Top Democrats Request FBI Investigation of Trump Campaign Ties To Russia Over Hacking (politico.com)

As the Trump campaign refuses to point blame at Russia for the DNC hacks, top democrats on four House committees are questioning possible connections between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. They have formally asked the FBI to investigate the matter, citing new comments from a Trump confidant. Politico reports: "Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyber attacks against Secretary [Hillary] Clinton's campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August," said Reps. Elijah Cummings from Government Affairs, John Conyers from Judiciary, Eliot Engel from Foreign Affairs and Bennie Thompson from Homeland Security. "For months, we have been asking the FBI to examine links between the Trump campaign and illegal Russian efforts to affect our election, including interviewing Trump advisor Roger Stone," they said. "In light of this new evidence -- and these exceptional circumstances -- we call on the FBI to fully investigate and explain to the American people what steps it is taking to disrupt this ongoing criminal activity." Earlier this week Stone said that "I do have a back-channel communication with Assange," referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization has been dropping documents online from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and has been unloading documents from other Democrats as well. U.S. intelligence agencies last week declared that a connection exists between Russia and allegedly hacked documents leaked by WikiLeaks and others.

Comments

Can we see this evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we see some of this troubling new evidence before we go to war with Russia please?

Re: Can we see this evidence?

[acrimonious howard]

Yup, there's the subpoena. But even before that (addressing parent now), I'd argue that the emails are more important from the Bush Administration. From the excellent Newsweek article: "when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons."

The Iraq war (II) and subsequent fighting is responsible for over 1 million deaths. 1 million deaths. I can't imagine how anyone can argue that it's not the most serious issue of the past 40+ years. Then there's the refugee crisis, al qaeda in Iraq (I don't care how they spell it), and the birth of isis, all stemming from this political decision.

If you have to talk politics, and sorry - this is a binary choice at the presidential level, you have to bring up the death of a *million* people. And then remember this email thing really came from a political witch hunt, costing tax payers millions of dollars. About a few broken laws and a handful of documents? If Hillary directly shot the 4 Benghazi victims herself, that would be comparable to less than an hour of American soldiers dying in the worst Iraq fighting. But she didn't. She was running a big organization and she (and more so others) made a mistake, for which she's examined and answered plenty already, and changes have been made to hopefully prevent the mistakes in the future.

Where's the Iraq War marathon hearings? How much did who profit from them?

Sure thing

[HBI]

Right after they get on investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Re:Sure thing

[Rei]

Tell me, how many of the hacked emails have you actually read?

How many of the hacked emails do you think almost anyone bringing them up has actually read?

I, unlike (almost assuredly) you, and the vast majority of people citing them, have actually read several. Now, keep in mind that these were carefully selected by Wikileaks, out of the vast number of emails that a campaign chair goes through, to be the most harmful things that they can find. In most of them, Clinton isn't even part of the conversation - not even quoted several replies back. However, in some of them, things she's written there. And my reaction to reading the actual words of Hillary Clinton?

Honestly, I was impressed.

Lest you think I'm a Clinton supporter, I was an Obama delegate in 2008 in the primaries when I lived in the US, aka fought hard against Clinton and her dirty campaign then. And I was a Bernie backer this time around and was harshly attacked by Clinton fans on progressive sites. Her politics don't align well with mine. She's a hawk. She's very pro-Israel. She's lagged behind the rest of the party on a lot of issues that I think important, only belatedly coming to the table (for example, gay marriage). Let's just say, I'm not her biggest fan.

But she comes across very well in her emails. It's interesting to get to read things from her not intended for public consumption, aka, without a filter. She comes across as extremely wonkish, very well informed, thinking about every last angle of every issue. To pick an example at random: one of the emails was leaked by Wikileaks to show that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were suspected of giving covert support to Daesh. Indeed, that's a very brief line in the email, that it's suspected and diplomatic pressure should be put on them to stop it. But most of the content in the email was a strategy analysis for how to deal with the conflicts in the region. If we do X, then Y will be upset with us, but we can compensate with Z, and if we don't do it then A will perceive B and think that they can then get away with C..... on and on across numerous axes. How can you change perceptions without actually taking action, for example? She brings up Benghazi - every Republican's favorite buzzword. But it's in the context of two US fighter jets who overflew during the attacks, and about how even though the jets had no authorization to attack, simple fear that they would provide close air support diminished the level of attacks for several hours.

