The Plot to Subvert an Election, from New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, does not contain everything we know about the Russian incursion into our culture and our 2016 election. This compilation is, however, comprehensive enough to provide a good, quick survey course on the subject.
Because, as Rachel Maddow pointed out this week, Hillary Clinton was relentlessly in the bull's eye of the Russian efforts, the entire anthology should be of interest to her 2016 supporters and voters and to Democrats in general. We know it has not stopped. We know they are still doing this in the run-up to the primaries that are almost upon us. Worse, we know that the primaries are not and will not be the prime target. 2020 will be. The presidential election will be - once again. We had better be prepared.
The Russian leader thought the United States, and Hillary Clinton, had sought to undermine his presidency.
The Russian leader believed the United States had relentlessly sought to undermine Russian sovereignty and his own legitimacy. The United States had backed democratic, anti-Russian forces in the so-called color revolutions on Russia’s borders, in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. It had funded pro-democracy Russian activists through American organizations with millions in State Department grants each year.
With little evidence, Mr. Putin believed this American meddling helped produce street demonstrations in Moscow and other cities in 2011, with crowds complaining of a rigged parliamentary election and chanting, “Putin’s a thief!”
And Mrs. Clinton, then secretary of state, cheered the protesters on. Russians, she said, “deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”
The two tangled again the next year when Mr. Putin pushed for a “Eurasian Union” that would in effect compete with the European Union. Mrs. Clinton sharply dismissed the notion, calling it a scheme to “re-Sovietize the region” and saying the United States would try to block it.
We must remain wary of social media presences that play to the disaffected. What we saw, among many other ploys from Russia in 2016, were seemingly American accounts admonishing Bernie Sanders supporters not to vote for Hillary Clinton. Also from the article:
The Russian operation also boosted Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who had dined with Mr. Putin in Moscow, to draw votes from Mrs. Clinton. It encouraged supporters of Mr. Sanders to withhold their votes from Mrs. Clinton even after he endorsed her.
If you are a disaffected Hillary voter, I caution you to be wary of "Hillary supporters" masquerading as Americans on social media. Typically, they praise HRC to the skies but also embed lies within their posts and/or the comment threads, e.g. claiming that Guccifer was not Russian (refuted in the Mueller July 13 indictmentand in this article) or that Russian organized crime deals exclusively in politics and not in weapons or drugs. (They will sell you a mothballed USSR military submarine to transport drugs, if you have the money. With a nuclear weapon if you have even more money. This is documented.)
There are several writers of varied levels of English Language Proficiency (ELP). The "ops," i.e. sock puppets, troll, bot controllers, access content from databases on cloud platforms as outlined in the July 13 Mueller indictment. The ultimate plan is very likely to skew the 2020 top line vote in ways that would dismay Hillary Clinton and re-elect Donald Trump.
This is not a short read, but it can be taken in episodes if necessary for a weekend read. It is rich with graphs, stats, videos. It is well worth the time. You will not likely find this much information on the subject all in one piece. It is probably also well worth a bookmark.
Have a lovely weekend. Fall is coming.
In one of his final appearances on the Senate floor, Senator John McCain urged his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get back to regular order. Hillary Clinton echoed that imperative on The Rachel Maddow Show last night. Appearing on the anniversary of the release of her book, What Happened, and upon the release of the paperback edition with a new afterword (also published in The Atlantic), Hillary addressed, among other topics, the Kavanaugh confirmation logjam, the Special Counsel probe, the Manafort deal, and the ongoing Russian influence not only in our elections but in our very interactions.
Rachel began the interview quoting from the piece that ran in The Atlantic, and asked Hillary why she is afraid of losing our country. Hillary responded saying that putting aside ideological concerns we have to defend our democracy. Degrading the rule of law, de-legitimizing elections, attacking truth and reason, undermining our unity ... is a crisis. She said the authoritarian tendencies, left unchecked could result in the erosion of our institutions to an extent that we have never imagined here. We are not there yet, she contends, but that is because there is an election. "We need a new Congress, and we need a new Republican party."
With a new Congress, Hillary thinks we need an agenda broader than one of impeachment. She listed policy changes already made, and said those need to be addressed. If people do not go out and vote, she thinks we will see more dismantling of institutions.
