We’ve heard these claims for about 20 months now: “Russians hacked the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win,” and “It is incontrovertible that Russians influenced the outcome of the 2016 election to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.” We’ve heard these so often, most Americans take those statements as actual facts without even a second thought. But should we?
- Who determined these “facts” are actually true?
- What proof did they find of this election tampering?
- Who were the guilty parties who actually conducted the tampering?
- How did they discover this election tampering?
- When did they discover this election tampering?
- Where is the evidence they uncovered that verifies these claims?
I will shock many when I say this: there is only ONE answer, and the same answer applies to each question posed above: “We Don’t Know!”
Wait a minute: FBI, CIA, DNI, Department of Justice, NSA — they all say there was Russian election tampering here in 2016. Did they? Here’s that answer again: “We Don’t Know…For SURE!”
Let’s turn the pages of the calendar back a bit and examine some history of the matter:
Obama: “There is no serious person out there that would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized, and the number of votes involved. There’s no evidence that’s happened in the past or that there are instances where that will happen this time.” (Obama before the 2016 election responding to allegations of election tampering in the U.S.)
There are those who maintain that in these comments by then President Obama, he was referring to domestic tampering, not foreign tampering. Conventional wisdom, however, is that his statements were made about “universal” tampering of all kinds by any government or individuals. Being the wordsmith that he is, President Obama would have certainly been precise in his making absolute statements about election meddling — especially because of his support of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, the allegations of Russian hacking and Trump’s claims they did so for Hillary’s benefit.
This entire Russia hacking/meddling/collusion narrative has gone on for far too long. It has opened Pandora’s box to discussions about U.S. and Russia elections hacking. Yes, I said Russia AND U.S. election hacking/meddling. Both are guilty of doing it….and doing it to each other! “Oh,” you say, “the United States would NEVER interfere in another country’s elections — especially not during the Obama Administration.” Wrong!
U.S. Foreign Election Tampering
Maybe it wasn’t Russia that Obama went after, but he certainly spearheaded election tampering with another country’s election. In fact, February 7th of this year, we posted here a story titled “U.S. Foreign Election Tampering: GUILTY!” Here are a few applicable lines from that story:
“The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.”
One might say, “None of those U.S. foreign election tampering events happened on Obama’s watch.” Wrong again. Read from the same February 7 article posted here:
“The Obama State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a U.S. congressional investigation concluded. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report. In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them. Netanyahu survived that election — regardless of Obama’s efforts to defeat him.”
What about the U.S. meddling in Russian elections? Certainly, that hasn’t happened!
In the run-up to the 1996 presidential election in Russia, opinion polls put the pro-western incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, in fifth place among the presidential candidates, with only 8% support. The same polls showed that the most popular candidate in Russia by a wide margin was the Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov. Moved to desperation by the numbers, well-connected Russian oligarchs suggested just canceling the election and supporting a military takeover, rather than facing a defeat at the polls. Neocons in the West embraced the idea–all in the name of Democracy, of course. In the end, though, Yeltsin and the oligarchs decided to retain power by staging the election.
In keeping with Russian laws at the time, Zyuganov spent less than three million dollars on his campaign. Estimates of Yeltsin’s spending, by contrast, range from $700 million to $2.5 billion. (David M. Kotz, Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin, 2007) This was a clear violation of law, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.
In February 1996, at the urging of the United States, the International Monetary Fund (which describes itself as “an organization of 188 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation”) supplied a $10.2 billion “emergency infusion” to Russia. The money disappeared as Yeltsin used it to shore up his reputation and to buy votes. He forced the Central Bank of Russia to provide an additional $1 billion for his campaign, too. Meanwhile, a handful of Russian oligarchs, notably several big contributors residing in Israel, provided more billions for the Yeltsin campaign.
Campaign strategists for the former Republican governor of California Pete Wilson covertly made their way to the President Hotel in Moscow where, behind a guard and locked doors, they served as Yeltsin’s “secret campaign weapon” to save Russia for Democracy. (Eleanor Randolph, “Americans Claim Role in Yeltsin Win,” L.A. Times, 9 July 1996) Yeltsin and his cohorts monopolized all major media outlets, print and electronic, public, and private. They bombarded Russians with an incessant and uncontested barrage of political advertising masquerading as news, phony “documentaries,” rumors, innuendos, and bad faith campaign promises (including disbursement of back pay to workers and pensioners, stopping further NATO expansion, and peaceful settlement of Yeltsin’s brutal war against Chechnya). Yeltsin campaigners even floated the threat that he would stage a coup and the country would descend into civil war if Zyuganov were to win the vote.
