Trump Campaign To Papadopoulos:Contact Russians; Brits Raid Cambridge Analytica Offices

While Der Trumpenführer, and House Republicans continue to claim the Russiagate investigation  is a "witch hunt," two new developments could well show that claim to be a lie.   First, it now seems that George Papadopoulos - who has copped a guilty plea and is working with Robert Mueller - was told by Trump campaign officials to make contact with the Russians and secured campaign approval before he sought to explore what Russia could do for the campaign.  So much for Trump's claim that Papadopoulos was a glorified coffee boy.  Potentially even more devastating is word the British officials have raided the London offices of Cambridge Analytica and are seizing the company's data base and servers - items that might provide a clear and indisputable link between Russian intelligence officials and the Trump campaign.  Trump in typical form has tried to distract the media - or at least the GOP's Christofascist base - by announcing a new ban on transgender members of the U.S. military.   First this from the Washington Post on Papadopoulos' direction from the Trump campaign:

When a Russian news agency reached out to George Papadopoulos to request an interview shortly before the 2016 election, the young adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump made sure to seek approval from campaign headquarters.

“You should do it,” deputy communications director Bryan Lanza urged Papadopoulos in a September 2016 email,  . . .

The exchange was a sign that Papadopoulos — who pushed the Trump operation to meet with Russian officials — had the campaign’s blessing for some of his foreign outreach.

Since Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the campaign and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump officials have sought to paint the 30-year-old energy consultant as a low-level volunteer whose outreach to Russia was not authorized by the campaign — and in some cases was actively discouraged.

Emails described to The Washington Post, which are among thousands of documents turned over to investigators examining Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, show Papadopoulos had more extensive contact with key Trump campaign and presidential transition officials than has been publicly acknowledged.

Among those who communicated with Papadopoulos were senior campaign figures such as strategist Stephen K. Bannon and adviser Michael Flynn, who corresponded with him about his efforts to broker ties between Trump and top foreign officials, the emails show.

Thomas Breen, an attorney for Papadopoulos, declined to comment. A White House spokesman also declined to comment.

In a tweet after Papadopoulos pleaded guilty, Trump wrote that “few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.” Another Trump campaign staffer dismissed Papadopoulos as a mere “coffee boy” during the campaign.
 At the end of March, Papadopoulos attended a meeting of Trump’s newly named national security advisory group at the candidate’s not-yet-opened hotel in Washington. After introducing himself, the young adviser announced he could organize a meeting between Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and Trump, according to court documents.

That Trump and his circle of sycophants have lied about Papadopoulos'  roll should surprise no one not living under a rock or only watching Fox News.

Adding to the fun is the fact that British authorities, as noted above, raided the London offices of Cambridge Analytica which may have been the go between for Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign.  One can only imagine what goodies that company's data base and computer servers may yield.   Here are highlights from Politico:

U.K. authorities raided Cambridge Analytica’s offices overnight amid an investigation into whether the political consulting firm illegally acquired Facebook data to target voters.

Around 18 investigators were seen entering the company’s London headquarters after obtaining a warrant to search its database and servers Friday night, the Guardian reported. The search lasted seven hours, according to the BBC.

“This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes,” the Information Commissioner’s Office said late Friday after receiving the warrant. “As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions.”

The search is the latest development in a ballooning scandal enveloping both the firm and Facebook. Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are scrutinizing the companies amid accusations that Cambridge Analytica may have used 50 million Facebook users’ data without proper consent to help U.S. President Donald Trump’s election.

Perhaps the Brits will expose what the Congressional Republicans have been working so hard to keep hidden.  

Senator Warner: "Clear Evidence" Trump Campaign Met Russians to Harm Clinton

In addition to the legal problems that he has ignited for himself - and Prince Jared - Donald Trump, Jr., has given investigators their first concrete example of Trump campaign efforts to collude with Russia.  It is something I have always suspected took place given Der Trumpenführer history of dealing with shady (that's being charitable) individuals and ignoring the law when it did not suit his purposes.  One of the most insane side effects of the disclosure is Trump, Sr.'s claim that he knew nothing about the meeting.  Consider this: it occurred in Trump Tower and involved his son and son-in-law.  Only in Trump world is such a far fetched claim believable to his Kool-Aid drinking supporters.  A piece in CNN - not the fake news channel Der Trumpenführer claims (that would be Fox News) - Senator Mark Warner shares his views on the unfolding Russiagate scandal which increasingly has the feeling of Watergate deja vue.  Here are article highlights:

The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday that Donald Trump Jr.'s acknowledgment of a meeting with a Russian lawyer last June is the first clear public evidence that senior Trump campaign officials met with Russians to try to discredit Hillary Clinton.

