I want to endorse much of what Ruth Marcus had to say in her recent column in the Washington Post. I agree that Donald Trump will be the legitimate president of the United States and that John Lewis erred in saying otherwise:
So for all of John Lewis’s heroic service to his country, the Georgia congressman’s assertion that Donald Trump is not a “legitimate†president was not appropriate or helpful. Indeed, it is not even the right way to think about the question. Trump is a legitimate president because our system demands finality and acceptance even in the presence of uncertainty. Posting an asterisk next to an election result is not healthy for democracy.
and there should be a thorough investigation of Russian governmental interference in the election:
And that is the flip side of accepting Trump’s legitimacy: to insist on investigation and accountability. Feinstein put it in appropriately apocalyptic terms. “We cannot ignore what has happened. To ignore it is really to commit ourselves to a very bad future,†she said. “This is the future of America. It’s the future of democracy. And if we can’t carry out an election without disinformation being pumped into it by another country, we’ve got a huge destruction of our system going on.â€
A searching inquiry into what happened and how to prevent it from recurring is essential. That should not be a matter for partisan debate, as hard as it may be for Trump, especially, to accept. Whether that happens will not determine the legitimacy of Trump’s election. It will shape history’s judgment of his presidency.
The inquiry should be as complete and impartial as is possible and its results must be made public and publicized widely.
Sadly, she exemplifies why such an inquiry must be made when she asserts:
That was the difficult lesson of the 2000 campaign. But for a flawed butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County that diverted confused voters to Pat Buchanan, Al Gore would likely have been declared the winner in Florida and thus the 43rd president.
She is perpetuating a myth. Every independent study of the Florida election in 2000 found that every remedy sought by Gore/Lieberman would have failed to make Al Gore president. I didn’t vote for George W. Bush in 2000 and would have preferred that he not have been elected president but Ms. Marcus is engaging in irresponsible speculation. Based on what we know the only course of action that would have led to a victory by Gore/Lieberman would have been allowing the Florida Supreme Court’s overturning the results of the election to stand.
That’s why it’s vitally important for a thorough investigation of the Russian government’s actions be undertaken, as open and impartial as these things can be. It will enable us to identify the material and efficient causes of the outcome of the presidential election of 2016.
If there is conclusive proof that the Russian government intervened in the election and produced the outcome, say that. If it is reasonable to believe that the Russian government intervened in the election and produced the outcome, say that. If there is suspicion and inference, say that.
1) We know to a high degree of certainty that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the docs to Wikileaks with the goal of electing Trump.
2) We know that the accused rapist and fugitive, Julian Assange, hates Hillary Clinton, and parsed the Russian leaks out in the most politically damaging way possible.
3) We know Trump exploited those leaks, ranting in every speech, and encouraging Putin to commit more illegal acts against his opponent.
4) Polling shows a fall-off in Hillary support following the Trump/Putin/Assange operation.
5) Trump wins by a razor-thin margin in three states while losing the popular vote by 3 million.
6) Trump spends his transition praising, and being praised in turn, by the butcher of Aleppo.
What are the remaining questions to be answered?
According to the Times consortium Gore would have won by a tiny margin had undervotes and overvotes been counted. Would that have happened? Who knows. Also, Marcus’ point is unprovable–she’s talking about the effects of bad ballot design on confused senior citizens.
So there’s really no bottom on the 2000 election. I don’t see anything conclusive occurring in 2016. Even if all of the accusations about Putin are true, it’s not as if there was one thing Wikileaks released did that sunk Hillary Clinton. What was released was dull and slightly embarrassing, but not surprising to any sentient person. The Russian connection was there from the beginning.The American media, I think, didn’t care and nobody else cared that we were just being fed hacked info. This indifference goes back to the Climategate hacks, where the denialist frauds were basically given a green light to embrace dirty tricks. It’s not surprising that the GOP followed suit. I mean, had the Russians hacked Hillary Clinton’s webcam and circulated images of her undressing the result would have been exactly the same. Trump would have made fun of her aged body, and asked for more, and the same number of people would have voted for him.
What’s going to be bad is the FBI’s response. Considering how Comey nailed Clinton at the end over nothing, there’s really no defense for the FBI holding back on Trump. I suspect he’s unable to defend his position which is why the Democrats were horrified. He had nada, nothing, less than bullshit. As far as I can tell, the only real defense is that the GOP is insane, and had Hillary Clinton won without Congress being notified before the election, part of the FBI and all of Congress would have destroyed him. Basically, he did it because he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win, and he was being prudent.
I do not believe that was a remedy sought by Gore/Lieberman.
Independent security experts who have scrutinized the material made public on the breaches, unbiased as far as I can tell, have said that what you’ve said above cannot be supported. Perhaps those are reasonable inferences based on material that has not been made public. Perhaps not. That’s what I would like to see determined from an investigation.
I can provide a link if you’d like but it’s pretty dry and technical.
As to what Ms. Marcus would like to see, you’ll have to ask her.
