NSA Chief: WikiLeaks Hacks of Democrats' Emails Were a "Conscious Effort by a Nation-State" | Mother Jones

The WikiLeaks release of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign constituted a "conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect," the head of the National Security Agency said Tuesday.

"There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's mind," NSA Director Michael S. Rogers said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily." Rogers acknowledged in October that Russians were behind the hacks.

News that the DNC had been compromised broke earlier this June, when hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a trove of documents containing campaign emails and memos—most notably emails implying that the committee favored Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary. The release of the emails led to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

WikiLeaks also published thousands of emails from John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair. Though Russia was long suspected of being behind the hacks, US officials did not formally accuse the Russian government of orchestrating the cyber attacks until October. In November, just four days before the election, DNC officials told Mother Jones they had found evidence that the DNC headquarters may have been bugged and had submitted a report to the FBI.

Robert De Niro lashed out at Donald Trump in a video that aired on Friday on Megyn Kelly’s “The Kelly File,” telling viewers that he’d “like to punch him in the face.”

De Niro’s remarks came in a video produced by Anonymous Content, which has been making a series of short interviews for a voter initiative called #Vote YourFuture. The director of De Niro’s video, Tom McCarthy, asked him, “What do you care about?”

De Niro’s anti-Trump remarks were so emphatic that the producers concluded that it could not be part of the campaign, which is non-partisan. But it was given to Kelly’s show for airing and publicists for the production firm released it to the media on Friday.

In the video, De Niro also calls Trump “blatantly stupid,” “a punk” and a “bulls–t artist.”

"It's over," a Republican strategist who has been supportive of Trump said. "Never seen anything like it. Never will."

The timing of newly obtained audio from 2005 in which Trump boasted how he used his stardom to approach women and "grab 'em by the pussy," could not be much worse for the nominee, whose standing with women in surveys has already been abominable throughout the campaign.

"This one matters," a Trump campaign staffer conceded, adding they had "no idea" how to spin the story in their favor.

Related: Trump Says on Hot Mic 'When You're a Star ... You Can Do Anything' to Women

In the immediate term, though, the tape is threatening to crack Trump's support within the GOP, whose leaders must weigh whether its worth it to defend Trump and risk poisoning the party brand or distance themselves and risk demoralizing their base.

Based on the early reaction, they're choosing the latter approach.

Cuban said he tells his tax lawyers to “take advantage” where they can, but added, “I’m not against paying taxes.”

The outspoken reality show star and sports owner gave two examples of how he’s made moves that saw him pay more than whatever bare minimum the law might require. First, he said he decided against seeking a bidding war for tax rebates when deciding where to build the new Mavs practice facility. Instead of moving the facility to a suburb, he settled on a 13-acre plot of land in Dallas’s Design District.

Cuban also said he voluntarily “wrote a million-dollar check” to the city to help Dallas police combat discrimination against the LGBT community in the area. He said he had been moved by the shootings at a gay nightclub in Orlando to take action.

“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” Cuban concluded. “At some point you have to recognize that you have to give back.”