Tag: Russian election interference

Trump: Obama Didn’t ‘Choke,’ He ‘Colluded or Obstructed’

President Trump on Monday said President Obama took no action against Russia for its actions in the 2016 election because he expected Hillary Clinton to win.

Trump concluded that Obama had not “choked” in taking no action against Russia, as a senior administration official told The Washington Post. Instead, Trump said Obama had “colluded” or “obstructed.”

“The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win…..and did not want to ‘rock the boat,’ ” Trump tweeted. “He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.”

“The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia … under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!” he added.

Trump’s accusations come as he is facing multiple investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia during the election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Moscow interfered in the U.S. election specifically to help Trump win.

The Justice Department, FBI and Senate and House Intelligence committees are probing possible links between Trump’s team and the Kremlin.

Trump in an interview last week criticized Obama over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, accusing the former president of doing “nothing.”

“Well I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it. But nobody wants to talk about that,” Trump told “Fox and Friends Weekend.”

“The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before they even – before the election. And I hardly see it. It’s an amazing thing,” Trump continued.

The Obama administration is facing fresh criticism after The Washington Post reported that Obama was slow and cautious in responding to Russian election interference.

Some officials were reportedly wary of taking action before the election, which was dominated by Trump making claims on the campaign trail of the election being “rigged” against him.

[The Hill]

 

Trump Officials Pressed State Dept Staffers for Plans to Lift Russia Sanctions

Trump administration officials pressed State Department staffers to develop plans for removing sanctions against Russia almost immediately after President Trump took office in January, Yahoo News reported Thursday.

In turn, according to Yahoo News, State Department employees sought to convince lawmakers to codify the sanctions, which were put in place by former President Barack Obama in response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Former Coordinator of Sanctions Policy Dan Fried, who retired from the State Department in February, said that he received phone calls from concerned officials tasked with developing plans to lift the sanctions asking him to intervene and “stop this.”

“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” Fried told Yahoo News, saying he eventually contacted lawmakers, including Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.), in an effort to codify the sanctions, which would complicate efforts by Trump to lift them.

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski, who, at the time, had just left the State Department, also brought the issue up with members of Congress.

The revelation State Department officials had scrambled to prevent the Trump administration from doing away with Obama-era sanctions on Russia comes as the FBI and at least four congressional committees are investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It also follows reports last week that Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner had discussed setting up a backchannel line of communication between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin with the country’s Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Kushner is currently under FBI scrutiny for his meetings with Kislyak and Russian banking executive Sergey Gorkov in December. He did not disclose those meetings.

Also present at the meeting with Kislyak was former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign from the White House in February amid revelations that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak in the month before Trump took office.

As a presidential candidate and since taking office, Trump has expressed a desire to improve U.S.-Russia relations, though he has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow and has called the federal investigations into the matter a “witch hunt.”

[The Hill]

Trump Adviser Roger Stone Admits to Contact With DNC Hacker

Roger Stone, President Trump’s former campaign adviser, on Friday admitted to having private conversations with a hacker who helped leak information from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during last year’s campaign.

Stone insisted to The Washington Times that the conversations were “completely innocuous.”

“It was so perfunctory, brief and banal I had forgotten it,” Stone told The Times of a private Twitter conversation he had with a hacker known as Guccifer 2.0.

Guccifer 2.0 is believed by the U.S. intelligence community to be a cover identity for Russian intelligence operatives. The intelligence community concluded that Moscow sought to interfere in last year’s election to help Trump win.

Stone told the Times he exchanged a handful of messages with Guccifer 2.0 in the weeks following a hack of the DNC, which was revealed in late July.

In one message from Aug. 14, Stone said he was “delighted” that Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account had been reinstated after being suspended.

“wow. thank u for writing back, and thank u for an article about me!!! do u find anything interesting in the docs i posted?” Guccifer 2.0 wrote to Stone, referring to an article Stone wrote for Breitbart News on Aug. 5 which attributed the DNC breach to Guccifer 2.0.

“i’m pleased to say that u r great man. please tell me if i can help u anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote in an Aug. 17 message to Stone.

Stone tweeted on Aug. 21, “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.” Weeks later, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails were leaked to WikiLeaks, leading many to believe Stone was aware in advance of the hack.

