US Charges Russian Social Media Trolls Over Election Tampering (cnet.com) 503
The US Justice Department has filed charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. From a report: In an indictment [PDF] released on Friday, the Justice Department called out the Internet Research Agency, a notorious group behind the Russian propaganda effort across social media. Employees for the agency created troll accounts and used bots to prop up arguments and sow political chaos during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook, Twitter and Google have struggled to deal with fake news, trolling campaigns and bots on their platforms, facing the scorn of Capitol Hill over their mishandlings. The indictment lists 13 Russian nationals tied to the effort.
..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
um, yeah, i think you are talking out of your ass and trying to cope defending your shithole president. here's the complete list
What does the indictment say?
It says a group of Russians:
Posed as Americans, and opened financial accounts in their name
Spent thousands of dollars a month buying political advertising
Purchased US server space in an effort to hide their Russian affiliation
Organised and promoted political rallies within the United States
Posted political messages on social media accounts that impersonated real US citizens
Promoted information that disparaged Hillary Clinton
Received money from clients to post on US social media sites
Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram
Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (£890,000)
The indictment says those involved systematically measured how well their internet posts were doing and adjusted their strategies to maximise effectiveness.
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point, and veering rather far from reality, as well.
The original concern (I won't even say it was a "claim") was that Russians may have influenced the election process. That doesn't invalidate the result, and nobody credible has claimed that it would.
The Trump campaign has since then countered that there's nothing to see, never any outside influence, and the whole investigation should be shut down.
With these indictments, there is now an official accusation, backed by a nice pile of evidence, that there was in fact Russian interference. That's it. No, it doesn't indicate on its own that Trump knew, or his campaign officials knew. Those questions are still open. What has been resolved at this point is the question of whether something illegal happened (yes, it did), and whether there was foreign involvement (yes, there was).
This could be the end of the indictments. If Trump's campaign was as honest as he claims, it will be. However, those open questions still need to be answered, which means the investigation needs to keep going. By making statements opposing the investigative process, Trump has made it worse for himself and his administration, because now the investigation needs to answer the question of whether anyone is trying to obstruct justice.
This has nothing to do with whether Americans are unfit to vote. That's always been a risk, echoed in Benjamin Franklin's famous response when asked what kind of government we would have: "A republic, if you can keep it." It has always been known that people are subject to manipulation, and that's why interfering in the election carries severe consequences. If the indicted Russians ever find themselves on American soil, they'll have a chance to find out exactly how harsh those punishments can be.
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i believe the original claims was that there was Collusion which implies conspiracy. The white house denied any collusion. and definitely said investigations into such were a waste of time and should be shut down. Are you old enough to remember the whitewater fishing expedition into hillary fraud even in the 90s? The dems made the exact same statements then, (vast right wing conspiracy) and nobody screamed obstruction of justice. After all that investigation we got purgery about a blue dress and inappropria
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I've regretted that sentence since writing it, so I'll take this opportunity to rephrase:
The Trump campaign (and administration afterward) has since countered that there's nothing to see, no undue outside influence, and no willing participation from his campaign. He's also advocated shutting the whole investigation down, to the extent of firing people involved in the investigation.
I agree that Trump's campaign is probably correct in that they didn't knowingly seek to break any laws during the campaign. I think that after his inauguration, though, Trump's meddling probably is obstruction, though I'm not sure there's enough evidence for an indictment against him. I expect there's also a lot of negligence involved, some criminal, but most of those accusations will go away to gain cooperation during
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Some people on the internet were trolls in the buildup to the election. Some of those people were Russian nationals
If the worst they've got is a misinformation campaign, they've got nothing. I have a FB account for a cat I had that died. I could easily turn him into a PETA proponent. Does that make me a criminal because I got political with a fake account? Some people don't realize that, just because something is typed into a jpeg, it's not necessarily true. The graphic DJT shared indicating that 81% of white murders are committed by blacks comes to mind. Filing charges for distributing FAKE NEWS seems silly if we ignor
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:4, Interesting)
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I believe the original claim was: "The Russians hacked the election", indicating that Trumps victory was illegitimate.
