Election security

It looks like President Obama ordered up phony RussiaGate scandal

RussiaGate is now a complete dead letter — but ObamaGate is taking its place. Just how far did the then-president go to cripple his successor?

It’s now clear the Obama-Comey FBI and Justice Department never had anything more substantial than the laughable fiction of the Steele dossier to justify the “counterintelligence” investigation of the Trump campaign. Yet incessant leaks from that supposedly confidential probe wound up consuming the Trump administration’s first months in office — followed by the Bob Mueller-led special counsel investigation that proved nearly the “total witch hunt” that President Trump dubbed it.

Information released as the Justice Department dropped its charges against Gen. Mike Flynn shows that President Barack Obama, in his final days in office, played a key role in fanning the flames of phony scandal. Fully briefed on the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, he knew the FBI had come up with nothing despite months of work starting in July 2016.

Election security

Christopher Steele claims Clinton lawyer fed him debunked claim about Russian collusion in 2016

British ex-spy Christopher Steele testified he met with Democratic lawyers during the 2016 presidential election, and one provided him with now-debunked claims about alleged Trump-Russia collusion as he compiled his dossier.

Steele, a former MI6 agent whose salacious and unverified dossier was used by the FBI in its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, discussed his meetings with two lawyers tied to Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee during a deposition in a British court in mid-March, according to a transcript obtained by the Daily Caller.

Michael Sussman and Marc Elias, two top lawyers for the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC, played an even more significant role in the Trump-Russia investigation than previously known.

Steele testified Sussman provided him with claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a late July meeting. These allegations made their way into a mid-September 2016 memo that became part of Steele’s dossier, although Steele repeatedly misspells “Alfa” as “Alpha.” Shortly after writing that memo, Steele met with Elias, who was the general counsel for Clinton’s campaign and had personally hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 on the campaign’s behalf. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson hired Steele in June 2016. It is not known what Steele and Elias discussed at their meeting.

Election security

It looks like Putin conned the FBI into the ‘Russiagate’ probe

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Russia investigation launched and conducted by James Comey’s Federal Bureau of Investigation deserves to rank as one of the agency’s great blunders — at best.

President Trump famously calls the probe a hoax, a label he uses liberally, but in this instance, it may literally be true.

We’ve spent years obsessing about Russian meddling in our politics, and now it turns out that the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign that morphed into the Mueller probe may have been instigated, in part, by Russian disinformation.

In other words, the Kremlin may have succeeded in getting us to turn even more viciously against ourselves and conduct our politics in an atmosphere characterized by screaming headlines, dark insinuations and endless investigations — all by feeding a few lies to a private eye hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

And the people who did the most to whip up this hysteria were the same ones who professed to be most alarmed at Russia meddling.

Election security

Psychologist: Big Tech Will Use “Subliminal Methods” to Shift 15 Million Votes on Election Day


After the 2016 presidential election, Epstein surmised that search engine bias shifted 2-3 million votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor, and he warns that the number in 2020 could be five times that amount.

The author says that Google and other social media giants “can shift opinions and votes in numerous ways that people can’t detect” via “a wide variety of subliminal methods of persuasion that can, in minutes, shift the voting preferences of 20 percent or more of undecided voters without anyone having the slightest idea they’ve been manipulated.”

A leak of Google emails to the Wall Street Journal back in 2018 already exposed how Google engineers had sought to investigate how they could manipulate a user’s “ephemeral experiences” to change their mind on the Trump travel ban.

“Ephemeral experiences are those fleeting ones we have every day when we view online content that’s generated on-the-fly and isn’t stored anywhere: newsfeeds, search suggestions, search results, and so on,” writes Epstein. “No authority can go back in time to see what search suggestions or search results you were shown, but dozens of randomized, controlled, double-blind experiments I’ve conducted show that such content can dramatically shift opinions and voting preferences. See the problem?”

Election security

Tulsi Gabbard: Presidential candidates must also condemn election interference by US intelligence agencies

Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.

A “news article” published last week in the Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.

