Trump spokesman says there's still 'zero evidence' Russia influenced presidential election

Daily Mail ^ | 2 Jan 17 | David Martosko

[xzins]

Spicer told 'Fox & Friends' hosts that last week's cyber security memo from the FBI and Homeland Security Department is a 'how-to manual for the DNC' to 'improve their IT security'

'I think it's unfair if they don't know. And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be someone else,' Trump said at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago resort club in Florida.

'And I also know things that other people don't know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.'

Asked what his secret knowledge consists of, Trump said: 'You'll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.'

Spicer said Monday that the president-elect 'is privy to information that nobody else has' and 'what he is driving at is the fact that there doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence within the intelligence community.'

'There's an intelligence report that's due out later this week,' he added. 'And once that report is made final and the president-elect is briefed, then I think we'll have a better idea of what to make of the situation.'

[xzins]

Exactly. Better to pay them 180,000 to fill out snap applications than to have them meddling in serious issues.

It also increases the likelihood they quit out of frustration or go ballistic and provide reason to fire them.

[xzins]

Excellent reminder. The disinformation campaign our own government ran against us after Benghazi should cause anyone to doubt a single word they say.

[xzins]

It wouldn’t surprise me at all that many are democrat CEOs.

[yoe]

Obama setting up impediments for Trump, trying to slow down his administration and their ability to get things done in a timely fashion........

Obama's legacy, his deliberate obstacles will overshadow any other is Barack's ungentlemanly, lack of class in the transferring of the presidency will follow him for the rest of his life...and that of his wife and daughters.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Trump has to be careful about how he plays this. There may be evidence that Russia phished for DNC and RNC emails. But that doesn’t mean much. The US has done much more than that (listening in on foreign leader’s calls). That is all just part of the espionage game. We want to prevent it but getting outraged over it is silly. But there is zero evidence that Russia “hacked the election” as if they were able to change votes through some hacking scheme.

[FreedomPoster]

We need to be hammering this point more - the Chinese hacked actual FedGov systems, not a political party’s. Why aren’t we talking about that more? Why weren’t their diplomats expelled, and sanctions put in place? From June:

Chinese breach data of 4 million federal workers
http://tinyurl.com/h5pxm2x

“Hackers working for the Chinese state breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, U.S. officials said Thursday, and the agency will notify about 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data may have been compromised.”

This was a hack of actual FedGov systems, resulting in a very damaging data release. NOT just some emails being released from Dem campaign operatives. No response that I know of in the Chinese case.

Do we need any more proof that the response to this supposed Russian phishing event is about domestic politics?

Additionally, Tucker Carlson asks the tough question, exactly what information revealed in the leaked emails should the American people not have known before the election? The Dems don’t want to answer that.

[Steve_Seattle]

"zero evidence that Russia influenced the election"

This can be taken on three levels:

1. There is zero evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or Podesta.

2. Regardless of who hacked the DNC and Podesta, it made no difference in the outcome of the election.

3. Regardless of who hacked the emails, they were authentic documents - not faked - so their exposure actually gave voters more information and allowed them to make a more accurate assessment of the candidates and what they stood for. The hackers were doing the job the MSM refused to do, giving the voters a more balanced picture of the candidates.

Most of the debate centers on #1, but #2 and #3 also need to be addressed. Is there, in fact, any evidence that significant numbers of votes changed because of the hacks, and was the number sufficient to sway the election?

My view is that most people who paid close attention to the content of the hacks were already predisposed to vote against Hillary, and that fence-sitters usually don't dig very deep for information.

The release of the leaks was paralleled by a media effort to push back, first by ignoring them, then by dismissing their importance, then by attacking the leakers. Probably less than 5% of the voters were poring over the content of specific emails, and that group largely consisted of pre-existing Hillary critics and Hillary defenders. The average person looked on from afar. But if people were influenced by the hacks, it was because they had more information, not less.

[reformedliberal]

It was and is possible to go through the office of the Secretary of State of each of the separate states of the United States, where the actual statewide tally of the votes is enumerated, and somehow hack THEIR separate computers, but this is not what was alleged.
_______________

I thought it was all over since Soros compromised all the SOS in the various states? Oh, didn’t work?

Must have been the Russians!

[xzins]

I still haven’t seen evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or Podesta.

Judge Napolitano makes a distinction between hacking and leaking. Hacking involves some kind of bug placed in a system, iirc. Leaking involves exploiting a weakness in the system.

Podesta’s phish error and Hillary’s unsecured server explain everything that needs to be explained.

[TruthWillWin]

Could be where Trump is getting his information?

[uncbob]

The fact that NO certifiable evidence has been put forth is proof these claims are BS. I don’t care if the CIA, FBI, DOJ and NSA swear to it - even McCain and Graham. It doesn’t matter. If they won’t provide CLEAR PROOF then all this hooha is BS, period.

I can't understand why Trump's people don't cite Comey's report on Hillary's emails wherein he states " They couldn't tell they have been hacked because any country with that capability would not leave a trace

So how is there a trace for the DNC emails ?

[veracious]

DC has become a freak show: politicized law enforcement, intelligence and tax gathering. This DC must be dismantled, aggressively.

[Gaffer]

This is all sore loser DNC, Democrat, Liberal, and media horsesh!t. Prove it conclusively or STFU.

[Paladin2]

Seems like there is net negative evidence.

[xzins]

I sure haven’t seen anything.

All I’ve seen is people proclaiming the evidence to be true.

And those people are all known liars.

[Stingray51]

The United States government has for decades intercepted the communications of foreign officials. Does anyone dispute this? Is this not a core purpose of the NSA? Even if the Russian government was behind the phishing of John Podesta’s emails, how is this qualitatively different than the US (and sometimes its allied parties in Echelon etc...) intercepting Russian officials’ emails or phone calls? Per Wikileaks, the US Government, including under Obama, even tapped the communications of allies like Frau Merkel. So I do not see how foreign intrusion into US emails is anything other than completely standard intelligence operations that we are as “guilty” of than anyone (and we are likely more “guilty” of this than anyone since our capabilities are presumably the greatest).

So the real issue is not the Russians (or whomever it was) capturing Podesta’s emails. The Dems lost no sleep over the emails being intercepted but what really drives them nuts is that the American people got to see them.

[justa-hairyape]

The entire Democratic Establishment is in ruins. Many of their voters believed the biased polls. This Russian Hacker meme helps explain to their voters why the Democratic Establishment and it’s MSM failed so miserably.

[Windflier]

Probably the best “fake news” of 2016 was this assertion that the Russians somehow “hacked” the election results. There is no possible way that the count in the election could possibly be affected from Moscow.

Note carefully that the purveyors of the 'hacking' meme never actually say that the votes were hacked. They throw the word up like a giant Macy's balloon and let the sheeples draw that conclusion themselves.

[wideyed]

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if it all came back to someone in the DNC actually did the hacking and routed it in such a way that made it look like it was coming from a Russian source? That might be why there is no proof that this really happened.

[Fishtalk]

I think you are right.