"This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior level members of the Trump campaign meeting Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton," Sen. Mark Warner told reporters.

Trump Jr. acknowledged Sunday that he met with a Russian lawyer who he had been told "might have information helpful to the campaign." . . . Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya, according to Trump Jr., but he said he told them "nothing of the substance" prior to the meeting.

Warner said Monday that Trump Jr.'s acknowledgment of the meeting reveals a "continuing pattern" of Trump campaign and administration officials having "conveniently forgotten" meetings they had with Russians.
 "It's also a continuing pattern that we've seen since the election of Trump campaign and Trump administration officials who have conveniently forgotten meetings with Russians, only when they are then presented with evidence they have to recant and acknowledge those kind of meetings," the Virginia Democrat said.

"I'm not going to get into the witness list and the individuals that we have talked to or plan on talking to, but rest assured Donald Trump Jr. will be someone that we want to talk to," Warner said. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the same committee, echoed Warner on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" later Monday. . . . . Wyden said he viewed Trump Jr.'s statement on Sunday as an "admission" of attempting to collude with a Russian person to bolster the Trump campaign.

"We don't know what was said, but when I look at somebody's own words, that was an admission," Wyden said. "He was getting together with somebody who was going to give him information of value, a Russian giving him information of value that would help Donald Trump get elected."

As in Watergate, there were first the improper actions followed by constant lies and then presidential efforts to obstruct justice.  The parallel's are increasingly stark.

Russian Hackers Sought to Get Clinton Emails to Mike Flynn

If one wonders why Der Trumpenführer is so obsessed with shutting down the FBI investigation of Trump BFF Mike Flynn, stories in New York Magazine and Talking Points Memo look at efforts of Russian hackers working on Vladimir Putin's personal orders sought to collaborate with Flynn and to hinder Hillary Clinton's electoral chances. Trump may be trying to use the ruse of voter fraud to distract his knuckle dragging supporters, but the real story remains that of what collusion and attempted collaboration went on between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign and Trump advisers.  Remebr, Trump more or less admitted that he fired James Comey because of the FBI investigation of Mike Flynn.  First these highlights from the New York Magazine piece:

During the 2016 campaign, Russian hackers discussed how to obtain emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server — and, then, transmit them to Trump campaign advisor Michael Flynn, according to intelligence reports reviewed by U.S. officials.

Meanwhile, a longtime Republican opposition researcher organized a campaign to access the emails that Clinton had deleted from that server — emails that he believed Russian hackers had gotten hold of. This GOP operative, Peter W. Smith, told multiple friends and potential “recruits” that he was working with Flynn on the email project.

These bombshells were brought to you by the Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris, who interviewed Smith on May 4 — 10 days before the 81-year-old died. Here’s Harris’s summary of Smith’s efforts:

His project began over Labor Day weekend 2016 when Mr. Smith, a private-equity executive from Chicago active in Republican politics, said he assembled a group of technology experts, lawyers and a Russian-speaking investigator based in Europe to acquire emails the group theorized might have been stolen from the private server Mrs. Clinton used as secretary of state. …In the interview with the Journal, Mr. Smith said he and his colleagues found five groups of hackers who claimed to possess Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails, including two groups he determined were Russians. “We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government,” Mr. Smith said. …Mr. Smith said after vetting batches of emails offered to him by hacker groups last fall, he couldn’t be sure enough of their authenticity to leak them himself. “We told all the groups to give them to WikiLeaks,” he said. WikiLeaks has never published those emails or claimed to have them. Smith said that he worked independently of the Trump campaign, and declined to tell the Journal whether the retired general was involved in his project.

However, the paper obtained a great deal of evidence that, at the very least, Smith led people to believe he was working for the Republican nominee’s senior adviser.

“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails. …In one Smith email reviewed by the Journal, intended to entice outside experts to join his work, he offered to make introductions to Mr. Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked as chief of staff in his father’s company. Mr. Smith’s email mentioned the son among a small number of other people he said were helping. Michael G. Flynn didn’t respond to a request for comment.
 In another recruiting email seen by the Journal, Jonathan Safron, a law student Mr. Smith described as a close colleague, included links to the websites and LinkedIn profiles of people purportedly working with the Smith team. At the top of the list was the name and website of Flynn Intel, which Mr. Flynn set up after his 2014 firing as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Harris’s report represents the most compelling evidence, to date, that Trump campaign associates colluded with Russian hackers to steal Clinton emails. The specific emails that Smith was targeting — ones sent by Clinton over a private server as secretary of State — were never leaked to the public by hackers. Rather, Russian agents hacked the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

At the time Smith began his operation, the DNC emails had already been leaked.