This has eroded to the point of "Some people on the internet were trolls in the buildup to the election. Some of those people were Russian nationals".
Social engineering is one kind of hacking technique...
You're putting words in people's mouths (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, there's still plenty of talk about the Russians hacking the election. They got caught funneling money through the NRA to Trump's campagin, and the only question is are we doing to do anything about it. Then there were all those meetings between high level Trump campaign officials and shady Russians that are still being investigated. Oh, and there's tons of evidence that the Russians have hacked into (literally) our electronic voting systems and that they continue to do so. There's good solid evidence they shared priceless voting record data with the Trump campaign. Again, hard to say if anything will come of this since the Republicans control so much of the government even before Trump won.
Remember, Trump was and is always a patsy. Nobody cares if he knew any of this because his only job was to show up to rallies and say bad things about Hillary and Mexicans. The question is how much did the folks who _really_ run the show know and do. What's clear is that what tattered remains of American democracy are left are being eroded.
But whatever, just keep ignoring the mounting evidence because the word 'hacked' sometimes gets used slightly inappropriately.
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they arent invalidated... do you even read or is this some bad bong hit for you? Even if every allegation turns out to be true, it was the ELECTORAL COLLEGE that voted for president trump. Unless you can prove that the ELECTORAL COLLEGE was being bribed by the russians, the election of 2016 will STAND. You are down to President Pense, ASSUMING you can get SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the SENATE to CONVICT on an indictment. The fucking senate cant even rally TWO-THIRDS majority to overcome a fucking VETO or FIL
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Informative)
Name a piece of information, known by Christopher Steele to be false, spread as if it were true.
But first off, let's back up. Who is Christopher Steele? From Wikipedia:
Not exactly some fly-by-night amateur. And rather amusing that you'd accuse someone whose job had been spying on Russia and later investigated the Litvinenko poisoning, determining it to be a Russian hit, of "spreading Russian propaganda"
Steele - again, the former head of MI6's Russia desk - had been an FBI source for years prior, where he had proved useful in a number of investigations unrelated investigations.
During the last election, Steele was hired - first by Republicans, then Democrats - to research Trump. And that he did. It's not even clear that he knew who was the source of his funding; he worked for Fusion GPS. The so-called "Steele Dossier" is not a curated/filtered "report", but rather a series of independent memos from varying sources - and was never presented as anything else. He was paid to collect information, not to analyze and curate it. Some of the information from the dosier that wasn't public at the time has since been independently confirmed. The vast majority has been neither confirmed or denied.
Concerning the Carter Page "memo" from Trump transition team member Devin Nunes (yes, he was part of Trump's own transition team [latimes.com]... "Hey, let's investigate ourselves!") suggests that A) the Steele dossier was the foundation of getting a warrant on Page, B) it did not inform them that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity, and C) the fact that it had been noted that Steele made a statement about being worried about Trump becoming president disqualifies him as a biased source.
Except:
A) Page had been on the radar long beforehand, having previously been caught up in a Russian spy scheme and having not only made numerous statements condemning the US and supporting Russia (on Russian TV), but even claimed to be a Kremlin representative [time.com]. (Seriously, if the FBI hadn't been spying on this guy they should all have been fired for incompetence)
B) The warrant application did [politico.com] state that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity; Nunes's complaint has now amusingly morphed into "the font size was too small".
C) Intelligence courts generally presume by default that sources have some sort of motive, because as a general rule, people who aren't motivated don't act as sources. Furth
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How about you name a bit know and proven to be true.
Or are we at the point where I could just write shit down and demand everyone accept it at face value?
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The person who leaked to Buzzfeed is not known; a ruling last year determined that Buzzfeed does not have to reveal the source [courthousenews.com]. However, by the time that Buzzfeed published it, it was already widely circulating in the federal government, so the most likely source was a government official.
You're confusing the release of the dossier with the release of the fact that Steele was assisting the FBI.
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you people actually serious when you say things like this? I mean, I assume these are troll accounts, but I just don't know anymore.
