CIA: Russia manipulated the election to install Trump

Obama did said that he told Putin to cut it out on hacking and interfering with the US election. You took that as he and the CIA knew Russia was trying to sway the election to Trump. Hacking and interfering with election <> try to sway election to Trump. CIA made that assessment after the election has occurred.

 

Hold on y'all, they're back to blaming the FBI for Hillarys loss.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN14925D

 

Exactly. Obama knew then they were trying to hack the DNC. He still has another month to wake up and start taking Russia a serious geopolitical foe.

 

I like how the CIA is saying that Russia manipulated this partly by hacking the DNC's emails showing that the Dems were manipulating the primaries against Bernie. Sounds a little like Pot and Kettle talk.

 

Clearly blowing the whistle on DNC corruption and collusion to manipulate the democratic process is wrong.....because....partisanship.

 

Wow, just checking in to make sure Bobby still cannot for the life of him separate
(1) the idea of revealing ugly internal party politics (which was not surprising from either of our main parties to anyone who's been awake during their adult lifetime),
from
(2) the idea of a foreign government meddling in an unprecedented way in a US election.

Whew. I feel relieved that the rigid mental block is still uncompromised. *fistbump*

If only a bipartisan group of US Senators could achieve the same AM radio type mental block, we could just get on with the Trumpocalypse without spending any energy to avert similar election meddling in the future.

 

I get that you still haven't figured out why your party lost the election (along with so many other elections the last 6 years) and why people aren't in an uproar about the DNC's corruption being aired via Wikileaks....but at some point, you're going to have to if your party ever hopes to fix what is wrong and turn things around.

I guess it's still too soon for you to see beyond emotions, so I guess we can expect more blaming everything on Russia, or the FBI Director, or racism, or whatever other excuse you come up with in order to deflect from the obvious truth. The Democrats put forth a candidate worse than Trump and they ran a worse campaign than he did. Arrogance was a big part of the problem, doubling down on it won't help things.

 

Violations of the Espionage Act? Are you talking about when Hillary did that when she mishandled classified informaiton? Don't get your criminal acts confused. Hacking the DNC isn't a violation of the Espionage Act.

Anyway, like I told Bob, I know you aren't quite ready to see past emotion right now, but hopefully at some point soon you will be able to do so and start thinking rationally. At that point, we can have a serious conversation about this.

 

Getting pissy does not make your point.

Did the DNC manipulate the primary so that Hilary would win the primary?

 

The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries

by Nina Agrawal
The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.

In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share.

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.

Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome.

“We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money” to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected.

Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said.

This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period.

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.

In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism.

“The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin.

Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.

In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions.

In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election.

“We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time.

In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.

In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.

 

Ron Paul: 'We don’t have very much room for condemning' Russian election meddling
BY MARK HENSCH

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) says America has little room for criticizing Russia’s apparent meddling in the most recent U.S. presidential election.

“I think it is politics more than anything else,” he said of global election interference on Fox Business Network Wednesday. "This really is nothing new. It’s like, guess what – someone may have done A, B, C.”

"I’m sure the Russians are interfering,” added Paul, a three-time White House hopeful. "We are interfering all the time.”


“If you review the history of how many elections we’ve been involved with, how many countries we’ve invaded and how many people we’ve killed to have our guy in, I’ll tell you what – we don’t have very much room for condemning anybody else.”
Paul said Russia did not noticeably influence the heated 2016 race between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who is now the president-elect.

“I think it’s insignificant. But I don’t think it made any difference. But when you lose, you can jump on that and make a big point of it," he said.

Paul, who twice sought the presidency as a Republican and once as a Libertarian, added election subterfuge is a symptom of big governments.

“I think the spying and interference is sort of the nature of our governments. That’s why I’d like to see government much smaller," he said.

A CIA assessment has reportedly concluded Russia may have intruded upon last month’s presidential election to help Trump defeat Clinton.

Intelligence agencies are believed to have identified various individuals who helped the Russian government leak hacked documents from several Democratic sources to WikiLeaks. Compromised parties included the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Trump, who frequently touted revelations from WikiLeaks on the campaign trail, has fiercely denied Moscow aided his White House win, and Russia has denied the allegations.

 

Poor Sam. His brain is struggling with all this

1) He, like his fave Obama, didn't seem to be concerned about it during the campaign. Now he mad
2) Other countries have long tried to influence elections
3) Not a single vote was cast by Russia in this election
4) Dumb-dumb Podesta fell for a silly phishing email
5) Sam is pissy because the ugly side (truth) of the democratic party was aired in the open for all to see
6) Sam's world view has been shaken because he does not have a diverse group of friends, instead only speaking with his echo chamber (NY lawyers!)
7) He knows Hillary was a lazy candidate who didn't work hard enough in the rust belt (didn't even bother visiting Wisconsin - that state was supposed to be safe!)
8) He knows Hillary has terrible judgment, as evidenced by her many failures

 

Honest question: why did Loretta Lynch not stop James Comey from sending his letter? Why has she not reprimanded him?

Oh, could it be that he was JUST DOING HIS JOB?

 

Yes, we all knew that, not just Obama. It was made public. Do you not recall Trump saying he don't think Russia was behind it in the 2nd debate, even though he has received intel directly on the matter?

Again, it does not mean what you claimed - that the CIA and Obama knew that Russia was trying to sway the election to Trump, but to only to interfere at that time.

 

At this point, what difference does it make?

 

Sam - I agree foreign hacking is bad. But you have to separate this from the election results. Two separate things.

 

From the NY Times, "But there is no evidence, American officials said, that Russia sought to manipulate votes or voter rolls on Nov. 8."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ob...r-election-hacking/ar-BBxHoZz?ocid=spartanntp