Lack of concern about Russian hacking shocks me.

[struggle4progress]

By Asha Rangappa
June 10 at 7:00 AM

... what I saw as the most explosive aspect of the testimony didn’t involve any legal violation of the U.S. code or questions about whether Comey had broken established Department of Justice protocols. Instead, it was the prima facie evidence that Comey presented that Trump appears unwilling to uphold his oath “to preserve, protect, and defend” the country — which puts the security of our nation and its democracy at stake. In the nine times Trump met with or called Comey, it was always to discuss how the investigation into Russia’s election interference was affecting him personally, rather than the security of the country. He apparently cared little about understanding either the magnitude of the Russian intelligence threat, or how the FBI might be able to prevent another attack in future elections ...

... there is unanimity among senior intelligence officials that the Russian interference in our election not only happened, but that it was extraordinary and unprecedented. In previous testimony, Comey described Russia as the “greatest threat of any country on earth,” and he warned Thursday that Russia is “coming after America,” regardless of party, “to undermine our credibility in the rest of the world.”

Former CIA director John Brennan testified to Congress in May that he was shocked that Russia had “brazenly interfered” in the election, so much so that he took the extraordinary step of directly confronting his Russian counterpart. He added that he believes that even in the election’s aftermath, “Russian intelligence services are trying to exploit what is going on in Washington now to their benefit and to our detriment.”

It does not require an FBI investigation to see that a president of the United States who finds no reason for concern in any of these assertions — and indeed considers them a “hoax” — cannot have the best interest of the country at heart ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/06/10/i-was-an-fbi-agent-trumps-lack-of-concern-about-russian-hacking-shocks-me/?utm_term=.56b23a341ca9

[delisen]

1. Is Russia's boldness due to knowledge of how much internal help

they have, particularly in the Republican Party.

[loyalsister]

34. I agree

Some of the claims are based on assumptions that demand a more thorough investigation and incontrovertible evidence. No one could question whether or not Clinton did commit perjury once the DNA surfaced. The question came down to "was it serious enough to qualify as a high crime or misdemeanor?" It was essentially decided that certain lies in civil court proceedings are not to be considered high crimes or misdemeanors.
Impeachment should be supported by evidence that cannot be questioned, and it should also be impossible to question whether it fits the high crime misdemeanor standard. Otherwise, it could easily backfire by turning 45 into a martyr and setting an ugly precedent.

[YCHDT]

3. People in the media don't believe the intel report either, they're not threatened by Putin and you

... can tell seeing if they new the next elections would be stolen too the ones who love america would be saying somthing

[elias7]

4. IMO, this was a declaration of war

[Golden Raisin]

27. Act(s) of war. Not just a declaration.

[Voltaire2]

29. it's neither. We fuck with the elections in other countries all the time.

What it is is payback.

[AlexSFCA]

5. absolutely

Everything else was noise. You would think some GOPers would be concerned because the primary was likely compromised making trump potentially illegally winning the primary itself.

[anneboleyn]

12. You would think -- yet not a peep from Jeb or Ted Cruz (I think Cruz was definitely a target)

Cruz was the target of a huge number of FAKE news stories during the primary -- the especially idiotic stories claiming that he was the Zodiac killer (he's a couple of decades too young for that!), Trump repeated the story about Cruz's father being involved with the JFK assassination (another ridiculous fake story), and a story claiming that Cruz was having all sorts of affairs with women who worked on his campaign. There were other fake stories as well. Cruz denied the affair story but the story was pumped by pro-Trump forces wildly during the crucial parts of the primary and in especially religious areas. Then the story disappeared.

All of those stories were fake news, and all of them were promoted/spread by bots and sock puppets, etc during the primary. You never hear about all of this crap now.

[tom_kelly]

22. The Jeb

I found it odd that Jeb showed such little interest during his campaign and pretty much rolled over dead. He knew. Those bushes know everything going on in this world.

[Chasstev365]

6. Sadly; most people on the hard right only care about the outcome

They don't give a dam about laws, rules, ethics, morals etc. Only winning and control.

[deurbano]

16. Exactly. Party before country, morality, ethics... humanity.

[spanone]

7. It says ALL we need to know.

[clu]

8. what did they hack

they spear-phished podesta and published a lot of stuff that frankly probably shouldn't have been associated with gmail. if the methodology had been more sophisticated maybe i'd care but at this point any conclusions draw from the contents of those emails are fair game.

forgive me I was not here during the 2016 run-up I am only recently coming back. i'm not sure of this site's consensus on this stuff.

[clu]

9. doh

oh sorry I hadn't read this yet

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/05/russia-us-election-hack-voting-system-nsa-report

[Igel]

28. And still, its spear phishing.

What they did with the info from the hacked email accounts was, it appears, send more phishing emails.

But we heard last winter or late fall that boards of elections were subject to a spear phishing attack.