She believes that she was clearly a part of the puzzle where Russian interference was concerned in 2016, but she thinks they are playing a longer game of undermining democracy here and globally. She said, "Foreign money, foreign interference in our elections, I don't care if it's from the right, the left, the center, up, down; I don't care where it's from. It's wrong. It's illegal,and the American people deserve to know. If it happened so we can try to prevent it." ¹
Rachel replayed a clip from a year ago where Hillary said we have to depend on those around Trump to be our first line of defense against him doing something that might have serious repercussions. The Times op-ed of September 5 and Bob Woodward's Fear appear to show that remark to have been predictive.
Her prediction now is that after the election Trump will wholesale fire people. She said he is close to being uncontrollable. She is hoping people will see that we need checks and balances and will vote accordingly. While she has not heard any specifics of invocation of the 25th Amendment, she thinks there are private discussions in the White House, and that people are worried.
It was a broad, extensive interview and thought-provoking. Hillary has warned us in the past. Once again she is sounding the alarms. Yes, we must get out the vote. But we must do more. We need to hold the government accountable. First, we must hold the line. Then, we must repair the damage. That demands advocacy. It is going to take more than a village. It is going to take the whole country.
¹Please bear this comment in mind and take it very seriously to heart if you are one of those who defends a "Hillary supporter" whom you suspect or know not to be American but who insists upon not only impersonating an American but also insists upon telling Americans how to think and how to vote. Proxies, trolls, sock puppets, and bots take every side. There is a purpose to this alleged support. Do not be duped.
It is a ludicrous idea: that a former Secretary of State should feel impelled to come to the defense of a former ambassador (to a huge, powerful country) against the president's wimpy response to a dictator. These are not normal times. Putin's demand was outrageous. Trump's response was, to quote Susan Rice, "Beyond outrageous."
Ambassador @McFaul is a patriot who has spent his career standing up for America. To see the White House even hesitate to defend a diplomat is deeply troubling. https://t.co/gI8K8Tjg3M
Special counsel Robert Mueller just released an indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Special counsel Robert Mueller just indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.
They are charged with hacking the computer networks of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They allegedly coordinated to release damaging information to sway the election under the names “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.” However, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to. ld reporters that it’s unclear if their efforts changed the outcome of the election.
(Proof he's an amateur or, really, a puppet. Experienced dictators know better than to leave home while a sh*tstorm is brewing at home. Even Putin knows he is in too deep and doesn't give a fig. THAT should light a fire under some kettles.)
Having studied Russian at Moscow State University and having been a Ford Foundation Fellow in Soviet Studies, Condoleeza Rice was George W. Bush's Russia expert. No one, Republican or Democrat, questioned her qualifications in that realm.
It is, therefore, stunning that she has chosen to side with Vladimir Putin against her successor at the State Department, Hillary Clinton.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put some of the blame for Russian election on Hillary Clinton in a wide-ranging MSNBC interview on Thursady
Rice, who has considerable experience with Vladimir Putin, did not hold back on her assessment of the motivations behind Russian election meddling.
She said that then-Secretary of State Clinton criticizing Putin for Russia’s 2012 elections encouraged the foreign leader to seek revenge. Rice said that Putin is an “eye for an eye” kind of person and that he was out to hurt Clinton in order to prove that America could also have flawed elections.
"With Vladimir Putin, this was an eye for an eye. He’s an eye for an eye kind of person, and Hillary Clinton criticized his election. Now he wants to show that he can sow chaos in ours."
1. Hillary commented (no she did not "meddle" - that is something different but back to that later) on the 2010 Russian parliamentary elections not Putin's 2012 presidential election.
In her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton portrays Putin's worldview as "shaped by his admiration of the powerful czars of Russian history" and his view of geopolitics as a zero-sum game. Following the December 2010 parliamentary elections in Russia, widespread reports of fraud brought tens of thousands of protestors out into the frigid Russian streets. Hillary recalls stating, "The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted.... That means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them." She goes on to describe Putin blaming her for "setting the tone" for the widespread demonstrations that followed the elections. Nothing in Hillary's memoir nor elsewhere provides any account of Hillary speaking out against Putin's 2012 reelection or any protests, for that matter.
