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Top Democrats Request FBI Investigation of Trump Campaign Ties To Russia Over Hacking (politico.com) 493

As the Trump campaign refuses to point blame at Russia for the DNC hacks, top democrats on four House committees are questioning possible connections between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. They have formally asked the FBI to investigate the matter, citing new comments from a Trump confidant. Politico reports: "Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyber attacks against Secretary [Hillary] Clinton's campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August," said Reps. Elijah Cummings from Government Affairs, John Conyers from Judiciary, Eliot Engel from Foreign Affairs and Bennie Thompson from Homeland Security. "For months, we have been asking the FBI to examine links between the Trump campaign and illegal Russian efforts to affect our election, including interviewing Trump advisor Roger Stone," they said. "In light of this new evidence -- and these exceptional circumstances -- we call on the FBI to fully investigate and explain to the American people what steps it is taking to disrupt this ongoing criminal activity." Earlier this week Stone said that "I do have a back-channel communication with Assange," referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization has been dropping documents online from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and has been unloading documents from other Democrats as well. U.S. intelligence agencies last week declared that a connection exists between Russia and allegedly hacked documents leaked by WikiLeaks and others.
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Top Democrats Request FBI Investigation of Trump Campaign Ties To Russia Over Hacking

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:06PM (#53079029)

    Can we see some of this troubling new evidence before we go to war with Russia please?

    • Wait about 2 weeks (Score:5, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @08:18PM (#53079385) Homepage Journal

      Can we see some of this troubling new evidence before we go to war with Russia please?

      I'm not counting out Trump losing for about the next 2 weeks. We have yet to see the following:

      1) Wikileaks has said it has evidence that will get Hillary indicted. As yet, the Podesta E-mails haven't done that, so everyone is expecting a big drop sometime soon. Probably on Hillary's birthday, October 26th.

      2) We haven't seen the last of the Podesta E-mails. A recent drop shows the democrats creating two organizations to infiltrate the Catholic religion, to create a "Catholic Spring" [catholicworldreport.com] at some point of their choosing. (Yikes! WTF, Democrats?)

      3) It seems that Hillary had a hand in Kim Dotcom's arrest (remember him?). In response, Kim has promised a surprise birthday present [kitguru.net] for Hillary. (Many people will be quick to point out that Kim is various flavors of asshole, but that's beside the point - he's tech savvy, has lots of contacts, an axe to grind against Hillary, and a ton of money.)

      4) Someone over at Reddit/4chan has Clinton's deleted E-mails [corvetteforum.com], and will be releasing them. These are apparently the ones deleted from her server before turning it over to the FBI.

      5) One of the recent Podesta dumps included his iPhone account password, and someone hacked his account, post a screencap proving that they were in the account, and sent all the data to Wikieaks. This means that Wikileaks not only has Podesta's E-mails up to whenever, they've got more recent ones up to about 2 days ago.

      6) ...and apparently remote-wiped his phone.

      7) Hillary is not appearing in person *anywhere*. (Check her rallys and engagements: it's all Bill, Barak, Michelle, and Chelsea. Hillary appears in person once from now to the end of the month.) Conspiracy theorists think that this is because of some hidden illness, but that's probably not the case. The Podesta E-mails reveal that the reason she's not being seen is because she's perceived as untrustworthy in person. Her campaign is being run largely by remote control.

      8) A couple of tapes of Clinton [www.therebel.media] have yet to be released.

      9) And weirdly, during the last debate a fly landed on Hillary's face [heatst.com]. That's not a problem or even especially interesting, but the fact that it landed, walked around and she never flinched or even notices [youtube.com] is creeping out a lot of people.

      I'm not giving up on Trump just yet, and I've still got lots of popcorn.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by zedaroca ( 3630525 )

        Wikileaks debunked the 4chan hack.

        https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/786653209825861633 [twitter.com]

        No they didn't. We checked that the credentials had already been changed.

        Agree with the rest.

