Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

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Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Tue Feb 06, 2018 4:24 pm

Since the current thread on this topic has gone over 1000 posts, which appears to be the limit set by the management of this site, I'm re-posting my most recent entry here.


(Twitter post with link to) 'U.S. Prosecutors Consider Charging Russian Officials in DNC Hacking Case'
The Justice Department has identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information that became public during the 2016 presidential election, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Prosecutors and agents have assembled evidence to charge the Russian officials and could bring a case next year, these people said. Discussions about the case are in the early stages, they said.

If filed, the case would provide the clearest picture yet of the actors behind the DNC intrusion. U.S. intelligence agencies have attributed the attack to Russian intelligence services, but haven't provided detailed information about how they concluded those services were responsible, or any details about the individuals allegedly involved.

The high-profile hack of the DNC’s computers played a central role in the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment in January that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” Mr. Putin and the Russian government have denied meddling in the U.S. election.
After all, the US Department of Justice is just crawling with people motivated by an anti-Trump agenda, so they're almost certainly talking through their hats when they say that they've identified Russian govenment individuals responsible for for the hacking the DNC, and have enough evidence to consider mounting prosecutions. Also, since this information came from anonymous sources we should really just ignore it because reasons.


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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by pErvinalia » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:06 am

"people familiar with the investigation". :nono:

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:14 am

That post was in response to yet another monotonous repetition of the 'no evidence, no evidence!' spiel. It's news from last year, however it's of later provenance than the source used in the post I was replying to. If there is no evidence, it would seem unlikely that specific charges against known suspects are being considered.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:33 am

A former member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service gives an opinion and analysis of the Nunes memo and the Republican effort to discredit Christopher Steele.

'The Smearing of Christopher Steele'
In his effort to malign the U.S. Justice system and confuse the American people in a hail-Mary attempt to protect President Donald Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes seems to also have confused himself.

As we now know, the intent of Nunes’ memo was to suggest that the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was undertaken on false premises. It alleges that the FBI abused its surveillance authority by issuing a warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page by basing its rationale on the controversial Steele dossier. It implies that the British intelligence officer behind that memo, former MI-6 operative Christopher Steele, and those who supported the warrant were biased against then-candidate Trump, and that the FBI and Justice Department purposely withheld that information—and the Democratic funding behind the dossier—in an attempt to gain the warrant.

Like many observers, I was underwhelmed by the memo. Given all the hype and high-level attention, I wasn’t expecting quite such a lame effort. The memo is little more than a partisan hatchet job, and others have already made mincemeat of the many false assumptions, cherry-picked arguments, poorly articulated conclusions and poor reasoning.

I will therefore leave the bulk of the criticisms to others. Instead, as a career intelligence officer who worked on Russian espionage issues overseas, and in support of FBI counterintelligence investigations domestically, I will focus on the potential intelligence and counterintelligence issues surrounding the memo and its publication.

[An explanation of the term 'source' as it applies to intelligence work: '... an intelligence source is someone under some level of U.S. government control, who is met and managed in a secret or clandestine manner according to rules set by the director of national intelligence.']

I suspect (hope), however, that Nunes knows that Steele was not an intelligence source. If he thought otherwise, it is despicable that the chairman of the bureau’s oversight committee would so cavalierly divulge a source. Why would anyone be willing to put themselves into harm’s way to work with the U.S. government again?

Instead, Steele was a former intelligence partner, who willingly shared information he believed was of interest to the U.S. If the FBI wished for him to continue his efforts, he would likely serve as a de facto paid contractor, providing his normal services, just on behalf of the FBI. In this sense, the FBI was a client, not a spymaster.

But Nunes was probably trying to confuse the issue and label Steele as a confidential source so that he can imply Steele broke some kind of law by misleading the FBI. Unfortunately for Nunes, there are no such laws. Sources come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, they’re bad people—criminals or gangsters. Like the rest of us, they all have biases. They even lie. There are no laws governing what a source can and cannot report, certainly not for foreign sources.

...

Nunes bases the bulk of his argument against Steele’s reporting on the fact that Steele commented in September 2016 to then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” This is the only line in the Nunes memo that is in bold font. The clear implication is that Steele’s personal views should have invalidated any of his work on behalf of the FBI.

A professional intelligence service understands that all sources have individual biases. Being biased is hardly a disqualifier. If it were, we would have a tough time finding sources in most countries around the world. It is the job of a handling service to understand a source’s bias, perspective, access, motivations and reliability. It is standard stuff.

If he really believes that Steele’s personal views negate his reporting, it suggests Nunes failed to read Steele’s reports or worse, misunderstands the nature of intelligence collection. Steele’s “dossier” was not a summary or analytical product but was a series of raw intelligence reports. An intelligence officer does not report personal opinions or produce finished analysis but is seeking to accurately record what his sources and sub-sources report. The professional intelligence officer’s personal opinions matter little.