2. Hillary Clinton was not "meddling" when she made her comments.This is meddling. As secretary of state, Hillary was well within her "paygrade" to make a comment regarding elections and unrest in another country.
3. Victim-blaming is always a cheap shot and always wrong! It is especially disturbing coming from a former secretary of state about her successor. I have this quote in the right sidebar here. It bears repetition. "What I have always found is that when it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water's edge." -HRC 11-04-10. Had Condi remained at the State Department in December 2010, she, too, would have been expected to comment on the elections and protests in Russia - especially given her academic background. Would her remarks have been so different?
The cyber attacks against independent election observers that Hillary describes in Chapter 11 of Hard Choices foreshadow some of what we saw happen here in 2016. Some. But not all. Not the worst. We also deserve fair, free, transparent elections and commentary about a foreign country from a candidate never justifies elements from that country interfering in our elections in any way.
Reuters Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton at the State Department.
By Joe Rothstein
Donald Trump spent much of the 2016 campaign warning us that the result of the presidential election would be rigged. Events of the last few weeks suggest he may have been right and that his presidency is illegitimate.
Here’s what we have learned in those last few weeks:
1. The Republican and Democratic co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Putin’s government engaged in propaganda and hacking campaigns to influence the outcome of 2016 U.S. election. The use of “hacking” in their assessment is significant for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.
2. The Russian propaganda campaign mirrored the way the Trump campaign itself used Facebook advertising to target voters, strongly suggesting collusion.
3. The National Security Agency and Equifax, two of the most secure data repositories in the world, reported that they were successfully hacked, undermining claims that state and county voting systems, many built on consumer software, were impenetrable to outside manipulation.
Let’s first consider the propaganda question. Read more >>>>
Many parts moving very fast! Whoa, Nellie! Time out!
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) calls a time-out during a multiple question from an Indian journalist, as India's Minister of External Affairs S.M. Krishna smiles during their news conference at the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in Washington June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)[/caption]
Here is the report everyone is talking about today. Rarely do I post an article before reading and fully digesting it myself, but this is different. Based on sources deep inside the Russian government, this report validates what we suspected knew all along: that Putin directed these initiatives and that the target, specifically, was Hillary Clinton. So, without having read more than a few paragraphs, I am posting it here to provide immediate circulation. It is long. It is important.
(Photo by Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images; photo illustration by Nick Kirkpatrick/The Washington Post)[/caption]Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
The White House debated various options to punish Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, it ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for its election interference.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump. Read more >>>>
It is also important that we thank the Washington Post team for their dogged pursuit of the truth. We have seen in the past as we see today that persistent investigative reporting is essential to keeping the government on task. The task is uncovering the truth.
When I found this article this morning about Venezuelans fleeing to the U.S., I was reminded of a warning I posted not long ago. The post I was looking for was this one from almost a month agowith
an embedded article in which Dr. Vanessa Neumann warned that the next
refugee flood would be from Venezuela. Looks like she was right.
What
I found in the process, however, was something that had not popped up
in my previous searches for archival material documenting Putin's animus
toward Hillary Clinton.
Lo' and behold this!
What is striking here is the nature of the demonstrations as described by VOA.
Traditionally,
opposition movements march under one banner. They wave similar signs,
chant the same slogans and follow a recognized leader. For a ruler, it
is easy to negotiate with an organized adversary.
But the key to
understanding what happened on Sakharov Avenue Saturday was the
proliferation of handmade signs. A myriad of individuals across Moscow
dreamed up their own messages, and then fashioned them on kitchen
tables, on office computers, or in copy centers.
Putin is not
facing an organized opposition movement. He faces something worse: an
atomized, but spreading mood of disrespect and rejection.
SNIP
In
another Kremlin blooper, the President’s twitter account erroneously
released a tweet that described protesters as sheep that provide sex.
In
an initial reaction, a large bearded man attended the Dec. 10 protest
holding a homemade sign. A big red X was painted over a reasonable
depiction of a woolly lamb. The caption: “I am Not a Sheep.”
