Here’s what I have to say about “Russiagate”
April 18, 2019
There was never a concerted effort by the Russian government to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Or if there was, no significant evidence has ever been presented to show that. US intelligence agencies confirm that not a single vote was changed.
A small Russian company bought $200,000 worth of Facebook ads concerning the election. $2.6 billion were spent in the 2016 presidential election. $200,000 was a drop in the bucket. Two important points here: a Russian company with “ties” to the Russian government does not make what it does an actual action of the Russian government. No one knows what those “ties” mean, and it is obvious from the small scale of the purchase that this was more of an experiment than an actual attempt to change anything.
It is possible, even likely, that the Russian government hacked into the Democratic National Committee computer system. But that does not mean that they released what they found to WikiLeaks. A good comparison is this: you are a sloppy homeowner. You don’t lock your doors. People come in and out all the time. Some take things, some don’t. Lots of people had access to the DNC data. That includes Russia, but there’s no reason to believe that Russia gave the information to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now in jail, specifically stated that the DNC information did not come from a “state” actor, which rules out Russia. There’s no evidence that Julian Assange has ever lied to the media.
He is obscure here in the United States, but Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, is a highly principled person who gave up his diplomatic career in the effort to criticize human rights abuses in Central Asia. His book “Murder in Samarkand” is awesome. Murray works with WikiLeaks. Murray says that he received the DNC documents, probably on a thumb drive, in a park near American University in Washington DC, from a disgruntled DNC staffer who is angry about the way the DNC treated Bernie Sanders in 2016. Like Julian Assange, there is no evidence that Murray has ever lied.
Technical experts say that the data copied from the DNC server was removed at a speed consistent with being copied to a thumb drive, which is much faster than the speed at which it would have been copied by being accessed remotely over the Internet. In other words, it was a leak, not a hack. Just as Craig Murray says.
To say the least, the US intelligence community has a long history of lying to the press.
In conclusion, no one can be sure exactly how the DNC data ended up with WikiLeaks, but the odds are currently overwhelmingly in favor of the leak theory.
There was much more Russian influence than 200$K in facebook ads, so that is wholly incorrect. The leak Vs. hack is still something I can't figure out but the Murray quote is new news to me....But I do think Assange is not being treated fairly.
Candidate spending topped a billion dollars. If your war chest can be neutralized by a mere fraction of that, maybe the problem is the candidate, not the memes generated.
The election meddling most alarming, was entirely homegrown.
@WilliamCharles And you think all russian meddling was on facebook.... that was the tip of the iceberg and almost a sidebar. When faux entertainment channel (fox news) say the same things as the russians bots...that should give you a clue.......
If it was done somehow through electronic voting machines, then those need to be scrapped as those vulnerabilities can be exploited by anyone. The same mental misfits who assured us they were safe now tell us they are the gateway to our elections being stolen. A return to paper ballots with an audit trail is in order.
That they are not proposing this means that election integrity is not their real concern.
@WilliamCharles I agree...the feds are coming down to Floridiota to look at a few counties who's machines were apparently hacked.
Trump was given massive amounts of free airtime because he was good for ratings. Wikileaks revealed the DNC/Team Hillary plan to fluff Trump thinking he'd be easier to beat. They lost to their handpicked Pied Piper. She played chicken with the fate of the nation in her pursuit of power... and saddled us with Dolt 45 due to her hubris.
It wasn't the Russians that told her to ignore key states. She went up against one of the shittiest presidential candidates in modern memory, and despite her own substantial negatives, felt she could coast to victory. Democratic operatives on the ground begged her not to ignore their districts, but they trusted their own flawed metrics.
Russiagate was cooked up by Robby Mook and John Podesta within 24 hours of her defeat as a means of saving face. And they continue to push this narrative against any evidence to the contrary. They double down on it time and again.
Trump is most definitely corrupt AF, but that does not mean that Dems can't be guilty of their own manufactured spin.
I will choose to trust the US Intelligence community over William Charles. The Intelligence Community produces no political input other than facts. Politician take those facts and spin them in any direction to suit their agenda. I trust Republican Robert Mueller and his investigation that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. If you, William Charles, are OK in allowing Russians to meddle in US elections as long as they do not change votes, then never call yourself a patriot.
The definition of patriot has been thoroughly abused. And I am actually quite enamored with the Russian meddling in Syria and Venezuela to prevent US terrorism from destroying these countries like we have with so many others. The election fraud that most concerns me is entirely homegrown and largely ignored. One example was the Democratic primaries, followed by the GOP vote suppression in the general. Where are the patriots addressing these outrages? Instead, we get nonstop scapegoating of Russia.
And regarding intelligence agencies, I still see the lie of "seventeen intelligence agencies agree" repeated though that number has shown to be false.
Additionally, some of the refutations of intelligence agency claims come from former agents.
@WilliamCharles please back up your claim with information supporting your claim that the 17 intelligence agencies are erroneous in their reporting that Russia interferred in our elections.
"On May 23, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper’s account about the three agencies involved.
“It wasn’t a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies, and for good reason because of the nature and the sensitivity of the information trying, once again, to keep that tightly compartmented,” Brennan said.
In other words, Clinton’s beloved claim that all 17 intelligence agencies were in agreement on the Russian “hacking” charge — an assertion that the “fact-checking” group PolitiFact has certified as “true” and that has been repeated endlessly by the mainstream U.S. news media — is not true. It is false. Gee, you might even call it “fake news.”"
@WilliamCharles It is not false. You can pick any fact that is not 100% accurate and in turn poison the entire investigation. Truth be told, there were four agencies involved in the assessment. Most of the intelligent agencies mentioned under the "17 agencies" are under the umbrella of the Director of National Intelligence. Yet it does not deter from the fact that Russia was deeply involved with interfering in the 2016 election. You have a bias opinion and cannot look at the facts beyond your political beliefs.
We'll have to agree to disagree then. And even though you seem to have better credentials, I feel I am evaluating the facts honestly. We get lied to quite a lot to support various agendas. I think the claim of Iran attacking Saudi ships is likely BS, yet the same media outlets that propped up WMD fabrications will cover this rather uncritically.
I've seen the difference between what the factd show versus how it's portrayed time and again. Even on the Russian collusion claims, the histrionics prior yo the report didn't match the eventual findings.
One quick aside since I checked out your profile bio... do you think Israel's attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity? I became an online acquaintance with Liberty officer James Ennes who wrote "Assault on the Liberty." Good man. A remarkable truth-teller.
@WilliamCharles Why do you suppose Israel attacked the USS Liberty?
On your comment about Podesta making up Russiagate after the election was lost, how did Hillary bring it up during the debates?
Are the Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine, France, and England, before the US election, also made up by the Deep State?
Do you think it was an accident?
That Russia hacked the DNC servers was already being floated prior.
The extent it was being promoted was always part of the saber-rattling. The US is directly involved in coups around the world, but Podesta giving his password over a fishing site is worth risking war with a nuclear superpower?
Quick question. Will these intelligence agency patriots try to gin up a war with Iran for Bolton and Abrams? Both are war criminals btw.
@WilliamCharles intelligency agencies produce facts. Those elected officials and people selected by those elected officials are the ones using the intel for their agendas. Nobody wearing a uniform wants war. The suits push their agendas for war. Bolton is a blowhard and his "war hawk" moniker is as much real as his fake military service.