That the election was a month ago and that there is a paucity of evidence appears insufficient in ending the Russian hacking scandal surrounding President-elect Donald Trump’s election, with Friday evening’s reports of the CIA reiterating the claims, while offering no new evidence, riling everyone up all over again.
More Attacks On Trump As Senate Hawks From Both Parties Plan Coup, Want Full CIA Investigation And Possible Sway On The Electoral College Vote
http://novorossia.today/153291-2/
Senate hawks from both parties are pushing for a new round of “full investigations” into the CIA’s claims. That the CIA’s claims were not echoed by other intelligence agencies didn’t matter much, with outgoing Sen. Harry Reid (D – NV) accusing the FBI director of covering up the intelligence on the matter, claiming he “helped Trump get elected” in doing so.
Trump has dismissed the allegations, noting the claims are coming from the same people who falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This also fueled condemnation from a number of hawks, who insist Trump should not reject intelligence community reports.
In practice, a lot of the Republicans have been pushing for continued hostility toward Russia, and seem to be hoping that the allegations, if kept alive, will oblige Trump to keep Russia at arm’s length to avoid looking like his rapprochement is payback for election interference.
The Democrats are no less eager to keep the US firmly hostile toward Russia, but some like Rep. David Cicilline (D – RI) are hoping it can go even further than that, hoping the scandal, if it keeps getting more publicity, will be sufficient to shift the electoral college vote away from Trump, potentially reversing last month’s result.
The CIA is up to its old tricks: overthrowing a democratically elected government. Only this time it’s our government
CIA READY TO OVERTHROW ANOTHER GOVERNMENT, THIS TIME THE TARGET IS THE UNITED STATES, COUP PLANNED AGAINST TRUMP, DANGEROUS TIMES AHEAD
http://novorossia.today/153281-2/
As they are now legally allowed to do ever since the law against covert CIA propaganda in the United States was repealed, the Agency has leaked to the Washington Post reports – via anonymous third parties – of its alleged assessment of a Russian campaign to hand Donald Trump the White House:
“The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
“Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to US officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.
“’It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,’ said a senior US official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to US senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
The reaction of the Trump transition team was swift and cutting: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”
This reference to the “intelligence failure” that led us into the most disastrous war in our history is not mere rhetoric: if you’ll recall, there was plenty of dissent within the intelligence community over the Bush administration’s conclusion that Iraq had WMD, and was getting ready to deploy, but this was stripped from the public documents. Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby made several trips to Langley to browbeat analysts into submission and give the administration the talking points they wanted to justify the invasion.
It’s important to note that this leak was published just as President Obama announced he was ordering a full-scale review of the intelligence: the Washington Post story was an effort to get out ahead of that and put the CIA’s conclusions on the record before the review could be made public. This is obliquely alluded to in the Post’s story:
“The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior US official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.” [emphasis added]
As we get down into the weeds, these unspecified “minor disagreements” seem a bit more major than the reporters at the Post would have us believe:
“Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin ‘directing’ the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior US official said. Those actors, according to the official, were ‘one step’ removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees.”
What does it mean to be “one step removed” from the Russian intelligence apparatus? Well, it means anything the CIA wants it to mean: it is clearly a subjective judgment, akin to the “criteria” by which the web site propornot.com identifies “Russian agents”: if you hold certain views, you must be “Putin’s puppet.” Another similarity to the propornot scam is that the “officials” cited throughout the Post piece are anonymous: we don’t know their motives, their positions, or whatever other information is necessary to evaluating their credibility.
What is missing from the Post’s story is any evidence: it is simply a series of assertions, offered without proof of any kind. That the Democrats, the warmonger wing of the GOP, and the media (or do I repeat myself?), are seizing on this was all too predictable. What separates this out from the usual rhetorical overkill that has characterized this election season is that it is being invoked as a reason for the Electoral College to vote for someone other than President-elect Trump.
