Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Jan-June 2017).

[Azor]

By Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness: https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/28/l...ollusion-myth/

Introduction:

Incoming elected administrations, especially the Obama transition team of 2008 in the case of Russia and Iran, seek contacts with foreign diplomats before formally entering office.

Most presidential campaigns are staffed by at least a few free-lancing opportunists who see their candidate as a nexus for profiteering. There is no need for a reminder of the lucrative careers of Bill Clinton from 2009-2012, or of Hillary Clinton’s brother, or of the nature of some of John Podesta’s investments. And foreign governments, our own included as in the case of the Obama Administration’s entrance into the Israeli elections, are frequently accused of trying to sway or indeed interfere with another nation’s campaign cycles.

Yet what is strange about the charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government is that those landscapes were concocted into something supposedly criminal and uniquely applicable to Donald Trump’s election and presidency. Indeed, one of the strangest events in recent political history was the post-election false news narrative that Trump and the “Russians” had colluded during the campaign to rob Hillary Clinton of a sure victory.

Highlights:

• FBI Director Comey informed President Trump on three occasions that he was not personally, the subject of any investigation about collusion with Russia
• Former DNI Clapper and former CIA Director Brennan admitted that there was no intelligence to their knowledge implicating Trump as a colluder with Putin to gain advantage over Clinton
• Former Homeland Security Secretary Johnson conceded that there was no evidence of any Trump campaign effort to persuade Russia to interfere in the elections
• President Obama, who had intelligence reports of Russian election-cycle hacking, dismissed the idea that any party could taint a U.S. presidential election and denounced Trump’s suggestion that the impending election might be “rigged”

• Poster's Note: read what Obama said in October 2016 regarding Trump’s claims of election “rigging”, which could refer to any type of voter fraud, suppression or “hacking”:

To Trump: “stop whining”
The voting process is protected because it is “so decentralized”
Trump’s claim is “not based on facts”
“I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place.”
“…if he [Trump] got the most votes, then it would be my expectation of Hillary Clinton to offer a gracious concession speech and pledge to work with him in order to make sure that the American people benefit from an effective government”

• Hillary Clinton lost because she was a poor candidate, her campaign was incompetent (wasting resources on red states rather than solidifying the “blue wall”), and because she did not offer a compelling story, other than the novelty of becoming the first female president.
  
  
• With respect to appeasement of the Russians, Obama launched a “reset” in reaction to Bush’s increasingly confrontational stance. Obama also was recorded explaining that he would need “space” from Putin until after the 2012 election, after which he could respond with “flexibility”. Lastly, Obama also in 2012 ridiculed presidential candidate Romney’s assertion that Russia was the primary threat to the United States.
  
  
• Republicans such as Nunes and McCain have denounced Obama for years, for not confronting Russian aggression in Ukraine, for various intelligence failures, and for not answering Russia’s information war against the U.S.
  
  
• VDH: “How the media was able in a matter of hours after the election to rebrand Democrats as anti-Russian hawks and Republicans as colluders with Putin is one of the strangest and yet most successful political fabrications in recent history.”
  
  
• Clinton seemed to be enjoying a comfortable lead in the last months of the 2016 campaign, but there were concerns that the DNC favoring her over Sanders, her private server and pay-for-play scandals were damaging.
  
  
• Putin was openly hostile to Obama, Clinton and Kerry, and believed that they had at various times meddled in Russia’s 2012 election and provoked the revolution in Ukraine in 2014.
  
  
• “Never Trump” Republican and Clinton campaign opposition research (e.g. the Steele Dossier) came to the attention of FBI Director Comey. Various bureaucrats later leaked salacious details of the Dossier to the press.
  
  
• Yet the media continued to largely ignore the Russian collusion story given that Clinton’s victory was almost a certainty. But then Trump won, despite losing the popular vote, and by crumbling the “blue wall”.
  
  
• Following Trump’s victory, the Clinton campaign needed to counter Trump (i.e. delegitimize and undermine) and to console itself, and revived the Russian collusion story. The media was eager for controversy and therefore public attention, and intelligence careerists who saw Trump as a threat to their “community” tried to authenticate the smear. The smear easily fit convenient stereotypes about Trump, Trump’s rhetoric and actions worsened the problem and Putin enjoyed watching Americans turn on one another rather than him. The smear also drowned out accusations that Obama leaked to the press or that Attorney General Lynch had obstructed the FBI’s investigation of Clinton.