      • 9) And weirdly, during the last debate a fly landed on Hillary's face [heatst.com]. That's not a problem or even especially interesting, but the fact that it landed, walked around and she never flinched or even notices [youtube.com] is creeping out a lot of people.

        That will affect the election close to zero.

      • This is proper Popcorn Season. All the bickering and name calling is nothing compared to what is coming. When you have two deeply flawed candidates, everyone is going to hold their cards close until it's time to lay them all down. The American public forgets about a news story after a week. Shit is about to get gloriously real.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The ip range shows some staging server. Code litter left behind is so well understood by private sector security contractors that they should have been able to detect access in real time.
      The time zone fits working hours in Russia.
      Some person has the skill to evaded social engineering during an interview and thats a sure sign of a Russian background, education or coaching.
      All that made it to the press and got passed around as fact.
      The press quotes contractors and unnamed gov officials. US gov workers a
      • The ip range shows some staging server

        The IP shows a public Russian VPN provider. Slashdot offers VPN's that operate in such countries as well, does that mean those countries are responsible?

        Code litter left behind is so well understood by private sector security contractors that they should have been able to detect access in real time.

        There are lots of hacking tools from all over the place floating around the dark web, if you know where to look. This doesn't mean that the Russian government had any hand in it.

        The time zone fits working hours in Russia.

        Most basement dwellers as Hilary calls them tend to work the same hours as average Russians. Most Russians that work technical positions generally work closer to US hours (because

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:07PM (#53079035)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Sure thing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by randomErr ( 172078 ) <ervin.kosch@nOspAm.gmail.com> on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:08PM (#53079047) Journal
      And all new allegations that came out in the hacked emails?
      • Re:Sure thing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @08:21PM (#53079409) Homepage

        Tell me, how many of the hacked emails have you actually read?

        How many of the hacked emails do you think almost anyone bringing them up has actually read?

        I, unlike (almost assuredly) you, and the vast majority of people citing them, have actually read several. Now, keep in mind that these were carefully selected by Wikileaks, out of the vast number of emails that a campaign chair goes through, to be the most harmful things that they can find. In most of them, Clinton isn't even part of the conversation - not even quoted several replies back. However, in some of them, things she's written there. And my reaction to reading the actual words of Hillary Clinton?

        Honestly, I was impressed.

        Lest you think I'm a Clinton supporter, I was an Obama delegate in 2008 in the primaries when I lived in the US, aka fought hard against Clinton and her dirty campaign then. And I was a Bernie backer this time around and was harshly attacked by Clinton fans on progressive sites. Her politics don't align well with mine. She's a hawk. She's very pro-Israel. She's lagged behind the rest of the party on a lot of issues that I think important, only belatedly coming to the table (for example, gay marriage). Let's just say, I'm not her biggest fan.

        But she comes across very well in her emails. It's interesting to get to read things from her not intended for public consumption, aka, without a filter. She comes across as extremely wonkish, very well informed, thinking about every last angle of every issue. To pick an example at random: one of the emails was leaked by Wikileaks to show that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were suspected of giving covert support to Daesh. Indeed, that's a very brief line in the email, that it's suspected and diplomatic pressure should be put on them to stop it. But most of the content in the email was a strategy analysis for how to deal with the conflicts in the region. If we do X, then Y will be upset with us, but we can compensate with Z, and if we don't do it then A will perceive B and think that they can then get away with C..... on and on across numerous axes. How can you change perceptions without actually taking action, for example? She brings up Benghazi - every Republican's favorite buzzword. But it's in the context of two US fighter jets who overflew during the attacks, and about how even though the jets had no authorization to attack, simple fear that they would provide close air support diminished the level of attacks for several hours.

        Check out any of the leaked emails with any relevant amount of content from her. Not just some brief "here's the twitter-length shocker" summary written by someone else - read them yourselves. Yes, the "shockers" are there. But so are very detailed lines of thinking about policy. No rage or emotional reactions. Actually, if you want to stick any of the "negative Hillary stereotypes" to her private writings, the one that probably fits best is the "cold and calculating" one. Analytic would probably be a better summary. Things like, what are all of the angles on this? What do we know, and what don't we know? What's the long game?

