Updated to 15 June 2019
Bolton says U.S. is conducting ‘offensive cyber’ action to thwart would-be election distrupters
U.S. Begins First Cyberoperation Against Russia Aimed at Protecting Elections
o https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/russian-hacking-usa-cyber-command.html
"U.S. Escalates Online Attacks On Russia's Power Grid" by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perforth, The New York Times, 15 June 2019
o https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html?
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Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Washington Post first op-ed piece set out here in full with its link below publisher makes no copyright claim as to its use under the Fair Use Doctrine as a necessary integral part of the combined sequence comprised of this and the following combined two posts, along with The New York Times and six more pieces from The Washington Post not set out but with links to those seven following this first piece and link, the sequence then completed with a final post providing just a very small sampling of Putin's total known "high confidence" suspected murders, crimes, etc. detailed in and through links in the final post in this series.
Both following combined two posts have been published together with this post in immediate sequence largely to provide readers with a summary overview of but some of the totality of suspiciously concerning circumstances given Putin's just announced coming (now delayed) White House visit by the GOP administration. This is in the midst of a continuous GOP administration contrived chaos seeking to obscure the growing probability that Trump did not legitimately win the 2016 election, along with the certainty this GOP administration is destroying our Constitutional democracy at every turn. This even while Trump repeats ever more loudly a rapidly growing intentional confusion of lies.
Of just one more great concern out of a multitude the GOP administration lies since Helsinki now even are sought to be backed up by "official" GOP administration White House obviously substantively altered Helsinki press conference transcripts and doctored videotapes publicly released made to appear to say exactly the opposite of what in reality actually was said in Helsinki. Namely Putin's response to a reporter's question was "yes" he did direct his administration to help Trump win because Putin directly said he wanted "Trump to win." The GOP administration in its White House public release has somewhat altered the question (which the Russians left out of their transcript altogether) but much more importantly changed each mention of "Trump" to "Clinton". This absurdity is no joke at all first as to what it demonstrates the GOP administration is prepared to do even to the previously recognized integrity of White House supposedly straightforward factual releases to propagate its endless stream of lies.
More immediately one can assume the setback damage caused by the fact that at least one-third of the American voting population either not having seen nor read about the true and correct statement "Trump to win" through their news sources nor even now those despite having been rightly informed are willing to believe Putin said the opposite "Clinton will win" because that is what the flat-out lying GOP administration has "officially said." The danger is all the more obvious that Trump now at this very late hour uses this "Clinton" lie as the basis for his feigning finally being concerned about the 2018 election integrity because of fears of Russian meddling on behalf, of course, on Clinton. Meanwhile everyone knows the entire GOP feels it has no need to direct any resources or real attention to fend off election meddling because the GOP with good reason is confident if anything it only will benefit the GOP the integrity of United States elections the "cornerstone of democracy" be damned.
With the brazen intentional alteration of the White House factual record into falsehoods having been perpetrated knowingly in order to support the false GOP administration narrative championed by the great pathetic liar Trump there no longer can be any question of anything but "corrupt intention." Any last true conservatives of integrity who still have lingered and somehow have not yet managed to find the courage to flee the GOP that no longer exists they can have no excuse if there even was still the chance to come up with one because it is nothing but quite clear beyond a reasonable doubt as to with whom they have altogether knowingly cast their lot.
The GOP "administration's" wrongly asserted claim to head the United States as its legitimate steward representing the People has become progressively exposed daily as a threadbare and now entirely dangerously preposterous proposition. Trump and now the entire GOP reek of illegitimacy such that the GOP administration now is long overdue to be removed post haste if not by the State itself then by the People as necessary with their brothers and sisters in law enforcement and the armed forces beside them the jettisoning the entire complicit GOP state Russian asset sustaining Trump illegitimately in the purported office of "President" for his and the GOP's own entirely criminal survival and self-enrichment as an anti-democratic illegitimate treasonous conspiracy against the United States of America. They must be lawfully removed for profound transgressions and abuses as anticipated in the Nation's founding documents an action which the Founding Fathers almost certainly already would have taken to return the United States to proper order under the Constitution and the legitimate rule of law.
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The Plum Line Opinion
In the past few days, President Trump has given at least some Republicans reason to express displeasure over his relationship with Russia. First he performed a pathetic ritual of subservience before Vladimir Putin, standing beside the Russian leader — after a private meeting between the two, which no aides were permitted to attend — and dismissing the copious evidence of a Russian attack on the 2016 election in deference to Putin’s word.
Then we learned that Putin had suggested that we make Americans available to the Kremlin for questioning, including Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, in exchange for allowing us to question some of the agents who carried out the cyberattack. Trump had called it “an incredible offer” and the White House said he was considering it, before finally backing down after the Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning the idea.
But look past the modest number of Republicans saying that Trump has gone a bit too far here or there, and you see a very different picture. The truth is that the entire GOP is well on its way to becoming a Russian asset.
Are there a few Republican dissenters? Sure. But perhaps we’re having difficulty viewing that whole picture because what’s happening is so utterly bonkers that we can’t quite bring ourselves to see it clearly. So let’s just review just some of the things we know:
- In 2016, the campaign of the Republican nominee for president was approached multiple times by representatives of the Russian government offering to help them win the election. These offers were welcomed with enthusiasm. The campaign was also led for a time by a political consultant with deep financial and personal ties to a Russian oligarch and a Kremlin puppet in Ukraine.
- Multiple members of the Trump team had contacts with the Russian government that they later lied to conceal.
- As part of its attack on the American electoral system, Russian intelligence hacked into Democratic Party systems. Some of the information it found there was released publicly and promoted gleefully by Republicans at all levels in order to help the Trump campaign; information relating to downballot campaigns was passed to Republicans who used it in order to maintain their hold on the House of Representatives.