It’s worth noting that Smith is not, necessarily, the world’s most trustworthy source. Among the GOP operative’s past endeavors were efforts to publicize sensational — and unverified — charges that, while governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton instructed his body guards to procure women for him to have sex with. Smith also drummed up rumors that Clinton had an illegitimate child.

The Journal story does not establish that Flynn was working on this effort — only that Smith said he was. It’s true that the intelligence reports cited in Smith’s story suggest that Russian hackers believed Flynn wanted them to send him emails. But if Smith were falsely informing hackers that he was affiliated with Flynn, it’s conceivable that those conversations could have transpired despite Flynn having no role in the project.

The Talking Points Memo piece adds some details.  Here are excerpts:

Eric York, one computer security expert who said he searched hacker forums on Smith’s behalf to try to dig up the emails, told the Journal.

What Smith hoped to unearth were the 33,000 emails that Clinton has said she deleted from her private email server because they were personal in nature, and which Trump infamously urged Russia to find and release during a July 2016 campaign rally.

Trump and his defenders in the media and his administration have referred to the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election as a “witch hunt” intended to hurt his presidency. They insist there is no evidence of collusion between Russian operatives and Trump campaign associates.

Smith acknowledged that the emails, if they existed, would likely have been hacked by Russian operatives. He ultimately received some emails from hacker groups prior to the election, he told the Journal, but urged those groups to pass the emails along to WikiLeaks so he would not have to personally vouch for their authenticity. Those emails have never surfaced, according to the report.

With all this smoke, it is increasingly difficult to believe that there wasn't real fire in the collusion effort.  If Trump had nothing to hide, why did he fire Comey and try to impede the investigation?   

FBI Had Planned to Pay British Spy Who Authored Trump Dossier

Donald Trump and his henchmen have loudly disavowed the 35 page dossier prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele.  Many of his fellow Republicans who put party above country have followed suit and painted a picture of the dossier and its author as unreliable.  Now, it seems that the FBI though otherwise and had planned to pay Steele to continue his work to ferret out Trump/Russia ties until the dossier was leaked and the political storm surrounding it broke.  In my gut, I continue to believe that there is fire beneath the smoke contained in the dossier and that the most important thing the intelligence agencies can do is to document Trump's treason (and that of his minions, hopefully, including Mike Pence).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the FBI's plan to have engaged Steele.  Here are excerpts:

The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump’s political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement.

The agreement to compensate former MI6 agent Christopher Steele came as U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election by orchestrating hacks of Democratic Party email accounts.

While Trump has derided the dossier as “fake news” compiled by his political opponents, the FBI’s arrangement with Steele shows that the bureau considered him credible and found his information, while unproved, to be worthy of further investigation.

Ultimately, the FBI did not pay Steele. Communications between the bureau and the former spy were interrupted as Steele’s now-famous dossier became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries and presidential denials, according to the people familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Steele was familiar to the FBI, in part because the bureau had previously hired him to help a U.S. inquiry into alleged corruption in the world soccer organization FIFA. The FBI sometimes pays informants, sources and outside investigators to assist in its work. Steele was known for the quality of his past work and for the knowledge he had developed over nearly 20 years working on Russia-related issues for British intelligence. The Washington Post was not able to determine how much the FBI intended to pay Steele had their relationship remained intact.

The revelation that the FBI agreed to pay Steele at the same time he was being paid by Clinton supporters to dig into Trump’s background could further strain relations between the law enforcement agency and the White House.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment. Steele’s London-based attorney did not respond to questions about the agreement.

Steele’s frustration with the FBI peaked after an Oct. 31 New York Times story that cited law enforcement sources drawing conclusions that he considered premature. The article said that the FBI had not yet found any “conclusive or direct link” between Trump and the Russian government and that the Russian hacking was not intended to help Trump.

After the election, the intelligence community concluded that Russia’s interference had been intended to assist Trump.

