Category Archives: Cyber

Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

by FannieCrabtree Posted on January 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Did Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign tip the election to Donald Trump? In the LA Times today, Noah Bierman and Brian Bennett have this to say:

The truth is no one knows for sure because the election was so close in so many states that no one factor can be credited or blamed, especially in last year’s highly combustible campaign.

This is exactly backward. The fact that the election was so close means that lots of things might have tipped the election all by themselves. The Russian hacking is one of them. Consider Bierman and Bennett’s own case:

Extensive news coverage of the how the leaked emails showed political machinations by Democratic Party operatives often drowned out Clinton’s agenda….English-language news channel Russia Today…posted a video on YouTube in early November, for example. Called “Trump Will Not Be Permitted to Win,” it featured Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, and was watched 2.2 million times….U.S. intelligence officials say anti-Clinton stories and posts flooded social media from the Internet Research Agency near St. Petersburg, which the report described as a network of “professional trolls” led by a Putin ally.

Putin’s most tangible victory may have come last summer. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was forced to quit her post as Democratic National Committee chairwoman after emails posted on Wikileaks showed that supposedly neutral DNC officials had backed Clinton over her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the primaries.

….In October, Trump similarly seized on leaked emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. They showed that Donna Brazile, a former CNN commentator who replaced Wasserman Schultz at the DNC, had shared a pair of questions with Clinton’s team before a televised candidates’ forum and debate….The leak showed nothing illegal. But it bolstered the idea that Clinton was a Washington insider who benefited from fellow elites.

….The most damaging leaks for Clinton may have been transcripts of excerpts of her highly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, released in October….There were no smoking guns in the leaks. But they included her admission that her growing wealth since she and Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 had made her “kind of far removed” from the anger and frustration many Americans felt after the 2008 recession. She also called for “a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future, with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it.”

That’s a lot of stuff! Does it seem likely that all of this, plus the fact that it kept Clinton’s email woes front and center, made a difference of 1 percent in a few swing states? Sure, I’d say so. Did other things make a difference too? Yes indeed. But given how close the election was, there’s a pretty good chance that Putin’s campaign of cyber-chaos had enough oomph to swing things all by itself.

I’m a little surprised this hasn’t produced more panic. In the United States I understand why it hasn’t: Democrats don’t want to sound like sore losers and Republicans don’t care as long as their guy won. But what about the rest of the world? It’s been common knowledge for a while that Russia does this kind of stuff, but their actions in the US election represent a quantum leap in how far they’re willing to go. And there’s not much doubt that Putin will keep at it.

After all, it worked a treat. And thanks to a gullible press and normal partisan politics, it’ll keep working. The next leak will get as much attention as these did, and the one after that too. We have no societal defense against this stuff.

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Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

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Read the US Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking

by FranchescaMenden Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday released its declassified report on Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election by hacking Democratic outfits during the campaign.

The report comes a day after top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the issue. During the hearing, Clapper said the intelligence community has grown more “resolute” in its assessment that Russian intelligence was involved in the hacks aimed at the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. On Friday, Clapper, Rogers, FBI Director Jim Comey, and CIA Director John Brennan briefed President-elect Donald Trump on the classified evidence linking Russia to the hacks and the leaking of the swiped emails. After the briefing, Trump released a statement noting that Russia is one of many actors that try to hack US targets, but the statement did not acknowledge the US intelligence community conclusion that Moscow had mounted the cyberattack against the United States as part of an operation to help elect Trump president.

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Read the US Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking

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Can Trump Ever Be Convinced That Russia Is Behind Election Meddling?

by Adele4435kfd Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump met on Friday with the heads of several US intelligence agencies for a personal briefing about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 president election. But it’s still unclear whether Trump believes what he was apparently told—or what it would take to convince him to accept the government’s findings that Moscow hacked Democratic targets to help Trump win the election.

After the briefing, Trump issued a statement noting that “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee.” But he did not say he accepts the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow did so during the 2016 campaign and was behind the leaking of Democratic emails through WikiLeaks and other sites. Trump did insist that “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.” Given that Trump repeatedly cited the WikiLeaks material during the campaign, his claim that Russian hacking had no effect on the election is hard to prove.

