I have been hearing a lot of News channels, even the gold standard C-SPAN asking viewers “Dodyou THINK the Russians meddled in the US election”? But here’s the thing, there is no “think” about it. It is an incontrovertible fact that both the Russian FSB and the GRU hacked the DNC servers and the evidence they did a lot more than that is overwhelming. So, for all your online arguing needs I will attempt to lay out the complete case against the Russian Government, and the incoming Trump administration’s collusion with them., complete with links, charts, graphs and 27 8x10 color glossy photographs with the circle and the arrows on ‘em.
Harkening back to my old Crim law days, let’s break this down like a court case: Motive, Method and Opportunity:
Motive:
When trying to convince a skeptical person or Trump supporter that this actually happened, the first question you will hear is “Why would Russia do that”? and if the question is being asked by a Trump person that question will include a coda talking about how Trump is WAY tougher than Hillary so it makes no sense for Putin to help Trump.
This one is easy and can really be explained in a single graph. This is Russia’s GDP for the last five years:
Now , keep in mind that US sanctions against Russia For the Annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine kicked in in June of 2014. Notice the 45% decline in Russia’s GDP in ONE YEAR? Yeah, we did that (partially from the sanction and partially thanks to diplomacy with the Saudis and the Iran Nuclear deal which kept oil prices very low during this time). Now, to understand just how catastrophic a thing that was for Russia (and it’s leader) let me put that in perspective: You remember how painful the Great Recession following the 2008 Financial Crisis was for us? Yeah, our GDP dropped by a mere 2.6% that year. Now just try to contemplate what a 45% drop would feel like.
Secondly, as a result of that, Russia is very nearly broke. It has already exhausted its foreign currency reserves and may have to raid its pension funds unless something changes VERY soon (and thanks to Trump it probably will, but more on that later). So, early this year, Russia realized that it was going to soon have to comply with international demands to leave Ukraine to get the sanctions lifted (which would have caused Putin no end of trouble at home as he maintains power partly because of ultra-nationalist support) or come up with SOME other way to bring them to an end.
Thus, Motive to install a much more friendly government in the US, one Hillary had already been clear she would not be.
As for Trump’s motivation to accept the embrace of Putin? Besides becoming president, there is the small matter of how badly in hock the Trump organization is to Russia. As Don Trump JR said, on tape in 2006:
"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” the candidate's son said, according to trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Methods:
1) Prior bad acts to establish a modus operandi: As this article from a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian affairs makes clear, Meddling in foreign elections to install friendly governments is pretty much SOP for the Russian government in the last 20 years (and let’s not even get started on the Soviet days) :
I've worked in the defense community for the past 20 years, the past three as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia. Over that time, my colleagues and I have watched Russian cyber-operations become far more ambitious and insidious. They've moved from technical denial-of-service attacks—targeting Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008 and against Ukraine’s internet and cellular phone networks in 2014 and electrical grid a year later—to the use of cyber spying and release of captured information to influence publics, including their own. In 2014, during U.S. and European Union negotiations to build a transitional government in Ukraine, Russia made public a wiretapped conversation between my colleagues Assistant Secretary Toria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, Geoff Pyatt, during which Nuland is heard saying “Fuck the E.U.” The objective was to embarrass U.S. officials and increase tension between them and their EU counterparts.
I watched as Russia funded far-right and far-left political parties in Western and Eastern Europe (most notably in France and Hungary), as well as NGOs and used its economic influence (especially in oil and gas) to pressure European politicians to support Kremlin objectives. This fall, we saw Moscow continue to intervene in other nations' politics, funding pro-Russian political parties in Moldova, and sponsoring demonstrations against that country's pro-Western government. This week, the head of the German domestic intelligence agency warned: "We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties."
