted government listed Manafort as being paid $12.7 million. Ukrainian prosecutors said the payments detailed in the ledger were an effort to obscure bribes.

A few days later, The Associated Press reported that Manafort and Gates had orchestrated a secret Ukrainian lobbying campaign in Washington. Participants said the men had sought to obscure the true backer of the work — Ukraine’s pro-Russian ruling party — by routing lobbying funds through a nonprofit front group.

Manafort and Gates denied having been involved in the lobbying. But emails obtained by the AP explicitly showed Gates giving orders to the lobbyists.

Manafort departed the campaign the following day.

Time: Donald Trump’s Many, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia

The truth, as several columnists and reporters have painstakingly shown since the first hack of a Clinton-affiliated group took place in late May or early June, is that several of Trump’s businesses outside of Russia are entangled with Russian financiers inside Putin’s circle.

So, yes, it’s true that Trump has failed to land a business venture inside Russia. But the real truth is that, as major banks in America stopped lending him money following his many bankruptcies, the Trump organization was forced to seek financing from non-traditional institutions. Several had direct ties to Russian financial interests in ways that have raised eyebrows. What’s more, several of Trump’s senior advisors have business ties to Russia or its satellite politicians.

“The Trump-Russia links beneath the surface are even more extensive,” Max Boot wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies.”

Again, we know about the bank connections, Manafort and Tillerson. How about these others?

What’s more, three of Trump’s top advisors all have extensive financial and business ties to Russian financiers, wrote Boot, the former editor of the Op Ed page of the Wall Street Journal and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations....

Trump’s foreign policy advisor Carter Page has his own business ties to the state-controlled Russian oil giant Gazprom. … Another Trump foreign policy advisor, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, flew to Moscow last year to attend a gala banquet celebrating Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda channel, and was seated at the head table near Putin.

It gets more complicated everywhere you look.

The most obvious example is Trump Soho, a complicated web of financial intrigue that has played out in court. A lawsuit claimed that the business group, Bayrock, underpinning Trump Soho was supported by criminal Russian financial interests. While its initial claim absolved Trump of knowledge of those activities, Trump himself later took on the group’s principal partner as a senior advisor in the Trump organization.

“Tax evasion and money-laundering are the core of Bayrock’s business model,” the lawsuit said of the financiers behind Trump Soho. The financing came from Russian-affiliated business interests that engaged in criminal activities, it said. “(But) there is no evidence Trump took any part in, or knew of, their racketeering.”...

But Bayrock wasn’t just involved with Trump Soho. It financed multiple Trump projects around the world, Foer wrote. “(Trump) didn’t just partner with Bayrock; the company embedded with him. Bayrock put together deals for mammoth Trump-named, Trump-managed projects—two in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a resort in Phoenix, the Trump SoHo in New York.”

But, as The New York Times has reported, that was only the beginning of the Trump organization’s entanglement with Russian financiers. Trump was quite taken with Bayrock’s founder, Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet-era commerce official originally from Kazakhstan.

“Bayrock, which was developing commercial properties in Brooklyn, proposed that Mr. Trump license his name to hotel projects in Florida, Arizona and New York, including Trump SoHo,” the Times reported. “The other development partner for Trump SoHo was the Sapir Organization, whose founder, Tamir Sapir, was from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.”

The web's tangles go on and on.

The Times also reported that federal court records recently released showed yet another link to Russian financial interests in Trump businesses. A Bayrock official “brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians ‘in favor with’ President Vladimir V. Putin,’” the Times reported. “The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a ‘strategic partner,’ along with Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire once charged in a corruption case involving fees paid by a Belgian company seeking business in Kazakhstan; that case was settled with no admission of guilt.”

Trump Soho was so complicated that Bayrock’s finance chief, Jody Kriss, sued it for fraud.

Alessandra Kelley · Dec 17, 2016

rugcat said:
What is troubling is that Trump, and many of the Republicans, are just trying to shrug it off as no big thing.

This astonishes me also. I am old enough and well-read enough to remember when the slightest breath of Russian involvement in anything remotely US government related set off shreiking klaxons.

And with good reason. Russia's government has ranged between blandly neutral and outright hostile to the US for well over two hundred years (with the possibly sole exception of President Boris Yeltin's time twenty-ish years ago). And relations have deteriorated pretty dismally under Putin's regime.

That anyone in the US government would "shrug off" election interference at all, let alone election interference from Russia (of all places!) is shocking.