By
Saturday, this theme had evolved into a group of five young women and
men holding an even bigger sign, reading: “We are Not Sheep.” They were
dressed, head to toe, as rabbits.
SNIP
Other protesters took
aim at Mr. Putin’s charge that the protesters were paid by foreign
governments and activated by a secret signal from U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton.
Signs demanded: “Hillary, Where is My Money?” “Hillary, I am waiting for my money,” “Let’s bankrupt the State Department.”
One man held a sign announcing: “I am Here For Free.” Read more >>>>
Well, wow! This raises a few questions.
Does any of this seem familiar? Yes.
The Kremlin was tweeting insults against Putin's adversaries.
The
protestors were creative and made their own signs, some about the
tweets and others about the alleged source of the protests.
The protests allegedly originated from Hillary Clinton's, and therefore U.S. government, interference.
Putin
accused her of paying the demonstrators who struck back by asking for
their pay or stating they were there demonstrating for free.
This all happened five-and-a-half years ago. Where are we now?
In
spite of it all, Putin was elected amid accusations of vote-rigging and
followed by opposition protests and counter-demonstrations of support
which some reported they were forced by employers to attend. Others
claimed they were paid.
The entire Gestalt has the appearance of a playbook.
Somebody gave the playbook to Donald Trump.
There are differences. It does seem that Trump is aware of how Putin played the game.
There
are constitutional differences. Putin had previously served two
presidential terms ending in 2008. The Russian constitution permitted
another run after a hiatus of sorts. Medvedev had stepped in as
president for four years while Putin retained leadership of the party.
American presidents may not run again after serving two terms. The
Russians knew very well whom they were getting in 2012.
While the
Russian demonstrations were characterized as "atomized," implying, to
some extent, spontaneous on diverse issues, our marches have been
organized around issues by groups with permits. We have, however, like the Russians, been accused of being paid for
demonstrating. Some signs in our marches have stipulated that we do this
for free in own own free time.
Our next march, the March for Truth, is scheduled for June 3. Again the main march will be in D.C. with large marches in other major cities. From the look of the map on this page, many sister-marches have been organized in every state and also in Europe. If you cannot get to a major city, you can find one near you or even organize your own in your area.
We are left, finally, with one last question. Will we end up, as Russia did, under the thumb of the guy we protest?
Since
the 2011 protests were against parliamentary elections the people
perceived as rigged, Putin was working with a legislature sympathetic to
him. We, currently, are in the same boat. We do have the opportunity,
with special elections and the mid-terms in 2018, of overturning the
majority party in the Senate and the House.
If we do not do
everything we can to flip the necessary seats, we can indeed end up with
a Congress that will do little if anything to oppose draconian measures
the Trump administration proposes.
One of the many issues the Russians protested in 2011 was this, also according to the VOA article.
Others
protesters noted that the Kremlin sent condolences to Pyongyang after
the death of Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s “Supreme Leader,” but neglected
to send condolences to Prague after the death of Vaclav Havel, the
anti-Soviet activist and elected President of the Czech Republic.
On
Sakharov Avenue, named after the Soviet-era dissident, elderly
protesters carried black and white photographss of the late Czech
President, with the inscription: “Havel Would Be With us!”
Hillary
Clinton, of course, attended Havel's funeral with former President Bill
Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Hillary wore a
headpiece Havel had an artist friend make for her.
As
far as we know, it does not transmit secret signals. Neither does the
State Department have a budget sufficient to pay off all of Russia. It
is not known whether Putin’s treasury is large enough to provide
tin-foil hats for the populace, but given their mood, we doubt they
would wear them. More likely, if that guy with the Picasso display is
any barometer, they would find some artful way to use the tin foil to
fire back at Putin.
In chapter 11 of Hard Choices,
Hillary Clinton discusses Vladimir Putin blaming her for Russian civil
unrest following the December 2011 parliamentary elections. By December
of 2016, accounts began appearing in the press
attesting to Putin's interference in our election as a direct response
to Hillary's purported influence over the Russian protestors.
Now, The Hill
reports that U.S. intelligence sources heard and transcribed a Russian
intel agent bragging about his organization targeting Hillary.
