Russia intervened to help Trump win election

[Bouncer]

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.

Russia intervened to help Trump win election: intelligence officials | Reuters

[Macedog24]

This is comical. Not the article, but obama. Hmm. What actions did he take with all the crimes Hilary Clinton had taken part of. ..... Even Obama is crying about hilary's loss

Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

[Bouncer]

Agree. It doesn't make Obama look good.

Trump won. Rural baby boomer America voted him in and rural baby boomers don't give 2 fucks what Russia has to say. Baby boomers grew up during the 13 day missile crisis, they grew up at the height of the cold war, why the fuck would they be influenced by Russia? They voted for Trump because they like what he was saying, they like what he stood for, they didn't vote for him because Russia made them like him.

Obama and Hilary need to stop.

[rado]

Butt hurt folks lol...typical dems

[Keiser]

Regardless of who won/lost, are you guys not alarmed that a foreign nation who wants to destabilize us meddled in our democratic election? This report was from the CIA (not Obama). John McCain says this is not a partisan issue and he's right. This is not a left vs right issue.

[Keiser]

The president-elect calls intelligence reports of election meddling ‘ridiculous.’ But prominent senators from both parties disagree.

Trump vs. Congress on Russian hacking - POLITICO

Influential senators from both parties amplified calls for an independent investigation of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, setting up a clash with President-elect Donald Trump over U.S. policy toward Russia and potentially his pick for secretary of state.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) issued a joint statement Sunday with the incoming Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, and top Armed Services Committee Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island that Russian interference in the election "should alarm every American." They said Congress must investigate further without allowing it to become a partisan issue.

But in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Trump again bluntly dismissed reports of Russian meddling, calling them "ridiculous" and an attempt to undermine his victory. At the same time, Trump's incoming chief of staff suggested the president-elect would not oppose congressional inquiries.

Still, the competing statements from Trump and the bipartisan group of senators sets the stage for a possible showdown over how far Congress goes to investigate Russia's apparent interference in the election. Other Republicans on Sunday joined the calls for a probe or cast doubt on Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO with close ties to Vladimir Putin who is reportedly in line to be selected as secretary of state.

The joint statement from the group of prominent senators from both parties will make it difficult for congressional leaders to dismiss the issue.

"Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks," Schumer, Reed, McCain and Graham said in the joint statement.

"This cannot become a partisan issue," they added. "The stakes are too high for our country. We are committed to working in this bipartisan manner, and we will seek to unify our colleagues around the goal of investigating and stopping the grave threats that cyberattacks conducted by foreign governments pose to our national security.”

Schumer separately had called for a congressional probe into Russia's influence in the election, saying Saturday that Democrats would continue to press for one when the new Congress convenes next year. And McCain flatly disagreed with Trump on the issue.

“I don’t know what to make of [Trump’s comments], because it’s clear the Russians interfered," McCain said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." “Facts are stubborn things."

McCain predicted that a congressional investigation would likely be lengthy and said that in an "ideal world," he would prefer a select committee on the matter, made up of key committee leaders on Capitol Hill. After declining to engage at length with Trump's policy stances and controversial remarks for much of this year, McCain is emerging again as a lead foil to the incoming president on national security matters.

[Bouncer]

Regardless of who won/lost, are you guys not alarmed that a foreign nation who wants to destabilize us meddled in our democratic election? This report was from the CIA (not Obama). John McCain says this is not a partisan issue and he's right. This is not a left vs right issue.

We've done more then "meddled" with other countries elections for years. Hell we've straight up placed puppet leaders in the middle east and elsewhere.

It's one thing to meddle but Russia had no effect on the outcome of the election I think you know that. Rural America didn't vote for Trump because Russia persuaded them to do so. You know that.

So no I'm not alarmed at all really.

[lipripper]

not so fast......

By Mark Hosenball and Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA's analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

The position of the ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as "ridiculous" in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks.

Trump's rejection of the CIA's judgment marks the latest in a string of disputes over Russia's international conduct that have erupted between the president-elect and the intelligence community he will soon command.

An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

"ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can't prove intent," said one of the three U.S. officials. "Of course they can't, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA's analysis - a deductive assessment of the available intelligence - for the same reason, the three officials said.

The ODNI, headed by James Clapper, was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the attacks. The commission, which identified major intelligence failures, recommended the office's creation to improve coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies.

In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against American political organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Democratic President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks.

Reports of the assessment by the CIA, which has not publicly disclosed its findings, have prompted congressional leaders to call for an investigation.

Obama last week ordered intelligence agencies to review the cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the presidential election and to deliver a report before he turns power over to Trump on Jan. 20.

The CIA assessed after the election that the attacks on political organizations were aimed at swaying the vote for Trump because the targeting of Republican organizations diminished toward the end of the summer and focused on Democratic groups, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

Moreover, only materials filched from Democratic groups - such as emails stolen from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman - were made public via WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, and other outlets, U.S. officials said.


"THIN REED"

The CIA conclusion was a "judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked," one of the three officials said on Monday.

"(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment," the official added.


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Republican Senator John McCain said on Monday there was "no information" that Russian hacking of American political organizations was aimed at swaying the outcome of the election.

"It's obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns," McCain said. "But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of our election and that's why we need a congressional investigation," he told Reuters.

