Posted on 04/04/2017 6:36:53 AM PDT by libstripper
Scandal: While the momentum behind the Russia-election-meddling story chugs along, the claim that sparked the entire drama — that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee — appears to have suffered a big blow. Does anybody care?
The Russia connection was first made by a private cybersecurity firm whose work has been treated as unassailable — until last week, when it had to rewrite and retract statements made to support that claim.
To understand what happened and why it is significant requires going through a brief timeline of events.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I made a mistake on number 4. Farkas did refer to “The Russians” in her comments.
Yeah, I’ve been casually wondering (not having the time to dig into all this morass) how much of this issue regards which server: DNC (legal but ineptly insecure), vs HRC (illegal and deliberately insecure)?
There’s been much talk about HRC having an insecure server, but somebody remind me: how much of the actual contents thereof (not to be confused with DNC emails) were leaked? aren’t we still waiting on the release of “the 30,000 emails she deliberately deleted to destroy evidence”?
That, IMHO, would be a bridge too far. While the idea is noble, nothing would change as the DNC would simply reform itself into another entity and the chase would continue. Hercules faced a less formidable foe in the Hydra and an easier burden in his trials.
There IS, however, a front-page story on Blackwater's supposed involvement in a Trump/Putin relationship.
There isn't even a pretense of objectivity in the so-called "mainstream" media anymore.
The DNC can just claim to “identify” as Russians, just like Rachel Dolezal “identifies” as black. Easy peasy.
Is there a point where someone will successfully prove that the Democrat Party is a criminal organization well within the definition of RICO? And can we not only hope for massive RICO criminal prosecutions, but equally massive civil asset forfeitures from those politicians and/or their States and Cities? And even more hopefully, can we hope that if the Courts designate the Democrat Party as a RICO operation, that it must cease and desist as a political party, and be banned from future political contests?
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Beautiful.....nice deconstruction. Something to look forward to for sure.
Basically RICO centers on (a) an organized group, (b) using a legal entity for criminal means, (c) in a "pattern" of criminal activities.
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REFERENCE The 1980 Georgia General Assembly was concerned about the increasing sophistication of various criminal elements on the public payroll (and those in elective and appointive office). The Georgia General Assembly then adopted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), patterned after a similar federal law.
(RICO is routinely used to try to prove that a legal business was being used for illegal means, and, in at its inception, RICO was used to prosecute drug traffickers or organized crime members).
In recent years prosecutors have applied RICO to crooked government officials: (1) those accused of using their public offices for personal gain, and, (2) tax-paid officials of govt agencies using public monies to flout the law.
To bring a case under Georgias RICO law, there must be at least two underlying felonies such as fraud, bribery, witness tampering (among other felonies).
RICO allows prosecutors to include multiple defendants charged with various crimes in the blanket indictment, and to charge that govt employees, publicy-funded and publicly-sanctioned entities were allegedly part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
EXAMPLE A govt official commits two felonies by (1) accepting, and, (2) filing falsified documents.
UPDATE Georgia tried convicted and jailed 27 corrupt teachers under this law.....for falsely taking public money, falsifying official school records, and so on.
Thank you. I was pretty sure that RICO could apply to government employees and your post is highly educational to that point!
I think either would have been equally acceptable to the Russians. The goal was a painfully close election like 2000 which leaves the new president weakened and ineffective. The perfect result would have been 269-269 in the electoral college with the House deciding the election.
The sense of it:
The “footprints & fingerprints” found on the hacked DNC email server look exactly the same as the “footprints & fingerprints” found on Android phones used to control Ukranian howitzers (modern weapons need computers, and Android apps are a cheap way to implement it), which were also hacked to cause destruction of the artillery.
I think I can see where you are going with that but I am not convinced the Russians would want The Donald as their rival. The end result is the goal and having a decisive victor that would be amenable to their ends is always preferable.
But more to the core issue, the tactic of using leaked emails is probably the weakest, least effective means of interfering with an election, IMHO. While it may solidify those already entrenched, it probably would hold no sway over the undecided. Personality and truthfulness is what sways them. While an email chain would influence an undecided who pays attention, the truth is that there is no such animal. If they are paying attention, they already distrust HRC. Also, the attention span of the average voter is probably on par with a flea, WRT politics.
BTW: WikiLeaks just revealed/confirmed that the CIA is _very_ good at putting someone else’s “footprints & fingerprints” on whatever the CIA has maliciously tampered with.
Flynn needs to be investigated. It appears he fell into the culture of corruption in D.C. after leaving the military.
Ol boy did have a connection to Russia and lied to Pence about it. When found out, Trump fired him as he certainly should have to avoid conflicts and scandal within his administration....right move on Trump's part.
Then ol boy received ca$h payments from the Russians.. When these payments were found out, he then filed an addendum to federal documents stating the ca$h payments. One of those culture of corruption....oh 54!7, they found out, lets see if filing the “correct” disclosures will keep me off the hot seat.
Flynn ain't in.
I’ll second the sentiment in #50. If you’re trying to get a “close election” to weaken the victor, leaking one party’s emails is a pretty lousy way to do it. Doing so is useful in weakening one particular party, but is far from decisive.
IF - as a hypothetical - Russia did “hack” the email server and leaked the contents to WikiLeaks (unlikely for numerous reasons), it is best explained as Russian intelligence services cracked the inept security as a matter of routine & mundane espionage (on the world stage, we expect everyone is at least casually trying to get into everyone else’s email), and sending the contents to WikiLeaks was a rather trivial & obvious action. The “leak” was so easy it was almost harder to _not_ do it.
To wit: the DNC’s contention amounts to this was little more than sneaky kids doing simple lock picking to rummage thru a disliked adult’s file cabinets, photocopying a particularly juicy & thick file folder, and mailing copies to their friends.
Thanks for explaining.. I am a big fan of artillery.. spent some time at ft sill, ok.. but I couldn’t quite connect the breadcrumbs.
And per #52, now that I’ve explained the alleged connection between emails & howitzers, apparently the people claiming to have found the connection have now retracted their claim.
Interesting revelations! Thanks!
The sense of it:
The “footprints & fingerprints” found on the hacked DNC email server look exactly the same as the “footprints & fingerprints” found on Android phones used to control Ukranian howitzers (modern weapons need computers, and Android apps are a cheap way to implement it), which were also hacked to cause destruction of the artillery.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
all according to independent contractor, Crowdstrike, the IT firm the Comey’s fibbers hired to investigate DNC hack.
PS: notable players in today’s news: Crowdstrike, evelyn farkas, susan rice, and hunter biden are all connected today to the Atlantic Council.
What, another shadowy conspiracy I need to keep track of?
I keep thinking I need to just ignore big politics and get on with self-sufficiency. I can’t do anything about the Atlantic Council et al, or whatever organized intrigued threatens us - just need to keep enough tabs to know when the balloon goes up.
l understand.
stay safe!
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