        Just my take. Form your own. Take in more than just soundbytes.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Bullshit.

          I read about her insider trading when she asked someone at the IMF in the EU about if Greece was getting a bailout, so her son in law could make a big bet on it happening. The guy at the IMF gave her a fairly detailed explanation of everything being considered, who was involved, and their stances on the issue. It basically came down to he said Greece was getting a bail out [side note, her son in law lost a shit load of money based on that insider information being wrong]. Her response to the inf

          • Re: Sure thing (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Bartles ( 1198017 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @09:31PM (#53079689)

            No, he's a Democrat. And Democrats always come home, even if its for a candidate who was the Antichrist 8 years ago, and who rigged the primary against their preferred candidate.

          • Hmm, IIRC that was before the stock act (in other words it was legal for congress members to trade on info like that), and the guy lost money anyway so there's nothing really to complain about. Since you bring it up though, who do think would be more likely to yugely profit from their presidency? Be honest.
            • by Imrik ( 148191 )

              Hillary, if Trump were elected everyone would be watching too closely and would call him on it.

          • Re:Sure thing (Score:5, Informative)

            by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @10:37PM (#53079953) Homepage

            If I were as crude as you, I would be responding with your trademark "bullshit" response right now. Unless you're talking about something else (wherein you should probably reference it), you never read that email because it was lost [washingtonexaminer.com] (at least the relevant parts, aka the attachment). The only writing from Clinton on the subject was a hasty "Pls print two copies." Is that what you call reading things she's written? Furthermore,, the supposedly "damning" thing is a chain-of-guilt. Nothing at all about Clinton giving information to her son it law, it's "Sullivan gave the info to someone else, who works at the Clinton foundation, and Chelsea works for the Clinton foundation too, and her husband was investing in Greece, therefore Hillary Clinton is a corrupt scumbag"). I'm rather surprised that with all of the stuff Clinton had to read on Greece as part of her job that they couldn't find something worse than this to try to tar her with. The most "corrupt" action that's come forth in the Wikileaks releases concerning Clinton and Mezvinsky themselves is that she forwarded an email from him [wikileaks.org] to another government official. I know, stop the presses.

            Back to the original topic: I recommend that people read things she wrote and form their own opinions from them. You clearly did not do that. It's something that very, very few people here commenting about the emails have actually done. They just repeat the "gotchas" that the leaks were designed to elicit.

        • Dude, great post. I would definitely mod you up if I had points.

        • by bongey ( 974911 )

          Hillary Clinton , her campaign and staff cannot even figure out how to secure an email. Even the THIRD time they were hacked they STILL couldn't figure out how to secure there email, even my autistic little sister has two factor authentication. The Clinton campaign as about as much sophistication of a group of teenagers planning a raid in World of Warcraft.

          And you want Clinton to have nuclear codes? Clinton might as well send them to evening news and publish them on twitter and facebook.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 )
      Considering that HRC is the most investigated candidate in history, I think it's fair to take a little peek at Trump.
  • FFS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:09PM (#53079049)

    Enough already. We get it, Democrats, you really want to go to war with Russia for some reason. It's as blatant as Bush's desire to go to war in the Middle East.

    Enough. Stop with the pretending that an insider leaking your dirty laundry A) excuses your corruption or B) is a justification for war.

    Just, give it up. Please.

    • Enough already. We get it, Democrats, you really want to go to war with Russia for some reason.

      So the investigation should not continue in case it embarrasses Putin and you are afraid of that?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Pick either candidate, your future president will be a loser and an international joke regardless.
        I'm embarrassed for you all.

        • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          I remember when Democrats told us that being shocked that our President is a misogynistic womanizer and accused rapist was somehow not-cosmopolitan and made us look foolish in the eyes of the world. It's funny how the wheel turns.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      Yes, because when I think of pro-war, anti-Russian, militaristic jingoists, it's the party of left-wing hippies.