[anneboleyn]

10. Trump's total lack of interest is "consciousness of guilt" as they say in criminal court. He shows

zero interest in the crime -- he's not even pretending to be interested -- and a prosecutor would say that this is because he KNOWS what happened. It just seems so obvious. And he's so arrogant and self-involved, and not remotely patriotic (I think it's obvious that he'd drive this country into the ground to get whatever he wants), that he doesn't even PRETEND to be concerned about the matter.

Think about the potential reactions of any of the most recent presidents. All of them would be stunned and very disturbed by this and would be ordering very serious countermeasures -- Obama Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan. But Trump doesn't care at all and we keep hearing from people in his party that it doesn't reeaallly matter (in fact the new Fox bobblehead idiot Tucker Carlson starts every single show by yelling at some random democrat that none of this matters and that there is no evidence that anyone did anything wrong) -- hell Trump even wants to give the Russians the assets that were seized when Obama placed sanctions on them for election hacking.

What also stuns me is the fact that the republicans, the McCarthy jackasses, are pretending this doesn't matter. Eh, so Russia hacked the election and so on...oh well. Let's get going with healthkill bills and tax burdens for the middle class! It is scary and extremely depressing.

[BarbD]

11. Russia's tactics are similar to what the Nazis did in the 1930's.

They were so effective with their fifth column movement, it allowed them to capture Austria without a shot being fired.

Consider that Russia, our sworn enemy, was recruiting Trump back when his casino was in trouble. Trump is only interested in money and Russian banks were ready and willing to bail him out.

It is in Putin's interest to have the American voter confused and cynical. However, I am heartened to see the patriots in these hearings sounding the alarm. Now, if I could only convince my republican California cousins to wake up and smell the borscht.

[byronius]

14. +1

[byronius]

13. A major defeat for the US that will echo for generations, if we survive.

A truly existential threat to the human race. We're on the edge. Anyone who doesn't agree just can't see.

[the_sly_pig]

15. Two things.... well maybe more than two things...

The war on education has been going on for 37 years. It has been successful.

The war on corporate taxation has been successful.

The war on the fourth estate has been successful.

The war on labor has been successful.

We have a traitor in the White House and we can't get a special prosecutor to investigate whether our decades long Cold War nemesis chose our president?!

It might be a good time to start thinking about the value of a Constitution and whether or not it's worth fighting for....

[deurbano]

17. Add the successful war on voting. And if the Russians can help with that, it's all good

Last edited Sat Jun 10, 2017, 06:02 PM - Edit history (1)

[certainot]

18. we'd be bombing russia if limbaugh and 1000 radio stations were 'outraged'! at

this as opposed to making excuses for the guy who was the beneficiary of it

the republicans and putin are working togetherand i wonder if limbaugh's got a cyprus bank acct.

[Voltaire2]

30. we can't bomb russia.

You do understand that, right?

[certainot]

31. i understand that but liberals don't understand that if 1000 radio stations

start talking about doing it pretty soon the teabags and republicans will start to think it's possible

and the only reason they're not is because the russians are on their side, have been using them for years, and i wouldn't be surprised if limbaugh and hannity have putin bank accts.

believe me, if hillary won and these russia connections were being made to her limbaugh and sons would be talking about bombing russia, and liberals wouldn't have a clue as to why so many republicans were pushing it, and we'd be protesting all the wrong places

[L. Coyote]

19. TRUMP'S lack of concern about Russian hacking points to his guilt.

He was colluding with the Russians.

[FiveGoodMen]

23. "He was colluding with the Russians."

And so are ALL of his supporters, whether they realize it or not.

Turns out, we weren't really afraid of communism or fascism or any other way of losing our freedom.

We, as a nation, are just a bunch of fools hoping that the cool kids -- i.e. the rich, the media, TV preachers -- will let us sit at their lunch table.

We, as a nation, don't give a flying fuck about ANY of the principles we espouse.

[BlueJac]

20. Party over country.........

The Republicans I know would vote that way every time, plus voting against themselves. Total Fox news brain washed! It is a sad state of affairs.

[Duppers]

21. THIS

The press should be hammering this point.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. Excellent essay. Thanks for posting excerpts. . . . nt

[madville]

25. If Hillary Clinton had won

We never even would have heard much more about Russian hacking. The responsibility​ falls on non-government entities' IT systems to protect their info from hackers. How do campaigns, individuals, PACs, etc all be mandated to protect their info? And then how does the government potentially regulate social media and fake news?

[athena]

33. That's not true.

Hillary was talking about Russian efforts to influence the election *during* the election, but no one was listening. People were too busy hating her to hear anything she was saying. If Hillary Clinton had become president, the Russian hacking would have been investigated, and steps would have been taken to prevent any foreign country from influencing U.S. elections in the future. It's only because the party the Russians supported is in power that nothing is being done about it now. If we want something to be done, we need to elect Democrats in a landslide in 2018.

[kairos12]

26. Drumpt voters prefer Putin to Clinton.

[Achilleaze]

32. republican betrayal of America sucks

"...there is unanimity among senior intelligence officials that the Russian interference in our election not only happened, but that it was extraordinary and unprecedented."