Erick Erickson: We Need a Special Prosecutor

It is very rare that right wing pundit Erick Erickson and I agree on much of anything.  Yet in an op-ed Erickson makes the case that it is crucial that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate Der Trumpenführer's ties to Russia and precisely what transpired in all of the communications between his campaign and Russian intelligence.  Erickson doesn't know if Trump, et al, are guilty or not but argues that only a independent prosecutor can get to the bottom of things and set the stage for the nation to move forward on important issues. I have to agree.  If Trump proves guilty, let things fall where they may.  If not, at least the American public can move on without having doubts about a traitor in the White House.  Personally, I suspect that Trump is guilty and needs to be exposed and dealt with extremely harshly.  Ditto for his accomplices.  Here are op-ed highlights:

The press has long reported that Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's one-time campaign manager, had ties to Russia. Rick Gates, who worked for Manafort at the Republican convention in Cleveland, was named as an "agent of a Ukrainian oligarch" in a 2011 lawsuit. Likewise, Carter Page, a Trump adviser, had ties to Russia.

The intelligence community, through a series of leaks, made clear that members of the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russian agents. Given the pre-existing ties, it begs the question if those contacts were about Trump and the presidential campaign or other matters.

Perhaps there is something to the allegations. Perhaps not. Perhaps, given holdovers from the Obama administration, some in the intelligence community have a vested interest in trying to sabotage Trump's agenda. A few reports in Washington suggest intelligence agents who supported former President Barack Obama's deal with Iran made it their mission to undermine Gen. Mike Flynn as national security adviser.

There is a lot of speculation, but only a few things are known for certain. We know about the Trump campaign staff ties to Russia. We know about the leaks from the intelligence community. We know there is thus far no evidence of collaboration. We know Democrats are convinced Trump urged Russian cooperation in stealing the election. We know Republicans are convinced members of the intelligence community resistant to change and reform are trying to undermine the president.

We know that Trump won the presidency by winning several states with less than one percent of the vote, which means Democrats have every incentive to raise doubts about the president. We know Trump, based on his own tweets, no longer trusts the intelligence community. We know that members of the intelligence community have previously leaked information to put both Obama and former President George W. Bush on defense.

Given this knowledge, we know this situation is going to breed further distrust. A president must be able to trust the intelligence community. The American people must be able to trust the president won his election without foreign assistance. Americans do not trust Congress, and no congressman has any incentive to get to the truth if it means he is unable to advance his own self-interest.

The logical course here is for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor in a limited capacity to examine two questions. First, did the Trump campaign collaborate with Russian intelligence to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign? Second, is the intelligence community leaking information in order to undermine Trump?

Until these questions are answered, the partisan feuding and allegations are only going to get worse. The president's distrust of the intelligence community is going to get worse. That, in turn, will jeopardize the safety of the American people.

The American people deserve better than this. A special prosecutor with no partisan agenda would be the best means of obtaining the truth of the matter. Sessions, for the sake of both the American people's trust in the president and the president's trust in the intelligence community, should appoint a special prosecutor quickly.

James Comey is Running Out of Excuses

Comey - Trump and Putin's accomplice?

If Donald Trump did collaborate with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 presidential election, it increasingly looks like they had an accomplice" FBI director James Comey who broke long time precedent and floated a letter against Hillary Clinton just eleven days before  election day.  The letter turned out to have no basis - something likely known by Comey.  Meanwhile he was sitting on explosive information about Trump's possible collusion with Putin and the likelihood that Putin had information with which to blackmail Trump once he was in office.  If Comey wasn't an actual Russian agent, he surely gave a major assist to Putin plans to put his puppet in the White House.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, Comey is about of excuses for his actions harming Clinton while protecting Trump.  Here are column highlights:

The rash of stories on Donald Trump and Russia published Tuesday leave many questions unanswered. The allegations, as sensational as some are and as damning as others are, are just that: allegations. Intelligence agencies (not to mention countless news outlets) have sought to verify them for months now, with little or no success. Though it might be nice to imagine Trump’s presidency collapsing before it’s even begun, the fact remains that we know little more now than we did last week about Trump’s ties to Russia and whether Vladimir Putin’s government has compromising information on the president-elect. There is one thing we do know, though: FBI Director James Comey’s intervention in the election last October — controversial at the time — looks completely indefensible now.

A few hours before the explosive CNN and BuzzFeed reports landed on Tuesday, Comey was at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the director whether the FBI has “investigated these reported relationships [between the Trump campaign and Russia]?” Comey replied, “I would never comment on investigations … in an open forum like this.” When Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) pressed Comey on the same question later in the hearing, he repeated that “especially in a public forum, we never confirm or deny a pending investigation.” (King dryly replied, “The irony of your making that statement here, I cannot avoid.”)

