Posted on 01/08/2017 12:37:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
I can’t tell yet if this is a new spin strategy carefully scripted by Team Trump or if Reince is about to get an angry phone call from his boss. Trump’s argument, after all, has been that there’s no way to tell who’s behind a hack. “Entities in Russia” puts the culprits a lot closer to Moscow than the proverbial “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”
The phrasing is noteworthy. Reince does answer “Russia” at one point when Wallace badgers him to name who Trump thinks is behind the hackings, but during the rest of the interview he uses the phrase “entities in Russia,” which feels deliberately ambiguous. “Entities” could refer to private hackers acting on their own initiative, not at the behest of the Russian government. This may be Team Trump trying to find a middle way between accepting the new intelligence report and sticking with their talking point that we can’t know with absolute certainty that Putin’s behind this. Okay, they now seem to be saying, we accept that it was someone in Russia who did the hacking and handed the material off to Wikileaks, but as to whether they were following orders from the Kremlin, hmmm.
For the record, this is what the report released on Friday had to say about that:
We assess Russian intelligence services collected against the US primary campaigns, think tanks, and lobbying groups they viewed as likely to shape future US policies. In July 2015, Russian intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks and maintained that access until at least June 2016.
The General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) probably began cyber operations aimed at the US election by March 2016. We assess that the GRU operations resulted in the compromise of the personal e-mail accounts of Democratic Party officials and political figures. By May, the GRU had exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC…
We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.
It was Putin himself who directed how the hacked material was leaked, according to NBC’s sources in U.S. intelligence. Per Friday’s DNI report: “We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” Putin and his intel outfits do technically qualify as “entities in Russia,” but I think Reince is being deliberately vague here for a reason. We’ll see if he, Trump, Kellyanne Conway, or any other surrogate points the finger squarely at Putin and the Russian government this week.
In the meantime, the new strategy seems to be to blame the DNC and Podesta for their own hackings. Reince spends a lot of time on that argument here — so much so that Wallace asks him point-blank at one point whether he thinks the hackers or their victims bear most of the responsibility for what happened. Priebus dutifully says the hackers before launching back into several more minutes of pointing fingers at the victims. It is true that the DNC’s and Podesta’s security was piss-poor: Read this if you missed it last month for an account of how the DNC blew off the FBI when the feds first tried to alert them to shenanigans in their server and how a miscommunication about a spear-phishing email led to Podesta’s account being breached. There’s also “fake news” circulating, though, to try to make the Democrats’ negligence seem worse than it was. For instance, contrary to increasingly popular belief, Podesta’s password wasn’t “password.” And why would it matter if he had a weak or strong password given that he was hacked via a phishing scam? The point of phishing is to get someone to hand over their password under false pretenses. You could make it 50 characters long and you’ll still be hacked if you fall for it.
“Blame the victims” is smart spin, though, given that this entire story is partisan warfare for most. For instance, George W. Bush’s account was reportedly breached by the Romanian hacker Guccifer through nothing more complicated than guessing the answers to his security questions based on publicly available information. Few on the right attacked Bush for having weak security, though, even though he’s an ex-president who’s probably still in touch with people who have access to sensitive information. Why? Because a crime’s a crime, even if the victim is a bit of a sucker, and it’s a serious crime if committed by an enemy power in hopes of influencing the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. If Trump had been spear-phished by China and the contents of his email leaked to try to help Clinton, righties would be rightly pissed and lefties would be guffawing that only a dope would fall for a scam so simple knowing that foreign intelligence services were interested in him. Oh well.
I watched as much of this as I could stomach. Chris Wallace needs to stop pretending he’s “fair and balanced”. Sigh
The money quote: “Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.”
I really wish this would get pushed strongly by the Trump people. NOTHING revealed was untrue. The dems are concerned they were caught. None of the info came from government sources either, the DNC and Podesta do not work for the government.
Speaking of the Wallace interview with Priebus today.... that is... They’re all hammering the guy to pronounce Putin guilty to justify the sanctions by Obama...
No one wants to touch the “content” of what was exposed... just the method.
Hey...dummies.
.SOROS...Soros...SOROS
I think a more important question is who is behind all the Fakenews related to “hacking”?
Even IF the Russians hacked the DNC and Podesta, they aren’t government systems, and none of the info released was fake, it was all real stuff that the DNC and Clinton campaign were doing and saying shady things.