An honest investigation would require the CIA to declassify their sources. Public testimony including the British spy and his Russian sources. the current CIA director, DNI, NSA director, FBI director, the current President, John McCain.
Do you think these folks want to be under oath about all the actions they took in this sorry mess? Yeah me neither.
Strangely, Trump could probably how weak a lot of this is (my conjecture), by declassifying the classified sections of the intelligence accessment, but he won’t because he’s a Russian agent!
I hope Andy chimes in on this thread. He has expert knowledge in this area and I would appreciate the benefit of his expertise.
I suspect that a thorough investigation can be carried out by reading in independent security experts with the appropriate security clearances.
The piece at Lang’s place that CuriosOnlooker linked to lays out the weaknesses pretty clearly: (1) the smoking gun on the second (the important) hack is the use of software associated with the Russian government, but not exclusive to it, and (2) reasoning through motivation of actors, utilizing no intelligence expertise, just J-school level analysis.
Taking these in reverse, the primary problem with reasoning by motivation to cover gaps in the evidence is that this is a common root of intelligence failures, such as ‘Saddam must have something to hide’ and ‘he wants WMD.’ More specifically though, prior to the election the J-schoolers argued in response to Trump’s audacious claim that if he loses, the election was rigged, that Russian interference with elections is a legitimate concern, but that the Russians have historically not tried to pick winners and losers, but sow chaos and delegitimize a government.
Taking the earlier J-school motivation as correct, then the smoking gun software is shared by a number of a cyber-anarchists, whose motivations differ little from Russia in seeking to delegitimize governments. Its also possible that they were given the software by Russian agents in order to freelance on the destruction of the world order, or muddy the waters of actual Russian activities.
And of course, reasoning through attribution of motivation has many layers, where the J-schoolers motivated in their description of Russian motivations because they thought Clinton would be the next President?
One possibility, and I’m not going to advocate it, is somebody sues Buzzfeed for libel. As Eugene Volokh has explained, Buzzfeed’s own statement that thee are “serious reason to doubt the allegations,” most likely removes it from First Amendment protection, even given the obvious public interest, i.e. Buzzfeed admitted to malice. There is, however, a statutory privilege that may or may not apply to Buzzfeed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/13/when-there-is-serious-reason-to-doubt-rumors-and-allegations-is-it-libelous-to-publish-them/?utm_term=.70feeaf45785
I’ve not read enough materials to know whether anybody besides Trump would have standing to claim injury here, and the prospect of a sitting President suing a media outlet would seem to violate norms that heretofore have never been broken to my knowledge.
If it is reasonable to believe that the Russian government intervened in the election and produced the outcome, say that.
Unless there’s a smoking gun proving the opposite, it’s always going to be reasonable to believe that Russia was behind the hacks, and Trump knew this and had some sort of positive contact with the Russian government as it happened and was basically part of, in a tangential way, the conspiracy.
This isn’t George Bush allowing 9/11 to happen, or Barack Obama being born in Kenya. It’s a real possibility, and the legalistic hand-waving is taking place because everybody knows this is the case.
I think I’d take the under on Trump’s willingness to violate established norms.
A major fly in the ointment, regarding our suddenly ratcheted-up concerns towards Russian intrusion into our election, is a bit suspect, even sullied, by how multiple hacks by various counties didn’t initiate more interest and earnest rectification much earlier. Now, after a Trump win, the scent of partisan repudiation muddies whatever genuine intent spurrs said investigation.
PD Shaw: ” Buzzfeed’s own statement that thee are “serious reason to doubt the allegations,†most likely removes it from First Amendment protection, even given the obvious public interest, i.e. Buzzfeed admitted to malice”
Are these documents not the basis of the two page summary given to Obama and Trump? That’s what Buzzfeed was reporting on, and that was entirely true. Truth is a fine defense for malice.
Jan: have we previously had an election with such blatant foreign interference, that was close enough for the foreign interference to plausibly effect the outcome? And then had policy changes that directly benefit that foreign power?
No, we have not. We’re in unprecedented territory here.
If Trump backed away from his strong support of the Russians, and wanted to investigate and get to the bottom of it before changing any policies towards the Russians (if he were behaving like an American President rather than a bought and paid for stooge), there would be less outcry.
@Gustopher, the simplest answer is probably that Buzzfeed does not have lawyers or they wouldn’t have said what they said. But Volokh discusses the republication rule:
“The republication rule: Say that Alan writes, “Betty alleges Charlie committed armed robbery.†Alan’s statement is literally true: Betty did make the allegation. But the statement Alan is reporting on (Betty’s statement) is false. American libel law has long adopted the “republication rule,†under which Alan is potentially liable for defamation — if Betty’s allegation actually proves to be false — even if he expressly attributes the statement to Betty. (See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 578.)”
“And this is true even if Alan distances himself from the allegation, for instance by saying that Charlie has denied the statement, or that Betty has reason to lie. The principle is that “Tale bearers are as bad as the tale makers.—
Modulo:
Exactly. And the polls show this bizarre reality is filtering down to the broader electorate.