So Comey understands that the FBI weighing in publicly on open investigations, when charges are still being proved, is unwise. Doing so puts those being investigated at the mercy of innuendo and rumor. Yet Comey ditched this rule when he notified Congress 11 days before the election that the FBI was looking into whether there were previously unrevealed emails from Hillary Clinton on a laptop belonging to her aide’s estranged husband. (It should also be noted that this followed months of anti-Clinton leaks from Rudy Giuliani’s friends in the FBI’s New York field office.)

Worse, the search warrant for the emails unsealed in December shows that, as The Post reported at the time, investigators “had no new evidence of actual wrongdoing” on Clinton’s part. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported Tuesday that the FBI thought the allegations of ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia credible enough that they sought a wiretap on four members of Trump’s team.

[W]hile Comey stayed silent about new accusations against Trump, he piped up about a big nothing-burger against Clinton.

Despite a second letter later clearing Clinton (again) of wrongdoing, the blow Comey’s letter struck against Clinton’s poll numbers is obvious, . . .

Comey’s behavior remains inexcusable. It is a shocking and disturbing double standard: staying silent on allegations against one candidate despite reams of new information, while reviving allegations against another candidate despite absolutely no new information.

It is unlikely that a Trump administration will punish Comey for this mistake. History, however, will not judge him so kindly.

Trump: Putin's Willing Accomplice in the Hacking Attacks

David Frum is not wild eyed liberal.  Indeed, he is a hardcore traditional conservative - or at least what a conservative used to be prior to the rise of the Christofascists, white supremacists and, of course, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer within the GOP.  Moreover, but faced with the choice between Trump and Der Fuhrer, Frum has never been a friend to Hillary Clinton.  Yet, in a piece in The Atlantic, Frum hits on an important aspect of the Russian hacking effort to throw the 2016 presidential election to Trump: Trump's willing complicity in exacerbating the impact of the leaked information and blowing the disclosures far out of proportion. Equally, disconcerting was Trump's reference to information on several occasions before the contents of the leaks had been publizied. Did he know what was coming in advance?  The Kremlin has confirmed communications with Trump's campaign during the election.  Did Trump cooperate in the hacking efforts?  Trump is claiming ignorance and down playing the need for a bipartisan investigation.  Frum suggests it may be because such an investigation might expose the full extent of Trump's complicity and prior knowledge.  Here are article highlights:

“It’s all just an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump.” That’s the argument you hear from Trump supporters each time new information comes to light about how hard Russian spy services worked to damage Hillary Clinton. You heard it again on Thursday.

The Trump supporters are 100 percent right: The information is delegitimizing. The president-elect of the United States reportedly owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service. It’s hard to imagine a crisis of presidential legitimacy more extreme than that. But that’s no argument against airing this information. It’s precisely why the information must be aired.

Vladimir Putin took a fearful risk. If the Electoral College had taken a slightly different bounce on November 8, Putin would now be facing an enraged President-elect Hillary Clinton. Putin had every reason to expect that he probably would end up facing a President Clinton. Yet he took the gamble anyway, apparently doing something none of his Soviet predecessors had ever dared to do: mount a clandestine espionage and disinformation campaign on behalf of one candidate for U.S. president, and against another.

The word “clandestine” is the key term here. In every election, foreign governments have their preferred candidates. It was no secret in 2004 that America’s French and German allies hoped George W. Bush would lose, or that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt the same way about President Obama in 2012. Those allies made their wishes known through the familiar and lawful method of grumbling to sympathetic American journalists about the awfulness of the incumbent administration. What they did not do was organize their spy agencies to break the law of the United States. But that is evidently what Russia did—and it seems to have worked.

Obama pledged today that before he leaves office, the American people will learn more fully how the Russians did it.

This will be important to know. But there is something else important to keep in mind.  The content of the Russian-hacked emails was actually remarkably unexplosive. Probably the biggest news was that Hillary Clinton had expressed herself in favor of a hemispheric common market in speeches to Wall Street executives.  . . . We learned that Hillary Clinton acknowledged differences between her “public and private” positions on some issues. None of this even remotely corroborated Donald Trump’s wild characterizations of the Russian-hacked, Wikileaks-published material.

Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump.

Many questions remain about how the Russian spy services did what they did. That includes Putin’s motives for ordering the operation. But on issues from Crimea to Syria to NATO to the breakup of the European Union, Trump’s publicly expressed views align with Putin’s wishes.

