Tag: Russian election interference

Republican-Led Review Backs Intelligence Findings on Russian Interference

New York Times logoA new Senate report undercuts claims by President Trump and his allies that Obama-era officials sought to undermine him while investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling.

WASHINGTON — For years, President Trump has derided the assessment by American intelligence officials that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to assist his candidacy, dismissing it without evidence as the work of a “deep state” out to undermine his victory.

But on Tuesday, a long-awaited Senate review led by members of Mr. Trump’s own party effectively undercut those allegations. A three-year review by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously found that the intelligence community assessment, pinning blame on Russia and outlining its goals to undercut American democracy, was fundamentally sound and untainted by politics.

“The I.C.A. reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the panel’s chairman. “The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions.” Continue reading.

Russia Trying to Stoke U.S. Racial Tensions Before Election, Officials Say

New York Times logoRussian intelligence services are trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups to sow chaos in the United States, American intelligence officials said

WASHINGTON — The Russian government has stepped up efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence.

Russia’s lead intelligence agency, the S.V.R., has apparently gone beyond 2016 methods of interference, when operatives tried to stoke racial animosity by creating fake Black Lives Matter groups and spreading disinformation to depress black voter turnout. Now, Russia is also trying to influence white supremacist groups, the officials said; they gave few details, but one official said federal investigators are examining how at least one neo-Nazi organization with ties to Russia is funded.

Other Russian efforts, which American intelligence agencies have tracked, involve simply prodding white nationalists to more aggressively spread hate messages and amplifying their invective. Russian operatives are also trying to push black extremist groups toward violence, according to multiple officials, though they did not detail how.

 

Fox News is spreading Trump’s coronavirus lies faster than the infection itself

AlterNet logoPresident Trump said that Russian interference in the 2016 election a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats to destroy his presidency. He claimed his impeachment was a Democratic hoax too and last week he said the coronavirus — or at least media coverage of the coronavirus — was one as well.

None of those were hoaxes. But that doesn’t mean hoaxes don’t exist. In fact, when it comes to the coronavirus crisis, disinformation, propaganda and hoaxes abound. Ironically, one of the sources is, you guessed it, Russia.

According to the Washington Post:

A top State Department official said Thursday that Russia is behind “swarms of online, false personas” that sought to spread misinformation about coronavirus on social-media sites, stressing the “entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation is at play.” …

The tweets themselves floated a number of harmful conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that the coronavirus had been created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or was the result of a bioweapon. Some of the tweets linked to YouTube videos, according to the State Department document, suggesting the problem went beyond Twitter

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Damning outline of Russian interference blows up claim the Kremlin is merely sowing chaos: The objective is to ‘reelect Trump’

AlterNet logoThe Center for American Progress’ Moscow Project website was an informative source of information during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and the Moscow Project has continued to analyze the Trump/Russia connection during the 2020 presidential election. In an article published on February 25, the Moscow Project stresses that the Kremlin has a favorite in this year’s election — President Donald Trump — and will do everything it can to help him win a second term.

“Russia’s main objective in 2020 is the same it was in 2016,” the Moscow Project warns. “That objective isn’t simply to sow discord; it is, as the U.S. intelligence concluded in 2017, to elect Donald Trump.”

According to the Moscow Project, it is “absurd” to think that the Russian government won’t interfere in the 2020 election just as it interfered in the 2016 election. Continue reading.

Trump doesn’t want to hear about Russian election interference. So Congress must step up.

Washington Post logoTHERE ARE plenty of good people in government who want to protect this country’s elections. The problem is that President Trump may not let them.

The replacement of Joseph Maguire with Richard Grenell as acting director of national intelligence was already part of a concerning post-impeachment pattern: the purging of public servants deemed too independent and the installation of blind loyalists to supplant them. But the change became more concerning still when The Post reported that Mr. Maguire’s odds of securing a permanent position plummeted after his staff told Congress that Russia is trying to get Mr. Trump reelected. The president describes this finding as a “hoax.”