Stone denied any connection to the hacks at the time.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security last December released a joint report detailing how federal investigators linked the Russian government to hacks of Democratic Party organizations. Reports from the intelligence community said Guccifer 2.0 was used to publicly release the data from hacks, but that the hacks themselves were conducted by Russia.

“The content of the exchange is, as you can see completely innocuous and perfunctory,” Stone told The Times.

“Even if [Guccifer 2.0] is/was a Russian asset, my brief Aug. 14 correspondence with him on twitter comes AFTER I wrote about his role in the DNC hacks (Aug 5) and AFTER Wikileaks released the DNC material,” Stone said. “How does one collaborate on a matter after the fact?”

The revelation of Stone’s contacts come as the Trump administration is under scrutiny for its potential ties to Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and other aides have been revealed to have met or spoke with top Russian figures ahead of the election.

Guccifer 2.0 had contacts with The Hill during last year’s presidential campaign, providing quotes as well as leaking documents.

In one leak, Guccifer 2.0 shared information about Democrats with The Hill, including the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of big-ticket donors as well as memos used to prepare House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama and DCCC officials for a fundraising event.

Another leak highlighted efforts by Democrats to prevent Mike Parrish from winning the party’s primary for a contested House seat in Pennsylvania.

(h/t The Hill)

Sessions Rejects Evidence From Intelligence Agencies, Says He Doesn’t Know If Russia Wanted Trump to Win

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News that he did not know whether Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.

That assessment differs from the view of U.S. intelligence agencies, which released a report in January declaring that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

The report also said Moscow did so in part because it “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Sessions’s comments about Russian meddling in the election came during an interview with Tucker Carlson — the first he has given since he said earlier Thursday that he would recuse himself from any campaign-related probes. While spokespeople for the FBI, which Sessions supervises, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, the remarks are sure to rankle some within the agencies. John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of CIA, said, “Many within the intelligence community would be surprised that the attorney general would not recall their conclusion that the Russian hacking was intended in part to favor Trump’s election.”

Asked whether the matter would upset members of the intelligence community, McLaughlin said, “I think they’re beyond outrage at this point.”

For the most part, Sessions repeated the points he made during a news conference hours earlier on his recusal. He confirmed that he had met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — even though he said during his January confirmation hearing, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Sessions said he had been responding to a particular question from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who, referring to a freshly posted CNN report, asked what Sessions would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

“I think it was an honest answer, Tucker. I thought I was responding exactly to that question,” Sessions said Thursday night.

Carlson soon pressed the attorney general broadly on the topic of Russia and the campaign.

“Did the campaign believe that the Russian government, the Putin government, favored Trump over Clinton in this race?” Carlson asked.

“I have never been told that,” Sessions responded.

“Do you think they did?” Carlson said.

“I don’t have any idea, Tucker. You’d have to ask them,” Sessions said.

It is unclear how Sessions could not have seen or heard of the intelligence community report, which contains the Department of Justice & FBI seal and was released publicly in January, not long before he took over as Attorney General. Then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. held a classified, full-Senate briefing on the matter on Jan. 12. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Trump himself acknowledged for the first time in January that he believed Russian operatives hacked the Democratic Party during the election, though even then, he disputed reports that the Russians acted to help him win. At his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions acknowledged that he was not well informed about Russia’s cyber provocations.

When Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out that the FBI had concluded Russia was behind the intrusion, Sessions observed, “at least that’s what’s been reported.” Later, he allowed, “I have no reason to doubt that.” Asked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) whether he had any reason to doubt the accuracy of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia used cyber attacks “to attempt to influence this last election,” Sessions said, “I have no reason to doubt that and have no evidence that would indicate otherwise.”

The report that concluded Russia sought to help Trump win the presidency said the Kremlin carried out an unprecedented cyber campaign, penetrating U.S. computer systems and relaying emails to WikiLeaks. It said Putin might have been motivated in part by dislike for Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state who he felt was responsible for inciting protests against his government. It was presented to Trump by Obama administration officials including Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James B. Comey.

The report did not address whether the Russian efforts affected the outcome of the election. Sessions also said that was unclear to him.

“People are bringing forth evidence, and there are congressional committees that are investigating that, and I believe the truth will come out. It usually does,” he said.

(h/t Washington Post)

Trump Lashes Out Over Russia Allegations

President Donald Trump couldn’t hold back anymore.

After a weekend of thorny questions and barbed Democratic criticism surrounding ties between his campaign and Moscow, Trump took to his favorite platform Sunday to fight back.

“Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” the president tweeted.

The tweet marked a departure in tone from the Democratic trolling he had done just a day earlier, mocking the opposing party’s newly elected chairman and attempting to sow discord by speculating that the Democratic National Committee had rigged the election against Bernie Sanders’ preferred candidate.

The White House, however, would have been hard-pressed not to weigh in on the subject of Trump associates’ contacts with Russia. Republicans on Sunday faced endless questions about the ongoing investigation into Russia’s role in the presidential election — especially what role, if any, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should play in overseeing it.

In the wake of allegations that associates of Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials prior to the election, emboldened Democrats increased their calls this weekend for an independent prosecutor to take on the case, arguing that Sessions’ role as a Trump campaign surrogate renders him incapable of handling the case impartially.

Even a vigorous Trump supporter, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California, joined the drumbeat on Friday. “You’re right that you cannot have somebody — a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions — who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” Issa told Bill Maher on HBO. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute.”

Issa’s break with the White House suggested the swirling questions surrounding Trump’s ties to Russia were beginning to singe GOP members of Congress. The former House Oversight chairman — famous for his dogged pursuit of the Obama White House — narrowly won reelection in 2016 with Trump atop the ticket and likely faces a competitive challenge in the midterm election.

He told POLITICO in an interview Saturday that his views about transparency and accountability under Trump are simply an extension of his career-long fight for those issues.

“My view is: It’s extremely important that Congress point the guns at the same direction that they were pointed,” said Issa. Under the Trump White House, Republicans must continue to “demand what we were demanding: transparency, accountability.”

“And this is the best time to show leadership. … We need to seize the opportunity and really push hard to have access so that no sacred cows are protected,” he said. “For credibility, we have to hold this president to the level of transparency that the last president took every effort to thwart.”

Issa remained an outlier among Republicans, however, in his call for a special prosecutor. Responding to calls for an independent investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Saturday that the House would not engage in a “witch hunt.”

“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” the California Republican told reporters at the California GOP’s spring convention in Sacramento. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans …?”

“At this point, there’s nothing there,” Nunes insisted. “Once we begin to look at all the evidence, and if we find any American that had any contact with Russian agents or anybody affiliated with the Russian government, then we’ll be glad to, at that point, you know, subpoena those people before the House and let the legislative branch do its oversight and then we would recommend it over to, you know, the appropriate people.”

Still, the topic dominated the Sunday morning news shows, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez each demanding an independent investigation without Sessions at the helm.

“What we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin,” Perez said.

One day earlier, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate committee investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, said he had “grave concerns” about the independence of the probe following a Washington Post report that said Nunes and Sen. Richard Burr, the panel’s GOP chairman, helped the White House knock down negative news stories.

Warner said he had called both Burr and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to express his concerns.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally whose name is frequently linked to a future role in the White House, was among the Republicans insisting there’s no need for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

“The Justice Department over the course of time has shown itself, with the professionals that are there, to have the ability to investigate these type of things,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “This is whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we’ve seen it happen on both sides, when a special prosecutor gets involved, the thing gets completely out of control. And I think that doesn’t serve anybody’s purposes.”

The attorney general’s former Senate colleague Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Sunday there is “no doubt” that the Senate’s investigation into Russia’s role in last year’s presidential election will be fair. And he insisted it’s far too early to demand that Sessions recuse himself from any investigation into the Russia issue.

“I think that’s way, way getting ahead of ourselves here, Chuck,” Cotton told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “There’s no allegations of any crime occurring. There’s not even indication that there’s criminal investigations under way by the FBI, as opposed to counterintelligence investigations, which the FBI conducts all the time as our main counterintelligence bureau. If we get down that road, that’s a decision that Attorney General Sessions can make at the time.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Associates Communicated With Russian Intelligence Officials Before Election

A number of associates linked to President Trump’s campaign and business interests are part of the federal inquiry into communications with Russian government officials who sought to meddle in the November election, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The extent and purpose of those alleged contacts continue to be weighed, including whether the associates were aware they were communicating with Russian intelligence officials or those working on behalf of the Russian government, said the official who is not authorized to comment publicly. The official added that there was no evidence of collusion to tilt the election.

TheNew York Times reported Wednesday that phone records and intercepted calls show Trump campaign officials spoke last year with people in Russian intelligence.