Over Trump’s motives for collaborating so full-throatedly with Russian espionage, there hangs a greater and more disturbing mystery—a mystery that Trump seems in no hurry to dispel. And maybe he is wise to leave the mystery in place: as delegitimizing as it is, it’s very possible the truth would be even worse.    

Vladimir Putin's Useful Idiots in America

As previous post indicate, I personally do not put it past Donald Trump, a/k/a Def Fuhrer, to have conspired with Russian efforts to throw the election in Trumps favor.  Recall, the Russian foreign ministry has confirmed communications with the Trump campaign, Trump invited Russian hacking, and stories of Trump's dependence on Russian money to support numerous projects, including some in New York City.  But regardless of Trump's complicity in the Russian efforts, Putin had many "useful idiots" in making sure Trump won the election. A column in the New York Times looks at Putin's unwitting accomplices.  Naturally, much of the blame falls on the main stream media - the same media that allowed the nation to be taken to war in Iraq based on Bush/Cheney lies.  Here are column highlights (please read the whole piece, especially if you voted for Trump so that you can see how you were played by Putin):

On Wednesday an editorial in The Times described Donald Trump as a “useful idiot” serving Russian interests. That may not be exactly right. After all, useful idiots are supposed to be unaware of how they’re being used, but Mr. Trump probably knows very well how much he owes to Vladimir Putin. Remember, he once openly appealed to the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Still, the general picture of a president-elect who owes his position in part to intervention by a foreign power, and shows every sign of being prepared to use U.S. policy to reward that power, is accurate.

But let’s be honest: Mr. Trump is by no means the only useful idiot in this story. As recent reporting by The Times makes clear, bad guys couldn’t have hacked the U.S. election without a lot of help, both from U.S. politicians and from the news media.

Let me explain what I mean by saying that bad guys hacked the election. I’m not talking about some kind of wild conspiracy theory. I’m talking about the obvious effect of two factors on voting: the steady drumbeat of Russia-contrived leaks about Democrats, and only Democrats, and the dramatic, totally unjustified last-minute intervention by the F.B.I., which appears to have become a highly partisan institution, with distinct alt-right sympathies.

Does anyone really doubt that these factors moved swing-state ballots by at least 1 percent? If they did, they made the difference in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and therefore handed Mr. Trump the election, even though he received almost three million fewer total votes. Yes, the election was hacked.

By the way, people who respond to this observation by talking about mistakes in Clinton campaign strategy are missing the point, and continuing their useful idiocy. All campaigns make mistakes. Since when do these mistakes excuse subversion of an election by a foreign power and a rogue domestic law enforcement agency?

So why did the subversion work?  It’s important to realize that the postelection C.I.A. declaration that Russia had intervened on behalf of the Trump campaign was a confirmation, not a revelation . . .  

The pro-Putin tilt of Mr. Trump and his advisers was obvious months before the election — I wrote about it in July. By midsummer the close relationship between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence was also obvious, as was the site’s growing alignment with white nationalists.

Did Republican politicians, so big on flag waving and impugning their rivals’ patriotism, reject this foreign aid to their cause? No, they didn’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, no major Republican figure was even willing to criticize Mr. Trump when he directly asked Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has long been obvious — except, apparently, to the news media — that the modern G.O.P. is a radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power. Why should the norm of not accepting foreign assistance be any different?

The bigger surprise was the behavior of the news media, and I don’t mean fake news; I mean big, prestigious organizations. Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people.

Meanwhile, the news media dutifully played up the Clinton server story, which never involved any evidence of wrongdoing, but merged in the public mind into the perception of a vast “email” scandal when there was nothing there.

And then there was the Comey letter. The F.B.I. literally found nothing at all. But the letter dominated front pages and TV coverage, and that coverage — by news organizations that surely knew that they were being used as political weapons — was almost certainly decisive on Election Day.

So as I said, there were a lot of useful idiots this year, and they made the election hack a success.

If we’re going to have any hope of redemption, people will have to stop letting themselves be used the way they were in 2016. And the first step is to admit the awful reality of what just happened.

It means not making excuses for news coverage that empowered that subversion.

And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements. It might be more comfortable to pretend that things are O.K., that American democracy isn’t on the edge. But that would be taking useful idiocy to the next level.

If American democracy survives Trump - and I have my doubts - I truly hope that historians identify those who basically acted in league with a hostile foreign power either through laziness, partisan extremism, and motivations driven by hate and bigotry.  There are many villians and all need to be held accountable by the view of history.

