When DNC emails were stolen just before the Democratic convention, the website Ars Technica looked into it. Their conclusion? It was a Russian hack.
Guccifer 2.0 … left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.
The cyber security firm Threat Connect looked into it. Their conclusion? It was a Russian hack.
A new analysis released by security consulting firm ThreatConnect has marshaled more evidence to prove that hackers linked to the Russian government communicated with journalists about the leaked documents.
Security firms CrowdStrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, and SecureWorks looked into it, as did a UK expert. What did they conclude? It was a Russian hack. More than that,16 different security agencies inside the United States government looked into it and concluded that it was a Russian hack.
There’s just one person who isn't convinced.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe [Russia] interfered,” Trump told Time magazine in his “Person of the Year” interview, released Wednesday.
Why would every security team that took time to check out the issue, including every agency of the government, all come to the same conclusion?
When Time reporters asked Trump if the conclusions reached by U.S. intelligence professionals who analyzed the hacks were “politically driven,” Trump replied, “I think so.”
Donald Trump doesn’t believe that Russia would interfere with a US election, but he does believe that every US intelligence agency and security firm went out of their way to indict Russia because of politics. Which makes it unlikely he’ll support a bipartisan investigation by Congress.
Of course, Trump may not be saying these things to directly support Russia. It may simply be that he has as little regard for security experts as he does for scientists and generals (outside of those appointed to his cabinet).
Already, Trump has raised concerns among intelligence professionals for his decision to skip most of his daily intelligence briefings, widely considered to be the most significant daily meetings on a U.S. president’s calendar.
It’s not only Russia where Trump’s opinion differs with that of people who … know something. Trump rolled off the rails over the summer about viewing a top secret video of the US sending planes loaded with currency to Iran. Which didn’t happen. And he was famously the only person to spot thousands of otherwise invisible Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after 9/11.
It’s hard to tell if Donald Trump is defending Russia because he has a secret debt to Putin squirreled away in his impenetrable finances or it’s just because once convinced of a delusion, Trump sticks with his own fever dream over any level of evidence.
Either way, it’s not exactly reassuring.