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Special Counsel Mueller Charges 12 Russian Intelligence Officers With Hacking Democrats During 2016 Election (cnbc.com)
Special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained a new indictment charging 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking Democrats to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, and with stealing information of about 500,000 American voters, the Justice Department announced Friday. From a report: The indictment lodged in Washington, D.C., accuses the Russian spies of hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and of releasing emails obtained from that cybersnooping with a a goal of influencing the election. The accused also hacked into state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and into companies that provided software used to administer elections, according to Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein said he briefed President Donald Trump about the case earlier in the week.
Rosenstien added details from the podium ...
There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There is no allegation the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election results.
Yes, that form of hacking is still a crime, and that includes other entities such as the aforementioned state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and companies that provided software used to administer elections. A real problem.
Unlike you know, the hysterics Republicans went into when it was the Georgia elections systems that they could find some way to blame on Obama. And they still think Obama ordered Trump to separate children from their parents.
And counting. Seems to be going quite well to me. Let's not forget how long Watergate took, and that was just some schmucks at a hotel and not a hostile Foreign power run by ex KGB...
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I've been wondering lately whether I'm the subject of cognitive dissonance.
If you follow Scott Adams, he talks about cognitive dissonance as two people watching the same movie and seeing different plots. When called to describe the plots, the two views are wildly different, sometimes polar opposite.
And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.
Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information. Best we can do is get unbiased statistics and raw facts (such as immigration numbers, unemployment, reputable polling) and come to our own conclusions.
Which brings me to the Mueller investigation, which I have always believed to be based on nothing. It seems perfectly obvious that the *amount* of Russian involvement in the election is well into the noise - to the tune of something like $13 million over several months, compared to $3 billion (-ish, depends on what you count) spent by Clinton and Trump.
Am I (and half the country) dismissing something important because of cognitive dissonance?
We might just find out.
The Mueller indictments will be based on evidence which can be examined, and accuses specific Russians of hacking and leaking the DNC through wikileaks.
On the other side, Julian Assange has stated several times that the leaks didn't come from Russia. Julian never identified the actual leaks, speculation has it that it was Seth Rich.
Julian Assange is a sufficiently trustworthy source not to be dismissed out of hand, and the US justice system should allow the evidence to be combed through by the media.
This could turn out to be a good touch-stone for validating one side of the cognitive dissonance claim.
I look forward to the public investigations of the evidence.
It will be good to finally see which movie we're actually watching.
Damn, you caught'em. Please relay your theory to Fox News, they love that sort of thing.
How's the weather in St. Petersburg today? Do the people you work with still call it Leningrad?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Um, no. That's just a, what's that word? Oh, yeah, a LIE. In the course of "conducting espionage" against Russian intelligence operatives OPERATING IN THE US, the FBI recorded the Russians talking to Carter Page, Trump's foreign policy advisor, who they had previous evidence of collaborating with Russian Intelligence. But that's nothing to get suspicious about, right? No reason to follow up on that, right?
32 people were charged. 12 of those were GRU (russian) agents. 3 were trump campaign personell. Article does not say who/what the others are.
?! wrong.
from zerohedge with screen shot of indictment -
"... there is no indication that any American was a knowing participant in this activity, and no indication that these efforts altered the vote count in any way."
https://www.zerohedge.com/site...
Yeah we might as well give up and just let these guys wander around the globe and use bank accounts anywhere they please since we can't lock them up. Heck just forget the whole thing happened, I'm sure they learned their lesson.
Someone had to do it.
It is important to include all relevant facts.
Peter Strozk, the FBI boss in the news for saying he would "stop Trump" from becoming President, was the person who paid Stefan Halper as an FBI informant and placed him inside the Trump campaign.
Stefan Halper then used his influence inside the campaign to recommend and hire Carter Page, who is now accused of being a Russian spy.
So the trail of facts seems to show a very very different story.
1. FBI's boss (Peter Strozk) hires a mole
2. FBI place mole inside Trump campaign (due to fear of russia)
3. FBI Mole recommends and hires a Russian spy (Carter Page)
4. FBI gets warrants to spy on campaign based on Russian spy "infiltrating" the campaign - Peter Strozk (see 1) leads the investigation
5. Opponents claim Trump colluded with Russians and deny FBI bias.
If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please share.