Donald Trump’s Lies About Russia

If nothing else, Donald Trump has proven himself time and time again to be a pathological liar. Worse yet, he denies fats that are substantiated both by video recordings and contemporaneously published news articles. Now, faced with (i) what the CIA and other intelligence agencies say is overwhelming evidence of Russian intelligence hacking the DNC and other Democrat offices, (ii) previous reports on Trump's reliance on Russian money, and (iii) statements by Russian officials that Trump campaign officials communicated with  Moscow during the campaign, Trump resorts to lying about everything and trying to spin the whole frightening affair as "ridiculous" and unfounded because the White House failed to act strongly back in October.   The New York Times sums up Trumps lies and duplicity in a main page editorial.  Here are highlights:

No matter how divided our politics and our times, Americans can agree that our status as a strong, democratic nation rests on the bedrock of free and fair elections. That confidence is what was targeted when Russia, one of our oldest, most determined foreign adversaries, invaded American computer networks and released thousands of pages of documents to undermine the legitimacy of the 2016 election.

This news emerged last summer. Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency shared a further conclusion, based on months of analysis, that the Russian hacking was intended to favor Donald Trump.

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command, said recently. “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,” he said. “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”

Extrapolating motive from evidence is always tricky. But after the C.I.A. provided classified briefings for Congress and the White House, members of both political parties were convinced.

But not President-elect Trump.

Mr. Trump’s instant rejection of the C.I.A. findings as “ridiculous,” based on no review of its work, echoed Moscow’s.

On Nov. 10, two days after the election, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said “there were contacts” between Moscow and Mr. Trump’s campaign. “I cannot say that all of them, but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives,” Mr. Ryabkov said.

Paul Manafort, one of Mr. Trump’s campaign managers, resigned after reports described his political ties to Russia. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, sat with Mr. Putin at a gala for Russian state television, where he has appeared as a commentator.

Donald Trump Jr. told a real estate gathering in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” adding “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Mr. Trump hasn’t released tax returns or other records that could ease fears that he has financial deals in Russia to protect. And he’s refusing to divest his business interests, so whatever ties there may be are likely to remain.

President Obama has asked the nation’s intelligence community to deliver a fuller report on its findings before he leaves office on Jan. 20, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for a congressional investigation. The results of that inquiry should be made public, and the intelligence community should tell Americans as much as it can about the cyberattack and its goals.

Mr. Trump’s reaction to the C.I.A.’s findings leaves him isolated, and underscores his dangerous unfamiliarity with the role of intelligence in maintaining national security. There could be no more “useful idiot,” to use Lenin’s term of art, than an American president who doesn’t know he’s being played by a wily foreign power. Or maybe it’s as Mr. Trump says: He’s “a smart person,” and avoids presidential intelligence briefings because they repeat what he already knows. If so, what else does he know about Russia that the intelligence agencies don’t?

Sadly, I have a gut feeling that Trump wasn't being played by Putin but rather was in league and cooperation with him.  Recall how Trump on occasion seemed to know what was in hacked e-mails and communications before they were published.  I suspect a Russian "bird" told him all about what was being done and due for release.  The word treason keeps forming on my lips.

Why It is Patriotic to Oppose Trump

Some, as is done in a column in the New York Times, argue that the 2016 presidential election is tainted.  I go a step farther and say that it was stolen as a result of Russian interference and the duplicity of James Comey, the director of the FBI who seemed to deliberately intervene in the election in an unprecedented way with a cleat goal of harming Hillary Clinton's electoral chances.  Hopefully, history will view Comey as a foul and unprincipled figure who put his own ego first and deliberately cause harm to America.  Whatever happens over the next four years, Mr. Trump will never be my president and in my opinion the only thing that a true patriot can do is oppose the man and the coven of extremists who he intends to bring to office.  Here are column highlights:  

The C.I.A., according to The Washington Post, has now determined that hackers working for the Russian government worked to tilt the 2016 election to Donald Trump. This has actually been obvious for months, but the agency was reluctant to state that conclusion before the election out of fear that it would be seen as taking a political role.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. went public 10 days before the election, dominating headlines and TV coverage across the country with a letter strongly implying that it might be about to find damning new evidence against Hillary Clinton — when it turned out, literally, to have found nothing at all.

Did the combination of Russian and F.B.I. intervention swing the election? Yes. Mrs. Clinton lost three states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – by less than a percentage point, and Florida by only slightly more. If she had won any three of those states, she would be president-elect. Is there any reasonable doubt that Putin/Comey made the difference?

