Donald Trump and his supporters have been dismissive of U. S. Intelligence claims that the Russians were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee e-mails. These made Hillary Clinton look bad and were then given to Wikileaks, which made them public. Those intelligence agencies have released a report giving the basis for blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operations.
The unclassified version of the report leaves out the details but gives the nature of their evidence. (Read the report for yourself here.) It says that Putin despised Clinton and wanted Trump to win. The actions, which also included the use of paid “trolls,” were intended to discredit Clinton–though the Russians expected her to win–and to boost Trump’s chances.
Defenders of Trump have said that some other group could have done the hacking, that the CIA has often been wrong (including finding evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), that the intelligence agencies are part of the establishment, that they are part of the Democratic administration (despite their non-politicized organization and their history of conflict with liberals), etc., etc. Yes, lots of things “could have” happened. But I am not aware of any evidence connecting the hacks to anyone else other than the Russians. (Do you know of any? If so, please let us know in the comments. I’ll continue my thoughts after the jump.)
Trump has been briefed with the classified version of the report, which includes the specific evidence linking the Russians. Now he is saying that the report concluded that there is no evidence that the shenanigans directly affected the election, which is certainly true. There is certainly no evidence for the Democratic conspiracy theory that the Russians hacked into voting machines and actually changed the results of the election. But even Trump now seems to agree that there is reason to blame the Russians. He is promising greater security against cyberattacks.
Certainly, the Russians had an interest in Trump’s election. He had long been promising to improve relations. He has long been skeptical about the sanctions the Obama administration has put on Russia. They are costing Russia billions, so of course Putin wants them stopped.
The United States–through the very CIA that has traced these hacks–has a long record of trying to influence other country’s elections. This just seems to be what nations do, in the shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage.
And if the e-mails hurt Clinton’s campaign, they revealed things that were true. Truth and transparency, no matter the source, are good things.
So why deny that the Russians did it?
To be sure, this will throw a shadow on any attempt by Trump to improve relations with Russia and to remove the sanctions. Not that this is likely to stop them from happening. And it will keep alive the narrative that Trump is in Putin’s pocket.
The underlying issue is that Trump and Putin think so well of each other, a feeling that pre-dated the hacking. There are also the connections between the new administration and the Russians, including those of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State.
The question we need to think about is not whether there are affiliations between Trump and Putin, but whether or not some kind of alliance between the U.S. and Russia would be a good thing. I have read conservatives, long before Trump, who said that Putin is holding strong on cultural issues, such as not approving of homosexuality, and that we can learn from him. Others say that an alliance between the U. S. and Russia would help us against our true rival, China. (But doesn’t his authoritarianism and his aggression against the Ukraine count for anything?)
Trump says that he wants to get tough with Iran, cancelling the nuclear deal that Obama made with the Shi’ite republic. But Iran is a client state of Russia. If Trump backs down on Iran, we will know that he is doing Putin’s bidding. If he doesn’t, maybe he will conclude that Putin’s interests conflict with ours after all. We will really know if Trump is a Russian agent (another Democratic conspiracy I’ve heard) is if he gives special treatment to the Orthodox Church and forbids any other Christian group from committing evangelism.
What do you think about all this this?
Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday.
The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage.
The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, “denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances.
The report released to the public is an abbreviated version of a highly classified multiagency assessment requested by President Obama. Even so, it amounts to an extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy.
Movie poster via Johan Oonmen, Creative Commons License
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