At L’Ombre de l’Olivier Francis Turner has what strikes me as a very fair summary of l’affaire de DNC email hack, Russian cyber-ops, and Trump collusion. Go over there and read his six bullet points. Maybe it’s just my own prejudices but that seems fair to me.
He summarizes the “narratives”, the different explanations various groups are putting forward to it, with this:
The lefty narrative is that Trump colluded with the Russians to get elected and has done so ever since, hence he is guilty of TREASON and should be impeached etc. Also he’s the second incarnation of Adolf Hitler, is Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Islamophobic and everything else ending it -phobic or -ist except communist. According to that narrative what he said in the Helsinki press conference was evidence of the above. In particular TREASON!!!!1111!!!!. For more detail just scan your favorite social media
The MAGA narrative is that Trump is heroically fighting the Deep State and MSM and heroically trolling them. Also he’s deliberately buttering up Putin in much the same was as he did Kim so as to do a deal with him that achieves the ends of MAGA. I’d say this post is more or less representaive.
The non MAGA righty narrative is pretty much this Victory Girls blog post and this Powerline one. Basically Trump should STFU sometimes and not deny that the Russians almost certainly were involved in electoral-related tricks.
The key thing to note is that the facts permit multiple things to be true. It seems to me quite likely that the Russians either wanted a Trump victory or a damaged Clinton and didn’t really care which because in their judgment either was likely to go easy on additional sanctions etc. However, they didn’t have to collude with the Trump campaign to help him. In fact their likely end goal was pretty much what we see today – a US electorate that is split down the middle and unwilling to talk to each other and a Presidency that is embattled.
Other than his perseveration on the -phobic bit, i.e. if you omit the balance of the first paragraph after its first sentence, is that accurate or not accurate? Fair or not fair?
He goes on to quote an anonymous Facebook post:
So let’s have a little thought exercise here, for the fun of it.
Assume [all the facts above regarding the Russians, add in additional ones as desired]
Go ahead and assume that the Russians did everything they possibly could, up to BUT NOT including actually hacking the voting hardware and software employed by the American people to cast their ballots.
With that all assumed…
Who cares?
No, seriously, who cares?
which continues at some length and considerable profanity in explaining why none of it really makes much difference. You should read that, too.
I also suggest you read Lawfare’s many, very fair-minded posts on this subject.
I’ll conclude this post with some questions and answers.
- Did the Russians hack into the DNC email? I’m convinced they did.
- Did Donald Trump or his campaign knowingly collude or collaborate with the Russian government in doing that? I don’t know. Isn’t that what the Mueller investigation is supposed to determine?
- Did the subsequent Russian information operation result in the 2016 presidential election being thrown to Donald Trump? It might have been one among several factors but I doubt it was dispositive.
- Did the Russians probe U. S. election systems? I’m convinced they did.
- Did they add Trump votes, remove Clinton votes, or change Clinton votes to Trump votes? I have seen no evidence that happened.
And the most important question: what should we do? IMO we should do three things:
- Let the Mueller investigation continue to go about its business.
- We should stop interfering in other countries’ elections and encourage the Russians and the Chinese in particular to do the same in no uncertain terms.
- We should stop using Internet- or wireless-connected voting machines and systems.
- Government agencies should take cyber-security more seriously than they apparently do.
- Keep calm and carry on.
Complete or incomplete? Fair or not fair?
Update
I also want to commend to your attention this post by Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast. For me this is the key passage:
Now is not the time for Trump’s critics, liberal and conservative alike, to play fast and loose with the truth.
but you may find some of the rest of it edifying.
Let’s stir the pot some more. It is being claimed that Putin gave Trump copies of transcripts of intercepted communications between various high ranking Americans and foreigners indicating widespread collusion with foreigners and bribery by foreigners.
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/u-s-national-news/2855-dear-god-they-caught-them-all-putin-gives-trump-160-terabytes-of-communication-intercepts-all-people-behind-fake-russia-collusion-false-flag-chemical-attacks-in-syria-sabotage-of-brexit-nefarious-clinton-activities-more
I’d say it’s a very fair assessment but incomplete in that you don’t address the possibility (probability IMO) of substantial bias and malfeasance in the IC. When you factor that in, the idea that the Mueller investigation will ultimately provide clarity and justice seems very unlikely (though I don’t disagree about letting it run it’s course.)
I’m curious if you think anything will come of the IG investigation concerning the Russia probe.
Other than continued loss of confidence in our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus I don’t think anything will come of it.
CStanley,
Regarding bias/malfeasance in the IC, what are referring to specifically?
Dave,
I largely agree – one quibble I would make is that I think the Russians were behind the DNC hack but didn’t necessarily carry it out themselves. They often utilize third parties and sometimes those parties don’t realize they’re actually working for the Russians.
I’d also point out that Wikileaks is a de facto Russian front operation, and has been almost since the beginning. It’s been both interesting and frustrating to see opinions on Wikileaks shift depending on whose ox is getting gored.