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FBI Director and CIA hold the same view that Russia hacked the 2016 elections

Trump's not dumb, he's willfully ignorant, which is worse. Dumb's not your fault, willfully ignorant is. Trump has shown absolutely zero inquisitiveness when it comes to the world or the laws of this country or his responsibilities as President. He doesn't read regularly, he dangerously assumes and brags that he knows more than the experts about every subject that comes to his attention, and he bitterly rejects sources of information that don't conform to his views or stroke his ego. He's absolutely the worst person to be holding that office with the possible exception of Sarah Palin, who is his intellectual equal.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
Which is weird, because a lot of us wanted a president like one Martin Sheen played.
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I'd give good money to see a Bartlett vs. Stillson debate parody on Funny or Die or something, with Sheen playing both roles and only twenty or so people understanding the reference. The movie is only 33 years old and the show 17, so it's still fresh. ;)
 
Sgt_G said:
First, they didn't hack the elections. They probably hacked and released e-mails of candidates, their campaigns, and party affiliates. But to say the "hacked the elections" makes it sound like the vote-count isn't valid.
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This is a position with which I disagree. While it's technically true, it obfuscates the larger point that Russia acted in specific ways to achieve specific goals: namely influencing the outcome of our election and damaging confidence in our electoral process overall.

That the votes and their counts were untouched is immaterial when the people casting ballots were the ones being manipulated.
 
Shikarnov said:
This is a position with which I disagree. While it's technically true, it obfuscates the larger point that Russia acted in specific ways to achieve specific goals: namely influencing the outcome of our election and damaging confidence in our electoral process overall.

That the votes and their counts were untouched is immaterial when the people casting ballots were the ones being manipulated.
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Sure, but then propaganda isn't exactly new, and to say "Russia hacked the election" suggests something different from "Russia influenced our election through the use of propaganda," which I'd say is absolutely true.
 
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Robert Maxwell said:
Sure, but then propaganda isn't exactly new, and to say "Russia hacked the election" suggests something different from "Russia influenced our election through the use of propaganda," which I'd say is absolutely true.
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I conceded the truth of the statement, but I still think it's mincing words rather than addressing the matter at hand. It's like general PC users referring to any kind of malware on a computer as a virus -- whether it be a worm, a trojan, etc. We all know what is meant when somebody talks about Russia "hacking" the election. This pretentious precision of technical language is why so many have a difficult time relating to Democrats; we can't call a spade a spade, and worse, we can't let other people call a "metallic handled rectangular digging blade" a spade -- even though we know what they're talking about.
 
Shikarnov said:
I conceded the truth of the statement, but I still think it's mincing words rather than addressing the matter at hand. It's like general PC users referring to any kind of malware on a computer as a virus -- whether it be a worm, a trojan, etc. We all know what is meant when somebody talks about Russia "hacking" the election. This pretentious precision of technical language is why so many have a difficult time relating to Democrats; we can't call a spade a spade, and worse, we can't let other people call a "metallic handled rectangular digging blade" a spade -- even though we know what they're talking about.
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Oh lord.

Words mean things. Being careless with language is the kind of thing Trump does.

Democrats didn't lose because they try to communicate clearly. What the shit.
 
You know, this whole "interfering in elections histeria" is laughable on it's face.

Couple things....

What has the CIA done since it's inception?
What did Obama pay for with tax dollars and do during Netanyaho's re-election?

What's the real purpose of this "investigation"? ..... oh, to determine we need better cybersecurity? Really, someone didn't already know that?

It's just insane.
 
Yanks said:
What did Obama pay for with tax dollars and do during Netanyaho's re-election?
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Funding ended in 2014, well before the election was called for. The story got dug out from the archives of Conservative blogs again in 2016 in response to the Russian situation.
Our ruling

A conservative blog claimed, "Obama has been sending taxpayer dollars, at least $350,000 to fund anti-Likud, anti Netanyahu groups in Israel for tomorrow’s election."

First, there is the matter of the dollar amount. If any U.S. money was used to mobilize anti-Likud voters, it would have been in Israel. A more accurate figure would be $233,500.

Next, there is a matter of the blog’s tense. "Has been sending" says the action is continuing. In this case, the money stopped flowing in 2014, before elections were called in Israel.

Finally, the allegation that the money was spent to fund anti-Likud, anti-Netanyahu groups in Israel for the election is based on speculation. Yes, Obama sent money to OneVoice, a group that promoted a two-state solution. And yes that group partnered with a different group V15 that wanted Netanyahu defeated. But there is no paper trail that the money given to OneVoice was spent on an electoral ground game. It would be naive to ignore that OneVoice’s policy positions mesh well with V15’s voter mobilization, but that’s different from saying that American taxpayer dollars were spent by V15.