The meeting comes a day after several top intelligence officials briefed a Senate committee on the matter. Hours after the Senate hearing, the Washington Post reported that US intelligence officials claim to have identified people who passed stolen Democratic emails and other materials to WikiLeaks and that intercepted communications between senior Russian government officials revealed Vladimir Putin’s regime had celebrated Trump’s victory. Several other media outlets later confirmed the Post‘s account.

Trump tweeted that reporters were given access to the materials because of “Politics!” and later questioned how the government could be confident in its conclusions, pointing to a report that the Democratic National Committee blocked or delayed access to its servers, according to the FBI. (The DNC and others noted that it was not necessary or customary for FBI investigators to access the servers in order to investigate the hack.) On Friday, Trump tweeted that he was “asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing.”

On Friday morning, before his briefing, Trump told the New York Times that the intense focus on Russian hacking is “a political witch hunt” led by people embarrassed that Trump won in November.

“Making this about the election and not the subversion of a foreign government is beyond disturbing,” a former CIA official tells Mother Jones. “This isn’t about politics; it’s about espionage. He needs to get his head wrapped around the fact that he will be the target the moment he steps into office as POTUS.”

The Trump transition team and Hope Hicks, his campaign spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. Incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has complained this week that reporters have gone too far in declaring Russia the culprit.

But security researchers say there is plenty of information in the public domain to conclude that the Russian government was involved in the hacks. That involvement was first reported by the Washington Post in June and has since been bolstered by several formal government announcements. The most recent government report, issued jointly by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on December 29, offered a basic outline of the US government’s conclusions and explained some of the technical evidence that led the US intelligence community to pin the blame on Russia.

“The evidence is airtight,” says Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist who now runs a security research firm. “I don’t know anyone in the industry that takes the doubts seriously. Within the industry, it’s not a question.”

Matt Tait, a security researcher and former information security specialist for the Government Communications Headquarters, the United Kingdom’s version of the National Security Agency, said the information that’s been presented so far by the US government and private security research firms who have investigated the hacks supports the case against the Russians.

“The public evidence for this hack is unusual in how compelling it is compared with almost all other breaches, and that to people who are motivated and technical enough to go through it properly, it provides a solid case even without access to the secret sources and methods used by the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Tait writes in an email to Mother Jones.

“There is additional information that the IC could provide,” he adds, “but frankly, for people who are not persuaded by the evidence that is currently public, I suspect there is no quantity of additional evidence that the IC could release that will be persuasive to those people.”

But Jeffrey Carr, a private information security researcher, believes there needs to be more independent vetting of the intelligence community’s conclusions. “I want to see a chain of verifiable evidence available for peer review that is internally consistent, that is not dependent solely upon technical evidence, and that brings us to reasonable certainty as defined by international law,” he wrote on Medium this month.

Still, it’s not clear that anything would convince Trump to accept Russia’s role in the hacks. “Based on the already overwhelming public evidence, what—short of a video of Putin himself at the keyboard—could change Trump’s mind?” former NSA lawyer Susan Hennessey tweeted Friday morning. Her next tweet: “Trump isn’t actually interested in being persuaded by evidence. His only question is whether he can maintain plausible deniability.”

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Can Trump Ever Be Convinced That Russia Is Behind Election Meddling?

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Democrats Turn Up Pressure on Republicans for Russian Hacking Investigation

by StewartPeachey Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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At Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Russian hacking of Democratic targets during the 2016 campaign, it was obvious that most Republicans don’t want to get involved with a matter that puts them on the wrong side of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled in the election in order to help him win. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chair of the committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), did each decry the Russian intervention and called for a thorough investigation. Yet the other GOPers on the panel were largely mute. This silence suggested that Rs on the Hill are generally not eager to dig into this touchy (for Trump) subject. And that explains why McCain has so far failed in his effort to persuade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to set up a special select committee to conduct a probe. Instead, McConnell prefers to leave most of this work to the (naturally) overly secretive Intelligence Committee, on which neither McCain nor Graham, the two loudest Republican voices on this front, sit. These machinations demonstrate that politics is shaping how congressional Republicans are reacting to a fundamental threat to American democracy and electoral integrity. And that makes all the more relevant a revived Democratic push to create an independent commission to investigate Russian intervention in the election.