Election security

How the U.S. Intelligence community is intervening in the 2020 election

What's driving the U.S. intelligence community intervention in presidential politics is not just fear of Trump, but fear of losing control of the presidency. From 1947 to 2017, the CIA and other secret agencies sometimes clashed with presidents, especially Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Carter. But since the end of the Cold War, under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, the secret agencies had no such problem.

Under Trump, the intelligence community has seen a vast loss of influence. Trump is contemptuous of the CIA's daily briefing. As demonstrated by his pressure campaign on Ukraine, his foreign policies are mostly transactional. Trump is not guided by the policy process or even any consistent doctrine, other than advancing his political and business interests. He's not someone who is interested in doing business with the intelligence community.

The intelligence community fears the rise of Sanders for a different reason. The socialist senator rejects the national security ideology that guided the intelligence community in the Cold War and the war on terror. Sanders' position is increasingly attractive, especially to young voters, and thus increasingly threatening to the former spy chiefs who yearn for a return to the pre-Trump status quo. A Sanders presidency, like a second term for Trump, would thwart that dream. Sanders is not interested in national security business as usual either.

Election security

Why the Trump-Russia intelligence report doesn't quite add up

The New York Times reported on Thursday that "intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected."

I'm not convinced that gives full context to the briefing. I suspect a Democratic member asked a briefer something along the lines of "Do you assess that Russia is trying to reelect Trump?" The briefer then probably offered a hedged response in the affirmative. I believe the core of the briefing was likely situated around an assessment that Russia is preparing to ramp up efforts to undermine the election and U.S. civil society.

That's very different from that which the New York Times report implies: a high-confidence national intelligence assessment that Russia is interfering to see Trump triumph over any and all of the Democratic presidential primary field.

First off, any intelligence assessment that Russia is interfering to reelect Trump would require a wide depth of diverse, high-value sources. At the very least, any intelligence product offering that conclusion would be based on highly reliable human source and signal intelligence reporting from or on people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the GRU, and each Russian government/contractor arm the United States believes is engaged in the interference effort. Considering the sensitivity with which any Russian 2020 interference operation will be regarded in Moscow (which is keen to avoid new U.S. sanctions or other retaliatory measures and so will work to maintain deniability), it is unlikely that the full degree and election-outcome intent of Russia's interference campaign are yet known. At least to the degree, that is, that would allow the intelligence community to come before the assembled mass of the congressional intelligence committees and offer a high confidence assessment to that effect.

Election security

US intelligence warned House members Russia is working to get Trump re-elected – reports

US intelligence officials are reported to have warned members of Congress last week that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2020 election campaign in favour of Donald Trump, in a briefing that led to the abrupt removal of the acting director of national intelligence.

When Trump heard about the briefing, he railed at the acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, over what the president saw as disloyalty, the Washington Post reported. Until then, Maguire had been a leading candidate to become permanent DNI and is understood to have told colleagues he expected to stay on in the position.

But in the wake of the briefing and Oval Office confrontation, Trump announced the appointment of a hardline loyalist, the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, in an acting capacity, which does not require Senate confirmation.

Election security

US election warning: Cyber attack expert cautions 2020 poll to be ‘dirtiest EVER’

THE US Presidential election will be won and lost online more than any other poll in history. But a digital propaganda expert believes digital misinformation and disinformation coupled with geopolitics will make this poll ‘the dirtiest ever'.
Dr Samuel Wooley, the co-founder of the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford, believes this election will be like no other, with voters both exploited and influenced by increasingly sophisticated technology and social media. He told Express.co.uk: “This year’s American presidential election will be the dirtiest and is going to be fraught with misinformation and disinformation.

Election security

Committee leaders recommend an integrated response to cyber events and disregard for political affiliations moving forward.

Senior Obama administration officials responding to reports elements tied to the Russian government had made cyber intrusions into the Democratic National Committee sought to delay and restrict the dissemination of the information, even from the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, according to interviews conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In a report out today detailing the government’s response to Russia’s campaign to interfere with the 2016 election, the committee found “the decision to limit and delay information sharing about the foreign influence threat inadvertently constrained the Obama Administration’s ability to respond.”

