So Manafort is found guilty on 8 counts of tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Then Michael Cohen pleads guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violation which he says were done at the direction of the candidate.
That means Trump, who is now an unindicted co-conspirator for a Federal Crime. But strangely the Right-wing is highly ebullient today as they now say this again proves “No Collusion.”
All the rest of us already knew that Manafort’s tax fraud counts were because of money he’d received from Russians and Russian friendly Ukrainians, and his bank fraud counts related to his desperation to renew that funding stream with people like Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska — but yeah, sure, none of that is “collusion” except for being exactly collusion, while the entire point of these charges was to push Manafort to talk about all the other potential collusion and conspiracy he was involved in with the Trump campaign from changing the RNC plank on weapons for Ukraine to “sending someone low level” — like Carter Page — instead of Trump to meet privately with Putin’s people.
They think this is a “Win” over in Right-wing Bizarro World, because of course they do.
In another dank stream on the dark side the Trumptarians are also calling Sen. Bill Nelson a big fat liar for saying that Russian have hacked into Florida election system because apparently Cruella De Kirstjen Neilsen and Christopher Wray don't yet know about it...
Top law enforcement officials have countered a claim by Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson that Russian operatives had penetrated some county election systems in his home state of Florida.
In a Monday letter obtained by Fox News, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FBI Director Christopher Wray told Florida officials that while Russian spies “have previously demonstrated both the intent and capability to conduct malicious cyber operations,” there is no current evidence to suggest any meddling in the upcoming midterm elections in November.
“DHS and the FBI will continue to notify any victim of a successful cyber intrusion into their election network in any jurisdiction nationwide,” the letter, which was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel, stated.
Which IMO is possible since the NSA handles national cyber security threats and neither of them work there.
NSA's role in U.S. cybersecurity includes its primary information assurance mission: serving as the National Manager for National Security Systems. National Security Systems include U.S. systems that contain classified information or are otherwise critical to U.S. military or intelligence missions.
What does NSA do as the National Manager for National Security Systems? NSA performs a number of functions that help the Government protect and defend those systems, such as approving standards, techniques, systems, and equipment related to the security of National Security Systems.
Additionally, NSA is uniquely positioned to contribute to U.S. cybersecurity because it also has a foreign signals intelligence mission. The two missions complement one another, enhancing the agency's ability to detect and prevent cyber threats. NSA employs experts in signals intelligence, information security, and computer network defense and exploitation. Their work gives NSA end-to-end insights into malicious cyber activity, the activities of hostile foreign powers, and cyber best practices. This expertise is often called on by partners across the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community to help the government mitigate threats and secure networks.
But really “There is no current evident to suggest any meddling in the upcoming midterm elections in November??”
Uh…
What about the attempt spearfishing of Sen. Claire McCasskill’s staff emails?
The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.
McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri.
There’s no evidence to suggest that this attempt to lure McCaskill staffers was successful. The precise purpose of the approach was also unclear. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it.
Not mention that there were at least 2 other lawmakers who were targeted in similar attacks.
A group of hackers believed to be tied to Russia’s military have launched spear-phishing campaigns against at least three candidates running for election in 2018, a Microsoft executive said Thursday.
Tom Burt, a vice president for customer security at Microsoft, said at the Aspen Security Forum that security researchers at the company discovered the phishing campaigns, tracing them to a group widely believed in the threat-intelligence community to be run by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency that hacked into DNC email accounts and leaked their emails.
And the six fake websites made by Fancy Bear that Microsoft took down.
Hackers linked to Russia's government tried to target the websites of two right-wing U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, Microsoft said on Monday.
The software giant said it had thwarted the attempts last week by taking control of sites that hackers had designed to mimic the pages of The International Republican Institute and The Hudson Institute. Users were redirected to fake pages where they were asked to enter username.
And then there was that time when Bill Nelson’s own specific claim was confirmed by classified sources.
The governor of Florida, Rick Scott, a Republican who is running against Nelson for his U.S. Senate seat this fall, has blasted his claim as irresponsible. The top Florida elections official, also a Republican, said he had seen no indication it's true. And The Washington Post weighed in Friday with a 2,717-word fact check that all but accused Nelson — without evidence — of making it up.
However, three people familiar with the intelligence tell NBC News that there is a classified basis for Nelson's assertion, which he made at a public event after being given information from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The extent and seriousness of the threat remains unclear, shrouded for reasons of national security.
To believe that Bill Nelson is lying here is the dumbest possible option, why exactly the hell would he do that? What’s to be gained in making this as a false claim?
Depending on the classifying agency — which I suspect is the NSA — this information may not yet have disseminated to FBI and DHS in order to protect their sources and methods. It’s possible that neither Nelson, Neilsen or Wray are lying, they’re just dealing with different sets of compartmentalized secret information, and from my own experience in black world that makes sense.
But it’s also highly troubling.
If DHS aren’t aware of this, then they aren’t doing anything about it. And if they similarly aren’t aware of what Microsoft has been finding with the attacks on McCaskill and others, what else don’t they know and aren’t they responding too?
This “shiny happy people” act they’re pulling is getting pretty dangerous.
What the hell are those guys doing down there?