The administration’s antipathy toward the so-called deep state is familiar and enduring. “My guess is 1,690 of them voted for Hillary Clinton for president, and 1,600 of them came to work every single day trying to make sure the president failed,” groused White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney last Wednesday about the 1,700 or so civil servants at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under his leadership. But these are the same professionals who are trying to make sure that our democracy continues to function, and in the case of the intelligence community, they’re the ones trying to deliver honest assessments of an enemy power’s attempts to meddle with this nation’s right to self-determination — whether by aiding Mr. Trump or by aiding Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, as U.S. officials have briefed the Vermont senator.

Russian interference reports rock Capitol Hill

The Hill logoReports this week that Russia is attempting to interfere in the 2020 race sent congressional Democrats reeling, with many lashing out at Republicans and blaming President Trump.

The New York Times reported Thursday that intelligence officials recently briefed the House Intelligence Committee about Russia interfering in the presidential race in an effort to get Trump reelected.

A day later, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he had been briefed on similar attempts to meddle in the elections, with The Washington Post reporting the Kremlin has sought to help his White House bid.

Trump can’t win in November without foreign help — and it’s eating him alive

AlterNet logoDonald Trump needs foreign help to get reelected in 2020, just the way he needed Russia’s help in 2016. In fact, Trump has made it perfectly clear to the world that he welcomes foreign interference on his behalf, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last year, “I think I’d take it.” Of course, he would—he needs it.

But that’s only what Trump has said in public. In private, we know that he’s shaking down foreign leaders in any way possible in order to enlist their help in his reelection bid. That’s exactly what Trump did in the “I would like you to do us a favor though” phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, urging him to investigate his political rivals eight times. So publicly, Trump’s pushing out open calls for pro-Trump interference by foreign governments and, privately, he’s dropping the hammer on countries that need U.S. support in order to extract help from them in his quest to cheat the American people yet again.

But the mere acknowledgment that Trump will actually receive the help he has sought is cause for heads to roll. That’s what the intelligence community dared to assert in a congressional briefing last week, setting up that latest Trump administration purge at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, intimated that Russia had “developed a preference” for Trump in 2020. Gasp! Quick, find your pearls. Oh wait, Trump’s got them and he’s crushing them in his tiny man hands. He’s enraged. His stack is blowing—smoke out the ears, hair on fire, madness! Acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire—out! Principal executive at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Andrew Hallman—out! And now purges of insufficiently loyal public servants are being considered at agencies like the Justice Department. Continue reading.

An old Ted Cruz quote proves he had a very different opinion on the core of Trump’s impeachment just months ago

AlterNet logoRepublican Sen. Ted Cruz Texas was once a fierce opponent of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but he’s now become a happy warrior for the president, especially in the face of impeachment.

But as Cruz has settled into his defense that Trump did nothing wrong in the Ukraine scandal, his attitude is in stark contradiction with worries he expressed just months ago, in May of 2019.

At the time, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation had been released by the Justice Department, and Attorney General Bill Barr was defending his own response to the end of the probe. Cruz, along with other Republicans, were proclaiming Trump’s supposed vindication and raising alarms about the origins of the Russia investigation under former President Barack Obama. Continue reading.

‘Russia Is Still Listening’ As White House Ignores Election Security

A new report for the New York Times about a Russian hack of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma is giving many a disturbing sense of history repeating itself.

The company, which is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was reportedly targeted by Russian military hackers. The Times explained:

…experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

GOP Senator Blocks Bipartisan Election Security Bill As An Attack On Trump

A bipartisan bill to protect American elections from foreign interference was once again blocked on Tuesday, this time by a Republican senator who claimed that the legislation was an “attack” on Donald Trump.

“The mechanisms in this bill have been designed more to attack the Trump administration and Republicans than to attack the Russians and those who would attack our country and our elections,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) said of the Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines Act.

The DETER Act — introduced by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) — directs the head of the U.S. intelligence community to expose any foreign interference in federal elections and sanction the countries that were determined to have interfered.

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