Though national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired this week for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, the official said the course of the months-long inquiry — which has amassed intercepts of telephone calls, business records and subject interviews — has not been significantly altered.

Flynn was interviewed by FBI agents following last month’s inauguration after public statements by top administration officials, including Vice President Pence, about Flynn’s pre-inaugural discussions with the Russian ambassador did not track the contents of the intercepted telephone calls. The administration officials had strongly refuted claims that Flynn had discussed sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration.

The transcripts of the calls proved otherwise, prompting then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates to alert White House counsel Donald McGahn that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail as a result of his misrepresentations to senior officials.

Amid the renewed questions and investigations about contacts between his associates and Russia over last year’s election, President Trump on Wednesday denounced “conspiracy theories” about his relationship with the Russians and said “illegal” news leaks brought down Flynn.

“It’s a criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time — before me, but now it’s really going on,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though aides said Trump demanded Flynn’s resignation Monday over lying about his talk with the Russian ambassador, the president praised his former aide as “a wonderful man” who has been treated “very unfairly” by what he called the “fake media, in many cases.”

Trump’s comments came as congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, served notice that the Russia story is not going away, especially in light of Flynn’s resignation and reports that Trump campaign aides had contacts with Russian operatives during the election in which Russian hackers were accused of sabotaging the Democrats.

“It is now readily apparent that Gen. Flynn’s resignation is not the end of the story but only the beginning,” said Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York.

Schumer called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia inquiry, saying the former Alabama Republican senator’s close ties to Trump and the campaign disqualified him.

During confirmation hearings last month, Sessions said he was not aware of conflicts that would force his recusal and a close aide to the attorney general said Wednesday that position had not changed. The aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said the attorney general’s oversight of the inquiry would be re-evaluated if developments warranted.

In a morning tweet storm, Trump denounced the media and critics over Russia.

“The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,” Trump said. “@MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!”

In another tweet, Trump accused his critics of scandal-mongering out of deference to defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” Trump wrote.

Trump complained about news leaks in a third tweet: “Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia.”

He added, “The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!”

(h/t USA Today)

Despite Denials, Russians Were in Contact with Trump Campaign

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

Mr. Flynn could not immediately be reached for comment about the conversations, details of which were first reported by The Washington Post. Despite Mr. Flynn’s earlier denials, his spokesman told the Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

Days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Mike Pence also denied that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. He said he had personally spoken to Mr. Flynn, who assured him that the conversation was an informal chat that began with Mr. Flynn extending Christmas wishes.

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Mr. Pence said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

Some officials regarded the conversation as a potential violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government, according to one current and one former American official familiar with the case.

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

The call is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s advisers have come under scrutiny from American counterintelligence officials. The F.B.I. is also investigating Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

But, at the very least, openly engaging in policy discussions with a foreign government during a presidential transition is a remarkable breach of protocol. The norm has been for the president-elect’s team to respect the sitting president, and to limit discussions with foreign governments to pleasantries. Any policy discussions, even with allies, would ordinarily be kept as vague as possible.

“It’s largely shunned, period. But one cannot rule it out with an ally like the U.K.,” said Derek Chollet, who was part of the Obama transition in 2008 and then served in senior roles at the State Department, White House and Pentagon.

“But it’s way out of bounds when the said country is an adversary, and one that has been judged to have meddled in the election,” he added. “It’s just hard to imagine anyone having a substantive discussion with an adversary, particularly if it’s about trying to be reassuring.”

(h/t New York Times)

Trump: Only ‘Stupid People’ Don’t Want a Good Relationship With Russia

President-elect Donald Trump is hitting Twitter hard on Saturday, one day after the release of an intelligence report that concluded Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election with the intention of helping him win.

After two earlier tweets that criticized Democrats and downplayed Russia’s role in the election, Trump tweeted that “only ‘stupid’ people” do not want a good relationship with Russia, adding that the United States has “enough problems around the world.”

“Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!” the president-elect wrote on Twitter early Saturday.

On Friday, the Intelligence Community released a declassified report that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to help Trump win the White House.

“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the report said.

Trump, who signaled throughout his presidential campaign that he was open to warmer relations with the Kremlin, has criticized United States intelligence agencies over reports about Russia’s cyber activity.

Earlier on Saturday, the president-elect said that there is “no evidence” Russia’s cyber activities affected the election outcome.

“Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!” he wrote on Twitter.

The Intelligence Community’s report notes that it did not analyze the impact of Russia’s actions.