Check out any of the leaked emails with any relevant amount of content from her. Not just some brief "here's the twitter-length shocker" summary written by someone else - read them yourselves. Yes, the "shockers" are there. But so are very detailed lines of thinking about policy. No rage or emotional reactions. Actually, if you want to stick any of the "negative Hillary stereotypes" to her private writings, the one that probably fits best is the "cold and calculating" one. Analytic would probably be a better summary. Things like, what are all of the angles on this? What do we know, and what don't we know? What's the long game?

Just my take. Form your own. Take in more than just soundbytes.

Re:The source isn't important

[J053]

So, we should just ignore the real possibility that a concerted effort is being made by the Russian intelligence services to influence our election, and install a President who would be favorable to Russian interests?

Re:The source isn't important

[guruevi]

Yes? EVERYONE tries to influence EVERYONE's elections, the US meddles in pretty much every "election" overseas. A lot of the 'elections' in South America and even the Middle East have historically been heavily influenced by the CIA if not outright manufactured by them. If these candidates were on the up-and-up they wouldn't be able to be so easily influenced.

Building wealth

[Okian Warrior]

I mean, it seems pretty weird to "not give up on Trump" at this point. You really genuinely want a republican president so badly that you're willing to elect a kiddy fiddler?

Heh.

That is sooooo far away from important to me that it doesn't even register.

Important to me is turning away from globalism, making the government work for Americans, and fixing some of our obvious problems.

Of those, the most important to me is the globalism thing. If you look at economics from a math perspective (specifically: game theory, and I'm a math person) you see that economics is based on flawed rationalizations. It's patently obvious that the rationalizations are true and correct given their assumptions, but that the assumptions are wrong.

The thing that made America great in the last half of the 20th century was the ability for citizens to build and keep wealth. Many people could get an education with little-or-no money, find a job, buy a house and raise a family.

People are finding that they can't do that any more, largely because of globalism. When a wealth-building country partners with a non-wealth-building country, all the wealth flows out of the great country and into the poor country.

England can partner with Germany or Norway and would do well. England partnering with Poland, Spain, or Greece is a disaster - Greeks can move to England and take high-paying jobs, but the English can't do the same in Greece. Greece is full of corruption, which limits personal wealth building.

To take a clear example, Clinton wants a 65% estate tax. This is a clear burden on creating and keeping wealth, it's double taxing, and it will be a disaster.

Farms can't be left to children, they'll have to be sold to pay the taxes. Family-owned businesses too. And houses.

And if there's no one interested in your farm, or business, or house at the time you need to sell it, it'll be sold for a lot less than it's worth just to pay the taxes.

That's only one example, but there are a ton of others. Pretty-much everything Clinton is for will pull the country down into poverty.

Yes, I'm for Trump simply because he wants to reverse that trend.

I don't care if he's Sithrak the blind gibberer in his private life.

If he's not Clinton, he's better.

Re: Building wealth

[jasmusic]

He's such a stone-cold, 100% genuine solid idiot that should he win, he will be outwitted by every world leader he meets.

Why do you say stupid shit? He didn't get to his station in life by being outwitted. You should be able to deduce that. Every square inch of Manhattan has to be negotiated for between banks, developers AND regulators, on a level I bet you are utterly unaware even exists. His "bullying bluster and evasion" prevents his enemies from nailing him down with technicalities that aren't even important to THEM. That's what Democrats do, ignore the forest and harass you on the dimensions of each leaf.

Re:Building wealth

[Rockoon]

his tax is simply not affecting ordinary citizens

It effects small business owners.

In fact, its a very direct attack on them.

Want to leave the small business to your children? Too fucking bad says Clinton.

so what?

[FalseModesty]

So we should go ahead and do what Putin wants, because everybody wants something? That makes Trump sense.