FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday that it is, “the intelligence community’s consensus that Russia continues to try to influence our elections, primarily through what we would call malign foreign influence.”
“But we certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020, through what I would call more than malign foreign influence side of things – social media, use of proxies, state media, online journals, etc. – an effort to both sow divisiveness and discord and, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to primarily, to denigrate Vice President Biden, and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
FBI Director Wray: "We certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020…to both sow divisiveness and discord and…to denigrate Vice President Biden."
Full video here: https://t.co/aLfZmkqbcC pic.twitter.com/CAq4VHoRqI
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 17, 2020
Now this would be sobering enough, but when you factor in that Donald Trump and his Department of Homeland Security head, Chad Wolf, are aiding and abetting Russia in the process, it becomes truly ominous. You recall how a mere two weeks ago, on September 2, a story broke that Chad Wolf blocked the publication of an intelligence bulletin warning about a Russian disinformation campaign attacking Joe Biden, specifically his mental fitness, in order to influence the election.
That action, in turn, prompted the stunning announcement from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, that congress would no longer be receiving in-person intelligence briefings. The excuse given for that is that Ratcliffe wanted to avoid “leaks” about intelligence. It wasn’t about leaks, it was about protecting Mother Russia.
EXCLUSIVE: DHS withheld publication of intelligence bulletin warning of Russian scheme to push “allegations about the poor mental health” of Joe Biden, per emails and document draft obtained by @ABC. @jonkarl has the full story. https://t.co/E2Af2hBsTz pic.twitter.com/Ro5yk3BkzQ
— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 2, 2020
And don’t forget Rudy Giuliani and his buddy, Andrii Derkach. Derkach or “dirt cache” was Giuliani’s source to discredit Biden. Unfortunately for Rudy and for the Team Trump, on September 7, the Department of the Treasury denounced Derkach as a Russian spy and sanctioned him. Politico:
“Derkach, a Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services,” Treasury found. “Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
Derkach has previously denied trying to interfere in the U.S. election, calling it “nonsense” in a statement to POLITICO earlier this summer. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the sanctions designation.
But Treasury’s announcement underscores growing evidence that Russia is mounting a similar campaign to its efforts in 2016 in an attempt to boost Trump’s candidacy and damage his rival. Trump administration intelligence officials have concluded that Russia is seeking to damage Biden and support Trump through actors like Derkach. In addition to Derkach, Treasury also sanctioned three Russian nationals accused of mounting a campaign to influence the U.S. elections, in part through identity theft.
Now bear, in mind, Derkach is Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley and Devin Nunes’ source.They are all on the crazy train to prove that Hunter Biden did something wrong, and it’s gotten so embarrassingly transparent that Mitt Romney spoke out against this political witch hunt yesterday.
The October surprise, and this is pure conjecture at this point, was to be a combination of dirt dug up on Hunter Biden by a Russian spy, culminating in a refutation of Trump’s impeachment, and some kind of revelation from John Durham’s investigation on how badly treated poor Donald Trump was. I’m speculating about this, because of the prominent investigator who left the Durham investigation a few days ago and because of this tidbit dug up by BuzzFeed News.
Heh. Just noticed @OANN deleted all Derkach tagged stories from its site, including a Reuters story on the Ukrainian MP and US-labeled "active Russian agent" being sanctioned for election interference. But — oops! — it didn't delete one misspelled with "Derkash," which remains. pic.twitter.com/Mr9739hrxg
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) September 17, 2020
Read the headline in the lower right hand corner, “One America News To Debut Special Featuring Exclusive Interviews With Former Ukrainian Officials and Rudy Giuliani, Debunking Schiff’s Impeachment Narrative.”
Two things: A corrupt Team Trump aided by equally corrupt and complicit senators and representatives are using taxpayer dollars for a partisan witch hunt to interfere in the election; and Russia is actively interfering in the election as well, and that’s according to the head of the FBI. So we’ve got insider activity in our government, aiding and abetting a hostile foreign power, to influence our election. This is the state of play in this country, 46 days before the election.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but while it wasn’t true at the time, almost seven decades later Joe McCarthy turned out to be correct – only the folks working for Russia infesting our federal government were from his own side!
How messed up is that?
Too many days I feel like I’m trapped INSIDE the looking glass with howler monkeys flinging bags of flaming shit at me and swarms of flying scorpions come at me in waves. Escape you say? I wish. Because escape to one side means “escape” into a radioactive wasteland that’s even killing cockroaches, and “escape” to the other side means “escape” into the vault at Ft. Meade where all the deadliest viruses and bacteria are stored but EVERY container has been broken open!
We’re going to find out on Election Day if there is a majority of Americans who are awake and interested in saving this country, or if the low information, no information lunatics have taken over.
