The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website August 5, 2018:
President Trump’s lawyers now say he dictated Donald Trump Jr.’s response to the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, contradicting months of previous assertions. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
President Trump has yet again tweeted about his personal legal issues in a way he perhaps shouldn’t have.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump had expressed concerns in the past week about his son Donald Trump Jr.’s legal exposure from the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. In a tweet about that report on Sunday, Trump said, “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
The following article by Cody Fenwick was posted on the AlterNet website August 3, 2018:
The new report reveals closer connections with the campaign than had previously been disclosed.
Credit: Pavel Starikov
Maria Butina, a Russian national who has been arrested on charges of working secretly as an agent of the Kremlin, interacted with one-time Trump campaign staffer J.D. Gordon in the final months of the 2016 campaign, according to a new report from the Washington Post.
Gordon reportedly served as the director of national security on Trump’s campaign until he left in 2016 to work on the transition team.
According to emails obtained by the Post, Gordon and Butina corresponded socially over email in the waning days of the campaign. Gordon reportedly invited her to attend a concert and his birthday party in October. While the interactions seem innocuous enough on their face, prosecutors allege that Butina used ostensibly social interactions as part of her intelligence work.
The following article by Rosalind S. Helderman was posted on the Washington Post website AUgust 3, 2018:
Maria Butina, 29, founded a Russian group called the Right to Bear Arms. On July 16 she was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of Russia. (Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
Maria Butina, the Russian gun-rights activist who was charged last month with working as anunregistered agent of the Kremlin, socialized in the weeks before the 2016 election with a former Trump campaign aide who anticipated joining the presidential transition team, emails show, putting her in closer contact with President Trump’s orbit than was previously known.
Butina sought out interactions with J.D. Gordon, who served for six months as the Trump campaign’s director of national security before leaving in August 2016 and being offered a role in the nascent Trump transition effort, according to documents and testimony provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and described to The Washington Post.
The two exchanged several emails in September and October 2016, culminating in an invitation from Gordon to attend a concert by the rock band Styx in Washington. Gordon also invited Butina to attend his birthday party in late October of that year.
The following article by Michael Sozan was posted on the Center for American Progress website July 27, 2018:
The White House. Credit: Jabin Botsford, Getty
In a wide-ranging set of indictments handed down on July 13, 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with brazenly attacking U.S. election infrastructure during the 2016 presidential election. On that same day, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats sounded the alarm that Russia is continuing its cyberattacks on the United States, ominously stating that “the warning lights are blinking red again,” just as they were before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Coats went on to say that the nation’s election systems and other digital infrastructure are “literally under attack.” Yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence, for more than a year-and-a-half, President Donald Trump has cast doubt on these consistent warnings. It now is incumbent on Congress, key members of the administration, state and local officials, and other stakeholders to take aggressive steps within their respective purviews to secure our election infrastructure.
The cacophony of warnings from top intelligence officials and lawmakers about our nation’s insecure election infrastructure could not be starker. In addition to the admonitions of Director of National Intelligence Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the United States needs to respond to Russia’s attacks “with fierce determination and focus.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States has a “‘great deal more work to do’ to safeguard the integrity of American elections ahead of the upcoming 2018 midterms.” And the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), concluded that 2016 may have been just a “testing ground” for future, more severe attacks.
On July 26, 2018, concrete evidence of the accuracy of these warnings came to light. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who is a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is in the midst of her own reelection campaign, revealed that Russian operatives attempted to infiltrate her Senate computer network. These Russian hackers allegedly used a variant of the same password-stealing technique that they used successfully to steal the e-mails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016.
The following article by Ellen Nakashima was posted on the Washington Post website July 26, 2018:
Sen. McCaskill asks a question during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on June 20, 2018. McCaskill says Russian hackers tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate her Senate computer network. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP
U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, one of the most vulnerable Democrats running for reelection this year, was targeted by Russian government hackers who sought but failed to compromise her Senate computer network.
“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy,” McCaskill said in a press release Thursday evening. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a thug and a bully.”
The hackers, who belong to Russia’s military spy agency GRU, targeted two other candidates running in the midterms, according to a Microsoft executive, Tom Burt, who spoke at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week. He did not identify the candidates. None were compromised, he said.
Yesterday, Mike Pence blamed states for not updating their voting systems to prevent election interference.
Pence: “It concerns us that many states still don’t have concrete plans to upgrade their voting systems, and 14 states are struggling to replace outdated voting machines that lack paper trails before the next presidential election.”
In reality, the Trump administration is responsible and has failed to protect our election security.
DNC Chief Technology Officer Bob Lord: “The Trump administration has spent its time blaming others for poor election security, instead of bolstering funding, implementing additional sanctions, and telling the Kremlin that this behavior will not be tolerated. Our democracy will not be protected from this threat until Republicans and this administration join Democrats to take action.”
The following article by Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 24, 2018:
I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
President Trump claimed Tuesday, without evidence, that the Kremlin will support Democrats in the November midterm election, debuting a new line on Russian interference as the uproar over his shifting stances on the issue enters its second week.
“I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” Trump said in his Tuesday tweet. “Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!”
The following article by Brett Samuels was posted on the Hill website July 24, 2018:
President Trump on Tuesday said he is “very concerned” that Russia will attempt to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, claiming Moscow “will be pushing very hard” to support Democrats.
I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
The tweet is the latest in a week’s worth of mixed messages Trump has sent on Russia since he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday.
Trump stood next to Putin in Helsinki and cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election — with the intention of helping to elect Trump. He blasted the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling as a “witch hunt” and said Putin offered a “strong and powerful” denial.
The following article by Salvador Rizzo was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2018:
Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen said that Russia’s election infrastructure interference attempts in 2016 didn’t favor one political party. (Reuters)
“I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party. I think what we’ve seen on the foreign influence side is they were attempting to intervene and cause chaos on both sides.” — Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in remarks at the Aspen Security Forum, July 19, 2018
These comments from the Homeland Security secretary appear to be in conflict with the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to favor President Trump.
The “attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure” that Nielsen mentioned were one aspect of a broader Russian campaign that also included hacking servers, stealing documents and spreading propaganda, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The following article by Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2018:
Over the course of three days, President Trump commented on Russian election interference in ways that repeatedly contradicted his own intelligence officials. (Video: Peter Stevenson/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
After a week of tortuous statements, walk-backs and clarifications on whether he believes the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump appeared to have come full circle on Sunday night, dismissing the issue as “all a big hoax.”
In an evening tweet shortly after taking off for Washington following a weekend spent at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump questioned why President Barack Obama did not inform his campaign or the public about alleged Russian interference before Election Day.
“So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election,” Trump said. “Why didn’t he do something about it? Why didn’t he tell our campaign?”
