"When I demanded you let me get in the last word, you didn't just let me spread lies, so I'm going to press the run away button and pretend my shameless parting shot landed".
Congratulations, lol.
Shit! we forgot an election thread for the midterms. Here it is now.
- Thread starter Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)
- Start date
Congratulations, lol.
Their statement was not that the information was inaccurate, though-- the statement is quite upfront in stating that they don't know if its genuine or not. They didn't make any claims that turned out to be false.
The statement is focused on Giuliani being the focus of Russian attempts to influence the election, and that the story bears the hallmarks of such an effort, whether the emails are genuine or not. And that's all true and remains true.
Do you have any support for the belief this is true outside of the letter they wrote?
What are "the hallmarks" of Russian election interference?
Yes, but more importantly, members of the intelligence community probably have quite a lot more.
The letter already points out: the Russian government has prior for both hacking and for leaking information to influence an election cycle. They did both to influence 2016. They had contacts within the Trump campaign, specifically with several people who directly respond to Giuliani. And they favoured a Trump victory.
Question for you, though: what exactly would you want the authors to rescind? What claim from that letter has been shown to be untrue?
The most egregious part, which warrants an apology for existing in the first place, is referencing " – the hacking (via cyber operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate information." Conflating those two things is to say "it doesn't matter if it's true or not, it could be from Russia so we're obligated to dismiss is".
That being said, the forensics not only seems to indicate the emails that could be validated are consistently real, they found that the data on the drive matches the origin story that came with it: it was pulled off of a water damaged macbook, with evidence of the efforts to copy off the data in mid-2019, followed by larger efforts to copy and categorize the data in 2020, exactly what the shop owner claimed to have done. The Russian hack of Burisma was months after that started. To think the laptop was faked, you'd either need to believe Russia had hacked Hunter Biden prior to hacking Burisma and planted the laptop at a random repair shop a year in advance of the election while constructing a very thorough forgery, or you can believe they constructed the most insanely thorough data forgery in history and got the cooperation of the repair shop guy in Delaware without leaving any trace of their activity to be detected for the next 2 years at minimum. And then there's the FBI part, who are said to have the physical laptop, and we know have investigated the origin of the laptop and have an ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden, specifically on tax crimes (of which there is evidence in the emails) and for lying on his gun background check about drug use (which there's video of from the laptop).
So if you'd like a specific line to rescind, I'd go with "the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue", since none of the forensic evidence implicates Russia years later.
But I would like to take a moment to gloat on something here: the hallmark of a Russian information campaign against the Democrats is that they hack and leak accurate information about the Democrats. That speaks for itself.
No, they didn't say "dismiss it". They said that regardless of whether its true, its notable and concerning that Russia has chosen to release use it to influence an election. Which is true.
That's because forensic investigation of the emails is not necessary or relevant to point to Russian involvement: the known channels between Giuliani's employees and Russian government agents, and their conversations concerning Burisma and Biden's family, are enough for anybody who isn't blinkered by partisan loyalty.
It does indeed: it also says quite a lot that the Russian government makes such efforts to assist the Republican Party, because it saw a Trump leadership as advantageous for Russia.
If you think Russia hasn’t hacked, or otherwise obtained, information on Republican misdeeds, that Republicans don’t do anything wrong/illegal/immoral, then you are insanely delusional or deliberately ignorant.
Well, they've also tried to boost Bernie Sanders. And Jill Stein. My read is that they did not want any mainstream politicians in the white house.
Boosting Stein’s campaign helped hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign which helped boost Trump’s campaign.
Getting Sanders on the ballot would have helped Trump because there are plenty of people who don’t Trust Sanders’ enough to vote for him.
Russia’s actions only ever truly benefited Trump and, maybe, the Republicans.
You seriously believe that Hunter Biden's laptop was acquired by and released to the public by Russia?
The difference isn't what Russia can do or what Republicans are guilty of. The difference is that US government institutions, intelligence agencies, and the media are perpetually vigilant of Republican politicians' wrongdoings (real or fabricated). There aren't secrets left to steal. Which there wouldn't be for Democrats either if there was any semblance of fairness in US politics.
Oh, do you mean like all of those Republican-instigated investigations of Hilary Clinton which all found absolutely nothing they could prosecute her for?
Maybe the reason so many Republican misdeeds come out is because Republicans are a party of hypocritical criminals desperate to distract us from their crimes.
If some hostile foreign power tried releasing information on Republicans during an election cycle in hopes of interfering with the election, then I’m pretty sure the intelligence agencies of America would be suspicious of that information and would want it out of the public eye while they investigated.
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Steele Dossier?
Edit with specifics for those who may be unaware: a Russian source "gathered" info on Trump, and then the DNC paid a former British spy to compile it and launder it back into the intelligence community, and then not only did they traffic it to media companies publicly immediately before the election, they also used it as pretense to bug Trump's campaign behind closed doors, and then the FBI hired the Russian informant directly.
If a foreign agent tries to trash Republicans during an election cycle, it seems the FBI hires them.
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Do you not remember the part where Comey said that by the law they could charge Clinton for the email server, but were choosing not to?
I remember the computer maintenance guy getting three laptops from a guy who 'looks like Hunter Biden.' (Waterlogged if I remember correctly.) And Hunter never bothered picking them up...
That is a stretch. To me, it would make a whole lot more sense if a foreign entity dropped it off. (Maybe if it was Hunter, he was under the influence. And he just forgot about it. He does sound pretty incompetent)
Doesn't mean it was Russia. Doesn't even mean it was someone Russian.
It is also a seperate incident from Russia hacking. I'm pretty sure it was Germany, North Korea, Iran and the UK also hacking in 2016. Wouldn't put it past a whole bunch of other countries doing it too. This is seperate from the Mueller Report
I'm going to note that Hillary (and many older congress members) should not be allowed near a computer system without a cyber security expert
I would prefer to ban her and Tandi from Twitter so their cancelling squad stop attacking the left AND the right. It's been going on for 14 years now and hasn't helped and just pissed people off
So, no not illegal. Some definite behavior changes would be nice
What...? No, that's not what I said. Though Russia did hack Burisma in late 2019, in an action that compromised login and security credentials.
I'm saying that the story's appearance at that time, and in that form, has grubby FSB fingerprints all over it-- from the Burisma hacking to the "man who looked like Hunter Biden" who never bothered to pick it up to the convenient timing to the numerous contacts of Giuliani and Trump with the Russian gov.
The exact chain of events we cannot know. And those intelligence experts didn't make any claims about the exact chain of events either. But there's a lot that should raise eyebrows there.
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Counterpoints: Russian hacking does not have the m.o. of faking a physical device. Russian hacking does have the m.o. of leaking full data sets online where people can see them. To my knowledge, historically they haven't done things like involve a random computer repair guy. There is plenty about the situation that doesn't match the way Russian hacking typically goes.
And the majority of the rationale is "this seems like someone trying to influence the US election", which is hardly unique to Russia. There's like 80 million people in the US who would want to help Trump or hurt Joe Biden in that election. Having contact with Giuliani is not in any way unique to Russia either, and there are thousands of people we factually know would want to influence Giuliani, rather than the speculation that Russia is targeting him.
And also, it's the future, and we have hindsight, and it wasn't Russia.