CIA Captured Putin's 'Specific Instructions' To Hack the 2016 Election, Says Report (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: When Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James B. Comey all went to see Donald Trump together during the presidential transition, they told him conclusively that they had "captured Putin's specific instructions on the operation" to hack the 2016 presidential election, according to a report in The Washington Post. The intel bosses were worried that he would explode but Trump remained calm during the carefully choreographed meeting. "He was affable, courteous, complimentary," Clapper told the Post. Comey stayed behind afterward to tell the president-elect about the controversial Steele dossier, however, and that private meeting may have been responsible for the animosity that would eventually lead to Trump firing the director of the FBI.

Comments

horse-shoe

[TimothyHollins]

If your boss explodes when reality does not conform to his wishes, he just might be a snowflake.

Another round of nothing

[Baron_Yam]

If you show the average person evidence that someone is doing something bad, they might ask questions about the reliability of the evidence.

If his own spy agency shows Trump evidence that Russia is doing something bad, he denounces them and has an off-the-record chat with Putin.

I wouldn't trust a spy agency as a general rule - their whole existence is about getting what they want by deception - but I'd hardly trust the Russians when it comes to a domestic agency's claims against them.

This immediately leads to questions about why a president might trust a foreign power over his own agencies. And more questions when there are records of his team attempting to work with that same power to scuttle an opponent's election bid, that have been consistently lied about in an obvious cover-up.

But this is Trump, so this will amount to another round of Twitter outrage and blow over.

Re:Another round of nothing

[Baron_Yam]

>Such an obvious cover up that no evidence has been found.

Just lie after lie uncovered about meeting with Russians. Just that.

But if you repeat your lie - "no evidence has been found" often enough, something like 30-50% of the USA will either believe it or pretend to believe it in order to keep your team in power.

Party over country, all the way down!

Re: Another round of nothing

[guruevi]

Itâ(TM)s not about trust but about keeping the peace and politics. Trump may or may not personally believe what the NSA and CIA told him (which has its own agenda) but to accuse or retaliate on Russia could start another Cold War.

In the end, Russia used propaganda to influence an election just like the US does in Russia. They didnâ(TM)t hack it, they didnâ(TM)t make people vote or stop voting at gun point, they got some advertising on a Facebook - voters influenced by that are morons and are spread out evenly across the population so itâ(TM)s unlikely to have had a great effect other than being demoralizing.

Re:Another round of nothing

[squiggleslash]

if the elections have really been hacked, why not void them and have a do over?

Because "elections have been hacked" can mean anything including:

1. Polling machines programmatically hacked (which nobody, so far as I can tell, is alleging.)
2. Infrastructure around polling, such as voter registrations, and tools to make available voter IDs, being hacked to suppress turnout (there were rumors the Russians might have at one point been considering doing this, but nobody has alleged they actually have done this.)
3. The pollution of information sources to ensure voters are given believable false information

Thus far, the allegations concerning the Russians have focused on (3). There's pretty much no constitutional basis for overturning an election on the basis that voters were mislead. Voters are mislead all the time, it's just usually the lies come from fellow Americans, and to some extent there's some balance. On top of that, if the election were reheld today, how many people would go to the polls saying "Well, I've since learned that Clinton was actually the victim of a 25 year long smear campaign and it's highly improbable that 90% of the bad things I've heard about her actually have any basis in reality. I was duped, and will change my vote"?

Any? Nobody willingly admits they were duped over something that basic.

At this point, the only mechanism we have for "correcting" the mistake is to elect an opposition party to power in Congress in 2018. If we consider Trump continuing to be President dangerous (and I do), we also have to hope that party also recognizes that Trump has already broken the law and should be impeached. But that's the extent of it. You can't request a do-over because voters were lied to and manipulated, that'd invalidate almost every Presidential election we've ever had. The fact it's a foreign government that did so means we need to address our relations with that government, not invalidate our own elections.

Re: Another round of nothing

[e3m4n]

I do find it ironic that out of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in advertising in this election, so many people are willing to believe that just $3000 in well placed Facebook ads is all it took to 'steal' an election. Does anyone besides Facebook have anything to gain by perpetuation this rumor? I mean that's totally amazing Advertisement for Facebook. "Ads placed on Facebook are 10,000 times more likely to be viewed than traditional media. A 2016 study showed that every dollar spent in ads on Facebook had more impact than $10,000 spent with our competitors" ... then they go about feeding those who are so anti-trump they will latch onto anything, and suddenly half the country believes that Facebook is the ultimate advertisement platform.

Re:Another round of nothing

[Killall -9 Bash]

What facts? 3rd hand information that someone somewhere saw something they interpreted as Putin giving an order? That's a fact to you?

Show me the actual intercept, then it's a fact. And of course, they won't, because it's completely made up. They'll hide forever behind not revealing their capabilities.... as if the CIA has a tap on Putin's phone they don't want him to know about.... Do you really think that's even plausible?

You don't think the CIA would make shit up to effect an election? They guys flying single engine planes under the radar to bring cocaine into this country wouldn't possibly do something bad like lie to the American public. Nope.

Re:Another round of nothing

[WalksOnDirt]

Have you forgotten Schwarzenegger already?