Last month, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Government Oversight Committee, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, introduced a measure to create a bipartisan commission—much like the highly praised 9/11 commission—to probe the Russian hacking. Their proposal did not gain a great amount of attention. Even top Democrats on Capitol Hill who supported the idea were not loudly demanding a robust investigation. But on Friday afternoon, Cummings and Swalwell reintroduced the bill, and this time more than 150 of their fellow House Democrats, including the top Democrat on every House committee, were co-sponsoring the proposed legislation.

The bill would establish a 12-member commission with the authority to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas, and receive public testimony. The panel would examine attempts by the Russian government to influence, interfere with, or undermine trust in last year’s US elections. And the commission would have to issue a report with recommendations within 18 months.

With this move, House Democrats are upping the ante, just as the Obama administration is completing its review of the Russian intervention in the election and Trump keeps tweeting positively about Vladimir Putin and suggesting the story has been hyped to taint his election. This week, a bipartisan collection of former senior intelligence and defense officials—including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and former Acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morrell—issued a letter urging Congress to create this sort of commission to “understand fully and publicly what happened, how we were so vulnerable, and what we can do to protect our democracy in future elections.”

It’s unlikely that many, if any, Republicans on the Hill will embrace this proposal. But Dems are attempting to generate political pressure. “There’s overwhelming agreement across America that our democracy was attacked this past presidential election,” Swallwell says. “Now everyone’s asking what our nation’s leaders will do about it.” For most Republicans, the answer seems to be: not much.

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Democrats Turn Up Pressure on Republicans for Russian Hacking Investigation

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CIA Says Russians Celebrated Trump’s Victory

by BerryC7650437138 Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post passes along the juiciest bit of the CIA’s classified report on Russian hacking:

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Then NBC News got into the act:

The official agreed to talk to NBC News after the Post published leaked details of the review because the official felt that the details the paper chose focused too much on the Russian celebration and not enough on the thrust of the report.

Two top intelligence officials with direct knowledge told NBC News that the report on Russian hacking also details Russian cyberattacks not just against the Democratic National Committee, but the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and American corporations.

….The report, on which Obama was also orally briefed, explains what intelligence agencies believe are Moscow’s motives, including, in part, a desire to disrupt the American democratic process. But the intelligence analysts who prepared the report also concluded that the hacks were payback for the Obama administration’s questioning of Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy as president.

Tomorrow Donald Trump will get his own briefing on the CIA report. That oughta be good. And in other Trump-related news, we got yet another outraged tweet about cars today:

It’s true that Toyota is moving production of the Corolla to Mexico. But here’s the thing: they’re moving it from Canada. This is not exactly breaking news, either: the Canadian media reported all this nearly two years ago.

Right now, about half of the Corollas sold in the US are made in Mississippi and the other half in Canada. When the new plant is finished, about half will be made in Mississippi and the other half in Mexico. Nothing changes. We’re still importing the same number of Corollas. And the Canadian plant will be reconfigured to build more profitable SUVs and mid-sized cars.

Unless it infuriates you that we’re importing some Corollas from Mexico instead of Canada, this is a nothingburger. On the other hand, if you just want to demagogue Mexico, I guess it’s tailor made.

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CIA Says Russians Celebrated Trump’s Victory

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Obamacare Is One of the Best Social Welfare Programs Ever Passed

by JamisonJose503 Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Jeff Stein reports on Democratic plans to fight any attempt to repeal Obamacare:

“We are united in our opposition to these Republican attempts to Make America Sick Again,” Schumer said, cracking a slight smile at the inversion of Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. The line suggests that Schumer wants to reframe the fight over Obamacare into one about the broader GOP health care agenda, which includes proposals to change Medicaid andMedicare.