People of good will are playing see-no-evil because they hope to maintain a degree of stability and authority in the US government. But that is an impossible goal with Trump. Rather than tell ourselves happy little lies about how it’s all nonsense, la di, da, let’s deal with the reality that 46% of voters and an absurd system led us to this disastrous outcome. We have the least fit, least competent, least educable president since Andrew Johnson. The 46% really, truly, screwed the pooch, and now the issue is what we can do to minimize the damage going forward. If only we had a Congress.
I agree with that.
“So for all of John Lewis’s heroic service to his country, the Georgia congressman’s assertion that Donald Trump is not a “legitimate†president was not appropriate or helpful. … Trump is a legitimate president because our system demands finality and acceptance even in the presence of uncertainty. Posting an asterisk next to an election result is not healthy for democracy.”
If we have an illegitimate President (let’s skip what that means for the moment), it is healthier for our democracy to acknowledge that (and take the hit to our faith in our government), or to try to bury it so everyone has confidence in the government (and presumably hope it doesn’t happen again)?
I would go for the first — acknowledge.
“…But for a flawed butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County that diverted confused voters to Pat Buchanan, Al Gore would likely have been declared the winner in Florida and thus the 43rd president.”
She is perpetuating a myth. Every independent study of the Florida election in 2000 found that every remedy sought by Gore/Lieberman would have failed to make Al Gore president.
You’re actually not addressing her point about the butterfly ballot.
Our system of voting has an error rate — and things like the butterfly ballot are part of that. But, that’s our crappy system, and errors happen.
During the recount, it was clear the process was going to be a reflection of who had the better lawyers rather than what was closest to what the ballots said — and I blame the Gore/Lieberman campaign for suing to recount only counties where they thought they would gain in. No one considered pursuing the moral high ground, and letting the recount fall where it may.
But, at no point up until the votes were cast and found to be within the margin of error were there reports of any government actors putting their thumbs on the scale, and there was never any sign of foreign interference. It was just crap that happened. It’s not really all that comparable.
Let me try to clear it up. What I said was that no remedy sought by Gore/Lieberman would result in his winning the election. That’s what the third party investigations showed.
The response that other remedies might have done so reflects a misunderstanding of our legal system and the courts. The courts aren’t free range investigators. They respond to specific claims. Gore/Lieberman filed no recount petitions which, if they had been accepted, would have resulted in their being declared the victors. Everything else is persiflage.
This entire discussion reflects the myths I mentioned. You can’t stop people from believing in myths but you can have responses to them. WRT the breaching of the DNC a more thorough investigation would result in knowledge that might grant us responses. As it is we only have articles of faith.
“…the investigation should be impartial…”
Investigate away. That standard is a pipe dream.
“An honest investigation would require the CIA to declassify their sources.”
Possible, but doubtful. Declassification would have to come from the Executive, not the agency that owns the information. It’s not unheard of for the Executive to authorize release that exposes and burns a source, but it’s very rare. For example, I think Reagan only declassified source material in two instances – the KAL airliner shootdown (intercepts of the pilot communications) and the Berlin Disco bombing by Libya (more communication intercepts). The political or strategic advantage has to outweigh the long-term cost of losing a valuable source of information.
No President would likely reveal CIA derived sources because CIA is the major Human Intelligence agency. Revealing a source would literally be a life-and-death affair.
So far it doesn’t appear President Obama intends to do more than what his IC did with the recent assessment (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3254235/ICreport010616.pdf), which I would encourage you all to read in full. It’s possible that President Obama might have ordered a full NIE (national intelligence estimate) but those usually take many months to complete and it seems unlikely he would request one right before a transition. It seems to me Trump doesn’t have much political incentive to order a more thorough investigation.
Congress, of course, can and should do an investigation of its own, but it would not have the access to source material that the IC does. Sadly, the vast majority of Representatives and Senators place intelligence issues as a low priority when it comes to staffing – most do not have any kind of experienced staffer much less one with the necessary clearances. Additionally, unlike the 9/11 commission which produced a solid report, this investigation would be inherently partisan, so I would be quite skeptical of any product coming out of this Congress on this topic.
So I think the IC report released a couple weeks ago is probably the best we can expect. I get that people are rightly skeptical of conclusions without access to the classified source data – and they should be to a certain extent – but I don’t think the conclusions of this report can easily be dismissed considering the consistency with the open source material and our knowledge of similar Kremlin operations in the past.
This thread is confusing me. Today the approved position is that it’s okay to leak to Wikileaks.
Can’t wait to find out what’s the approved position on leaking sensitive information tomorrow.
I am advocating that Trump should declassify the sources – and if it’s human, give them asylum to ensure their safety.
The public needs to see and trust these sources if the public is going to back the necessary response to confront the Russia and really turn up the risk of a blowup. Because that’s what the logical response to the allegations are if they are true.