The report is the third in a series of five planned to dissect Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, including disinformation campaigns conducted via social media, phishing attacks on key party officials, and cyber intrusions into voting systems. It makes a number of recommendations based on lessons learned from those events, and was accompanied by an optimistic view of prospects for November’s contest.

Election security

NPR Poll: Majority Of Americans Believe Trump Encourages Election Interference

Weeks before the first votes of the 2020 presidential election, Americans report a high level of concern about how secure that election will be and worry about the perils of disinformation, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said they believed the U.S. is not very prepared or not prepared at all to keep November's election safe and secure.

Reflecting the polarization of the Trump era, two-thirds of Democrats think the country isn't prepared, while 85% of Republicans said they think it is.

"Like so many issues, Americans view election security from opposite poles of the partisan divide," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll.

President Trump, who has often disputed the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, gets low marks from many voters on his handling of election security.

Driven by Democrats and independents, 56% of those surveyed think Trump has not done very much or has done nothing at all to make sure there will be no future election interference — although 75% of Republicans think he has done enough.

Election security

Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’

An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles.

More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” are set to be released over the next months.

It comes as Christopher Steele, the ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk and the intelligence expert behind the so-called “Steele dossier” into Trump’s relationship with Russia, said that while the company had closed down, the failure to properly punish bad actors meant that the prospects for manipulation of the US election this year were even worse.

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The release of documents began on New Year’s Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Election security

Russiagate Investigation Now Endangers Obama

Former US President Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned 180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs.

The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or her own personal reasons. Either way, it’s treason (crime that is intended to, and does, endanger the continued functioning of the Constitution itself*), and Mr. Obama is now being actively investigated, as possibly having done this. The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. Although he, of course, cannot be removed from office (since he is no longer in office), he is liable under criminal laws, the same as any other American would be, if he committed any crime while he was in office.

Election security

It's time former CIA Director John Brennan answered for his role in the Russia investigation

The U.S. attorney investigating the origins of the intelligence community’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 meddling, and President Trump’s connection to it, has a new target: former CIA Director John Brennan.

John Durham, the federal prosecutor hand-picked by Attorney General William Barr to look into misconduct in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, has reportedly asked for Brennan’s emails, call logs, and other documents, according to three officials briefed on the matter.

The report confirms what has long been speculated: The deep-rooted irresponsibility uncovered by Inspector General Michael Horowitz extends far beyond the FBI, and Brennan had something to do with it. In fact, it’s possible Brennan led the FBI down the rabbit hole that was the Russia hoax, feeding the agency foreign intelligence while distancing himself from the problematic Steele dossier.

Now, Durham wants to know what Brennan thought about Christopher Steele, the former British spy who was on the Democratic National Committee’s payroll, and whether Brennan’s private comments about this intelligence contradicted with his public statements.

Election security

FBI spying is a far bigger scandal than the Trump impeachment

Of the two biggest news stories this year, only one of them is truly a scandal, and it’s not the one that's led to the ridiculously partisan impeachment.

No, the big scandal is that our most important and powerful law enforcement agency, the FBI, engaged in an unwarranted spy operation against a major party's presidential campaign. That story is only just now being told, thanks to U.S. Attorney General William Barr having called for multiple investigations into the matter.

It’s a scandal of epic proportions, and yet New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who insists he’s a conservative living in the real world, thinks it’s only on the same scale as an impeachment by Democrats over a phone call.

“If conservatives are right to object to the abuse of power by F.B.I. agents,” wrote Stephens on Wednesday, “shouldn’t they be far more alarmed at the abuse of investigatory and other powers for political ends by the president of the United States?”

Well, yes, that would be the case if Trump had abused his “investigatory and other powers for political ends.” But that’s not what he did. Whether Trump abused the power of his office is at best debatable. But at minimum, we know that high-level FBI agents, elected to nothing, abused their own power for what looks like the purpose of taking down a presidential candidate they didn’t like. That fact isn’t up for debate. The inspector general said it, and so did the head judge of the FISA court, which the FBI relies on for surveillance warrants.