McCain questioned an assertion made on Sunday by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, tapped by Trump to be his White House chief of staff, that there were no hacks of computers belonging to Republican organizations.

"Actually, because Mr. Priebus said that doesn't mean it's true," said McCain. "We need a thorough investigation of it, whether both (Democratic and Republican organizations) were hacked into, what the Russian intentions were. We cannot draw a conclusion yet. That's why we need a thorough investigation."

In an angry letter sent to ODNI chief Clapper on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he was “dismayed” that the top U.S. intelligence official had not informed the panel of the CIA’s analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBI’s assessment.

Noting that Clapper in November testified that intelligence agencies lacked strong evidence linking Russian cyber attacks to the WikiLeaks disclosures, Nunes asked that Clapper, together with CIA and FBI counterparts, brief the panel by Friday on the latest intelligence assessment of Russian hacking during the election campaign.


(Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Jonathan Oatis)

[jack tors]

They keep talking about this Russian influence. Not really sure what are they referring too? Clinton emails?

seem like sore losers

[Bouncer]

They keep talking about this Russian influence. Not really sure what are they referring too? Clinton emails?

seem like sore losers

exactly. trump didn't win because of fucken emails. he won because he found a huge group of people in America that believed and felt what he was saying. for the most part, the white baby boomer. as I said before, these people grew up in a time when russia was the absolute devil. nothing Russia could do or say would have influenced these people.

[Keiser]

The Russians did more than hack the DNC's emails.

They created and distributed fake news. They created hundreds of thousands of twitter bots and posted for example a fake story about Hillary supporting super late term abortion into the 9th month of pregnancy where the doctor rips the live fetus right out the uterus and then retweeted it thousands of times to give it social proof and did the same on facebook with fake news. Create a story that says Hillary is going to open the border and let in all the criminals from Mexico and give them amnesty, upvote it thousands of times to give it social proof, someone on the fence in middle America reads it, shares it with all his friends, gets scared and then it spreads like wildfire.

This is called propaganda and the Russians are masters of it. Their entire news system is propaganda. This is much different from media bias like we have with the mainstream media, this is 100% made up fake news. Big difference.

This type of propaganda energized the Trump base. They had to defeat Hillary at all costs so that babies in the 9th month weren't ripped out of their mothers uterus. Trump won by less than 100k votes across 3 states (PA, Wisconsin, and Michigan).

[Bouncer]

Sorry moochie but the Trump supporters were listening to what was coming out of trumps mouth. He appealed to them and he appealed to a very very large group of rural America.

I don't deny that Russia fiddled. What I do deny is that they had any meaningful impact. Trump won this election by targeting his audience and that audience happened to be a massive part of America that turned up and voted.

The same people that voted Trump have always hated Hilary. Long before Russia had anything to say about it.

There is a famous top gear episode where the guys come to America and drive across the deep south. The episode is from something like 2006-2007. Long story short they each wrote something on each others cars to try to get the other one beat up. One of the things wrote was "Hilary for President". Remember this was 2006-2007. Jeremy looked into the camera and said something along the lines of.. "if you don't know why this is bad, let's just say that down here this woman is the anti Christ". The others wrote "NASCAR sucks" and "man love rules"...

My point, even the Brits knew how hated this woman was a decade ago. You really think rural America had to be swayed against Hilary by some Russians or Commies as most of rural America would call them? Get real.

[Turbo3000]

I didn't talk to any T supporters in person, but I saw plenty of people from my hometown and high school posting stuff on FB. I don't think I ever saw anything regarding 9 month abortions or any other suspected Russian propaganda.

The DNC has been caught many times paying protestors to disrupt major cities. I'm sure Republicans have done similar. Our news is less bias are more propaganda than it has ever been. Everyone has an agenda to advance.

[Keiser]

I didn't talk to any T supporters in person, but I saw plenty of people from my hometown and high school posting stuff on FB. I don't think I ever saw anything regarding 9 month abortions or any other suspected Russian propaganda.

Not only was it posted on Facebook, but here is a video of Trump himself saying "rip the baby out of womb" in the 9th month. It's unbelievable really that he just was able to stand up there and lie like this during the actual debate. Plz watch this, it's less than a minute long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC-SFcpFxQY

smh

[Keiser]

The same people that voted Trump have always hated Hilary. Long before Russia had anything to say about it.

There is a famous top gear episode where the guys come to America and drive across the deep south. The episode is from something like 2006-2007. Long story short they each wrote something on each others cars to try to get the other one beat up. One of the things wrote was "Hilary for President". Remember this was 2006-2007. Jeremy looked into the camera and said something along the lines of.. "if you don't know why this is bad, let's just say that down here this woman is the anti Christ". The others wrote "NASCAR sucks" and "man love rules"...

My point, even the Brits knew how hated this woman was a decade ago. You really think rural America had to be swayed against Hilary by some Russians or Commies as most of rural America would call them? Get real.

Good point, but we all know how the deep south feel and votes. And I agree with you 100% on the Deep south. They are too far gone and there is no changing their mind.

HOWEVER. This isn't about the deep south. Trump didn't win because of the deep south. Trump won because of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And in the case of Michigan and Wisconsin those are typically blue states and they are in the north. Hell, even Minnesota almost went to Trump. I blame the propaganda machine and fake news for flipping these states, specifically Wisconsin and Michigan from Blue to Red (by less than 100k votes across the 3 states.)