The purpose of these new indictments is not to bring Russian intelligence operatives to justice. The purpose is to establish grounds for conspiracy charges against Americans. There's still a lot more to come from this investigation. Don't think for a second that this is some sort of conclusion. That mistake has been made every time new indictments are brought: "Is that all Mueller has?" is the cry from the Trump camp every time one of these new indictments is announced. You can tell from the unforced errors coming out of the Trump administration that the pressure is building.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Give it time, it's still early days. Watergate took 4 years, Iran Contra took over six.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, the number of mice is now over 30, and the mountain is a long way from done. And never forget what a single mouse can do to an elephant, especially a big, wet, orange elephant with bone spurs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While your statement is factually correct the narrative to which the submitter is reference is the "Trump-Russia Collusion" narrative. People want it to be true to get rid of Trump. These are all publicly available in indictments.
Papadopoulos - Perjury
Flynn - Perjury
Manafort & Gates - Falsified income tax filings and bank fraud.
Pinedo - Identity Fraud
van der Zwaan - Perjury
Only Pinedo, has anything to do with Russian involvement and that has to do with him selling some of the fraud services to the Russians. Pinedo wasn't involved with Trump's campaign. Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
If I ever had a mod point to give, then I might give you one on the grounds that it's the only visible mention of "hackers" in this discussion.
In general, I was not made happy by the lack of "funny" comments, even though it's a serious topic with little room for humor. However, it was more saddening to see the dominance of the discussion by obvious trolls and sock puppets. Does it call for a review of the ontology of lies? Or a new ontology of trolls?
The so-called victory of #PresidentTweety was razor thin. What that actually means is that each and EVERY group that can plausibly claim to have influenced about 80,000 voters has an equally plausible claim to be the margin of Trump's residency in the "dump", as he described the White House. Actually, you could argue for 40,000 if they were voters swung away from Hillary and over to Trump.
There are strong and credible evaluations (including some bipartisan ones) that strongly indicate that the tactics of Putin's goons influenced at least that many suckers among the millions of voters they targeted. Ergo, it's rather hard to deny that Trump owes Putin, but it's only a question of degree. My assessment is that Trump is much more beholden to Mike Pence for delivering the votes of the religious lunatics.
Or perhaps it's more significant that the US government is almost surely more guilty of interfering in elections than the Russians? If money does translate into votes, then it would be a sure call. Do you know how much of the Marshall Plan funding was actually diverted to the CIA? And how much of that dark money was used for meddling in elections in places like Italy and Japan?
Still, it feels worse when our own ox has been gored. It might be worse in this case only because of the old KGB kompromat on Trump that Putin inherited. (I still think the Golden Shower rumor is a clever feint created by Putin to make his puppet feel safer.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Very awful, and highly disliked (you might even say the second most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, after Trump himself).
But that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Russians are actively trying to influence elections and subvert democratic processes in the US and Europe.
And it's troubling that so many people in the US are trying to discredit an investigation into whether or not our democratic processes are being actively subverted.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please share.
Ok:
FBI announces in late 2016 that they have an active investigation into the Trump campaign working with Russia to affect the election.
That would toss the election to Clinton, since it was pretty close. And it would be really, really easy for the FBI to do if they actually were out to sabotage Trump. Just a press release, like the multiple press releases they sent out for their investigation into Clinton.
Instead, the FBI announced the investigation into Clinton's emails, including a big announcement reviving it in October. The FBI didn't talk about the investigation into the Trump campaign, and actively turned the press away from it by claiming the investigation didn't involve the Trump campaign.
That would be a really bad idea if they were actually out to get Trump.....but it doesn't fit the narrative so the imbalance in press releases somehow doesn't get included when you talk about including all facts.
Are you limiting your scope to the latest indictments? Because people like Manafort and Papadopoulos have already been indicted by Mueller, and some have pled guilty. The scope of his investigation is very large. It's also not over, and he's actually able to control his people so there aren't any leaks, we have no idea what evidence he has or who his other targets are. The only information we get from Mueller is when he files things in court. So it's probably premature for anyone to conclude anything other than what his filings say. Just because there has not been a filing charging someone with collusion, for example, does not mean that there is no collusion or that he's not investigating it or that he doesn't have evidence of it. He just hasn't filed that yet, so let's hold off on making conclusions about what people definitely did or did not do until he finishes his work.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
What have the FBI, the NSA, and the rest of our wonderful "intelligence" apparatus been doing, while this was going on?
Oh, yeah, they were busy trying to sabotage Trump
Strzok sat on evidence incriminating Trump campaign members in connection with Russian election interference -- and didn't publish it. And Comey basically threw the election to Trump by reopening the Clinton investigation in late October. That's some strange behaviour for people supposedly trying to "sabotage Trump".
Considering what comes out of peoples mouths when they explain why they voted for Trump or still support him, arguing that no one is stupid enough to have been influenced by something that dumb isn't very persuasive.
Truth hurts. You decided to get personal, I just decided to distance myself from you. You didn't come here to debate, you came to argue. If I can't educate you, I'll educate people that are reading.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.