“Ex”-CIA analyst Bob Baer – the unofficial media spokesman for the Deep State – is calling for “a new election,” although he wants to “see the forensics first.” (Guess what, Bob, there are no reliable “forensics”!). John Dean, White House counsel under former president Richard Nixon, “called for the intelligence report on Russia’s role to be made available to the 538 members of the electoral college before 19 December, when they formally vote to elect the next president.” Retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid accused the FBI of covering up the intelligence assessment, and called on director Comey to resign. The “progressive” Twitterverse lit up with hysterical accusations of “treason,” and not so subtle hints that the Electoral College must repudiate Trump.
Meanwhile, former British diplomat Craig Murray threw a monkey wrench into the coup plotters’ campaign by asserting what I’ve been saying in this space all along: that publication of the DNC and John Podesta emails weren’t hacks, but rather were leaks. Murray, a close associate of Julian Assange, had this to say to the Guardian:
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims ‘bullshit,” adding: ‘They are absolutely making it up.’
“’I know who leaked them,’ Murray said. ‘I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
“’If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”
Of course we had to go to the British media in order to read this.
Let’s be clear about what we actually know – and, just as importantly, what we don’t know — about the WikiLeaks email releases:
1) There is not a lick of evidence that the Russians, or anyone else, “hacked” the DNC/Podesta emails. That is, we don’t know if someone used electronic means to obtain them, or if it was an insider, i.e. a person with access who subsequently turned them over to WikiLeaks
2) It is nearly impossible to trace the source of a hack using “scientific,” i.e. purely technical, means. As cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr puts it, the methods of the professional cyber-security industry are essentially what he calls “faith-based attribution.” Furthermore, the methodology that firms such as CrowdStrike used in supposedly uncovering the “Russian hackers” in the DNC case are classic examples of confirmation bias and laughably inadequate.
3) Julian Assange denies that the Russians are the source of the emails, and although he refuses to identify the person or persons responsible, someone he has worked closely with and his known to have his confidence, Craig Murray, is now telling us that it wasn’t a hack, it was an insider who leaked the documents. That this is being steadfastly ignored in the American media is hardly surprising: after all, it was WikiLeaks that exposed the “mainstream” media’s active collaboration with the Clinton campaign, and the media was clearly in Clinton’s camp.
4) A key element of the CIA campaign is that the Republican National Committee was also hacked by the same Russian spooks, and yet nothing was posted on WikiLeaks Note how this assumes the premises of the conspiracy theorists: that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC/Podesta emails and that WikiLeaks is merely an extension of the Kremlin. Also note that the Republican National Committee denies it was hacked, and furthermore please note the fact that Colin Powell’s emails were indeed posted by DC Leaks, along with routine emails from various GOP operatives that had no particular significance.
So what is going on here?
When Trump supporters opined that the “Deep State” would never allow the populist real estate mogul to take office, I was skeptical. This seemed to me like a made-for-television movie script rather than a real possibility: after all, what could they actually do, aside from using force to prevent him from taking the oath of office?
However, as the campaign progressed, and the Clintonites became progressively more unhinged in their attacks on Trump, the Russian angle became more prominent: former acting CIA Director Mike Morell’s accusation that Trump is an “unconscious agent” of the Kremlin, and “not a patriot,” seemed over the top at the time, but in retrospect looks more like it was laying the groundwork for the current CIA-driven propaganda campaign.
But why would the CIA, in particular, have a special aversion to Trump? Marcy Wheeler, whose analytical abilities I respect despite our political disagreements, has this to say:
“First, if Trump comes into office on the current trajectory, the US will let Russia help Bashar al-Assad stay in power, thwarting a 4-year effort on the part of the Saudis to remove him from power. It will also restructure the hierarchy of horrible human rights abusing allies the US has, with the Saudis losing out to other human rights abusers, potentially up to and including that other petrostate, Russia. It will also install a ton of people with ties to the US oil industry in the cabinet, meaning the US will effectively subsidize oil production in this country, which will have the perhaps inadvertent result of ensuring the US remains oil-independent even though the market can’t justify fracking right now.
