CIA Assessment: Russia Sought to Help Trump Win

One of the sad and frightening ironies is that many in rural America who seemingly have less intelligence than Sarah Palin, the idiot of Wasilla, and who view themselves as "real Americans" allowed themselves to be played by a former KGB operative who now sees himself as Russia's new tsar.  As the New York Times and other real news outlets report, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have concluded "that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump."  That Vladimir Putin sought to see Donald Trump elected ought to have been a blaring clarion to anyone rational that Trump is toxic to both the best interest of America and to the survival of democracy itself.  At an LGBT holiday party last evening in Williamsburg heavily populated by LGBT activists, professionals and academics from William & Mary University, the shock at the stupidity/idiocy of Trump voters was a common theme - along with much discussion of how to form a resistance to Trumpism and the coming onslaught against LGBT rights and civil rights in general.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials. . . . Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks. 

“We now have high confidence that they hacked the D.N.C. and the R.N.C., and conspicuously released no documents” from the Republican organization, one senior administration official said, referring to the Russians.

It is unclear how many files were stolen from the Republican committee; in some cases, investigators never get a clear picture. It is also far from clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote.

The Russians were as surprised as everyone else at Mr. Trump’s victory, intelligence officials said. Had Mrs. Clinton won, they believe, emails stolen from the Democratic committee and from senior members of her campaign could have been used to undercut her legitimacy. The intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to help Mr. Trump was first reported by The Washington Post.

In briefings to the White House and Congress, intelligence officials, including those from the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, have identified individual Russian officials they believe were responsible. Intelligence officials and private cybersecurity companies believe that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by two different Russian cyberunits. One, called “Cozy Bear” or “A.P.T. 29” by some Western security experts, is believed to have spent months inside the D.N.C. computer network, as well as other government and political institutions, but never made public any of the documents it took. (A.P.T. stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat,” which usually describes a sophisticated state-sponsored cyberintruder.)

The other, the G.R.U.-controlled unit known as “Fancy Bear,” or “A.P.T. 28,” is believed to have created two outlets on the internet, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, to make Democratic documents public. Many of the documents were also provided to WikiLeaks, which released them over many weeks before the Nov. 8 election.

Salon pick up on the disturbing story line.  Note how many Republicans seem only too willing to allow a foreign enemy to interfere with our election results so long as their party is the beneficiary. Here are more highlights:

The Washington Post today reported that the CIA now is sure of Russia’s deliberate efforts to help elect Donald Trump as president of the United States. According to the story, “Agency briefers told the senators it was now ‘quite clear’ that electing Trump was Russia’s goal.”

In a report by the Washington Post, officials are named who say they have information related to those connected to the Russian government — the same persons who provided Wikileaks emails that were hacked from the DNC and John Podesta.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

According to several officials, [Senator Mitch] McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

 

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

 

Trump’s transition team dismissed the findings in a statement Friday, claiming, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

          Read the full story at the Washington Post.

America democracy died on November 8, 2016. Sadly, like a patient with an as yet un-diagnosed terminal cancer, most Americans do not grasp what has happened or, in the case of Trump voters, that they have betrayed the nation and done the bidding of enemy agents.  Perhaps instead of wearing their "Make America Great Again" hats they should wear hats that say "American Traitor."  Be very, very afraid.