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Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia

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Why liberal conspiracy theories are flourishing in the age of Trump.

Updated by Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com  May 19, 2017, 8:30am EDT

President Donald Trump is about to resign as a result of the Russia scandal. Bernie Sandersand Sean Hannity are Russian agents. The Russians have paid off House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz to the tune of $10 million, using Trump as a go-between. Paul Ryan is a traitor for refusing to investigate Trump’s Russia ties. Libertarian heroine Ayn Rand was a secret Russian agent charged with discrediting the American conservative movement.

These are all claims you can find made on a new and growing sector of the internet that functions as a fake news bubble for liberals, something I’ve dubbed the Russiasphere. The mirror image of Breitbart and InfoWars on the right, it focuses nearly exclusively on real and imagined connections between Trump and Russia. The tone is breathless: full of unnamed intelligence sources, certainty that Trump will soon be imprisoned, and fever dream factual assertions that no reputable media outlet has managed to confirm.

Twitter is the Russiasphere’s native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her 283,000 followers on Twitter. Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler (226,000 followers) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor (159,000 followers).

There’s also a handful of websites, like Palmer Report, that seem devoted nearly exclusively to spreading bizarre assertions like the theory that Ryan and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell funneled Russian money to Trump — a story that spread widely among the site’s 70,000 Facebook fans.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/19/15561842/trump-russia-louise-mensch

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Despite the Hype “Russian Hacking” Claims Fail to Prove Altered Election Results

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January 6,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Misleading the American people to advance a political narrative has been a hallmark of President Obama’s foreign and domestic policy. The most recent example is the administration’s attempt to conflate the hacking of the Democratic Party with potential cyberattacks on the US Election.

Last week, federal officials went as far as to tell the Washington Post that malware linked to Russian hackers was found on a laptop at Burlington Electric, a Vermont power company. By Monday the Post had recanted, writing that investigators “are finding evidence that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort.”

The Obama administration and many Democrats as well as Republicans led by Sen. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have ordered hearings and are pushing the Russian hacking story instead of focusing on the hacking of Hillary Clintons unsecured servers and Clinton operative John Podesta being caught in a basic phishing hack giving access to all his emails.

In October the Clinton campaign declined to confirm the authenticity of the WikiLeak documents but called them “stolen, and ” the latest move by Russian operatives they claimed were trying to help Donald Trump.

The problem for Democrats is the WikiLeak released emails, proved unequivocally that the DNC had rigged the primary race against Bernie Sanders, worked in collusion with the mainstream media, the Hillary received debate questions ahead of time, that DNC staffers used inflammatory and derogatory language toward minorities, women and gays, but the most damming was the implication that the entire media appeared to be on the Clinton’s payroll.

Recount efforts failed as Trump picked up more votes and voting irregularities in Detroit pointed to DNC tampering.

Today DNI Chief Clapper took swipe at Trump, Assange as he defended the Russia Hack Intel. This is of course is the same James Clapper who in 2014 the Washington Post featured a story in which a group of congressmen led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) were pushing for President Obama to fire, the director of national intelligence, claiming he misled Congress about the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance activity on American citizens.

NBC reported, Clapper without offering any evidence said Russia had “clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations, leaking data stolen from these operations, and targeting political infrastructures systems.”

In mid-December  Jeh Johnson head of the Department of Homeland Security explained DHS’s cyber team was ready on election night and they didn’t see “anything that affected the ballot count,” he said.

When pressed, asking whether he could assure Americans that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome of the election.

Johnson said, “We see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count for any cyber actions that deprived people of voting,”.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin Says Put Up or Shut Up

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Kremlin slams ‘extremely scurrilous’ US hacking accusations

AFPDecember 16, 2016

Tokyo (AFP) – The Kremlin on Friday slammed Washington for pointing the finger at President Vladimir Putin over cyber attacks targeting the US election, after Barack Obama pledged to retaliate against Russian hacking.

“At this point they need to either stop talking about this or finally present some sort of proof. Otherwise this looks extremely scurrilous,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists during a visit to Japan.

Obama on Thursday warned that the United States would take action against Moscow after the White House accused Putin of direct involvement in cyber attacks designed to influence the US election.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action,” Obama told NPR radio.

“And we will, at a time and place of our own choosing.”

The outgoing US president’s remarks dramatically upped the stakes in a dispute between the world’s leading nuclear powers over interference that may have swayed last month’s tight election in which Republican billionaire Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s threat came after the White House ratcheted up allegations over the Russian hacking by personally tying Kremlin strongman Putin to the attacks.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kremlin-slams-extremely-scurrilous-us-hacking-accusations-100047216.html

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Top U.S. spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking

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By Mark Hosenball and Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

The position of the ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as “ridiculous” in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks.

Trump’s rejection of the CIA’s judgment marks the latest in a string of disputes over Russia’s international conduct that have erupted between the president-elect and the intelligence community he will soon command.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-intelligence-idUSKBN14204E?il=0

 

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Recycled “Red Scare” ,Fake News Makes the Rounds

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“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and “Make America Great Again.” President Elect Donald J Trump

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

By Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller December 9 at 10:45 PM

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.95f296d92f69

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1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered

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file photo Boyd Loving

1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered

August 6, 2014
MEDIA TRACKERS

Media Trackers is dedicated to media accountability, government transparency, and quality fact-based journalism. Archive »

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.

Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNNreliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.

“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.

In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.

Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim.

https://eagnews.org/1000-member-secretive-progressive-journalist-group-uncovered/