Re:Intredasting

[Baron_Yam]

>When you require careful and concerted choreography to explain simple concepts to your president

If you want Trump to believe something, it's best to get Fox News to do a short and aggressive segment on it in which they flatter Trump a lot. Maybe include a short phrase that looks good with a hash tag.

Cool...

[Zurkeyon3733]

Publish them... SHOW us all this "Evidence" I want to SEE it. Not hear about it. I can hear lies from ALL directions. SHOW ME THE TRUTH!

Re:Intredasting

[houghi]

Too much work. Just say that Obama wanted the opposite.

Re:Typical WP - lots of words little substance

[Baron_Yam]

>Up to this point it still appears that Russia bought some ads to try to sway the vote.

Well... more than that. There's also the bot net deployed to make certain opinions look vastly more popular than they were.

But how upset are you supposed to get about that when your own country has a history of funding outright revolutions and installing puppet regimes?

>There is no evidence that they hacked any voting machines.

I really don't understand why Americans tolerate their current voting system. Computer-tallied paper ballots and pencils with ballot boxes and any manual counting observed by the candidate's representatives is pretty solid.

Computer kiosks with known flaws, with the electronic records purged ASAP looks an awful lot like the dream system of someone who wants to generate whatever result they like and should offend (and terrify) the average voter.

james clapper

[NynexNinja]

This is the same James Clapper who lied under oath in proceedings in Congress. Not sure he can be trusted to make any comments at this point.

It doesn't matter

[Karmashock]

Hillary didn't lose because of Russia. Trump didn't win because of Russia.

Ignore Russia for five seconds if you can... Hillary was a weak candidate and so was pretty much the entire republican field.

Jeb Bush for example carried 3 percent of the republican vote. Hillary is generally disliked by most of her own party. Trump naturally is one of the most disliked presidents in US history. But he didn't win the election because people liked him. He won because for whatever reason... he said he was going to do things and people believed him.

Pretending that the current political circumstances are the result of the Russians is deranged. This is the same sort of blind spot that lead to Al Gore losing the election against Bush 43. Anyone that studied the gore vs bush election knows that Gore made a lot of mistakes. If you tell yourself you lose because of the Russians or because the Supreme Court robbed you... then you're going to keep losing and you'll deserve to lose.

Re:Intredasting

[smooth wombat]

Let's take this tripe one by one.

it had nothing to do with his policies

This one is true. Obama told everyone what he wanted to accomplish which then allowed Republicans to state unequivocally their top priority, make him a one-term president. And thus they became the party of No, obstructing everything, even if the people wanted it.

how he enacted those polices

Not sure what you mean by this one. Oh wait. You mean those executive orders and signing statements, don't you? The same ones George Bush and every single president has done since George Washington. Yeah, I can see how that would be an issue. After all, if you do the exact same thing as your predecessor, only you are in the wrong. Not the guy who came after you and does the exact same thing.

his attitude toward the opposition

You mean like reaching out and trying to find common ground? How horrible!

his repeated mishaps (Fast and Furious as example)

You claim multiple mishaps yet cite only one. I'm guessing those 3,000 dead that happened when George Bush ignored months of daily warnings of an impending attack doesn't come close this one issue, right? Nor the financial collapse which was the worst in 80 years. Nor the invasion of Iraq which cost us over 4,000 soldiers and over $4 trillion in costs. How about handing over $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street and banks so they could pay out their bonuses? Forcing phone companies to install illegal wiretaps? Does any of this ring a bell?

his moneyed ties to Wallstreet

You mean unlike the current administration who as as his Treasury chief a person who came from Goldman Sachs, right? Or that he had, until recently, Carl Icahn who is lousy with connections to Wall Street. Here's a list of the Goldman Sachs employees the con artist has in his administration. This is only Goldman Sachs employees. This doesn't include all the other firms people have come from.

This article talks about how the con artist doesn't want to enforce rules against Wall Street and the banks. Instead, he wants them to "self report" whenever they commit a crime. This of course is in no way a sign the con artist has moneyed ties to Wall Street or is doing their bidding. None whatsoever.

his repeated power grabs at various government agencies

Like signing statements above, the same as previous administrations. Were you whining when Bush did this? How about Reagan?

his cozy relationship with MSM

Non sequitor. MSM is a nonsense name, a fake name if you will, made up by those trying to claim the high ground because they have nothing to offer. If you think Breitbart and the Fox tabloid are somehow better news sources than the New York Times, BBC or CNN, it's quite clear facts don't enter into your daily life.

his continuation of Bush policy

Isn't this a good thing? Everyone knows how great things were under Bush what with the financial markets collapsing, the worst recession in 80 years, 14 million people losing their jobs, millions losing their homes. This doesn't even take into account the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history which occurred on Bush's watch. Make up your mind. You criticize Obama for doing his own thing, and you criticize him for doing the exact same thing Bush did. You can't have it both ways.

his lackluster foreign policy

This is the only legitimate issue and is a continuation of your first comment. Obama was lackluster when it came

Re: Intredasting

[tbannist]

No, it was literally GWB's policies that helped to create ISIS. The invasion of Iraq set the stage for the rise of ISIS and the Bush policies on torture allowed their future leader to be imprisoned by American troops, tortured and then released. That experience pushed him towards a path to religious fanaticism and mass murder. So if you want to blame an American president for ISIS, the facts say Bush would get the blame.