I've even heard some of his spokespersons floating the idea that since the information in the hacked emails was true, where it came from really isn't that important. They are more afraid of evidence showing that Putin wanted Donald Trump to be president, which is damaging, than they are of the Russians being able to hack the DNC, and possibly the RNC as well.

That first is just monumental stupidity. Where information comes from and how it is gotten is supremely important. Ethics matter. Theft matters. Foreign propaganda matters.

And just because what Russia is doing looks jolly helpful to the Republican's partisan causes at this moment in time does not mean that Russia's motives are good ones or that this is in any way good for the US.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

As for the second, I cannot ascertain what anyone else is thinking or is afraid of. But it certainly looks damning.

raburrell · Dec 17, 2016

William Haskins said:
post 146 lists manafort and tillerson as evidence of a trump/putin conspiracy.

and yes, the trump/obama conspiracy is absurd and deliberately so; my point being that if there were compelling evidence of trump treason, obama would not turn a blind eye to it.

You're drawing lines you haven't proven here, IMO - Maeze's post mentions Manafort and Tillerson's relationship with Putin, and Trump's comments on Ukraine, etc. It does not accuse Trump of treason.

It is not illegal for US citizens to engage in business with Russia, be friendly with Russian leaders, etc. Pointing out an existing relationship is not the same as claiming treason.

At this point, none of us has any idea whether the campaigns were colluding, to what extent, who knew, etc. Perhaps Obama does, perhaps he doesn't. I think it's more likely that any proof, if it exists, would only be gleaned from a more broad scale investigation.

William Haskins · Dec 17, 2016

MaeZe said:
It was an exchange with me stepping up to the plate because I wrote the post raburrell and nighttimer were doubtful of in post #169.

i'll take maeze's assessment over yours in this case.

raburrell · Dec 17, 2016

Both Maeze (#172 &178) and I said she was not claiming Trump committed treason in that post. I'm not really sure what you're even arguing here.

AW Admin · Dec 17, 2016

William Haskins said:
i'll take maeze's assessment over yours in this case.

That's the last one-liner snark I'm going to tolerate. This isn't a rhetorical shooting gallery or a game of fish-in-the-barrel.

William Haskins · Dec 17, 2016

it was not a one-liner. maeze had explicitly claimed as her own the post that nighttimer and raburrell claimed did not exist.

raburrell · Dec 17, 2016

William, I asked you for evidence that any poster here has made the claim that Trump committed treason. Maeze's post did not do that.

The argument you appear to be making is that it is irresponsible for people to claim Trump committed treason because Obama isn't acting like Trump committed treason. So I see two problems with it:
1) No one here is actually claiming Trump committed treason. Or at least I'm still going to ask for a post which actually does so before I revise that assessment.
2) No one here knows what Obama (or the rest of the non-golfing national security apparatus) is doing behind the scenes.

What I do see is that quite a few of us want this investigated, properly, and are aghast at the idea that somehow, it's okay with most members of congress, a fair amount of the voting public, etc because it happens to suit their partisan goals.

William Haskins · Dec 17, 2016

please look back at your posts. you started with a challenge to produce a post in which someone claims evidence of "conspiring with moscow." nighttimer asked me to hook a brother up.

i noted the post and then the poster (the primary source, for god's sake) showed up right behind me stating that she had, indeed, made the post you claimed was hypothetical.

i don't know what else to tell you.

will withdraw from the conversation now and save my ban for another day.

MaeZe · Dec 17, 2016

William Haskins said:
i'll take maeze's assessment over yours in this case.

Raburrell's and my comments are in agreement. Not sure where you think we differ.

My apologies if I missed some nuance about treason in the exchange. I never said that. I merely said my default position about Trump is not one assuming he isn't more involved. I see evidence that makes me suspicious. That is not the same as saying he's involved. I just don't agree with the benefit of the doubt as a lot of people (not necessarily in the thread) are giving him.

William Haskins · Dec 17, 2016

understood. bowing out.

Williebee · Dec 18, 2016

Roxxsmom said:
He's crafty, but he's also pretty arrogant and has a history of getting away with things...

Repeating something here. Trump is a salesman, and his history shows that he is not a particularly ethical or conscientious one. He has the initiative and motivation, and grew up with resources that allowed him to leap frog past many of the required social integration skills. He can sell himself on an idea, even as he is saying it. He'll then repeat it multiple times. By that point he will believe it to be true. He may well then start the process over with a diametrically opposed idea. The integrity or efficacy of the ideas aren't relevant.