Serious observers, including leading Democrats, agree that even if the recent hacking allegations against Russia turn out to be true, the “dirty tricks” did not affect the outcome of the 2016 election. By contrast, American meddling and financing of the 1996 presidential election in Russia clearly played a pivotal role in turning Yeltsin from a candidate with single-digit approval at the beginning of the year into a winning candidate with an official (but disputed) 54.4% of votes cast in the second-round runoff later that same year.
Let’s Get Back to Russia…TODAY
I am not sure about Russia’s attempts to meddle in U.S. elections. Why do I say that? I’m someone who has a rabid hunger for facts. And even though John Brennan makes voracious claims of Russian election meddling, even though James Clapper makes claims of Russian election meddling, even though Intelligence Committee members in Congress, many in the FBI and CIA, and many in the media make such claims, Americans really don’t know. Why? HAVE YOU BEEN PRESENTED WITH EVIDENCE?
Let’s be honest: American citizens have always relied on the good faith and trust in their government regarding every operation of the government. Why? Because they tell us things like “The U.S. has the greatest intelligence community in the World,” and “The FBI is the premier intelligence agency today.” How much of what they do can we verify? Very little. And it’s when we see intelligence briefings on Capitol Hill with Intelligence Department Heads like James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper (who have each been caught in numerous lies) and we watch in those same hearings the “new” FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stonewall duly elected members of Congress, refusing to answer questions or turn over subpoenaed documents to those Constitutionally responsible to verify, there is NO doubt Americans have the right to question what we see and hear from American Intelligence agencies and members, and even Congressional leaders in intelligence areas.
We Need Proof
Are you tired of hearing the partisan spin about every press briefing, press conference, interview, committee testimony, statements saying over and over, “I can’t talk about classified investigations or materials?” No wonder the trust factor for the FBI, CIA, NSA, Justice Department, are at the lowest levels in American history among American citizens. Americans just do not know what to believe.
There is a simple fix for all of this: GIVE AMERICANS THE EVIDENCE. “If” Congress and the President want “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” presented to the American people about everything to do with this discussion, it can happen quickly, legally, and immediately. There’s only one person who can de-classify EVERY classified document and EVERY classified piece of evidence of any kind anywhere in the U.S. government: the President of the United States.
- There is classified information about who killed JFK;
- There is classified information about UFO’s;
- There are classified documents pertaining to proof (or disproof) of Trump Campaign illegal Russian involvement of any kind in 2016;
- There are classified documents that prove if the Mueller investigation is legal, honest, and has any proof of impropriety on the part of the Trump Campaign, Hillary Clinton, The Democrat Party and members of the Hillary Campaign;
- There are classified documents that prove whether or not the IRS actions were manipulating tax-free applications by Conservatives groups to prevent their approval before the 2012 election;
- There are classified documents that prove whether or not the Russians actually meddled in the 2016 elections and if so whether or not those actions made any difference in the election.
President Trump: Please de-classify all of the Mueller Investigation documents so Americans can know if our President is guilty of crimes or not! 18 months in, if there’s any there there, please prove it to us!
Summary
It’s sad that I do not trust the American government. I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. But I do require the truth. Where anywhere else in this nation is it OK to cover-up critical issues of daily operations to hide wrong-doing or cheating, illegally paying people for favors, intentional lawbreaking to further one’s cause or to line one’s pockets with illegal dollars (or both), and selling influence and peddling favors for money but in the U.S. government? Why does that continue?
Simple: there are no police to force accountability for all this government wrong-doing. Yes, there are Inspector Generals and the FBI and other law enforcement watchdogs at the federal level. But who controls all those? The Federal Government. And the Federal Government operates almost totally on quid pro quo: “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.”
There’s only one thing that will break this chain of deteriorating confidence in and trust of the U.S. government from Americans: the entire documented evidence of EVERYTHING.
That can and should be done…IMMEDIATELY!
I’ll finish by saying this: the Russians probably DID try to meddle in our 2016 elections and have done so for decades — just like we have theirs. But many Americans (including me) cannot take the word of members of the U.S. government. “Just trust me” doesn’t work anymore.
The Truth Will!
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