Since the health care law passed in 2009, Schumer and other Democrats in Congress have learned that defending it can be a political loser. Republicans stayed unified in their opposition, and public opinion stayed on their side. But in their final push to save it, Democrats are moving the battle to new turf, fighting over Americans’ shared frustration with the inadequacies of the country’s health care system, not the law itself.

This is sadly true. Democrats have never been willing to defend Obamacare, and they still aren’t. It’s crazy. Obamacare isn’t perfect. Nothing this side of the pearly gates is. But if politicians limited themselves to defending programs with no problems, we’d never hear from them again.1

But considering where we started—with a Rube Goldberg medical system dominated by well-heeled special interests and all but indifferent to the near-poor—Obamacare is almost miraculously close to perfect. I know that Republicans have convinced everyone otherwise, but take a look at the results of this Kaiser tracking poll from November. Virtually every single aspect of Obamacare is not just popular, but very popular:

Even Republicans like practically everything about Obamacare, including the taxes to pay for it. People like the subsidies; they like the exchanges; they like the out-of-pocket caps; they like the Medicaid expansion; they like the pre-existing conditions ban; and they like taxing the rich to fund it all. The only unpopular part of the whole law is the individual mandate.

What’s more, Obamacare has been a huge success. It’s provided health coverage to 20 million people. It’s massively reduced the cost of health coverage for low-income families. It’s slashed the number of uninsured by half among blacks and whites and by a quarter among Hispanics. It’s allowed people with expensive chronic illnesses to get treatment. It will help keep overall health costs down in the future. It’s had no negative impact on the employer health care system. And it’s done all this without raising the deficit. In fact, it’s cut the deficit.

And yet, Democrats are still afraid to defend it loudly and proudly. This just boggles me. Sure, Obamacare has some problems. Certain regions don’t have enough competition. Deductibles are high if you buy a bronze plan. And a small part of the population has been hit with large premium increases.

But this is something like 10 percent of Obamacare. The other 90 percent is purely positive. Why are so many liberals unwilling to say so? Why aren’t they willing to defend Obamacare with the same fervor they defend other imperfect programs, like Medicare or the ADA or the Clean Air Act or Social Security? Obamacare is at least as good as any of them. But no one will ever believe it if Republicans are attacking it relentlessly while Democrats mutter resentfully that there’s no public option and politicians hide in their offices in the hope that nobody will blame them if their premiums have gone up.

If Democrats aren’t willing to defend Obamacare, it’s hardly a surprise that Republicans feel free to go after it without consequence. Maybe they should start.

1Yes, I know, that might not be a bad thing.

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Obamacare Is One of the Best Social Welfare Programs Ever Passed

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Clapper: Election Cyber Attacks Were Directed By the Kremlin

by TyreeKruse Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said today that the intelligence community believed “more resolutely” than it did three months ago that Russia was behind a campaign of cyberattacks during the presidential election. The LA Times reports on his testimony before Congress:

Three U.S. spy chiefs testified publicly for the first time Thursday that the Kremlin’s most senior leaders approved a Russian intelligence operation aimed at interfering in the U.S. presidential race, a conclusion that President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged.

….“We assess that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets,” they wrote in joint remarks submitted for the hearing.

….U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the Russian cyber operation sought to damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to help Trump’s bid for the White House. Clapper did not confirm that judgment Thursday, although he indicated it would be included in the classified report. “Yes, we will ascribe a motivation,” he said. “I’d rather not preempt the report.”

The full House and the full Senate will be briefed on a classified version of the review next week, Clapper said. After those briefings, a declassified version will be made public, he said….“I intend to push the envelope as much as we can in the unclassified version because I think the public should know as much about this as possible,” Clapper said. “There are some fragile sources and methods.”

I don’t have anything to say about this since, obviously, I don’t know any more than what Clapper told us. We’ll just have to wait for the unclassified report and see what it says.

But I will comment on one thing: aren’t liberals supposed to be the ones who are skeptical of the intelligence community? Are we suddenly defending them just because it’s politically convenient?