U.S. spies reportedly heard a Russian military intelligence officer bragging about his organization planning to target Hillary Clinton in May 2016.
The officer told a colleague that GRU would cause havoc in America’s presidential election, Time reported Thursday.
The
officer reportedly described the intelligence agency’s effort as
retribution for what Russian President Vladimir Putin considered
Clinton’s influence campaign against him while serving as secretary of
State.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials told Time that American
spies transcribed the conversation and sent it to headquarters for
analysis.
Time reported that an official document based on the raw
intelligence was then circulated.“We didn’t really understand the
context of it until much later,” a senior U.S. intelligence official
said.
Putin publicly accused Clinton of conducting a major
operation against Russia when protests erupted in more than 70 cities in
2011. Read more >>>>
Ten days into the new administration, a Russian military push in the Arctic was the subject of concern and a post here.
At the time, both Russian appropriation of Arctic waters for drilling
and Russian control of Arctic sea routes as those waters thaw (guess
why) were the issues. Days later, on Thursday February 2 came this post:
Throwback Thursday: I TOLD You to #WatchThisSpace!!! The issue there was disclosure of oil company funds going to foreign governments.
Here we are 13 weeks later, and oh what a tangled web we see described by Dr. Vanessa Neumann in The Daily Beast today. Dr. Neumann, Daily Beast points out, is "a Venezuelan-American and president of the trade integrity and political risk consultancy Asymmetrica."
Many big oil companies funded Trump’s inauguration. Only one is deeply in debt to the Kremlin.
Dr. Vanessa Neumann
04.27.17
The oil company’s half-million donation to Donald Trump’s
Inaugural Committee wasn’t illegal. But it certainly wasn’t moral. And
the cash may have come from the Kremlin, at least indirectly.
Recently
released Federal Election Commission filings show that Citgo, the U.S.
subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (known
as PDVSA) gave Trump more money than Shell or Walmart. The donation is
unusual for PDVSA: Citgo had not donated to previous presidential
inaugural committees.
Citgo’s donation to
the Trump Inaugural Committee and the horrifying images emerging from
Venezuela’s weeks of brutally repressed protests (26 killed, 437
injured, and 1,289 arrested—according to Venezuela’s attorney general;
Venezuelan prisoner rights NGO Foro Penal says 1,536 have been “detained” as of April 25)
are connected: Russian money and influence is behind both of them. Some
of those detained are tortured in Venezuela’s equivalent of CIA
headquarters, known as “The Tomb,” for its subterranean torture
chambers. The Inaugural Committee donation came days after Citgo (a
Delaware-incorporated company with operational headquarters in Houston) mortgaged 49.9 percent of its holdings to Rosneft,
an oil company controlled by the Kremlin. That enabled Citgo’s parent
company PDVSA to make its bond payments. Rosneft is sanctioned by the
U.S. Treasury Department. So is its CEO, Igor Sechin, “Russia’s Darth
Vader.” One of the most feared men in Russia, Sechin is close to
Vladimir Putin and is one of Putin’s key instruments of geopolitical
power. Net net: If Venezuela defaults on its bond payments, Rosneft
(i.e., Putin & Co.) could own several refineries, nine pipelines,
and distribution terminals all across the Eastern U.S., from Texas to Maine,
without any government oversight. If the Russians end up owning Citgo,
they will be using American consumers to fund their autocracy and
Assad’s brutality in Syria.
Yes,
you read that correctly. No, your eyes do not deceive you. Holy
moly! Sechin's name comes up as does, in a very disturbing way,
Rosneft. Where did we see those names before? Oh, right! The
Christopher Steele memos! Those documents were highlighted in a second,
then seemingly unrelated, post here also on February 2: Throwback Thursday Part II: The Russians, the Memos, the Sanctions – The Art of the Steal.
Dr.
Neumann has pulled the whole cat's cradle into a coherent web that
reaches, now, from the Arctic to the Caribbean to the Middle East and
remains about Russia, oil, money, Syria, and elections, and threatens a
new refugee crisis.
As we approach the 100th day, remember this
from 13 weeks ago? We still do not know who bought those shares. It's a
good guess that Carter Page knows.