“The CIA is institutionally quite close with the Saudis right now, and has been in charge of their covert war against Assad.”
The Saudis, having given millions to the Clinton Foundation, along with their Gulf state allies, were counting on a Clinton victory. The CIA has a longstanding relationship with Riyadh, and together they have been working assiduously to not only overthrow Assad in Syria but to forge a “moderate” Sunni alliance that will effectively police the region while establishing the Saudis as the regional hegemon. This was the Clintonian strategy while Hillary was at the helm of Foggy Bottom: Libya, Syria, the alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are all examples of this utterly disastrous “Sunni turn.”
The irony here is that the accusation leveled at Trump – that his historic victory represents a successful attempt by a foreign power to take control of the White House – is a classic case of projection.
What we are witnessing is a joint CIA-Saudi operation to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States.
In a recent speech given on his “victory tour,” Trump said the following:
“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. Our goal is stability not chaos.”
For the whole of its existence, the CIA has been in the business of toppling regimes that didn’t bow to Washington’s dictates, from Guatemala to Iran to Chile and on and on. The production of chaos is their whole reason for existing. Trump would effectively put them out of business. No wonder they want to destroy him.
We have heard much about how the CIA “assessment” needs to be made public, at least partially: of course, the details will never be published so that ordinary Americans can see them. It’s the old “we have to protect sources and methods” excuse. But cries – from both those who support the CIA and the few skeptics – for an “investigation” into the charges are simply playing into the hands of the Langley crowd. For an investigation assumes that the premises of the CIA’s case – that WikiLeaks is a Russian front, that the emails were actually hacked rather than leaked, and that there is some validity to the assertion that Trump is a “Russian puppet,” as Mrs. Clinton put it – are anything other than the basis of a smear campaign designed to undermine our democratic institutions. We might as well have an “investigation” into “Pizza-gate” or the belief that the moon landing was faked.
Yes, we do need an investigation – into this brazen attempt by the CIA to subvert our democratic institutions, and undermine the office of the President. When Trump takes the oath of office, the very first thing he must do is to launch that probe – and clean house at the CIA. The cancer of subversion that is festering at the core of the national security bureaucracy must be excised, and Trump is just the man to do it.
Yet - NO indictments on Hillary for the same and MORE - offenses?
A US federal judge sentenced former congressman Chaka Fattah on Monday to 10 years in prison on corruption charges.
Ex-US Congressman Fattah Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Corruption
https://sputniknews.com/us/201612121048470987-chaka-fattah-prison-sentence-corruption/
Fattah, a Democrat from the state of Pennsylvania, received the second-longest prison sentence for corruption ever imposed on a current or former member of the US House of Representatives, the Philadelphia Daily News reported.
The 60-year-old former legislator is scheduled to begin his sentence on January 25.
At Monday's sentencing hearing in US District Court in Philadelphia, Fattah expressed regret for some past decisions but also said he had helped millions of people during his career.
In June, he was convicted in a racketeering conspiracy for using charitable funds and federal grants to repay $600,000 he had borrowed in a failed campaign to become mayor of Philadelphia. Fattah also used campaign funds to repay his son's student loans and planned a scheme to repay $130,000 to a political consultant using money from a federal grant.
Fattah served in Congress for 22 years before losing in a party primary in April. He resigned from office in October.
Former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for misspending government grants and charity money to fund his campaign and personal expenses. U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle called the Philadelphia Democrat's crimes "astonishing" given that he and his TV anchor wife had a $500,000 annual income that put them at or near the "top 1 percent."
Ex-Philadelphia congressman gets 10 years for corruption
https://www.mail.com/news/politics/4825722-ex-philadelphia-congressman-10-years-corruption.html#.7518-stage-hero1-1
December 12, 2016 - Fattah, 60, spent two decades in Congress before losing the primary this year. As he awaited his sentence, Fattah said he had "mixed emotions": saddened to find himself in court but grateful for the work he was able to do.