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion,” the report said.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Goes on Hours-Long Tweetstorm Over Russian Hacking

Twitter

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the only reason the hacking of the Democratic National Committee is discussed is because Democrats are “totally embarrassed” about their election loss, and he urged friendlier relations with Russia.

“Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!” Trump said as part of a Saturday morning tweetstorm.

His comments came a day after the declassification of a US intelligence report that concluded Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, ordered a campaign to influence the US election and hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning.

Trump pointed to “gross negligence” by the DNC as the reason the hacking took place.

He also denied suggestions that the Russian hacking could have affected the election results, saying “there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results” because voting machines weren’t “touched.”

The US intelligence community’s report concluded that Russia — led by Putin — developed a “clear preference for President-elect Trump. But it did not assess the impact that Russian activities had on the election outcome, as Business Insider’s Pamela Engel reported.

The president-elect further touched on his relationship with Russia, saying that only “stupid people” and “fools” would think that having a good relationship with Russia is “bad.”

“When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now, and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some fo the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!” he tweeted.

Here are the tweets:

(h/t Business Insider)

Trump Praises Putin Over US Sanctions From Election Interference

After the Obama administration’s tough new sanctions against Russia put the president-elect in a vulnerable political position at home, in his own party and abroad, Donald Trump chose to respond in familiar fashion – with praise for Vladimir Putin.

The president-elect has repeatedly spoken approvingly of Putin and called for closer relations with Russia. On Friday, he used Twitter to applaud Putin’s restrained response to the expulsion by the US of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds.

The tweet, like many from Trump that seem calculated to shock and offend, caused a predictable media furore. However, it probably will have done nothing to alleviate the difficult political position in which Trump now finds himself.

The president-elect has been consistently skeptical about the US intelligence consensus that Russia ordered cyber-attacks on Democratic party targets as a way to influence the 2016 election in his favor – the reason for Obama’s new sanctions. At one point, he suggested the culprit might have been China, another state or even a 400lb man in his bedroom.

On taking office in January, Trump might therefore be expected to simply end the Obama sanctions. And as president, he could do so; presidential orders can simply be repealed by the executive branch.

But the situation is not that simple. If Trump did choose to remove the sanctions, he would find himself at odds with his own party. Senior Republicans in Congress responded to the Obama sanctions by identifying Russia as a major geopolitical foe and criticizing the new measures only as a case of too little too late. Some promised a push for further measures in Congress.

Trump may therefore choose not to reverse the new sanctions. If so, he will find himself at odds with the man he so constantly praises.

On Friday, the Kremlin responded to the moves, including the expulsion of 35 suspected intelligence operatives and the closing of two Russian facilities in the US, with a shrug. Putin, it seems, is willing simply to wait until Trump moves into the Oval Office. Trump’s tweet suggested he is too.

But such provocative words could not distract the media and public from another domestic concern for Trump – the growing perception that his predecessor has acted to his disadvantage.

“The sanctions were clearly an attempt by the Obama administration to throw a wrench into – or [to] box in – the next administration’s relationship with Russia,” said Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Putin, in part, saw through that and sidestepped it by playing good cop to [Russian foreign minister Sergey] Lavrov and the [state] Duma, who were calling for a reciprocal response.”

Trump will also face pressure from intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Moscow ordered the election cyber-attacks.

“There is now a public record of what Russia did and why they did it,” said Zachary Goldman, executive director of New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security, referring to a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI report issued on Thursday.

“Even if the sanctions can be unwound, you can’t make that public statement go away.”

Goldman also noted an international element to the situation facing Trump. It is important to note, he said, that the new executive order enables Obama and his successors to take retaliatory action against efforts to influence elections held by “allies and partners”. Germany and France will hold elections in 2017.

On a call with reporters on Thursday, a senior White House official said the US had “every indication” that Russia would continue to pursue such cyber-attacks.

‘All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions’
On the same call, officials expressed confidence that the political risk of appearing to cave in to Moscow would prevent any future administration from unwinding the sanctions.

“If a future president decided that he wanted to allow in a large tranche of Russian intelligence agents, presumably a future president could invite that action,” a senior official said.

“We think it would be inadvisable. As my colleague just said, these diplomatic compounds were being used for intelligence purposes. That is a direct challenge to US national security, and I don’t think it would make much sense to reopen Russian intelligence compounds.”

 

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