Hillary
Clinton and her team tried to warn us. But, you know, emails,
wikileaks, ‘flawed,’ ‘ill,’ and ‘shrill.’ Not the perfect (female)
candidate – which is the enemy of not just the good, but of the best
yet.
Keep watching this space! Here's a pretty picture for #ThrowbackThursday.
We should know by now, two weeks in, what the new administration's
tactic is. Like a shell game con artist, they employ a certain sleight
of hand. They throw a fireball out that dazzles, enrages, and engages
attention. While we are attending to this distraction, even more serious
shady doings are going on somewhere else that we somehow miss. An
example.
Yesterday, Trump's meandering, inept introduction of
Black History Month so astonished (and, frankly, amused to the point of
Twitter parodies) that while we were all attending to 199-year-0ld
Frederick Douglass "who has done a terrific job that is being recognized
by more and more people," the Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson for
secretary of state while Congress removed an anti-graft section of
Dodd-Frank that will permit petroleum companies (among others) to
conceal payments to foreign governments. Actually, according to one
source, all of these things happened.
Today, at the National Prayer Breakfast, there was this:
"And
I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings" Trump says
after boasting Apprentice "went down the tubes" once he left”
The media and the social nets went nuts! Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Natasha Bertrand
The
US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday
published an amendment to President Barack Obama's sanctions order
against Russia to "authorize certain transactions" with Russia's Federal Security Service.
The
new authorization will allow US companies to pay up to $5,000 a year to
the FSB — which oversees technology imports into Russia — to secure
licenses from the security services to export information technology
products to Russia, as long as other aspects of the sanctions order
aren't violated, according to the document published by the Treasury.
Obama
issued harsh sanctions against the FSB — first in April 2015 and again
in December of last year — which it accused of playing a role in hacking
campaigns targeting US citizens and infrastructure during the 2016
presidential campaign. Read more >>>>
Who's going to notice this after Trump prayed for Arnold's pitiful ratings?
Of course back on September 24, Hillary Clinton's campaign issued this statement.
Friday, HFA senior national spokesperson Glen Caplin released the following statement in response to the new bombshell report that Trump’s foreign policy adviser is being probed for suspected meetings with senior Russian officials:
“It’s
chilling to learn that U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a
probe into suspected meetings between Trump’s foreign policy adviser
Carter Page and members of Putin’s inner circle while in Moscow. You
have to ask why he would meet with Igor Diveykin, who is believed by
U.S. officials ‘to have responsibility for intelligence collected by
Russian agencies about the U.S. election.’ This comes as Russian hackers
continue their attempts to influence the outcome of our elections,
something Trump openly invited. This is serious business and voters
deserve the facts before election day. Read more >>>>
WALLACE:
Secretary Clinton, I want to clear up your position on this issue,
because in a speech you gave to a Brazilian bank, for which you were
paid $225,000, we've learned from the WikiLeaks, that you said this, and
I want to quote. "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open
trade and open borders." So that's the question...
TRUMP: Thank you.
WALLACE:
That's the question. Please quiet, everybody. Is that your dream, open
borders? CLINTON: Well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence,
I was talking about energy. You know, we trade more energy with our
neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do
want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders.
I think that would be a great benefit to us.
But you are very
clearly quoting from WikiLeaks. And what's really important about
WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage
against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts
of private people, of institutions. Then they have given that
information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet.
This
has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly,
from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies
have confirmed, to influence our election.
So I actually think the
most important question of this evening, Chris, is, finally, will
Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make
it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in in this election,
that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually
encouraged in the past? Those are the questions we need answered. We've
never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before.
WALLACE: Well?
TRUMP: That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders, OK? How did we get on to Putin?
WALLACE:
Hold on -- hold on, wait. Hold on, folks. Because we -- this is going
to end up getting out of control. Let's try to keep it quiet so -- for
the candidates and for the American people.
TRUMP: So just to finish on the borders...
WALLACE: Yes?
TRUMP:
She wants open borders. People are going to pour into our country.
People are going to come in from Syria. She wants 550 percent more
people than Barack Obama, and he has thousands and thousands of people.