"I've helped tens of millions of people," Fattah said. "(That) has nothing to do with the fact that I've been found on the wrong side of these questions by a jury." The jury earlier this year found that Fattah took an illegal $1 million loan from a wealthy friend to prop up his failed 2007 campaign for Philadelphia mayor. He then repaid some of it with federal grant money from NASA that he had steered to an education nonprofit run by loyal former staffers.
The nonprofit efforts — including a NASA-funded mobile science classroom emblazoned with Fattah's name that roamed Philadelphia during the mayoral campaign — helped promote Fattah's political career, prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
The jury convicted him of leading a five-person racketeering enterprise that included the loyal aides and political consultants who did his bidding, comingling campaign, nonprofit and government funds and using them as directed for Fattah's personal and political needs.
For example, Fattah used $23,000 in nonprofit funds to repay his son's college loans and took an $18,000 bribe to try to help a friend become an ambassador. He even lobbied President Barack Obama on the friend's behalf, to no avail. Fattah and his wife used the $18,000 for a down payment on a Poconos vacation home. They told authorities the money covered the friend's purchase of a Porsche owned by Fattah's wife, but the Porsche never left their garage.
"For someone so interested in advancing education for the disadvantaged, you had the temerity to steal from the Educational Advancement Alliance, a nonprofit supported by government funds," Bartle said.
The judge said it was equally "astonishing" that Fattah would steal money to cover his son's debts, to pay taxes and to buy a family vacation home. "While you have done much good, you also engaged in grave and widespread criminal activity," Bartle said. "You abused your trust, time and time again."
Fattah had insisted the Justice Department, though led by fellow Democrats, had been out to get him and his family for years.
His son, Chaka Fattah Jr. is serving a five-year prison term in an overlapping fraud case that went to trial last year. Chaka "Chip" Fattah Jr., who never finished college, was convicted of using fraudulently obtained business loans to fund his jet-set lifestyle.
Fattah, who earned $174,000 as a congressman, is married to longtime Philadelphia news anchor Renee Chenault-Fattah. They have two school-age children. Chenault-Fattah, who is also a lawyer, spent 25 years with WCAU-TV before she resigned after the indictment named her a participant in the bribery scheme. She was never charged and has denied wrongdoing.
Two of Fattah's political consultants pleaded guilty in the case and testified against him. The four others convicted at trial will be sentenced later this week. They include former Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Herbert Vederman, of Palm Springs, Florida, who had sought the ambassadorship.
Prosecutors had asked Bartle to sentence Fattah to 17 to 21 years in prison. Fattah, who began his career in the Pennsylvania statehouse and entered Congress in 1995, lost the spring Democratic primary days before his trial began and resigned after his conviction in June. Former state Rep. Dwight Evans, a fellow Democrat, now holds his seat.
US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey calls for Congress to form a bipartisan select committee to investigate Russian interference in US presidential election.
US Senator Calls to Investigate Russian Interference in US Election
https://sputniknews.com/us/201612121048467275-us-russia-hacking-election/
The call for a committee to investigate any possible interference by Russia in the US election gained another supporter, US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said in a press release on Monday.
"I join the call for Congress to form a bipartisan select committee to investigate Russian interference in our election and will do everything I can to support to it," Booker stated. A bipartisan group of senators, including John McCain and Chuck Schumer, announced their plan to form a committee on Sunday. Any Russian efforts to influence the results of our election should be of grave concern to every American, and must be fully investigated.
Lawyers for twice-failed Oval Office aspirant Hillary Clinton have asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., to dismiss a lawsuit over her statements as secretary of state about the Benghazi terror attack that left four Americans dead.
Hillary pleads to dismiss Benghazi lawsuit
But plaintiffs argue she shouldn't get favors because she's among 'political elite'
http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/hillary-pleads-to-dismiss-lawsuit-against-her/
The plaintiffs are arguing the case should to go trial because she doesn’t deserve special treatment as a member of the “political elite.”