That may change as more evidence comes to light.

PunditFact’s rulings are based on when a statement was made and on the information available at that time. This claim rates Mostly False.
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http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...laims-us-funded-anti-netanyahu-election-effo/
 
Locutus of Bored said:
I understand that there are a lot of concerns regarding Trump's presidency, and I share them, but let's please not resort to wishing for or contemplating his assassination. I disagree with the man on just about everything, but I don't want to see him be killed or removed from office through illegal means. That's morally and ethically wrong and not good for the already divisive and damaged political health of the country.
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I can't disagree with you there, and I don't necessarily want him killed, I just don't want him (or the illegitimate Gerrymandered Congress and Senate for that matter) controlling any aspect of my life unless I consent, or that of anyone else. I also fear he will be above the law. What should be done if that is the case, and there is no justice? I don't consent to his presidency, and the popular vote tells a similar story for those who bothered to vote!

I hate how he didn't get the consent of most of the country, and he and the Senate want to act like they have a mandate to do whatever they want, while their supporters laugh at our depressing view of the future! Honestly, I don't have much hope for the divisiveness of this country. Trump can fix it by addressing our concerns, and not just his base, but I find it more likely he will be dismissive to us like he is to climate change. He's even supports the notion that he got the popular vote, because of millions of illegal voters, and I've had to correct few people on that repeatedly!
I hate this whole damned thing! And I hate how negative it is making me feel! Like I said, I never thought I would feel in any way positive about the death of a leader.

Kai "the spy" said:
Not to mention that President Mike Pence is not really a less scary option.
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I hear that! I have only heard rumors about him being a supporter of Christian extreme fundamentalist. I don't know if it is true though, but it he is indeed a Dominionist, I don't see how this country would keep from coming unglued. Honestly, the idea of progressive states just seceding from the Union and forming our own country is looking more and more attractive by the moment!

Honestly, this whole discussion has potential for it's own thread.


Guy Gardener said:
If Trump is a dummy, and I'm not saying that he is, but what if his Supreme court Nominee backfires on him? I can imagine that all his "friends" (peers/cronies/equals) staying for the gravy, hate and despise the man behind his back...

But once you're in, you're in: No take backs.

If Trump pushes through a Justice who wants to destroy Trump more so than support conservative ideals, this could change the next four years completely.

It's more likely that the Republican party (to which Donald is supposedly the head) that is some how autonomous without him, because I doubt Trump attends any of the secret meetings they don't tell him about.

Will Trump nominate a Republican stooge that isn't his wo/man?

Will the Republican Congress allow in a Trump stooge that they do not approve of?

Is there a compromise that they both can get behind?

...

I just had a giggle.

That barely noticeable US law wich forbids nepotistic hiring in the US Government.

Does the position of First Lady count?

If Melania or Ivanka are made First lady by Trump, which is seemingly an illegal act, it will trigger his impeachment, since you know, Donny married one and made the other. It's really then just a question about the statute of limitations for this Law, since almost every president has been this same kind of criminal, so it would probably effect where a few of them are allowed to be buried, and their corpses will have to be moved.
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I just wish the Democrats would force Merrick Garland down the Republicans throats. Trump has no right to nominate a judge, that was Obama's right, and when the Republicans refused to even hold a hearing, they should have been kicked out of the hearing, held in contempt, and Garland should have been rubber stamped.

And they have every moral right: Mitch McConnell said The People should decide the next Supreme Justice, not the Electoral College. Plus, as much as I'd like to see them throw a temper tantrum, this could also help keep the Rethuglicans in line at least a little! This shouldn't even be negotiable, and the Democrats should be fighting for this tooth and nail, and what the Repugs did should be punished if they refuse.

This just pisses me off to the point of wanting to go out and kill these fucking assholes (but I won't, even if I had the perfect opportunity. Curse my ethical inhibitions!). Trump's appointment as far as I'm concerned is illegitimate at best, and illegal at worst.
If he were kicked out of office with the help of the next Scotus (which the progressives Supreme Court Justices might be more than happy to help with), then he'll deserve it as far as I'm concerned.

Too bad we can be sure that whoever replaces him won't be much better. We all know that Pence would be terrible.
 
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Shikarnov said:
We all know what is meant when somebody talks about Russia "hacking" the election.
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No, apparently not, because I still hear people talking suggesting that the election office computers were hacked (unauthorized remote access) and even claim the code on the voting machines was re-written. Based on everything I've heard from reliable sources, that never happened.

