[News] Trump, Russia, and the 2016 Election

All news related to Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia and to the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. New details should be cited to reputable sources.

Rat Boy wrote:

Her site is also claiming the Feds are going after the GOP under RICO and once all the dust settles, the next president will be...Orin Hatch. Well, that seems fitting; Donald Trump is the most corrupt president since Richard Nixon. Orin Hatch would be the blandest president since Gerald Ford.

This got an audible chuckle out of me. Bravo!

So the White House finally got around to releasing their photos and readout of the meeting. One weird thing...someone is missing:
IMAGE(https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4156/34597652845_3d95b69d41_k.jpg)President Trump Meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov by The White House, on Flickr

The official US record has no mention of Kislyak.

This is deeply weird.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Christ, these f*cking people.

White House: Removing Comey will help bring Russia investigation to end

The White House said Thursday that removing FBI Director James Comey from his post may hasten the agency's investigation into Russian meddling.

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," said deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen."

And THIS got an audible chuckle out of me. Bravo, Sarah Huckabee Sanders!

So what happened to Spicey? That's two days in a row I've seen this deputy secretary paraded out on the news.

Did he never come out from the bush he was hiding in?

https://mobile.twitter.com/NetworkJu...

Former FBI analyst Watts on why Russian "active measures" were much more intense in our elections this time and more effective.

Stele wrote:

So what happened to Spicey? That's two days in a row I've seen this deputy secretary paraded out on the news.

Did he never come out from the bush he was hiding in?

He's a Navy reservist so he's off doing his service. I think he's supposed to be back this weekend.

Stele wrote:

So what happened to Spicey? That's two days in a row I've seen this deputy secretary paraded out on the news.

Did he never come out from the bush he was hiding in?

He's currently on the outs with his boss:

Salon wrote:

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, appears to be bearing most of the blame for the media firestorm caused by FBI Director James Comey’s termination.

Politico reported Thursday that President Donald Trump was holding an audition for Spicer’s replacement on Wednesday when he had the deputy White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, perform the daily press briefing.

According to The Washington Post, Trump has been irate with his communications team, which, he believes, fumbled the rollout over Comey’s abrupt firing. Since Comey discovered he was fired via a breaking news broadcast, media outlets have run wall-to-wall coverage speculating whether the president inappropriately fired his FBI director in order to impede an investigation he was leading against him.

According to The Post, Trump sat down for dinner and TV on the night of Comey’s firing and noticed that no one one on cable news was defending him. The president somehow landed on Spicer as the person responsible for all the negative coverage.

Paleocon wrote:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NetworkJu...

Former FBI analyst Watts on why Russian "active measures" were much more intense in our elections this time and more effective.

Basically, Trump team repeats Russian lies and that makes them more effective.

Right now, Carter Paige is on with Chris Hayes on MSNBC again, being an idiot again. Must see TV.

IMAGE(https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/russia-cover-final.jpg?w=560)

TIME: Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America

On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of U.S. counterintelligence officials in Washington. For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia's influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. In offices in both D.C. and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia's multipronged scheme. But the report in early March was something new.

It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary email hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter. The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow's hackers to take control of the victim's phone or computer--and Twitter account.

Like many a good spy tale, the story of how the U.S. learned its democracy could be hacked started with loose lips. In May 2016, a Russian military intelligence officer bragged to a colleague that his organization, known as the GRU, was getting ready to pay Clinton back for what President Vladimir Putin believed was an influence operation she had run against him five years earlier as Secretary of State. The GRU, he said, was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election.

What the officer didn't know, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, was that U.S. spies were listening. They wrote up the conversation and sent it back to analysts at headquarters, who turned it from raw intelligence into an official report and circulated it. But if the officer's boast seems like a red flag now, at the time U.S. officials didn't know what to make of it. "We didn't really understand the context of it until much later," says the senior intelligence official. Investigators now realize that the officer's boast was the first indication U.S. spies had from their sources that Russia wasn't just hacking email accounts to collect intelligence but was also considering interfering in the vote. Like much of America, many in the U.S. government hadn't imagined the kind of influence operation that Russia was preparing to unleash on the 2016 election. Fewer still realized it had been five years in the making.

That cover is amazing.

Yonder wrote:

That cover is amazing.

Holy sh*t yes.

Wait, TIME magazine is doing journalism again? When did that happen?

BadKen wrote:

Wait, TIME magazine is doing journalism again? When did that happen?

It's the right time to start again. Plenty to report.

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's more iconic. And it's near the Kremlin.

maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's not, but it's a much more recognizable Russian landmark.
Besides, superimposing one big white building over another big white building wouldn't have the same visual impact.

DSGamer wrote:
maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's more iconic. And it's near the Kremlin.

And most people in the U.S. wouldn't know the difference anyway.

muttonchop wrote:
maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's not, but it's a much more recognizable Russian landmark.
Besides, superimposing one big white building over another big white building wouldn't have the same visual impact.

Kremlin on the left, St. Basil's Cathedral on the right.
IMAGE(http://www.worldfortravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Kremlin-Moscow-Russia.jpg)

maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

No, though someone set the drawing of the image to the Tetris theme.

maverickz wrote:
muttonchop wrote:
maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's not, but it's a much more recognizable Russian landmark.
Besides, superimposing one big white building over another big white building wouldn't have the same visual impact.

Kremlin on the left, St. Basil's Cathedral on the right.
IMAGE(http://www.worldfortravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Kremlin-Moscow-Russia.jpg)

That's not the Kremlin either. Not the actual government building.

Gremlin wrote:
maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

No, though someone set the drawing of the image to the Tetris theme.

There is nothing quite as satisfying as watching a lot of very serious looking military men singing a song with the lyrics:
Little red berry, red berry, red berry of mine!
In the garden (there is) a berry - little raspberry, raspberry of mine!
Ah, under the pine, the green one,
Lay me down to sleep,
Oh-swing, sway, Oh-swing, sway,
Lay me down to sleep.

This is actually the Kremlin:

IMAGE(http://tour-moscow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Big-Kremlin-Palace.jpg)

The Kremlin is a complex, the most recognizable part of which is that clock tower.

This discussion is why they went with St. Basil's.

maverickz wrote:

The Kremlin is a complex, the most recognizable part of which is that clock tower.

No that is Big Ben.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
maverickz wrote:

The Kremlin is a complex, the most recognizable part of which is that clock tower.

No that is Big Ben.

DSGamer wrote:
maverickz wrote:

St. Basil's Cathedral is not the Kremlin.

It's more iconic. And it's near the Kremlin.

In my experience, St. Basil's is used as a shorthand for Red Square and, by extension, the Russian state (with an implied suggestion of the Soviet Union).

I would have preferred they used the Prora instead, but no one knows what that is.

Yonder wrote:

This is actually the Kremlin:

IMAGE(http://tour-moscow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Big-Kremlin-Palace.jpg)

Apparently whoever was in charge of the paint job worked on The Simpsons.