BY
In the latest attempt to malign and undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post reported on Friday that a “source” from a series of closed doors meetings with the CIA has claimed they have found evidence linking Russian hackers to email leaks that took place during the election.
In the latest attempt to malign and undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post reported on Friday that a “source” from a series of closed doors meetings with the CIA has claimed they have found evidence linking Russian hackers to email leaks that took place during the election.
The Washington Post seemed quite confident in their source, along with the evidence that I assume they haven’t personally examined, as they outlined that a “secret assessment” by the CIA has concluded that Russians not only interfered with the U.S. election, but did so with the objective of helping Donald Trump.
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 U.S. 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.
Although The Washington Post and fellow liberal media outlets, who made it their goal to try to prevent Trump from getting elected while helping his challenger Hillary Clinton, quickly latched on the report and have practically taken it as fact. Despite no evidence being made public yet, mainstream media outlets are already running with headlines like “CIA finds Russia interfered to help Donald Trump win US election”.
Not everyone is buying the Russian hacker narrative though, particularly those who have close ties to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Assange himself had publicly stated earlier this year that the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia in any way, and also eluded that the leaks in fact came from inside the Democratic party itself.
The Guardian reports that Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador and close associate of Julian Assange, feels that the accusations are completely unfounded and that “they are absolutely making it up”. Murray also claims he knows who was responsible for the leaks, has met the person and they certainly have no connections to Russia.
A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts’ conclusion about Russia’s motives did not mean the intelligence community believed that Moscow’s efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election.The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.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.”The California Republican congressman Devin Nunes, chair of the House intelligence committee and a member of the Trump transition team, said: “I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence – even now. There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.”
This is the same Craig Murray that earlier this year told the press, “The source of these emails (DNC leaks) comes from within official circles in Washington DC. You should look to Washington not to Moscow.”
So despite there being no evidence released to the public of any Russian involvement in our election, and the sole information on this CIA report has come from a “source” who spoke to one of the most anti-Trump media outlets in the country, it appears that mainstream journalists have already made up their minds. Because of course, it couldn’t have been the weak candidate that the Democrats chose, the fact that they colluded against Bernie Sanders or that Hillary Clinton was mired in one scandal after another, that she lost the election. It must have been the coordinated efforts by a country on the other side of the world that was the sole cause of Clinton’s failure to convince enough voters to support her.
The anti-Trump “not my president” protests didn’t work, the threatening of Republican electors to not the vote for Donald Trump is failing (actually more Hillary Clinton electors are changing to their votes in attempts to encourage others to do so), Jill Stein’s recount is a bust, the “fake news” narrative is only drawing attention to the mainstream media’s horrific track record of credibility during the election, so the Russians influencing the election story must be the next step for Democrats unable to admit defeat.
And if the Russian hacker narrative fails, I have no doubt another conspiracy, plot or protest movement will pop up in an never ending battle that will accomplish nothing other than further dividing our country. But if you can’t win legitimately, just ruin the game for everyone else, right?
