Is It Democratic Sour Grapes Or Did Russia Actually Hack The Election?

Did Russia Hack the Presidential Election?

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Since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election was announced, bitter Democrats have been searching for any and all means at their disposal to invalidate or nullify his victory. They’re trying just about every strategy you can think of — a recount of the vote in multiple states, attempting to persuade members of the Electoral College to change their votes and a new gambit —accusations that Russian hackers manipulated the election by giving information to WikiLeaks and planted “fake news” stories to manipulate the public prior to the election.

These claims aren’t new; the Democrats have accused Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russia long before the election was held. While it’s true that Trump made a few positive comments about Russian leader Vladimir Putin and urged that a rapprochement take place between the U.S. and Putin’s government, the charges of “fake news” are relatively new and appear to have expanded out of original charges that fake news in general (unrelated to Russian influence) was partially responsible for steering people’s votes at the ballot box.

In essence, if fake news was responsible for how people voted, if it came from U.S. sources, there’s nothing Democrats could do other than maybe filing a few lawsuits. But if the Russians were behind it, they could try to make a claim that a foreign government interfered with the electoral process of the U.S., and that could be reason enough to hold a new election.

WikiLeaks in the past has denied that they received Democratic Party emails from Russia. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, has said his department doesn’t have intelligence showing a connection between WikiLeaks and Russia.

The Democrats’ whole approach here is really a long shot, but the charges of fake news have some validity to them; there were indeed false stories promoted by both parties floating around on social media prior to Election Day.

But different people define “fake news” differently. Some readers believe it only encompasses stories that are 100 percent untrue — reports that are made up out of whole cloth. Others believe it includes stories that may be a mix of the truth with some items that are false.

And still others believe fake news can be any story that has an implicit bias. These can be stories that are actually entirely true, but leave out key facts. An example might be a story that said the late Senator Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, without mentioning that he was in the organization for several years in the early 1940s but had disavowed it wholly by 1952.

All three of these scenarios were represented in posts and stories published on the web prior to the election; some were written for highly dodgy independent news sites you’ve probably never heard of while others were written for The New York Times and CNN.

The problem of “fake news” is both pernicious and widespread. Where it gets tricky, however, is when it’s discovered that someone significant is sponsoring or syndicating this fake news. If it was as simple as one political party attempting to smear another, that would merely be considered a dirty trick and would likely result in a little embarrassment, finger-pointing and not much else. But when an accusation is made that it’s a foreign power behind the stories, that’s a whole other topic and relates directly to national security.

In this case, fears of Russian hacking were propounded even prior to the election; but mostly, this was in relation to potential hacking of voting machines. After the election was held, vote fraud experts declared there were no indications of mass electronic vote hacking. But the idea that somehow the Russians were responsible for the Democrats’ loss refused to die.

Clearly, someone in the Democratic Party decided to fold this concept in with the semi-legitimate complaint about fake news. However, it’s highly doubtful that evidence can be found to back up the claims.

As for the charge regarding WikiLeaks, the Democrats have asserted that the Russians also hacked into Republican Party servers and stole information, but chose not to reveal it in order to favor a victory for Trump.

Democrats such as Representative Adam Schiff of California claim that “This was a serious attack on our democracy… To inoculate the public against further Russian meddling, the public really needs to know what the Russians were up to. But it’s also a way of deterring the Russians if they know they’ll be exposed in a very public way.”

Republican Congressman Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, rebuked the CIA for contradicting the agency’s own forensic findings that it had presented the committee with earlier in the year. Nunes wrote to Intelligence Director Clapper, who oversees the CIA, and said that he was “dismayed that we did not learn earlier, from you directly, about… the CIA’s reported revision of information previously conveyed to this committee.” Intelligence officials rejected Nunes’ requests to appear before his committee immediately to explain the matter.

“It is unacceptable that the intelligence community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed… on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign,” stated Nunes when informed of this. “The legislative branch is constitutionally vested with oversight responsibility of executive branch agencies, which are obligated to comply with our requests.”

Nunes said his committee was “vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign” and wanted to “clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us… The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes. The Committee will continue its efforts and will insist that we receive all the necessary cooperation from the relevant leaders of the intelligence community.”

It should be noted that CIA Director John Brennan is a former campaign advisor and aide to President Obama. A former officer of the CIA, Kent Clizbe, claims that Brennan is attempting to politicize the well-known agency with its recent actions. “All the politicization of the CIA of the previous eight years is nothing compared to Brennan’s current operation — his vile use of the good name of the CIA is an attempt to invalidate our presidential election,” Clizbe said.

“Brennan’s misuse of the CIA in an effort to serve his political masters is unprecedented and unforgivable. These are the actions of totalitarian dictators, using foreign security services to sully political opponents. Someone needs to stop him before it’s too late.”

Initially, even President Obama disagreed with the assessment that there had been Russian interference. His administration released a statement November 25 that read, “The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process.”

Since the beginning of December, however, Obama has changed his tune and has ordered a review by all government intelligence agencies of any foreign actions that could have influenced any American elections from 2008 to the present. The findings of this review will be made public early next year prior to Inauguration Day.

President-Elect Donald Trump has downplayed the noise made by the Democrats on this issue, saying, “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”

Trump reminded voters that analysts at the CIA are the same people who produced fake intelligence saying Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as a pretense for the U.S. to invade that country in 2003.

With no clear consensus in the intelligence community on this issue and the Electoral College vote taking place on December 19, it’s improbable that these charges will stick or be able to alter the election results. It’s clear that the Democrats are grasping at straws and hoping for a “Hail Mary” pass that can save them from their loss, but it appears that their efforts will be too little and too late.

~American Liberty Report