So, it really isn’t as if this is unthinkable or even out of character behavior for Russia
2) The “Smoking Gun”: the DNC hack: Wikileaks Julian Assange claims the DNC emails were “leaked” to him, not hacked. To put this bluntly, he’s a damn liar. There is absolutely no question the Russian FSB AND the GRU both hacked the DNC’s servers, and you don’t have to believe the CIA to reach this conclusion. After the DNC suspected it had been hacked, it employed Crowdstrike, one of the world’s leading and most respected cybersecurity firms to analyze their servers. Back in May, long before the election result was in any sort of doubt, they released their findings at the DNC’s behest. They concluded that the DNC servers were hacked and the FSB and GRU were responsible (in fact the DNC twigged to something being wrong when they two pieces of spyware interfered with each other). You can read the report itself but the evidence is pretty damning:
1)The software used for the hack was the same used to hack the German Parliament earlier that year, an attack German intelligence conclusively linked to the FSB
2) The GRU got sloppy and not only re-used the spyware, but they ALSO re-used the URL that the spyware sent data to, one that during the German hack had been conclusively proved to belong to the FSB
3) Flynn and Manafort, paid Russian agents: You remember Paul Manafort? The seasoned campaign pro who jumped on the Trump train just as Corey Lewandowski was running it off the rails? As the New York Times extensively detailed in August, he had extensive ties to Putin and the Russian Government, particularly through Putin’s client/puppet, ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, who, according to a secret ledger recovered by Ukranian anti-corruption police, was secretly paid millions of dollar in cash for “election consulting “ work done for Yanukovich’s party (How has the IRS not come a knockin’ after that revelation?) as well as being involved in shell companies set up by Yanukovich and Putin’s wealthy friends to stash cash offshore.
Similarly, Gen. Michael Flynn, now Trump’s presumptive National Security Adviser has also served as a paid agent of the Russian government since his retirement. Giving publi c speeches in Russia where he called the US “a Bully” and called for the end of sanctions against the Russian government. And Flynn has amply demonstrated in the past that his geopolitical views are flexible if the price is right
Quid Pro Quo From Team Trump:
I won’t say from Trump himself because I am only half convinced he is aware of what’s happening around him at any given time, much less having a hand in shaping policy. Nonetheless the Corporate entity that is the incoming Administration is clearly in the bag for Russia. As Bloomberg so aptly put it, the incoming administration, as currently constituted, is basically Russia’s Dream Team
If nominated and confirmed, Tillerson would join another supporter of closer cooperation with Russia at the top of America’s policy-making apparatus, Michael Flynn, the president-elect’s national security adviser. Add in Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, retired General James Mattis, who’s viewed in Moscow as more pragmatic than his predecessors, and the Kremlin couldn’t ask for much more, according to Sergei Markov, a consultant to Putin’s staff.
Nominating a Secretary of State with no Foreign policy credentials, not Diplomatic experience, who just happens to be a close personal friend of Putin’s and the CEO of a company with a potential half a TRILLION dollar in deals with the Russian government, but deals that can ONLY go forward IF, the US decides to suddenly reverse course and lift the (as we have seen above) incredibly effective sanctions against Russia. Is what them there professional gamblers might call “a tell”, but if you look closely at the campaign your realize this is only the latest instance.
Take the Republican Platform hashed out at the RNC. While Platform writing is a fairly useless an esoteric exercise, in retrospect your eyebrows have to hike a wee bit when you realize that Trump’s people intervened during the platform writing only ONCE. The issue? Removing the plank from the official GOP platform condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calling for the US to sell arms to Ukraine to help it repel said invasion.
And then there was Gen Flynn’s cryptic and incredibly anti-Semitic Tweet when the Russian link to the DNC email hack first his the news, attempting to debunk the story
"This is a new low, not anymore, Jews. Not anymore."
And there is this latest CIA report. Assume for just a moment That the CIA is right, and the Russians also penetrated the RNC servers, (and this group of hackers is correct about the servers at Trump tower either being hacked or voluntarily communicating with Russia). Obviously none of the RNC material was released, meaning, unless the GOP is composed of the greatest group of boy scouts known to man, there is a potential the Russians have their hands on serious blackmail material abut RNC personnel. And who is our new White House chief of Staff ?(despite what the Constitution says the REAL #2 job in US politics)? Oh yeah, that’s right, the former HEAD of the RNC, the improbably named Reince Priebus.
So, you can draw your own conclusions as to whether Trump is co-conspirator in all this or Merely useful idiot. Either position assumes facts not in evidence. However at Some point you have to ask yourself Does it matter? Can we afford even 4 years of a government captive to foreign interests? At what point is it fair to call the GOP’s willingness to turn a blind eye to the evidence for partisan gain actual treason?