  • The whole, "The Russians did it!" is completely irrelevant. The hacks/leaks/whatever show that these people are complete slime and probably shouldn't be trusted to clean your toilet, let alone run your country. If the Russians have this information, it's safe to assume that *everyone* who wants this information has it. This entire crescendo of "The Russians!" is just a ploy to try to get people to ignore the horrible facts in these leaks and instead build up a bogeyman to redirect the peoples anger. It'

    • by J053 ( 673094 ) <J053@BOYSENshangri-la.cx minus berry> on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:49PM (#53079219) Homepage Journal

      So, we should just ignore the real possibility that a concerted effort is being made by the Russian intelligence services to influence our election, and install a President who would be favorable to Russian interests?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yes. (Probably.) I'm not sure if the Russian interests are governmental (Putin-related or not), other political, economical or private, but whatever. The ‘interests’ are trying to influence our elections through data leaks. That means they have found that on some subjects their interests align with ours, and if you're a party whose interests align with the people of some nation, there's nothing wrong with trying to persuade that people, and when you do, you'll necessarily influence the elections

      • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @09:00PM (#53079589)

        Yes? EVERYONE tries to influence EVERYONE's elections, the US meddles in pretty much every "election" overseas. A lot of the 'elections' in South America and even the Middle East have historically been heavily influenced by the CIA if not outright manufactured by them. If these candidates were on the up-and-up they wouldn't be able to be so easily influenced.

      • Frankly, I applaud any agency, foreign or domestic, that exposes the filth that constitutes our government. In this particular election cycle, the DNC has taken a beating. I suspect the Republicans have remained relatively unscathed by The Russian Bogeyman because it's pretty obvious that Trump will insert his foot into his mouth whenever given the opportunity. Why try to destroy a candidate that is obviously going to destroy himself?

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        This sounds like the cry of the losers. Democrats are desperately trying their best to demonize Trump and anyone who might vote for him. Despite all of this, there remain tons of people that are simply not Democrat or have hated Hillary pretty much her entire political career.

        Crying foul here is the loser trying to blame someone else for their failings. It was true for the Bernie supports. It's true any time Trumpies wine about it. It's true for Clinton News Network and friends.

        If it's the truth then it's o

    • Ah, but the "seriousness of the charge" only works on Republicans.

    • They are operating in panic mode as their current tactics are not having the desired effect. This is human nature.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The huge worry for the US is a generation of empowered whistleblowers with access. Staff cant use any of the official chain of command to get legal issues to the authorities.
      Whistleblowers https://cryptome.org/2013-info... [cryptome.org] Staff know what happens after people raise internal mil/gov/contractor legal questions within the US.
      A walk out to the press is the only still protected way to get the message out. Physically handing over material so no digital trail exists if both sides are cell phone aware when mak
    • The whole, "The Russians did it!" is completely irrelevant. The hacks/leaks/whatever show that these people are complete slime and probably shouldn't be trusted to clean your toilet, let alone run your country. If the Russians have this information, it's safe to assume that *everyone* who wants this information has it. This entire crescendo of "The Russians!" is just a ploy to try to get people to ignore the horrible facts in these leaks and instead build up a bogeyman to redirect the peoples anger. It's grade A+ politics.

      If a newspaper does investigative journalism that seems to hurt your candidate slightly more than their opponent you'll raise hell.

      But when Russia sends their intelligence service to dig up every possible piece of dirt on the opponent... well that's completely fine!

      • If Russia did it, then the Russians are the ONLY people doing any investigative anything.

        Everything on the news is just mud slinging, on both sides. This is embarrassing.

  • A stupid electioneering stunt to what, show desperation, demonstrate panic, put even further on public display the political corruption of various government agencies.

    What the fuck do they not understand about the majority of people thinking it is great, fantastic, job well done, when foreign governments spy on the corruption of your government and release that information to the public.