Exactly NO Evidence has been produced that shows that the info released actually influenced the election in any way, because for months the media had said that the emails were “baked into the cake” with Clinton, and would only be of interest to those who weren’t going to vote for her in the first place.
So, what we now have is an entire media/political collusion to attempt to delegitimize Trump as the legally elected president. An investigation into the collusion between the dems, the media and any number of republicans, such as McCain and Graham, should be undertaken.
I remember in 2008 when the son of a democrat in TN hacked into Palin’s email and released her personal emails, including pictures of her kids, their email addresses, and telephone numbers, the dems and their media lapdogs were overjoyed, and weren’t in the least concerned about hacking.
Are there no private hackers who care about such things?
Where has this country gone?
The meat of the story is that the Dem establishment was exposed and proven to be corrupt ... and frankly disgusting too.
So ... "compliment the straw man spin of those who benefitted by the exposition of your corruption even though you probably murdered someone to prevent it" is ... kind of lame spin.
Never thought of that.
CHINA DID steal millions of pieces of info from the Fed Gov.
No biggie, I guess.
I wish Trump would mention that. But wishes are worthless.
OK, but still if the Russians thought that hilLIAR was a shoo-in and thus sought to undermine her via release of the emails. so what?
It still had NO EFFECT on the election, so everyone esp the MSM, stop calling it “election hacking”
It’s just an attempt to undermine Trump.
Exactly. Those who voted Trump are not buying ..but they keep trying to sell it. They just keep digging their hole deeper.
RINO's McCain and Graham need to be investigated...period. I believe during 2008, McCain was set in place to run and help Obama win but when Sarah got too popular... they had to put her down....JMHO
Yes, if the American Public had never found out what underhanded scheming filth the RATs are...
Hillary would now be President!
Reince Priebus may have a very short lived tenure as a Trump advisor.
PASS THE POP CORN.
i assess that the DNC and Obama killed Seth Rich to silence him, Rich had been one of Wikileak’s sources.
I also assess that this is a big lie to fool America, and to send Trump down a bunny hole.
Its a TRAP!
Please, please help stop this explicitly fake news. I am truly concerned for the well being of my country.
Fox (et al) are using the words certainty’, and ‘fact’ based on Friday’s hacking report. Lies. Fake news. On page 13 yesterday’s hacking report makes it crystal clear that nothing at all in the report is a certainty. Nothing.
Obama’s appointed intelligence officials are historically well proven liars. Even if you choose to believe them this time, ‘fact’ or ‘certainty’ are clearly uncalled-for. Even seeing ‘17 intelligence agencies agree’ is fishy. Figure the odds.
President Trump did not express any opinion based on seeing the classified info because a major edict always in that security world is not to confirm nor deny. Simple.
Also: At one point NSA uses ‘moderate confidence’ instead of ‘high confidence’. Note that nobody even looked at Podesta’s server and that NSA does most international intercept. Maybe it’s honest and maybe simply as far as NSA was willing to bend while risking its’ own credibility?
I’m not saying the Russians did it or not. I’m saying the media, including Fox, are using ‘certain’ and ‘fact’ based on this report. Lies. False news.They either don’t do their homework and/or they have an agenda. I think this varies by individual.
I cannot help noting that I get ‘phishing’ email on occasion. Are the Russians after me? I have not been impaired enough to give my password to a junk mail for many years. I bet that (still unknown to me) hacker got a laugh out of ‘password’ spelled out. Another anachronism. Podesta should be hiding quietly in a closet instead of stirring up trouble. And I hope the I.T. guy who took the weight got a fat envelope. Anyone really that ill informed couldn’t do 15 minutes of actual I.T. work.
Thanks for your help.
Yep.. "disgusting" is a generous description. :)
I do not for one second understand why Trump has let himself be sucked in to the “who did it” morass. Why? He should’ve said “whomever got the truth about about the cheating and corrupted Democrats deserves our thanks. Thank you Russians, thank you North Korea, thank you 400
Pound Basement Dude. You shone a light on corruption.” I know there are a lot smarter people than me advising him. What is the argument for bickering about who did it instead of addressing it head-on? Enlighten me.
Why didn't they dump everything and get an entire new system that was secure?
ALL the news was about Comey and the embarrassments (and firings). Russia was not in the equation.
Then Trump wins....and suddenly Russia is THEE major player in the election.
We know that ALL countries spy on each other. Just ask Merkel!!
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