They have no idea where they come from.
And you see, we are going
to stop radical Islamic terrorism in this country. She won't even
mention the words, and neither will President Obama. So I just want to
tell you, she wants open borders.
Now we can talk about Putin. I
don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well,
that would be good. If Russia and the United States got along well and
went after ISIS, that would be good.
He has no respect for her. He
has no respect for our president. And I'll tell you what: We're in very
serious trouble, because we have a country with tremendous numbers of
nuclear warheads -- 1,800, by the way -- where they expanded and we
didn't, 1,800 nuclear warheads. And she's playing chicken. Look,
Putin...
WALLACE: Wait, but...
TRUMP: ... from everything I see, has no respect for this person.
CLINTON: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.
CLINTON: And it's pretty clear...
TRUMP: You're the puppet!
CLINTON: It's pretty clear you won't admit...
TRUMP: No, you're the puppet.
CLINTON:
... that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United
States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people,
that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list,
break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get
help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
So
I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We've never had a
foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 --
17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded
that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest
levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I
find that deeply disturbing.
WALLACE: Secretary Clinton...
CLINTON: And I think it's time you take a stand...
TRUMP: She has no idea whether it's Russia, China, or anybody else.
CLINTON: I am not quoting myself.
TRUMP: She has no idea.
CLINTON: I am quoting 17...
TRUMP: Hillary, you have no idea.
CLINTON: ... 17 intelligence -- do you doubt 17 military and civilian...
TRUMP: And our country has no idea.
CLINTON: ... agencies.
TRUMP: Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it.
CLINTON:
Well, he'd rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian
intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that
just absolutely...
We were warned by Hillary even
though no government agency stepped up to clarify the situation. Some
of what we heard back then appears, more specifically, in what have come
to be known as the Christopher Steele Memos.
There
we learned, not only of Kremlin quid pro quos for the lifting of
sanctions, as cited below, but also of potential 'kompromat' on Trump.
(see p.9) Unfortunately, the media focused heavily on the 'kompromat'
which involved some hanky-panky with prostitutes rather than on the
bigger picture which included influencing U.S. voting blocs in order to
get Trump elected so that sanctions could be lifted. The implication of
that 'kompromat' is, of course, that Trump can be blackmailed to do
anything the Kremlin wants.
An
unverified dossier with claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to
Russia contained allegations that the CEO of Russia’s state oil company,
Igor Sechin, offered former Trump ally Carter Page and his associates a
19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on
Russia.
The dossier says the offer was made in July 2016, when Page was in Moscow
giving a speech at the Higher Economic School. The claim was sourced to
“a trusted compatriot and close associate” of Sechin, according to the
dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele.
“Sechin’s
associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal
and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered
Page and his associates … up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in
Rosneft,” the dossier said. “In return, Page had expressed interest and
confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia
would be lifted.” Read more >>>>
While
it remains true that these memos have not been verified, it is awfully
spooky that these sanctions are being lifted. Can we expect the Ukraine
sanctions to fall next?
Oh, and by the way, subsequent to all of that there was this in October! No one knows who bought those shares.
Hillary Clinton and her team tried
to warn us. But, you know, emails, wikileaks, 'flawed,' 'ill,' and
'shrill.' Not the perfect (female) candidate - which is the enemy of not
just the good, but of the best yet.
The
next time the 'central committee' sends up a flare, look in the other
direction. That is where the damage will be occurring - in the shadows.
Watch this space!
This is very personal for me, and I rarely get this personal. I have
been struggling to find a positive article to share here about
Hillary's donor thank-you event at the Plaza in NYC on Thursday night. I
have failed. There are articles out there, not the kind I would ever
attach here, articles referring to her as glum, angry, dodgy, shifty,
scapegoaty. I do not believe these articles reflect Hillary's true
"personal status" at this event, i.e. I believe they are more of the
same bad press she has received throughout the 2016 campaign season.
Hillary wore Suffragette White (Before you beat me down - that is what it is called. It is not called Suffragist
White. So don't start with me. My fuse is pretty short right now. My
great-grand aunt was one, and she called herself a Suffragette. So just
don't. We can do without revisionist history right about now.) To thank
her largest donors, she took to the podium to explain what she thought
happened in this election.