Cult members allow no facts into their house of cards. Waste of time talking to them. The solution America is: get off your collective arses & use the one tool we have that was paid for IN BLOOD…VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!
This is absolutely right. The only thing that is going to insure any kind of sanity returning to government is to vote out Trump by a huge margin that he can’t contest.
On a related note, I couldn’t believe Lawrence O’Donnell didn’t push back on Woodward when he stated the Mueller Report found no collusion. It found that with all the Trump people lying and destroying evidence Trump had effectively obstructed justice. LO should have gently pointed this out.
The “no collusion” is a misunderstood phrase. If I understand Peter Strzock correctly, he said that a combination of the Mueller report and other investigative materials prove up collusion. The Mueller report alone may not prove up the legal standard for collusion, but bear in mind, Rod Rosenstein did a number on the scope of the investigation. Trump’s dealings with Russia should have been investigated, not the narrow scope that Rosenstein ordered Mueller to look at.
Mueller said he couldn’t prove *conspiracy*, because people lied to the investigators and destroyed or hid evidence. (Collusion has no legal meaning.)
True. “An unjust law is no law at all.” St. Francis. While children & families are destroyed, they want 2 argue semantics.
That’s what I kept wanting O’Donnell to say to Woodward. Also that we now know that contrary to the impression given to the public at the outset (and for a long time afterwards) Mueller had a very narrow mandate – to investigate and report on crimes on the specific issue of conspiracy against the United States. There is no crime of “collusion” in the Federal Code. Conspiracy to do certain things is however a crime and Mueller was only able to partially investigate matters -in large part because he was proscribed from looking at Trump’s finances (which would have provided important information and leads) and also because as Mueller noted in his report Trump’s own obstruction and that of his people prevented Mueller from fully doing his work. Rosenstein never turned Mueller loose the way everyone expected (base on all past Special Counsel/Independent Counsel Investigations) but Mueller and his team wanted to keep looking. People forget that a month before Mueller let it be known he was wrapping up and would be submitting his report he’d requested and gotten approval from the judge to extend the work of his grand jury for another six months. And a few weeks later all of a sudden he’s “done” and will be writing up his findings?
As his testimony before Congress made apparent long before it was over Mueller was clearly uncomfortable being there and intended to stick to what he said he’d do which is stay within the four corners of his report. Basically it all amounted to people citing passages, Mueller looking at them and saying “that’s what the report says.” After a few hours on the first day it was apparent that was going to be it, and that hopes for him “editorializing” a la James Comey wasn’t going to happen. It was apparent the whole circus would fall flat.
Given that I sure as hell wish someone would have asked Mueller the same question O’Donnell should have put to Woodward (as in whether he dug into the question): “In January you requested and got an extension of your grand jury for another six months of service. Weeks later you let DOJ know you would be submitting your report. Did you have ANY conversation with Rosenstein in which you stated why you wanted your grand jury to serve another six months? If not then why not? If you did, what was Rosenstein’s response. Did he directly order, or imply that it was time to stop investigating and submit your report?”
I find it incredible to believe someone as experienced and smart as Woodward wouldn’t have delved into that question. I sure as hell wish it had been aired when the country was watching. Yes, it would have put Mueller on the spot, but it would have made the whole issue of just how limited the scope of Mueller’s investigation actually was, and how much control Rosenstein might have been exerting to control things a topic of discussion and then investigation by journalists.
Now, with Mueller supposedly preparing to testify again I sure as hell hope that Democrats on the panel are prepared to dig into this. And I think had O’Donnell responded to Woodward the way you and I appear to think he should have the fire to do so would have been lit.
‘Russia is mounting a similar campaign to its efforts in 2016’–similar, maybe, but I would say that they are going all out this time because we are forewarned about their tactics, and there have been some efforts to counter their toxic stew of BS. I don’t know that we’re as ready for them as we could be, especially in light of the fact that the Republican Party is acting as ‘in country’ aiders and abettors in the hostile take over of our country. The complicity of the Rudy’s, the Ron Johnson’s, et all is shocking. They should all be brought up on charges of conspiracy, treason, sedition for undermining the country to turn us over to their Russian overlord.
They should never have put Ratcliffe in ANY intelligence position. (The first time he was nominated, he was judged unqualified.)
We know the Russians are interfering, we’ve been told, so what do we do about it?
Don’t get your news from FB or twitter. Tell others not to do so. Instead news should be obtained from mainstream outlets, preferably more than one. And finally, don’t believe a fucking word that comes out of the mouths of Republicans on Johnson’s committee, or from Devin Nunes and his House pals.
I am seriously wondering why Trump’s buddy, who owns Newsmax, would be running with this. And obviously Doug Collins is all fired up. There’s something missing here. http://www.jobztip.com