Believing anything the guy says, counting on anything he commits to, just because he said it, is foolish at best.

William Haskins · Dec 18, 2016

Clinton campaign chief: Did Trump, Russians collude?

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman said Sunday that President-elect Donald Trump's campaign may have colluded with the Russian government over hacked e-mails in an effort to swing the election.

"It's very much unknown whether there was collusion," John Podesta said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Without pointing a finger directly at Trump, Podesta said any ties between the Russian hacking and the president-elect's campaign should be revealed to members of the Electoral College before they confirm the election results Monday.

"What did 'Trump Inc.' know, and when did they know it?" Podesta said. "Were they in touch with the Russians? I think those are still open questions, and the electors have a right to know what the answers are — if the United States government has those answers — before the election."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...gn-chief-did-trump-russians-collude/95584106/

nighttimer · Dec 19, 2016

Alessandra Kelley said:
That anyone in the US government would "shrug off" election interference at all, let alone election interference from Russia (of all places!) is shocking.

John McCain concurs.

Arizona Senator John McCain said Sunday that Russian hacking during the 2016 election threatens to “destroy democracy.”

The Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee pushed for a special select committee to investigate the CIA’s finding that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and a top Hillary Clinton aide in an effort to help elect Donald Trump as President.

“We need a select committee,” McCain said on CNN’s State of the Union. “We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to find out exactly what was done and what the implications of the attacks were, especially if they had an effect on our election.”

McCain mocked President Obama’s news conference on Friday, in which Obama said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin to “cut it out.”

“There’s no doubt they were interfering and no doubt it was a cyberattack. The question now is how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do? And so far, we’ve been totally paralyzed,” McCain said. “I’m sure that when Vladimir Putin was told quote ‘cut it out’ unquote, I’m sure that Vladimir Putin immediately stopped all cyberactivities. The truth is, they are hacking every single day.”

McCain’s calls for investigation by a special committee into the cyberattacks have been rejected by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who want Senate and House committees already in existence to conduct the investigation.

Well, thank goodness, Sen. McCain is on the job and ready to call out the Russkies for messing with our election. An election where his party nominee publicly denigrated and ridiculed McCain's war hero status. That's not been forgotten nor forgiven by the Arizona senator.

Facing a tough primary and reelection, McCain put his spine and his balls in a blind trust and now that he's back for another six years in the Senate, he's reclaimed them both in order to jab the outgoing POTUS as well as the incoming one. Presidents come and presidents go, but the one thing you can count on is Johnny Mac finding his nerve once it's politically safe and the risk is minimal.

nighttimer · Dec 20, 2016

William Saletan on how Team Trump's unified response to Russian hacking allegations is "SQUIRREL!"

regdog · Dec 20, 2016

I have to disagree with the article. Trump isn't making the Iraq mistake. He knows Russia interfered, he just refuses to publicly agree with it. Same as his denial of bragging about sexually assaulting women, same as his denial about knowing Putin, same as his denial about supporting the Iraq War.

He is one of those people who says what he means, until he says something else, then the previous statement ceases to exist.

Sadly, far too many of his supporters are just fine with that.

AW Admin · Dec 20, 2016

One of the weirdest aspects about the Russian hacking for me is that many people on every point of the political spectrum, including Federal officials, are seemingly surprised that the Russians hacked the DNC, etc.

Of course they did.

What do people think Intelligence data collection is? It's spying. And when so much of our data and communications are digital on via signals, whether radio or electric, of course everyone is attempting to hack into everyone else's data streams.

So why on Earth is anyone using the Internet for private communications that are not secure?

Forget the hacking; the 'net is not meant to be secure.

And this is another reason why we should encourage people to use the best security we can, including private citizens.

And it's also why so very many Federal agencies (and the equivalent in nations outside the U.S.) don't want even ordinary citizens to use encryption.

Because encryption makes data theft and spying harder.
If it's on the 'net (or on a cellphone) just assume that it's read by everyone everywhere.
And contemplate that with hacking, and spying in general, as with plagiarists, it's the failures we catch.

AW Admin · Dec 20, 2016

William Haskins said:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...gn-chief-did-trump-russians-collude/95584106/

I kinda wish Ms. Clinton would stop asserting things like Putin had it in for her personally, or that the hacking caused her to lose.

I think it certainly had an effect, and that and the FBI actions towards the end of the election, certainly made a difference, and might perhaps have tipped the election, but she had already missed the boat entirely for large numbers of white rural voters.

Election 2016, Russian Hackers Possible Senate Inquiry

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