I'd find it funny if it wasn't such a serious issue. But sure, let's say that Steele, working for a third party who was being paid by the GOP is totally working for Hilary Clinton's benefit. Because the GOP love Hilary and definitely started their relationship with GPS Fusion for her benefit. (Yes I know the democrats took over payment, but we should be clear on where this whole thing started)
And the two charges are totally identical, because where the charges levied here are for explicitly directed campaigns intended to spread misinformation, Steele was a paid employee of a company hired privately to produce information for another private entity. A full fledged and funded campaign by a foreign government is surely the same thing as the domestic government hiring a foreigner to act as, more or less, a Private Investigator.
These are totally the same.
These two things are totally equatable and not at all two completely distinct and different things so different it would be like comparing apples to horses.
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You are complaining about spreading misinformation yet spread misinformation. Democrats commissioned the dossier. Stop spreading misinformation.
Actually, AC isn't completely wrong. Bush allegedly initially hired Steele [dailymail.co.uk] to make the hit piece, but it was completed after he got $$$ from the Dems, and then was leaked by them via useful idiot John McCain [nypost.com].
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Informative)
The history of the dossier is now quite well documented and it had nothing to do with the GOP or Republican leaning groups.
Fusion was hired by The Washington Free Beacon to do some background research on Trump. This did not involve Russia but was more just general opposition research during the primaries. In 2016 they terminated the contract and that was the end of their involvement.
After that contract was over Fusion was then hired by the DNC and Hillary campaign (through their lawyers) to research Trump with specific interest in Russia. Fusion then hired Steele as part of the DNC contract.
This all came out during congressional testimony and as far as I know is not in dispute by any of the named parties.
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Informative)
Democrats commissioned the dossier.
A conservative website (The Washington Free Beacon) initially hired Fusion GPS [nytimes.com] to do the research, largely backed by Rubio supporters. Then Hillary & the DNC took over. Then Fusion GPS hired Steele. So, yes Republicans kicked off the Fusion GPS investigation. No, the GOP did not fund the Steele dossier.
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Any right leaning association with Fusion and their Trump research was over months before Steele was ever hired to create the dossier. The dossier and all the twisted details associated with it are 100% a DNC/Hillary 2018 creation.
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Any right leaning association with Fusion and their Trump research was over months before Steele was ever hired to create the dossier. The dossier and all the twisted details associated with it are 100% a DNC/Hillary 2018 creation.
Do you understand the chronology here? The dossier was compiled for Hillary by Steele, thus claiming it's Hillary's creation is like shooting the recipient of the message because you don't like what the message said. Your conclusion is so incredibly stupid, that most idiots can't even get it that wrong.
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:4, Informative)
Steele wasn't some random person who just sent Hillary an email, he was essentially her employee. Hillary's campaign specifically contracted the dossiers creation and then pushed it to the FBI to try and trigger an investigation without the slightest attempt at verification.
Steele worked for Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton's campaign contracted them to do opposition research on Trump. In no way was Steele "essentially her employee". Also, it was Fusion GPS, not Hillary nor Steele who made the decision to provide the dossier to the FBI.
You either very ignorant or deliberately lying.
How is she not responsible for it?
Clinton's campaign received the dossier and then did nothing with it. In what way are they responsible for things they didn't create and didn't publish?
There's also the very strong likelihood (due to the specific nature and wording of some of the details) that large parts or even the entire document was in fact created by people even closer to Hillary than just paid contractors (Blumenthal being the top suspect) and Steele was only used as a go between to give it a semi-respectable face.
Yeah, sure. Why don't you discredit yourself further with even more conspiracy theories?
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I honestly can't tell if that's Sarcasm or not. Because it lines up perfectly with what the mentally ill Hillary Butthurts believe.
Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
she will be dead before being president. We might have a madame president but it wont be her. That 'cold' she has had for the last 2 years..... its still there. Besides why would you WANT her? She ACTUALLY IS guilty of collusion and conspiracy to meddle in an election. They didnt even deny they colluded with the media to rig the primary elections. Thats what started the whole screaming about russian hacking to begin with. Podesta fell for a fake email that tricked him into signing into a fake website with his real password. Hell even the then-chairman of the DNC released a book outing the illegal stuff the HRC campaign did. If you try to put her back into the election cycle you're going to end up with someone else you dont like. Pick someone without so much damn baggage for fucks sake
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Steele did in fact release large parts of the memo to the public through a series of interviews with several news organizations. That is part of the reason he was terminated as a FBI source. He lied to investigators about whether or not he had communicated the contents of the dossier to journalists and he said no. This was later shown to be a lie during a British investigation where he testified that he had in fact talked to several journalists, including Yahoo News, which was used as a secondary source
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yes he did! he got fired as an FBI informant because he did EXACTLY that... he leaked his memo to Yahoo News in the UK and that was exactly what got him removed as a paid informant. THEN the FBI continued to use said dossier AFTER his firing, and failed to disclose that not only was it paid for by a campaign, but the source was FIRED for a huge breach in their policy.
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If Trolling were a crime 98% of the internet would be in jail.
$100k (Score:3, Insightful)
So these are the guys who spent less than 7 figures on propaganda and supposedly bought the most powerful government in the world?
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It's weird how all the AC flame bait comments like this one were so quickly upvoted. . .
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6 figures were spent on advertising on social media. 1 million a month was spent on the entire operation, including employee compensation. You don't think these guys work for free, do you?
The Clinton campaign spent a billion dollars on campaigning. The idea that foreign agents spending fractions of that swayed the entire election is absurd. The idea that American citizens have to be shielded from the outside world to have safe elections is absurd. The fact that we're discussing Russia's effect on the 2
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or just how bad she is at managing our money. Maybe we should have Internet Research Group in charge of our budget and taxes j/k
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Politicians sucking at social media is hardly news, and the Russians are good at it.
If you doubt the power of memes I'll give you an example: you are repeating the "Killary" meme over a year after she lost and became irrelevant.
If speech had no power we wouldn't value free speech so much. The good news is that Russia has inadvertently shown us how we can counter politicians buying their way into office.
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When will this story die?? (Score:2, Insightful)
I want this to be investigated as much as anyone, but the feigned shock and surprise from some Americans feels naive. Considering all the meddling (or outright coup d'etats and invasions) our country has been involved in over the last 100 years, this almost feels a little like a sliver of long overdue karmic payback.
More importantly, I don't think those who want this investigation to go on and on (for whatever reason) understand just how pious and insulting it sounds to those who chose Trump. I mean, dark m
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it doesnt make it right, but i keep seeing a lot of post (a fuck ton of them AC btw) with statements like 'If i see a russian im going to punch him in the dick". They are angry and honestly, HONESTLY, believe this is an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on our government. Clearly these AC must be millennials. Nobody could be that niave and that isolated unless they grew up in a entirely online existence. And btw the crime is NOT collusion.... the word collusion implies two groups working together. the in
Better article at WaPo (Score:5, Informative)
The Washington Post has a better article on this. [washingtonpost.com]
One bit of info missing from CNET is that these indictments are the direct result of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation.
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It is signed by Mueller at the bottom of the indictment as well.
Russian shills abound... (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, I just figure that anyone who posts idiocy about the Russians not hacking the US is either a Russian shill or one of their dupes. Either that, or they're so soaked in conspiracy theories that their brains are addled. It's really no use listening to them. Once you decide that false information is as good as real facts, your mind might as well be gone.
And for the idiots referenced above who say that all this Russsia stuff is "fake", I'll take the CIA, FBI, and NSA's word about spying before any of you conspiracy-spouting morons in the peanut gallery - I do value professionalism, if nothing else.
I think we need to at least try (Score:2, Informative)
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You need to give up on Slashdot.org. Slashdot has long since been over run with the worst moronic right wing global warming deniers and the lowest IQ types imaginable.
Slashdot.org is dead to anyone who values facts and science.
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Let me lend some identity to your anonymous post because that is exactly my sentiment.