Yes, the Russians may have illegally obtained e-mails and such. And they probably did support the propaganda machine to try to influence voters' opinions. But one could say that the Op-Ed pages of every major newspaper in the country also tried to influence votes and yet we don't call that "hacking". One could complain that the Russians aren't the same as the New York Times, but then you'd have to complain about Op-Ed pieces in the BBC-Online and UK Daily Mail as well.

Just to be clear, I am not at all happy with what the Russians allegedly did and/or tried to do.
 
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Sgt_G said:
Yes, the Russians may have illegally obtained e-mails and such. And they probably did support the propaganda machine to try to influence voters' opinions. But one could say that the Op-Ed pages of every major newspaper in the country also tried to influence votes and yet we don't call that "hacking".
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We don't call that hacking because it's not. If major newspapers were using illegal means to obtain information and disseminating it clandestinely, that would be more comparable.

Sgt_G said:
One could complain that the Russians aren't the same as the New York Times, but then you'd have to complain about Op-Ed pieces in the BBC-Online and UK Daily Mail as well.
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Opinion pieces presented under an author's own name by publicly-accountable news organizations are directly comparable to secretive, illegal intelligence-gathering and disinformation operations to further a foreign nation's interest? Seriously?
 
From where the infected email was sent, it is perfectly legal for Putin to just be Putin.

Not a crime.

The doofus who opened that email had to be aware that opening any email is risky, which is why he checked with tech support and tech support got the words illegitimate and legitimate ass backwards, because they were trying to be fancy and just turned out to be dummies. Internet security was fine, it was all human error, unless they are lying to us.

Barely a crime.

Yet still somehow more of crime than what they did with the information, considering once they were inside the DNC firewalls, Putin could have taken all their money, or given that cash to maybe even a charity, just to #### with the Clintons and the Democrat Party.

Imagine...

"Hi, American people, It's Hillary, um, you know how you gave me 900,000 million dollars to win this thing, well I sorta misplaced it. Um, sorry, there's only a month to the election left, and I have some bills to pay America, so you don't suppose that you could possibly afford maybe give me another 200 million dollars, just so I can make ends meet till the 8th, where I'm pretty sure I'm going to win. thank you, sorry. I promise that I will be more careful with your money this time."
 
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Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him
By Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, CNN
Updated 5:15 PM ET, Tue January 10, 2017

(CNN) — Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States."

CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs.

The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment.

CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations. But, in preparing this story, CNN has spoken to multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos.

Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.

On the same day that the President-elect was briefed by the intelligence community, the top four Congressional leaders, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees -- the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- were also provided a summary of the memos regarding Mr. Trump, according to law enforcement, intelligence and administration sources.

The two-page summary was written without the detailed specifics and information about sources and methods included in the memos by the former British intelligence official. That said, the synopsis was considered so sensitive it was not included in the classified report about Russian hacking that was more widely distributed, but rather in an annex only shared at the most senior levels of the government: President Obama, the President-elect, and the eight Congressional leaders.

CNN has also learned that on December 9, Senator John McCain gave a full copy of the memos -- dated from June through December, 2016 -- to FBI Director James Comey. McCain became aware of the memos from a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow. But the FBI had already been given a set of the memos compiled up to August 2016, when the former MI6 agent presented them to an FBI official in Rome, according to national security officials.

The raw memos on which the synopsis is based were prepared by the former MI6 agent, who was posted in Russia in the 1990s and now runs a private intelligence gathering firm. His investigations related to Mr. Trump were initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries, multiple sources confirmed to CNN. Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Officials who spoke to CNN declined to do so on the record given the classified nature of the material.

Some of the allegations were first reported publicly in Mother Jones one week before the election.

One high level administration official told CNN, "I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think [the] concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/
 
Tease.

That's preamble.

It's suggesting that there's something, without telling us what it is.

Maybe Trump works for Putin, maybe he doesn't.

Communicating isn't the worst, considering it might be completely innocent.

Donald might want to build a Hotel in Russia, and he was already exploiting his connections months ago to push the deal through.

"Sigh"
 
Thank you.

Took a peek at that earlier.

Anyone can have dirt on trump, shit, I have dirt on Trump (we all do) that would cause any one else to off themselves from shame, so it's really a question about how he reacts to being black mailed.

1. Complete capitulation.

2. Ignore the blackmailer, and await the consequences that might never unfold.

3. Release the dirt himself and "deal" with the fallout.

:)
 
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