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Two years ago and two weeks ago The Post published for the first time that hackers linked to the Russian government had acceded to the National Democratic Committee network and stolen documents. This first report predates any publication of documents by WikiLeaks and preceded several months of public awareness of a major effort by the Russian government to interfere in this year's presidential election.
And yet, two years and two weeks later, the person who would have been the deliberate beneficiary of this interference offers this thought on Twitter.
There is nothing new in this tweet, of course. Each of these thoughts has been offered in various ways and places probably dozens of times.
But there is nothing new in this tweet – that President Trump continues to offer this alternative view of reality and long-demystified conspiracy theories – is remarkable in itself. So, once and for all, let's review Trump's nebulous claims, which is known, and why Trump, perhaps more than anyone else, should know better.
He almost certainly does, of course. It is politically beneficial for him to cast as much doubt on the evidence available, either because he wants to rebuff suggestions that his election was tainted (the Russian side) or that he helped him. Russian effort (the part on the special advocate Robert S. Mueller III)
In case a part of him would know no better or in case there would be others who would take the questions of Trump at face value: Here are the answers.
Why did Russia interfere? election. There were at least two tracks that Russian intelligence actors have taken to try to overturn the election (and its consequences).
One involved the hacking of the DNC network and, subsequently, access to the email account of Hillary Clinton Podesta's campaign manager (among others). The files of these hacks have finally been made public by WikiLeaks. The other track was causing unrest on social media and at rallies, encouraging divisional problems to oppose Americans to each other.
Public evidence of the piracy of the DNC and the Podesta comes from this June 2016 report. The story tells how the DNC had noted unusual activity and hired an external firm called CrowdStrike to analyze what was going on . CrowdStrike has seen signs of two known hacking groups linked to the Russian secret service. (We will come back to this question a little bit.)
Our story noted that hackers had targeted opposition search files. Shortly after, a hacker called himself Guccifer 2.0 by a hacker who claimed to be Romanian, but who at one point did not hide his Internet address, which allowed the investigators to identify his place of work: Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow, "reported the Daily Beast, referring to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. The documents published by Guccifer contained their own clues, including the originally leaked files with indicators that the hacking had been done on a Russian-language operating system
"After this error went public, the intruders have removed the Cyrillic information from the metadata in "The next discharge and the names of users carefully used from different parts of the world," reported Vice's Motherboard, thus confirming that they had made a mistake at first round. "
Associated Press published a report detailing how Russia accessed The Podesta account with an email prompting him to provide his login credentials. The piracy of his account was part of a barrage of attempts to compromise email accounts before the Russian intelligence services targeted not only US political figures but also opponents of the Russian government.
This is a small taste of the public. US intelligence agencies have compiled a classified report with stronger evidence, which was presented to the then-elected president in January 2017. Intelligence officials working for Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama have repeatedly stated that they did not doubt that Russia interfered in the elections. . Even before election day, government agencies warned against Russian infiltration attempts and linked the DNC hacks to Russia.
Then there is the interference in social media. The best evidence for this was presented by Mueller himself in an indictment filed earlier this year. He alleges how, from 2014, a group called the Internet Research Agency began to analyze US policy and travel to the United States to determine points of tension. The group would then have created accounts on social media intended to propagate divisive messages about race, religion and national security, an effort that continued after the elections itself.
. At one point, his agents seem to have posed as Americans and paid a US citizen to build a cage that was used at a Trump rally to house a mimic of Hillary Clinton wearing a combination of prison.
participated in this effort and details his team's understanding of how they were established and funded. It includes messages from people involved in the effort by specifically talking about deceiving Americans on social networks
Again, these are just the tracks that are known
Why the physical server DNC n & # 39; has not been studied by the FBI. ] We will use an imperfect analogy here.