As a person on the left said, criticizing his wing, "Similarly, during the presidential campaign, the internet was saturated by multiple, widely shared think pieces focusing on Trump’s misogyny. Anyone that attempted to explain why they might vote for him were comfortably, and immediately be shouted down and dismissed as a sexist, or racist, or ableist. And vote for him they did: 63 million hate-filled bigots apparen
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Conspicuously missing from your explanation is why you would have voted for him. We can't really say he's been terribly functional since the election.
Call housekeeping, Vlad (Score:4, Insightful)
Putin can't have witnesses. I'm betting we're about to see some dead Russians.
If you were one of the 13 indicted Russians, would you be more afraid of the US Department of Justice or Vladimir Putin?
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And I hope ... (Score:2)
... that everyone is going to prison. The President, his Cabinet, 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, you, me, really just everyone.
Are Federal prisons privately run [bop.gov] yet, and are they publicly traded? Because I have some great investment ideas that involve 100% incarceration rates.
Rosenstein caveats (Score:2)
What Rosenstein says: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge."
What Rosenstein thinks: "Please don't fire me, please don't fire me, please don't fire me ..."
If the US had any balls whatsoever... (Score:5, Interesting)
...we could simply say "OK thanks Russia. You want to play 'media domination game"?"
The US is already the most staggeringly dominant culture ever seen on earth, without really deliberately trying (not unlikely that's partly why).
If we were a country with any sense of itself, any sense of unity of purpose, and not a fractious bunch of self-hating bitches, with Hollywood's expertise we could without batting an eye SWAMP Russian media, internet, and airwaves with a chaos of propaganda, infowar, fake news, with production values so sophisticated there would be NO WAY any Russian national could tell if that video was real or not, or that email was real or not, or that video of Vladimir Putin having a quiet, gay moment with a young Russian male model followed by an overwhelming wave of irrefutable evidence of that young male model being found murdered brutally and only the faintest traces of official security service involvement.
They spent what, a few $hundred thousand influencing social media? We could drop a few $hundred MILLION and drive their society into outright civil war.
There is no media culture as dominant or efficacious as the American culture in 2018. None.
But we are our own worst enemy, and Russia can do this sort of thing knowing that Americans will cheerfully attack EACH OTHER over it long before they have the cojones to set aside their partisan bitching in favor of their own country's well being.
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This is going to get laughed out of court.
Well, the Russians don't give a rat's ass about any charges filed by US Justice Department in a US court. Russia will formally invite them to kiss their hairy asses.
I'm seeing the scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur is in front of the castle being taunted and insulted by the laughing French while they throw shit on him.
Replace King Arthur with the Americans and the French with the Russians.
I guess the US government wants to pretend that they are doing something about the Russian
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communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.
Translation: sharing a meme on Facebook.
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You deserve to know who is doing it and why. What do the Russians get out of it? Reduced sanctions obviously.
And if they coordinated with Trump, what does Trump get out of it?
"Follow the money!" -- Tried and true wisdom
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And if they coordinated with Trump, what does Trump get out of it?
There's good reason to believe someone - likely multiple people - have a lot of leverage on Trump. There's a decent chance he's being straight-up blackmailed.
There's also a decent chance he's caught up in various illegal activities with the Russian mafia. Specifically there have been allegations that his properties were/are used to launder money.
=Smidge=
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There's good reason to believe someone - likely multiple people - have a lot of leverage on Trump. There's a decent chance he's being straight-up blackmailed.
There's also a decent chance he's caught up in various illegal activities with the Russian mafia. Specifically there have been allegations that his properties were/are used to launder money. =Smidge=
Oh, we're making shit up now?
There's good reason to believe someone - likely Xenu - sent Trump to Earth to destabilize it. There's a decent chance he's being straight-up mind-controlled.
There's also a decent chance he's caught up in various interstellar prostitution rings with the Omicron Persei 8 mafia. Specifically there have been allegations that he likes to grab alien pussy.
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You deserve to know who is doing it and why. What do the Russians get out of it? Reduced sanctions obviously.
And if they coordinated with Trump, what does Trump get out of it?
