US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7589

On May 20 2017 02:28 GreenHorizons wrote:


Did they? Which ones? Not the FBI? I mean the


which people interpret to mean that 17 agencies all agree that the DNC hacks were Russia and given to wikileaks.

I'm saying Wikileaks denies that they got them from hacks at all and says they were leaked, and there isn't this concrete surety about the DNC emails being a result of a Russian hack as you are suggesting.

"Our assessment now is even more resolute than it was" on Oct. 7 when the government first publicly accused Russia, Clapper told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said motives for the attack would be made public next week.

"There's a difference between healthy skepticism ... and disparagement," Clapper said. Vice President-elect Mike Pence has used the expression "healthy skepticism" to defend Trump's criticism of intelligence findings.

"It doesn’t bother me if someone is going to be skeptical and challenge our work and maybe disagree with our views, but I expect that the president of the United States will recognize that the CIA and intelligence community were established by statute for a very important reason,"

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

On May 20 2017 02:27 a_flayer wrote:

The way I understood it, the DNC servers were never inspected by the FBI or any of the US Intelligence agencies. They were inspected by Crowdstrike.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/fbi-russia-hacking-dnc-crowdstrike/index.html

On May 20 2017 02:33 Plansix wrote:

There is no evidence that has convinced you, is what you are saying. The CIA and several private firms have stated that they believe it was Russia. That is not sufficient for you, which is fine. I will amend my statement and say that a lot of people believe the hacks were the result targeted phishing by Russia and not an internal leak.

On May 20 2017 02:38 Plansix wrote:


This time article states at an official at the CIA said wikileaks did not release personal information that was on teh server at the time of the hack. I don't know how they would know that unless they looked at it.

http://time.com/4625301/cia-russia-wikileaks-dnc-hacking/

I am willing to accept that some people are not willing the US intelligence services at face value. There is more than enough reason for that belief. But there is not way the DNC's severs were never looked at by law enforcement.

On May 20 2017 02:35 Nevuk wrote:
I believe it more likely they were hacks because of the technical competency long displayed by the democratic party.

On May 20 2017 02:39 GreenHorizons wrote:


There is no evidence really. I mean basically you have someone the DNC paid to write a report writing a report that was conducive to what the people paying them wanted?

If I'm not mistaken the suggestion that the CIA/FBI think it was Russia feeding info to Wikileaks (presumably the DNC leaks) is an anonymous rumor?

They do think Russia was trying to influence the election (I think that's widely agreed upon) but the idea that the Wikileaks emails came from Russia I think is little more than a rumor?



Yeah, the article says it's an anonymous source, and you're presuming they looked at it because an anonymous source said they made a conclusion?

On May 20 2017 02:35 Nevuk wrote:
I believe it more likely they were hacks because of the technical competency long displayed by the democratic party.

On May 20 2017 02:43 Plansix wrote:

GH, you are free to believe whatever you want. I have zero interest in this debate with you.

On May 20 2017 02:48 a_flayer wrote:
I think it is entirely possible that the Russians hacked the DNC for their own information-gathering purposes (similar to the CIA hacking into French presidential candidates in 2012). Independently from that, Seth Rich (was he a Bernie supporter?) could have leaked DNC data to Wikileaks, and then gotten murdered by some random would-be robber.

I do find it rather odd that the DNC wouldn't let the FBI look at their servers, considering the severity of what had happened, but any suggestion that the DNC or Clinton somehow being responsible for killing Seth Rich is absurd conspiracy stuff.

The notion that the Russians hacked AND leaked is very plausible as well. There is both opportunity and motive, considering they will obviously have hacked (given the assumption that everybody hacks everybody) and their obvious desire to undermine HRC. It's just that there is absolutely no direct evidence for that one crucial bit of the puzzle with regards to who gave Wikileaks the DNC data (and, yes, I'm allowing the CrowdStrike investigation as direct evidence of the Russians hacking into the DNC in this scenario).

On May 20 2017 03:02 Plansix wrote:

I wonder if the DNC was not comfortable with the FBI agents having unlimited access to their servers, so they filtered it through a third party. Since the firing of Comey, I have been reading that a lot of FBI agents were Trump supporters. Maybe the DNC did not feel comfortable with giving them more access than the hacks got.

On May 20 2017 03:06 GreenHorizons wrote:


Which is very different than the surety you expressed of them being handed over to law enforcement, to realize they weren't at all and now you're speculating that perhaps they were filtered through a company paid by the DNC.

I don't hold you personally responsible for this crappy line of argument. The Democrats and media shoveled this stuff down peoples throat and if you weren't highly skeptical some of this stuff could slip right past an otherwise engaged person.

On May 20 2017 03:00 Nevuk wrote:
Does anyone else find it insanely creepy that Pence refers to his wife as mother?

On May 20 2017 03:07 TheTenthDoc wrote:
The only evidence suggesting that Seth Rich was involved in anything with Wikileaks was the private investigator telling Fox that he thought there was a chance of it.

The next day, the private investigator said he said that because the Fox people told him there was a chance of it, and it seemed like a possibility.

So basically if you believe Fox has privileged information they for some reason aren't revealing, then I guess it makes sense to think there was any development in the Seth Rich case.

On May 20 2017 03:20 a_flayer wrote:

The only evidence suggesting that Russia leaked the data essentially comes down to opportunity (they hacked) and motive (they dislike Clinton/preferred Trump).

Seth Rich, as a programmer, was someone who likely had certain privileges in the DNC IT infrastructure, potentially giving him the opportunity to access the data. If he was indeed a Bernie supporter (I've seen this suggested in various places, but never really substantiated), then that'd be his potential motive.

So in both cases, you can reason towards opportunity and motive quite easily. You don't need to go to Fox News or other fake news sources at all.

On May 20 2017 03:24 Plansix wrote:

You have to want it pretty hard, though. That is a lot of things to assume with no evidence to back it up. It also plays into this weird view of the DNC where they are capable of covering up a murder of their own staff, but totally incompetent about getting hacked and losing the election. Getting away with murder is pretty hard.

On May 20 2017 03:25 a_flayer wrote:


Nah, as I said before, the murder could just as easily be a random unrelated factor in this.

On May 20 2017 03:29 WolfintheSheep wrote:

You don't investigate for murder just because someone can think of reasons why a death could possibly be murder.