Election security

Russia’s Top Diplomat: We’re Ready to Publish Our Correspondence With U.S. on Election Meddling Allegations

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed concerns about Russian interference in U.S. elections and waged a bizarre personal attack on an American prisoner being held in Moscow after meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump on Tuesday.

The disagreements between Russia’s top diplomat and his American counterpart were on full display as soon as Pompeo said at a joint press conference that he’d put his foot down with Moscow and made clear the Trump administration would not put up with election meddling.

“I was clear—it’s unacceptable,” he said.

Lavrov replied that Russia had not seen any proof of election meddling, and when a reporter suggested he could simply “read the Mueller report,” he said there was “no proof of any collusion” in the report.

According to a transcript published by Russia's Foreign Ministry, he also cryptically said the Kremlin was “ready to publicize the correspondence between us and the American administration regarding allegations of interference.”

Election security

Former CIA director Brennan lied to Congress about Steele Dossier, IG report reveals

A dossier of salacious anti-Trump gossip was used to pad out the intelligence community report on supposed Russian election interference, and CIA Director John Brennan may have misled Congress about it, a new report reveals.

According to the Justice Department Inspector General’s report into the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign, the information contained in the now-infamous ‘Steele Dossier’ was used to inform the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s “Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” published several weeks before President Donald Trump assumed office. 

A summary of the dossier was included in the assessment, former FBI director James Comey told the Inspector General’s office, because Brennan and a cohort of intelligence personnel felt it “important enough and consistent enough” to warrant entry.

Election security

Gabbard campaign accuses Clinton of defamation over 'fabricated' Russian asset claim, demands retraction

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is accusing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of defamation over a recent statement that implied Gabbard was a Russian asset and is demanding that Clinton issue a retraction.

A letter from the Gabbard campaign’s legal counsel insisted that Gabbard is not a Russian asset, and that Clinton knew the statement was untrue when she said it.

“In making the statement, you knew it was false. Congresswoman Gabbard is not a Russian asset and is not being groomed by Russia,” the letter said. “Besides your statement, no law enforcement or intelligence agencies have claimed, much less presented any evidence, that Congresswoman Gabbard is a Russian asset. This fabricated story is so facially improbable that it is actionable as defamation.”

The letter is part of Gabbard’s continuing pushback after Clinton appeared on the podcast Campaign HQ with David Plouffe on Oct. 17. During the conversation, Clinton said, “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And, that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset. I mean, totally.”

Election security

It’s the DNC, Stupid: Democratic Party, Not Russia, Has Delegitimized the Democratic Process

Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public’s doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party’s subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment’s willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.

The Democratic Party’s bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC, as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.

Election security

Hannity: Reports on alleged FISA abuse and origins of Russia probe will ‘shock the conscience and soul of the nation

Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity said the release of investigations into the FBI and Justice Department probes of President Trump and his campaign will "shock the conscience and soul of the nation."

"There's a lot coming," Hannity said. "We got the Horowitz report on FISA report ... my sources tell me it will shock the conscience and soul of the nation and when the Durham report comes out, that will similarly shock the conscience and soul of the nation about abuse of power and corruption," said Hannity during this year's Politicon in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday.

WHERE IS THE FISA REPORT?

For weeks, it’s been speculated the long-awaited review of alleged surveillance abuses by the Department of Justice and the FBI during the investigation into Russia’s purported meddling in the 2016 presidential election could drop any day — though Hannity believes a November release is likely.

"We know it's finished, it still hasn't been released to the public, and we've seen delay after delay after delay," Hannity said in an earlier segment of his show.

For more than a year and a half, Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating alleged misconduct related to the FISA warrants delivered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department and the FBI obtained warrants in 2016 to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page. It is unclear, at this point, if Page was the only Trump official that the DOJ obtained a FISA warrant against.