[T]his was a tainted election. It was not, as far as we can tell, stolen in the sense that votes were counted wrong, and the result won’t be overturned. But the result was nonetheless illegitimate in important ways; the victor was rejected by the public, and won the Electoral College only thanks to foreign intervention and grotesquely inappropriate, partisan behavior on the part of domestic law enforcement.

The question now is what to do with that horrifying knowledge in the months and years ahead.

One could, I suppose, appeal to the president-elect to act as a healer, to conduct himself in a way that respects the majority of Americans . . . . What we’re actually getting are wild claims that millions of people voted illegally, false assertions of a landslide, and denigration of the intelligence agencies.

Another course of action, which you’ll see many in the news media taking, is to normalize the incoming administration, basically to pretend that everything is O.K. . . . . however, it’s clear that Mr. Trump — whose personal conflicts of interest are unprecedented, and quite possibly unconstitutional — intends to move U.S. policy radically away from the preferences of most Americans, including a pronounced pro-Russian shift in foreign policy.

In other words, nothing that happened on Election Day or is happening now is normal. Democratic norms have been and continue to be violated, and anyone who refuses to acknowledge this reality is, in effect, complicit in the degradation of our republic.

[Trump] doesn’t deserve deference, he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

And when, as you know will happen, the administration begins treating criticism as unpatriotic, the answer should be: You have to be kidding. Mr. Trump is, by all indications, the Siberian candidate, installed with the help of and remarkably deferential to a hostile foreign power. And his critics are the people who lack patriotism?

Politics being what it is, moral backbones on Capitol Hill will be stiffened if there are clear signs that the public is outraged by what is happening. And there will be a chance to make that outrage felt directly in two years — not just in congressional elections, but in votes that will determine control of many state governments.

Everything we’ve seen so far says that Mr. Trump is going to utterly betray the interests of the white working-class voters who were his most enthusiastic supporters, stripping them of health care and retirement security, and this betrayal should be highlighted.

This election was an outrage, and we should never forget it.

Clinton Camp Will Join Recount Push

Who knows where a recount in three key swing states - Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania - will lead, but at this point I support almost anything that could save the nation from the nightmare of a Donald Trump presidency.  The thought of Trump appointing Supreme Court justices even as he uses the office of the presidency to further enrich himself is stomach wrenching.  Given the unprecedented evidence of Russian efforts to influence the election in favor of Trump, if nothing else the recount will confirm that hacking did not occur.  The down side of that result, of course, is that the foulness and mindlessness of 25% of American's registered voters would be confirmed. The New York Times looks at the recount effort.  Here are excerpts:

The top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid said Saturday that the campaign would join a third-party candidate’s effort to seek a full recount in Wisconsin, and potentially two other states, though he said the campaign had seen no “actionable evidence” of vote hacking.

In a post on Medium, Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, described an intensive behind-the-scenes effort by the campaign to look for signs of Russian hacker activity or other irregularities in the vote count.

The essay suggested that the campaign was joining the recount effort with little expectation that it would change the result. But many of the campaign’s supporters, picking up on its frequent complaints of Russian interference in the election, have enthusiastically backed the recount effort led by Jill Stein, who was the Green Party candidate.

Ms. Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, about an hour before the deadline.

“Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

Should Ms. Stein pursue additional recounts, “we will take the same approach in those states as well,” he wrote. But he noted that the “number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.”

Mr. Trump issued a statement on Saturday calling the recount push “ridiculous” and “a scam by the Green Party.”

The Obama administration issued a statement to The New York Times on Friday in response to questions about intelligence findings related to Russian interference in the election. In the statement, it said it had concluded that the election had been free of interference.

The administration issued a second statement on Saturday saying that “the federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day.”

Now Mrs. Clinton finds herself in a difficult position of not wanting to lead the charge for a recount that Democrats believe will go nowhere, but also not wanting to abandon supporters who have donated to Ms. Stein’s last-ditch effort.

Mr. Elias’s post offered a revealing look at how much time and energy the campaign has spent in the past two weeks looking for evidence of Russian hacking or other irregularities, and how it has tried to keep those efforts secret.

“Since the day after the election, we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result,” Mr. Elias wrote.

“Most of those discussions have remained private, while at least one has unfortunately been the subject of leaks,” he wrote, a reference to conversations between Mr. Podesta and a group of experts that included J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist with deep experience in the vulnerabilities of voting systems.