Clinton narrowly averted a default judgment in the case earlier when a judge adopted claims that she wasn’t properly served.
Then she argued in court filings that the case should be dismissed, claiming the plaintiffs, Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, and Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, haven’t properly claimed they were injured.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by lawyer Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch USA after the FBI determined Clinton’s handling of classified information through the use of a nonsecure, private email server was “extremely careless.”
They allege that she told them one story about the attack, then told the media another story, and ended up calling the family members liars.
But the claims are plain, according to a new filing in the case, which contends that the plaintiffs have properly presented false light claims, correctly provided claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and “properly alleged” other damages.
“Plaintiffs respectfully request that the court rule on defendant Clinton’s motion in a politically neutral fashion, as defendant Clinton, like everyone else before the court, is not above the law,” the filing states.
“To treat her differently than others would be treated would create and perpetuate a terrible precedent, as the American people have come to believe that, in effect, there are two systems of justice; one for the political elite establishment, and one for the rest of the citizens of our nation.”
The case is based on claims by family members that when Clinton met with them at Joint Base Andrews, she told them the Benghazi attack was “a result of an Internet video criticizing the prophet Mohammad.”
She said this even though she knew the statement to be false, the claim asserts.
But she later changed her story, and “negligently, recklessly, and/or maliciously defamed plaintiffs by either directly calling them liars, or by strongly implying that they are liars, in order to protect and enhance her public image and intimidate and emotionally harm and silence them to not speak up about the Benghazi attack.”
For example, the memo documents that in a 2015 interview with ABC News, she “flat out falsely denied telling the families of Benghazi victims that the YouTube video caused the attack.”
She told her daughter immediately that the attacks were acts of terrorism, but later told others they were sparked by the obscure video.
“Look, I understand the continuing grief at the loss that parents experienced with the loss of these four brave Americans,” Clinton said. “And I did testify, as you know, for 11 hours. And I answered all of these questions. Now, I can’t – can’t help it the people think there has to be something else there. I said very clearly there had been a terrorist group, uh, that had taken responsibility on Facebook, um, between the time that, uh, I – you know, when I talked to my daughter, that was the latest information; we were, uh, giving it credibility. And then we learned the next day it wasn’t true. In fact, they retracted it. This was a fast-moving series of events in the fog of war.”
The memo states: “Clinton, in her motion, operates under the false presumption that she was acting with the scope of her employment when she used a private email server to transmit and receive classified and confidential information, and thereby fatally jeopardizing the safety of plaintiffs’ sons.”
The case contends her use of an unsecure email system allowed her messages to be hacked, and thus terrorists learned details of the American operations in Benghazi.
The memo says the solution is for the plaintiffs to be allowed to conduct discovery, and the results all be presented to a jury.
Smith and Woods were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, jihadist attack on the American compound in Benghazi. While Clinton and other Obama administration officials were publicly blaming the deaths on a response to an obscure YouTube video, internal communications show they knew immediately that it was a terrorist attack.
Earlier in the case, Klayman explained: “Having used a secret private email server that we now know was used to communicate with Ambassador Christopher Stevens with confidential and classified government information, and which we also now know was likely hacked by hostile adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea aligning with terrorist groups, it is clear that Hillary Clinton allegedly negligently and recklessly gave up the classified location of the plaintiffs’ sons, resulting in a deadly terrorist attack that took their lives. It is no coincidence that covert State Department/CIA operations were being run out of Benghazi.
To add insult to deadly injury, Hillary Clinton told the plaintiffs that their sons were killed as the result of a video mocking the Islamic prophet Mohammed when she knew that they were murdered by Muslim terrorists. When the families exposed her lies, she called them liars to protect her reputation and to further her own presidential ambitions. She thus defamed the parents of fallen heroes Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith, and committed other wrongful acts, as alleged in the complaint.”
The lawsuit notes the FBI found Clinton, “at a minimum, was ‘extremely careless’ in handling confidential and classified government information and ‘there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.'”