"Follow the money!" -- Tried and true wisdom
It seems incredibly unlikely at this point that they did given the lack of evidence. Suing internet trolls and disproving "the dossier" seem to have been all that has come out of the investigations so far. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for something being done about trolls - regardless of whether they're trolling political candidates or regular folks. Heck, I think we should go after trolls even if they aren't Russian and there isn't good PR in it for certain political parties.
Re:What tampering? This is about memes (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much more than just memes. Americans went on rallies organised by Russians. The Russian operatives encouraged minorities not to vote, and focused on damaging the Clinton campaign.
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It's much more than just memes. Americans went on rallies organised by Russians.
That's true, including a "'Trump is NOT my President' rally in New York the week after the election and one in Charlotte, North Carolina, the following week. [bloomberg.com]"
Re:What tampering? This is about memes (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been paying much attention to this whole story since it seems like general boondoggle and that nothing substantial will come out of this, but doesn't the above quote make it harder for the people who want to accuse Trump of collusion? The " unwitting individuals" part makes it seem like Trump is just stupid (well we already knew this) instead of guilty of collusion.
I'm glad you got your digs in on Trump and all that, but do you really think Trump was involved directly with the trolls?
Re:What tampering? This is about memes (Score:5, Interesting)
In this indictment, yes. The events detailed here did not include willing participation by Trump's campaign. Unfortunately for Trump, there are some crimes that don't require knowledge to be committed... For example, being negligent in one's duty to investigate a financial source can be a crime.
As has been the case for a while, the bigger concern is Trump's behavior after the investigation started. If he's shown to have been actively working to obstruct the investigation, that could be what gets him.
Cynic that I am, that's really what I expect is the case... Trump tried to run an honest campaign, but he's so easily manipulated and so quick to overreact that he ends up causing his own downfall, without any direct foreign involvement.
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I actually tend to lean more to the right than otherwise, but it seems lately I've had too many functioning brain cells for the rest of the party to appeal to me.
The credibility of the collusion allegations hasn't really changed. There have been ongoing developments as more Russian operations have been uncovered, but there has never been much direct evidence of Trump's involvement. However, once Comey was fired and Trump started applying pressure to end the investigation prematurely, the question of obstruc
Re:What tampering? This is about memes (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose reading even the introductory paragraph of the indictment is too much for you? It is, in fact, illegal for non-Americans to directly participate in US Politics, such as:
- Paying for political advertisements
- Paying others to troll social media for you
- Making campaign contributions
And this is all on top of general fraud and identity theft charges.
This is a proper and textbook example of a conspiracy, with a group of people in coordinated effort to conduct an illegal activity... not just some assholes "posting memes."
=Smidge=
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Could you cite the actual statutes, please? The summary I read [cnbc.com] cites nothing of the kind — the individuals are indicted for fraud and identity theft. These are very real and nasty crimes, whether or not they are related to elections and regardless of whether perpetrators are Americans or foreigners.
Unless the donation is to a "charity" [politifact.com], owned and run by a candidate [opensecrets.org], right?
Re:What tampering? This is about memes (Score:5, Interesting)
Could you cite the actual statutes, please?
The actual indictment is linked in the Slashdot summary. They explain exactly what they believe happened and why it's illegal, including citing applicable statues.
Unless the donation is to a "charity", owned and run by a candidate, right?
You better be careful trying to play that card, considering Trump continues to operate his "charities" despite having been forbidden to operate in New York due to investigations.
Oh right, soon after Trump was elected he fired the Attorney General who was investigating him, so I guess that makes it okay since he's not under investigation anymore!
=Smidge=
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It is, in fact, illegal for non-Americans to directly participate in US Politics, such as:
- Paying for political advertisements
- Paying others to troll social media for you
The courts have this theory that persons under US jurisdiction have the same civil rights as citizens. Couple that with the actual language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...” to abridge free speech, and there's a very reasonable argument that these are protected speech.
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If America goes down that road, your neighbours to the North and South are going to be building walls to keep you out.
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It is, in fact, illegal for non-Americans to directly participate in US Politics, such as:
- Paying for political advertisements
- Paying others to troll social media for you
- Making campaign contributions
The third item you listed is undisputed (for foreign nationals or organizations, I don't think it applies to foreign-born US residents), and has clearly been an issue discussed in the media I recall at least back to the Clinton administration.