The
purpose of an event like this is accountability. When people have made
an investment and the investment fails, they deserve an accounting of
why and how that failure happened. That, I believe, was the motivation
behind this event. These were people who hosted fundraisers for Hillary
and brought a great deal of funds into the campaign coffers. She felt
she owed them an explanation.
Apparently Hillary delivered remarks in which she cited James Comey's letter to Republican members of Congress, just 11 days prior to Election Day, as well as Russian hackinginto various Democratic Party sites, including her campaign's emails as contributing factors. (So, wow! Seems the only safe
server was Hillary's own server about which the Republicans complained
so vociferously.) Not to mention that Hillary pointed this out at the final presidential debate which, unfortunately, I guess I entitled prophetically here. (So maybe I should just shut up.)
I guess I'll just post this once a day until Congress does something to preserve the Republic....pic.twitter.com/NAX1xTzFvd
The night before Election Day, in Independence Hall Square,
Hillary appeared to be the overwhelming winner in this contest. For
her to have to face her most powerful supporters and explain her loss
was not humiliating. It was and remains confusing, shocking, and beyond
reason considering that she won the popular vote by a 2.1% margin and
more popular votes than any white male candidate has ever accumulated.
This
loss was not Hillary's loss. It was a loss for our diverse nation. It was a loss for Democrats. It was a
loss for women as well as for little girls and boys whom she inspired.
Most importantly, it was a loss for Americans, most of whom voted for
Hillary, and was engineered by an adversarial state with a grudge to
bear against Hillary as she plainly told her donors Thursday night. It
was Putin's revenge.
Was she glum? Was she angry? Was she casting blame? Why the hell shouldn't she? We wuz robbed!
Please
do not attach the negative articles about this event here. I have not
found a single one - and I have looked - that was positive. But if you
find a positive one, I welcome the discovery.
All you reporters out there who rode on her plane and now describe
her with ugly adjectives, you should know better. You heard her issues, agenda, and plans. You should know better.
I am a pretty mad bitch right about now. Stay clear. I bite.
The Express is reporting that the Russian interference in the U.S.
presidential election was likely prompted by Hillary's charges of
rigging in that country's parliamentary elections in 2011. At the time, Putin accused Hillary of stirring up the protests that broke out in the wake of the elections.
VLADIMIR
Putin’s anger with Hillary Clinton could have been the cause of
Russia’s alleged release of damaging Democratic party emails, according
to a former ambassador to Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) welcomes US Secretary of State Hillary ClintonBoth
the CIA and the FBI indicated that Russia could have tried to influence
the outcome of the recent presidential election in the USA.A government
source told The New York Times: “We now have high confidence that they
hacked the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and the RNC [Republican
National Committee], and conspicuously released no documents [from the
Republican party].”SNIPNow former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul
has said that the release of the emails could have been sparked by Mr
Putin’s desire for revenge over her criticism of the 2011 election that
elected the 64-year-old.Read more >>>>
August 25, 2014
If anyone tries to tell you she accomplished nothing or that the reset
did not work, show them this page. She worked very hard to get this
treaty and to get it ratified. We are lucky. This protects us all.
But
as 2011 began with this extraordinary bi-national victory, the tone
shifted with the year drawing to a close. As Hillary recounts, Russian
parliamentary elections in December were marred by fraud reports, and
Putin announced his intention to run for the presidency again.
Hillary
expressed concern about these reports, and when folks in Russia hit the
streets to demonstrate their disapproval, Putin blamed her for the
unrest.
At this OSCE conference Hillary quotes herself.
December 6, 2011
"The
Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their
voices heard and their votes counted. And that means they deserve fair,
free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them."
Although
she argued to Putin that it was unlikely that people woke up and went
into the streets because they thought she wanted them to, she does not
completely reject the idea that she might have inspired some courage to
protest. Read more >>>>
So, yes, the voters, the electors, and the candidate and her enormous campaign team of staffers and volunteers do deserve the factson the Russian incursion into our election.
Want to encourage your state electors and elected officials to sign on? Here are some contact links.
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