More importantly, I am not so certain that Steele’s comment reflects personal bias so much as informed opinion based on professional experience. By September 2016, Steele had already reported on a damning criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. His sources had shared with him information related to financial wrongdoing, compromising personal behavior and even espionage. Rather than assuming it is some sort of inherent bias or hatred for Trump, I see Steele’s comments as those of an intelligence officer who trusts his sources and believes the information that he has been gathering. If I collected information from trusted and knowledgeable sources that Trump was potentially involved in a criminal conspiracy with Vladimir Putin, I’d be “biased” too. The fact that Steele believed so much in his reporting that he felt passionate about passing it to the FBI can be as much an argument for the defense as for Nunes’ prosecution.

However, the memo’s most serious weakness is the same as with all the other attacks on the Steele document – they pretend that the content doesn’t exist. Instead, they dwell on how the research was funded, and make no effort to refute the specific allegations. They look at it through a partisan lens and discount the substance.

...

If the FBI were approached by a former allied professional intelligence officer with whom they had a previous productive relationship and he provided extremely serious information alleging possible espionage at the highest levels, it would be professionally irresponsible of the bureau to not take the allegations seriously and investigate at least until they had a sense of whether there was any validity to them. If the information fit an existing espionage investigation, it is a no-brainer. They can psychoanalyze their source later.

In this regard the memo pretends that all of the allegations in the Steele reports are false. As I’ve written previously (“A Second Look at the Steele Dossier,” “The Steele Dossier in 2018: Everyone's Favorite Weapon”), significant pieces of the dossier ring true. Even the recent Stormy Daniels saga is eerily similar to Steele’s reporting. Just like in the dossier, Trump’s bad behavior with women put him in a vulnerable and compromising position. Also, in both cases, his personal “fixer” Michael Cohen allegedly paid hush money to cover up the wrongdoing – even using false names and shell companies to cover his tracks in the case of Daniels. (He denies it.) On the other side of the coin, aside from labeling it “garbage” and “fake,” Trump’s supporters have been unable or unwilling to disprove any significant fact in the dossier.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:03 am

Am I supposed to believe that nobody knows definitively whether or not the current president worked with the Russians to beat Clinton? Let's just fire'em all and start over. How is that not the story here? We're how long into this thing?

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:15 am

It took Ken Starr more than four years to investigate Clinton. It wouldn't be a good idea to rush an investigation into an even more serious matter than what Starr was looking at.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:21 am

You don't consider it a failure of our intelligence capabilities to not know whether or not Trump colluded with the Russians? I realize an investigation is necessary whatever we know. I just hope like hell we aren't investigating to determine whether or not he did work with the Russians. --holy shit, that'd be crazy eh?

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by laklak » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:29 am

Who cares? The fix is in and we're all fucked anyway. Best to just turn on the tube and find out what the Kardashians are up to.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:31 am

:lol: I'm not watching the Kardashians though, that'd be a buzz kill.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by laklak » Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:27 am

There's always reruns of NCIS and Criminal Minds.
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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:35 am

Stop it, you're making me feel like one of those assholes who doesn't watch TV.

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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by JimC » Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:49 am

In Soviet America, TV watches you!
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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Tero » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:46 pm

Putin’s plan working perfectly:
"This is the first President to make a full-throated, unvarnished attack on the entirety of the FBI, not going after J. Edgar Hoover, who was one person in the FBI," Biden said, referencing the agency's former director.
Biden continued, "What do you think they're thinking in Moscow? This is doing everything that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin ever wanted, sowing doubt about whether or not our justice system is fair, sowing doubt about whether or not there is anything that is remotely consistent with our Constitution."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/politics ... index.html
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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by Tero » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:48 pm

laklak wrote:There's always reruns of NCIS and Criminal Minds.
I've solved most of them in 10 minutes. If there is a woman involved it is the boyfriend. If there is a Saudi arabian involved, it is the family that is involved, he has disgraced them. The other 10% of the plots: it is either the boss or the security guard in the building where the murder vicitim worked.
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Re: Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:23 pm

Why would Russia care what Tillerson says? Trump has refused to implement the sanctions in response to election meddling that were voted in by Congress by a very large margin, so Tillerson's threat of 'consequences' is rather hollow.

'Russians already meddling in US midterms, Tillerson says'
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday warned the United States is ill-prepared to prevent Russian interference in the upcoming midterms, as it was in the 2016 general election.

“I don't know that I would say we are better prepared, because the Russians will adapt as well,” Tillerson said in an exclusive interview with Fox News in Bogota, Colombia. “The point is, if it's their intention to interfere, they are going to find ways to do that. We can take steps we can take but this is something that, once they decide they are going to do it, it's very difficult to preempt it.”

Russia is already attempting to interfere “in the U.S. in 2018” ahead of congressional midterm elections as it did in the 2016 general election, he said.

“I think it's important we just continue to say to Russia, ‘Look, you think we don't see what you're doing. We do see it and you need to stop. If you don't, you're going to just continue to invite consequences for yourself,’” said Tillerson.

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