    The only message to the foreign government from the majority of citizens, thank you and the message to their own governm

  • by Vegan Cyclist ( 1650427 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:44PM (#53079197) Homepage
    I don't know it for sure, but I heard about it on the internet. I think Trump needs to produce papers proving he's not a KGB agent. (I believe he is their most tremendous agent - there has never been a better KGB agent than Donald Trump.)
    • I don't know it for sure, but I heard about it on the internet. I think Trump needs to produce papers proving he's not a KGB agent. (I believe he is their most tremendous agent - there has never been a better KGB agent than Donald Trump.)

      I know you're being funny, but I'm old enough to remember the lengths the Soviets went to turn important US citizens to their cause. It would be naive to think that the ex-KGB establishment is Russia isn't engaging similar tactics right now.
      I'm not for a moment suggesting Trump is a 'KGB agent', but he has business history is Russia, and it's quite possible some deals have been done somewhere. Who knows for sure, only some impartial examination of financial history would tell for sure.

      • I'm not for a moment suggesting Trump is a 'KGB agent', but he has business history is Russia

        More than just "business interests". Most Western banks won't do business with him any more, citing him as a bad risk. The only place left for him to get money for his "projects" is the Russian oligarchy.

        The one Western bank that will still deal with Trump is Deutsche Bank, and their stock price has taken a huge hit.

        http://www.wsj.com/articles/wh... [wsj.com]

        http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08... [nytimes.com]

      • by dbIII ( 701233 )

        Who knows for sure, only some impartial examination of financial history

        If that was enough he'd look guilty as hell due to his huge recent loans from Russian banks. It needs more than that, even though it looks pretty bad to have a canditate that owes a lot to a nation we have a few problems with.

    • In Soviet Russia, KGB Trumps YOU!
  • by StandardCell ( 589682 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:49PM (#53079217)
    Disclaimer: I don't think either Trump or Clinton is suited to be president, for different but equally important reasons, and we desperately need a real third party candidate better than Johnson or Stein.

    That said, the level of political gyration in this election is beyond astounding. I and many others have lost complete faith in journalistic integrity and ethics, and we are approaching Soviet-era levels of information control with respect to the leaks. In those leaks are very serious allegations of fraud, illegal collusion with the media and with other parties inside and outside the government, perjury and other criminal acts, the hypocritical content aside.

    You will also notice that no politician has forwarded these allegations for investigation to the FBI, nor has the FBI apparently undertaken any effort to investigate these allegations. You will notice that the FBI has begun investigating the source of the leaks, but this action is contradictory in and of itself. Either the leaks are false, in which case there is nothing real that was leaked, or the leaks are true, in which case both the leaked material AND the source of the leaks are investigated.

    What we have now is an overt subversion of the rule of law and the distraction pointed at our old enemy Russia. Russia, of course, isn't too happy with us meddling in Ukraine or Syria because we can't get our fucking noses out of those places and nearly every other country where we have some cold war or energy interest. As much as I regret saying this, the Arab Spring has shown that having a dictator in the Arab world is preferable to having tribal religious extremism tear the country apart, destroy some of humanity's oldest heirlooms in the name of religious extremism, and spawn terrorism all over the world.

    But even that isn't enough. Now there's word the CIA will organize a cyber-attack against Russia soon. I'm definitely not a big fan of Russia with their imperialistic ambitions and the oligarchs robbing common people their blind, but this country is doing everything but deescalating conflict and creating an extremely dangerous situation.

    Perhaps it's finally time to clean up our own house, first and foremost. If we can't fight the level of corruption that the Wikileaks emails and subsequent actions of the current administration have shown, then there's no doubt that using yet another foreign conflict as a distraction is driving this country headlong into disaster. Too bad people can't get together and put their partisanship aside to have a million people march outside the Capitol or down Pennsylvania Avenue to attempt to get them to investigate everything and everyone impartially, foreign and domestic, Republicrat and Demican, and everyone in between.

    In other words, if we don't get our shit together, welcome to the alternate version of Alien vs. Predator. Whoever wins, we lose.
  • by CanEHdian ( 1098955 ) on Friday October 14, 2016 @07:50PM (#53079227)
    The verdict: the Trump Campaign wasn't "tied" to the Russian state-sponsored hacking group(s), but their relationship was just extremely careless.

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