However, the first item goes directly against a comment that I heard on mainstream non-right wing media recently. Because of this, I would also appreciate links or citations that can be easily found to read about this. The second item probably follows from the first.
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The copy I found [thomsonreuters.com] is signed by Mueller...
You want to keep on? Stay a cowardly AC, it suits you.
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Yes that is bad. But note how those two counts make up for 6 pages of the 37 page indictment.
It's good that we are getting criminals but to dedicate an entire Special Investigation for a common occurrence like that... Is a poor use of federal resources. The FBI should have been able to address those crimes without the need of a Special Counsel. The bulk of the indictment is about social media trolling mentioning 5 pages about fraud and sprinkled with 2 paragraphs for identify theft.
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No evidence of tampering at all.. they just hacked into the voter registrations to take a peak.
That's literally what the article you linked says. They probed 21 States databases, managed to access 1, viewed the information (which for the most part is all publicly available) and made no alterations or additions.
The link to the Russian government is generally because these intrusions were related back to Russian hacking groups which have been know to work for the government in the past. In some cases the ties are just that they had a Russian IP address, because we all know the ip address connecting t
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Except not a single American is indicted — much less anyone from the Executive Branch.
Please, hold your breath until it gets interesting. Please, please, please. With sugar on top...
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Except not a single American is indicted — much less anyone from the Executive Branch -- YET.
Fixed that for you. xD xD xD
Re:The Moscovian Candidate (Score:5, Interesting)
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IMO its not out of guilt. I think he knows he has nothing to do with this. I think its narcissism that does it. The same that created a pissing match on day 2 over the size of the inauguration attendance. And before you point out that it makes him unstable, bear in mind that SHE also is a huge narcissist and had already been caught conspiring with the media to rig the primary election away from Sanders. I specifically voted against HER just because of that alone. My conscious is still clean, I voted Gary Jo
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I think lacking a Libertarian candidate as a "Plague on both your parties" vote, or if Budnarik were the LP candidate again, I'd have written in Cthulhu as the lesser evil.
But then, I'm in Calipornia, where Hillary would have gotten 60% of the vote if she were sacrificing babies to Molech at each campaign stop, so my vote couldn't possibly make any difference.
I'm not sure what I'd have done if I'd lived in a state where where my vote had any actual relevance. (Cue youtube video from "Third Rock" where Dick
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Meanwhile, lawyers for the party in opposition of Trump suggest that even a pretense at a primary is more than what is necessary in selecting a candidate for national office.
Even a slightly informed person can look at your application of a double standard and realize that personal attacks and demonization will be all that can be expected from you, regardless of a leader's actual merit and character. Trump is exactly the leader you deserve.
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Nobody deserves Trump. Not even the GOP, and in private places I'm certain ALL OF THEM would say that. The only reason the GOP majority Congress puts up with him is they think they can 'control' him enough to maybe get their agenda forward. If he was not the GOP candidate they'd have ousted him for any number of reasons by now -- and if YOU were the least bit informed, YOU would see that.
Re:The Moscovian Candidate (Score:5)
> They didn't care one wit about which candidate won
Sure they didn't. That's why they were talking with the Trump campaign and trying to get him to drop the Maginitsky act after being elected, and why Trump isn't enforcing the sanctions. I'm suuuure that Clinton would have acted exactly the same.
Both sides are equally bad, amirite?
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No, go read the actual indictment. It's very clear that the charges indicate help for Donald Trump only.
Read this section of the indictment:
It goes on to say that during the primaries, the indicted Russians sought to give support to Trump and disparage his GOP opponents (Cruz, et al
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Pull a quote out of context to prove your point? Why nothing is beneath you is it...
Take a look at paragraph 6, 28, 57 and more buddy... They where spreading FUD...
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Go read them again yourself, without your Trump-colored glasses on. Or perhaps that would break your contract?
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No, go read the actual indictment. It's very clear that the charges indicate help for Donald Trump only.
You might try actually reading it yourself. Paragraph 43, part of Count One of the indictment, very clearly says they also supported Bernie:
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.