There’s some of that going on, I’m sure. But the real reason is a lot simpler: the intelligence community doesn’t really have any motivation to make this stuff up aside from a generalized dislike of Russia. They are interested in keeping everyone on edge about cyberattacks, but that doesn’t require Russia to be involved in what happened. In fact, doubling down on the Russia story even after Trump won is nothing but bad for the CIA. All they’re doing is pissing off the incoming president, something they could easily avoid by keeping the cyberattack story but downplaying the Russia angle.

So this is sort of an admission against interest. The CIA’s interest is in getting more money for cyber security and cultivating a strong relationship with a new president. The fact that they’re doing just the opposite suggests pretty strongly that they believe in no uncertain terms that Russia really is behind this.

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Clapper: Election Cyber Attacks Were Directed By the Kremlin

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At Russian Hacking Hearing, Most Republican Senators Express No Outrage

by FranklyPonce Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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At Thursday morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about Russian hacking during the 2016 elections, little new information was revealed about Moscow’s meddling in the presidential campaign. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did say that the intelligence community’s review ordered by President Barack Obama of the Russian operation will be done early next week and will yield an unclassified report for public release. “I intend to push the envelope as much as I can,” Clapper said, referring to information the report will make public.

Clapper also noted that the intelligence community is now more “resolute” in its assessment that Russian intelligence was behind the cyber thefts and subsequent public dissemination of emails from the Democratic Party and John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He also testified that the public report will include an assessment of Moscow’s motives behind this operation—the CIA concluded weeks ago that the motive was to boost Donald Trump’s prospects—and that there was “actually more than one motive.”

Though the hearing did not expand public knowledge of the Russian hack, it did serve a political purpose: to slap Trump for both his refusal to acknowledge Russian involvement in the hacking and his related disparagement of the intelligence community. Several senators seized the opportunity to challenge the president-elect’s denialism and to send him a message. Some referred to him directly; some took veiled—though barely veiled—shots. Opening the hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee’s chairman, said there was “still much we don’t know…But Russian intrusions in the election…are not in any doubt.” And Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the senior Democrat on the committee, scoffed at the “indifference of some to this matter” and asked Clapper if the hacking was a stand-alone Russian operation. (Clapper replied, “This was a multifaceted campaign. The hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.”)

Other Democratic senators also banged on Trump. Sen. Claire McCaskill thanked McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another member of the committee, for defending the intelligence community against Trump’s insults. And referring to Trump’s approving tweets about WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange—Trump indicated he believed Assange was more credible that US intelligence—McCaskill thundered that Trump placing “Julian Assange on a pedestal” relative to the men and women of the US intelligence community ought to cause bipartisan outrage. Pointing to widespread Republican silence on this front, she added, “Mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side of the aisle.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) later chimed in that Trump’s “disparagement” of the intelligence community “has been a terrible disservice to our nation…I hope that we will see a change.”

Graham also scolded Trump. “It’s okay to challenge the intel,” he said, adding, “but what I don’t want you to do is undermine” the intelligence community. Noting that Clapper was due to brief Trump on Friday on Russian hacking and other intelligence matters, Graham asked the nation’s top intelligence officer if he was ready to be challenged by the president-elect. “Yes,” Clapper replied.

Other than McCain and Graham, the Republican members of the committee shied away from referring to Trump or even the main matter at hand: the Russian hacking. Many asked about other cyber threats and attacks, such as the Chinese hack that penetrated the US government’s personnel system. It was just too awkward or politically incorrect for them to question Clapper and the other witnesses about the Moscow operation and Putin’s intentions. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) even tried to undermine the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia intended to help Trump. “There’s a widespread assumption—this has been expressed by Secretary Clinton herself since the election—that Vladimir Putin favored Donald Trump in this election,” Cotton said. “Donald Trump has proposed to increase our defense budget, to accelerate nuclear modernization, to accelerate ballistic defenses, and to expand and accelerate oil and gas production, which would obviously harm Russia’s economy. Hillary Clinton opposed, or at least was not as enthusiastic about all those measures.” Cotton asked Clapper, “Would each of those put the United States in a stronger strategic position against Russia?” Clapper said that “anything we do to enhance our military capabilities, absolutely.” Then Cotton made his point: “So there is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia.” He was suggesting that because Trump’s campaign platform had a hawkish military plank, the intelligence community’s assessment was wrong and that Trump was not Putin’s preferred candidate. Clapper did not respond to this argument.

And Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) won the blame-America-first-to-protect-Trump prize. He tried to diminish the Russian hacking that profited Trump by pointing out that the United States, too, has tried to influence elections overseas:

The glass house comment is something I think is very important. There was a study by a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that’s estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn’t include coups or regime changes, so tangible evidence where we’ve tried to effect an outcome to our purpose. Russia’s done it some 36 times. In fact, when Russia was apparently trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their election. So I’m not here to talk about that, but I am here to say that we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw and I think that that’s consistent with what you said on other matters.

Actually, Tillis was indeed here to talk about this in order to not talk about how Russian intelligence subverted an American election and aided Trump.

Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Clinton’s running mate, took a seat on the dais. When it was his turn to question the witnesses, he noted that a few years ago he was chairman of the Democratic Party and that the party’s office contained a filing cabinet that had been rifled during the Watergate break-in. That burglary, he noted, led to a “high moment” for Congress, when the House and the Senate conducted bipartisan investigations that sought to protect the integrity of American elections. Referring to the Russian hacking, Kaine said, “This is a test of this body.” He wondered if the current Congress would act in a bipartisan fashion to preserve the “integrity of elections.” Judging from the ho-hum attitude of most Republicans on the panel toward the Russian intervention, Kaine may end up being disappointed.

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At Russian Hacking Hearing, Most Republican Senators Express No Outrage

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Donald Trump Is Worth About $3-4 Billion

by HildegaSizemore Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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Bear with me here for a moment. I have a theory to share with you that might answer a long-debated question: how much is Donald Trump worth?

Here’s the theory: Trump likes rich people, but he doesn’t like people who are richer than him. This suggests that his cabinet picks might tell us just what it takes to be richer than Donald Trump. Here’s a revised version of my usual Swamp Watch chart:

The list tops out at $2.5 billion. This suggests that Trump is worth $3-4 billion, right in line with the Forbes estimate of $3.7 billion. Donald Trump has apparently been very careful to make sure that he’s the richest guy in his administration.

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Donald Trump Is Worth About $3-4 Billion

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Trump Promises New Episode of The Donald Show on Tuesday (or Maybe Wednesday)

by FrederickWilloug Posted on January 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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Happy New Year!

Here is the president-elect of the United States on the last day of the old year, offering his skepticism that Russia was behind the hacks of the DNC and other political organizations during the election:

“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Mr. Trump said of the intelligence agencies….He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”

When asked what he knew that others did not, Mr. Trump demurred, saying only, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Here’s what I think Donald Trump knows about hacking: nothing. In movies, the stereotypical hacking nerd can blow through any cyber defense in about 30 seconds of whirlwind typing. So this is what Trump believes: There are lots of 19-year-old kids who can type furiously for about 30 seconds and break into any computer in the world.

I don’t imagine anyone is going to argue with me about that, so let’s move on to Trump’s statement that he knows things “that other people don’t know.” Intriguing! What could that be?

Well, America’s intelligence agencies think Russia is behind the hacking, so Trump doesn’t have any secret knowledge from them. Where else could he have gotten it? There are two obvious possibilities. The first is that Trump’s team did it, and he’s going to confess on Tuesday (or Wednesday). Wouldn’t that be great? The second possibility is that Putin has provided Trump with some kind of plausible misdirection, which he’s going to parrot on Tuesday (or Wednesday).

Actually, of course, there’s a third possibility, and it’s the most likely of all: Trump is just blathering as usual, and he will provide no new information on either Tuesday or Wednesday. He’s just playing the press the way he always does, and we’ll all turn out for the show, just like we did for the birther show in September.

We’ve got at least four years and 20 days of this stuff still ahead of us, folks. Take a deep breath.

Link: 

Trump Promises New Episode of The Donald Show on Tuesday (or Maybe Wednesday)

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