When investigators go to a crime scene, they use a technique to dust off fingerprints, resulting in a reproduction of the contours of the fingertip of a suspect. It is this reproduction that is used to find a match with a fingerprint database; FBI investigators do not need to take the safe with them to constantly double check the original print. They use the copy
is essentially what the FBI did with the DNC server: The desktop was provided with copies of the data on the server, such as duplicating your own hard drive. If the Russians had accessed the physical server after being introduced into the DNC, the physical server itself could have been useful. Instead, they received the server's fingerprint, so to speak. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the DNC and by FBI director James B. Comey, in testimony
"The best practice is always to have access to the machines themselves," he said. Comey in March 2017. People tell me that it was a suitable substitute. "
One of the reasons that the analogy of fingerprints is flawed, incidentally, is that a duplicate data on the DNC server is a perfect copy. A raised engraving is not
Why Clinton's ties with Russia have not been studied. There are two main ways of alleging inappropriate links between Russian and Russian actors.
The first is that the sale of a uranium mining company to a Russian company was approved while Clinton was secretary of state.The allegation is that Clinton approved this sale after receiving the Money for the Clinton Foundation and after Bill Clinton received $ 500,000 for a pledge to speak.
Our fact-finders have repeatedly said there is no evidence that Clinton participated directly in the approval of the sale; 39; State was one of the nine bodies responsible for approving it; There is no indication that foundation contributions or speech payments have anything to do with the decision.
The other alleged link between Clinton and the Russians is even more diverted. Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, has compiled a series of reports on behalf of an agency called Fusion GPS, examining possible links between Trump's campaign and Russian actors – the issue of collusion. These reports, which were never intended to become public, have used a number of sources within the Russian government to obtain information. Since GPS Fusion was hired by a law firm working for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, the allegation (as stated here) is that the Russians helped Clinton by providing her damning information on Trump. Trump said it was the real collusion .
No evidence was presented (despite the fact that many people were watching) that Clinton was aware of Steele's reports before they were made public, let alone the sources were. (There is evidence to the contrary.) There is also no indication that the Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin have misdirection directed at Steele, which is essential to the idea of collusion with the efforts from Russia. (The US secret service believes that Putin directly ordered the interfering effort intended to help Trump in 2016.)
If Russian intelligence wanted to disclose the negative information about Trump included in Steele's reports, they chose a very indirect way of doing it. – and a very indirect way to involve Clinton in the effort
Why say that there was "no collusion" is misleading. Trump's repeated claim, since the beginning of the Mueller probe, was that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. He or the White House said 140 times during this single month of January
. It may be that no incidents occurred in which Trump or his senior campaign team specifically coordinated with Russian actors to guide their interference in the 2016 race. is probably the safest default assumption. But that's what Mueller investigates and, just as police officers do not lay charges in murder cases as soon as they enter a crime scene, it takes a while to assess the proof and understand what happened.
Trump's campaign "in collusion" with the Russians depends very much on your definition of "collusion". Do you consider the secret wish of the Trump family and campaign president Paul Manafort to obtain negative information from the Russian government an example of collusion? Different contacts between other characters in the campaign and individuals linked to the Russian government in which there was often expressed support for Trump to win the race?
At least six people related to the campaign and perhaps up to 10 (including Trump) probably knew that the Russians were offering land to Clinton. That indicates a collusion is in the eye of the viewer.
Why trust in Mueller's investigation is warranted. In other tweets on Thursday, Trump launched slanders about Mueller personally and his investigation more generally.
Trump and his allies did a good job of undercutting the Mueller's probe confidence, often raising issues like those on which Trump tweeted: that the investigation involves biased supporters and that it was launched by an FBI agent named Peter Strzok, who was hopelessly partial
. Republican for life who was appointed to lead the FBI by George W. Bush and about which no credible allegation of bias was raised. (If I missed one, please let me know.) Mueller is ultimately responsible for the investigation within the limits set by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein – also Republican for life and someone named by Trump himself. that Mueller allows the probe to be driven by animus against the president. On the contrary: While Strzok was involved in the investigation before Comey was fired and Mueller named, Mueller removed him from the special advocate team two months after discovering Texts in which Strzok had denigrated Trump. Trump at one point celebrated a judge who indicated skepticism about Mueller's indictment of Manafort; this judge agreed this week that the charges against Manafort were in Mueller's jurisdiction.
About this price tag. Trump has repeatedly complained of the high cost of the Mueller probe. The government spent more on his trips to Mar-a-Lago than for the special advocate's inquiry.
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