* * *
Specialists were instructed to post content that focused on “politics in the USA” and to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them).”
Re:PopeRatzo is a moron (Score:5, Informative)
News is still breaking today. This came out like ten minutes ago:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
This is an American who just plead guilty to helping the Russians with the identity fraud part of the conspiracy. He is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
When you say "no American involved", you should have said, "yet". Now we learn of the Americans involved.
Don't try to flatter me.
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You really should just read the indictment, you will get a very different picture. They were really only supporting Trump. They “supported” Hillary with false-flag operations designed to lend legitimacy to Trump supporters, e.g. posing as supporters while holding up signs with fake quotes about Hillary supporting Sharia law, etc. They obviously did care which side won.
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Their GOAL was FUD and unrest. To that end they supported the candidate they thought would lose.
That's why they where supporting Sanders in the primary and why they where supporting Trump over Cruz. Their goal was to spread unrest and FUD so they picked the apparent losers because it allow better bang for the buck....
Seriously, who thought Trump would win the Monday before the election? Nobody...
But the charges are clear. No Americans involved knew what they where doing or that these people where Rus
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they staged opposite rallies in the same city. That sounds more like trying to start a fight. IF they cared that much why did the same Internet Research Group immediately start running anti-trump ads and protests the day AFTER he got elected instead of just closing up shop. I'll grant you they wanted HIllary to lose, but they were probably more about hurting hillary than helping trump. Afterall she did manage to sucker $500million dollars in extortion for the sale of Uranium One. Someone probably had to cov
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No doubt they were trying to sow unrest. However, if you're saying they didn't care which candidate won, that is bullshit.
The indictment says the Russians' efforts included "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,".
It fits too, as it is well known Putin hated Clinton.
Listen, whether you like Trump or not, isn't it important to face facts and protect the COUNTRY from this kind of thing?
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being Anti-Hillary is not the same as Pro-Trump. Lets face it, this election was between the Never-Hillary group and the Never-Trump group. The Pro-Trump group and the Pro-Hillary groups probably amounted to 15% of the total electorate in this election. Too bad she colluded with the media to steal the primary election. We might be talking about President Sanders had that not happened.
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They where spreading FUD about the election SYSTEM in this country. They didn't care one wit about which candidate won, they just wanted to make people not trust the system. They where sowing unrest, not trying to get Trump elected....
Bingo!
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Nope.. Clearly the Justice department is saying "no Americans" knew what these Russians where up to.
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A demonstration then? (Score:2)
To let the world know what they COULD do, without actually having a clear agenda this time. But if you are nasty to us when you are in office, your reelection is going to be... difficult. A wonderful example of plausible deniability!
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The rallies were after the election. If you read the actual document they state that most of the activity was against the Clinton campaign.
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> "No Americans involved who knew what was going on or that Russians where involved" is the key thing I took away from it.
If you were on the Titanic and heard of the iceberg, I think you would be saying:
"No boats have sunk so far" is the key thing I took away from it.
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It's nice to hear that you carefully went over all the evidence.
1) They were specifically referring to the Russians who were being indicted. The Americans those Russians contacted were not aware they were speaking to Russians. That doesn't mean that someone like Carter Page or Paul Manafort weren't in contact with other Russians (if they were, they would probably be higher on the food chain).
2) The rallies were to sow discord after the election. That doesn't imply that they didn't get the man they wanted in
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so your saying the efforts to derail the investigation into uranium one or the campaign financed Steel Dossier which was later used to mislead a FISA judge are being done by non-patriotic americans then. Glad that was clarified.
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hmm thats a pretty good point, if foreigners are not supposed to get involved, then technically it would be lawful to have ICE at their rallies to check citizenship.
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Just like we ticket every driver who's going over the speed limit.
Yes, it's illegal. No, it's usually not worth the effort to pursue, unless you do something really bad, like cause a collision or act knowingly on behalf of a foreign government intelligence agency.
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Attempting to influence stupid people is not a crime
This. Or every exec on Madison Avenue would be in prison.
Critical thinking skills. Get some.