- Amid the insistence from the intelligence community that in 2018 Russia will likely attempt to once again penetrate the computer systems of state election agencies, Republicans this week killed an effort to provide funding to states to bolster the security of their election systems.
- As part of a lengthy effort to infiltrate the National Rifle Association, an important Republican interest group, an alleged Russian spy began a romance with a Republican activist, met multiple Republican leaders, and fostered a relationship between American gun advocates and Russians. On the night of Trump’s victory, she messaged “I am ready for further orders” to her handler, a Russian banker named Alexander Torshin who is close to Putin.
- The NRA dramatically increased its spending on the 2016 presidential campaign from past years, pouring $30 million into their effort to elect Trump. The FBI is investigating whether that money may have illegally come from Russia, funneled to the organization by Torshin.
- The Trump administration has announced a change to IRS rules so that groups like the NRA will no longer have to identify their donors on their tax forms, making such money almost impossible to trace in the future.
- Over the last few years, the Christian right, another key part of the GOP coalition, has grown increasingly close to Putin, whom they see as an ally in a global clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam.
- In Congress, Republicans have undertaken an aggressive campaign to discredit and, many of them plainly hope, shut down the probe into the Russian attack on America. Though they mounted seven separate investigations of Benghazi, they are nearly united in their position that no further investigation into a hostile foreign power’s attempt to manipulate the American electoral system is necessary.
- Fox News, which functions as the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, has aired relentless attacks on the Russia investigation and calls for it to be shut down.
- Despite the mountain of unambiguous evidence of the Russian attack in 2016, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters continue to say no such attack occurred.
- Hard-core Trump supporters are beginning to argue that even if Russia did attack the American electoral system, it was actually a good thing because it helped Donald Trump get elected.
That last argument has not yet filtered up to more mainstream Republican figures, but give it some time. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller III closes his investigation and presents all his evidence (and more indictments, surely) no one will really be surprised to hear Republican members of Congress and prominent conservative media figures saying that it all worked out for the best because Hillary Clinton isn’t president, and we should just move on.
The president himself has laid the groundwork for that argument to spread. Not only has he repeatedly cast doubt on whether the attack occurred, he insists that he himself didn’t “collude” with Russia, and no matter what, there’s no proof that the attack changed votes, as though that would somehow make the whole thing okay. And you may recall that when news broke that his son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman met with a group of Russians in hopes of getting dirt on Clinton, an outreach that had been presented to them as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” the president claimed that “I think from a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting,” as though working with Russia to defeat his opponent was the most natural thing in the world.
We can speculate on exactly why Trump has been so eager to become Putin’s flunky; it’s obviously a complicated story with roots that go back decades. But what about the rest of the GOP? Some of them have embraced the annexation of their party with gusto, while others are clearly more reluctant. But let’s not forget that they were reluctant to make peace with Trump’s takeover of the GOP, too. Eventually, they realized that since Trump had captured the hearts of the Republican base, they had no choice but to get on board if they wanted to survive.
The same has happened, and will likely continue to happen, with Russia. Had you told them ten years ago that Russian intelligence was going to mount a comprehensive assault on an American election, they’d say that they would respond to such an attack with a furious rage and leave no stone unturned in learning every detail about it so that any collaborators could be mercilessly punished and no such attack could ever occur again. Today though, they’re mostly eager to get everyone to think about something else.
It may be because they’ve convinced themselves that no tactic is too repugnant, no alliance is too distasteful, and no moral compromise is too loathsome when you’re serving the lofty goal of keeping Democrats from power. Or it may be that they’re terrified that their rabid base will decide that they are insufficiently devoted to the cult of Trump. Whatever the reasons, they’ve traveled a long way down this road already, and it doesn’t look like they’re turning back.
Read more:
Read more:
Joe Scarborough: Republicans should be repulsed
Greg Sargent: A top official just issued a stark warning about Russia. To this White House, he’s ‘gone rogue.’
o
Traitor Donald J. Racist babbles another stream of lies State of the Union address to complicit GOP criminals of Congress in January.
o "U.S. Escalates Online Attacks On Russia's Power Grid" by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perforth, The New York Times, 15 June 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html?
o "Russia's Not Meddling? Then Explain Maria Butina." by Dana Mllbank, The Washington Post, 18 July 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/here-is-possible-russian-political-meddling-in-the-flesh/2018/07/18/a1c285fc-8acc-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html
o "Who Met With Maria Butina?" by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, 24 July 2018 Video 1:30 2:39
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/07/24/who-met-with-maria-butina/
o "The NRA Connection: A Problem For The GOP In The Midterms" Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, 23 July 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/07/23/the-nra-connection-a-problem-for-the-gop-in-the-midterms/? Video 2:59
o "What Really Disturbs Voters About Russia's Election Interference" by James Downie, The Washington Post, 22 July 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/07/22/what-really-disturbs-voters-about-russias-election-interference/
o "The Truth About Trump And Russia That Republicans Can't Say Out Loud" by Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, 17 July 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/07/17/the-truth-about-trump-and-russia-that-republicans-cannot-say-out-loud/
o "Trump Is Being Manipulated By Putin. What Should We Do?" by Will Hurd, The New York Times, 19 July 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/opinion/trump-russia-putin-republican-congress.html
o "The Surreal World Vladimir Putin Has His Own Version Of Reality. And Trump Believes It." by Julia Ioffe, The Washington Post, 19 July 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/19/feature/vladimir-putin-has-his-own-version-of-reality-and-president-trump-believes-it/
Copyright 2018-2019 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to The Washington Post content)
