Category: 2016 Presidential Election

I as well as millions of other Americans tired long ago about the reports we saw and heard over and over that “experts” continued to harass us with claiming “We know factually that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election in coordinated efforts to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to assist Donald Trump’s win of the White House.”

”Factually” is the word that perked me up: at TruthNewsNetwork we research, always digging for facts. I’m sure you will understand that when we are told by “experts” that something politically is “factual,” our stomachs turn and our heads ache because the belief that what political “experts” tell us today are “facts,” we are pretty certain they are NOT facts.

But in our patience and continued research, we have unearthed some facts about 2016 that support those Russian interference claims in 2016 with apparent attempts to discredit Clinton. We had significant help from other news sources in putting this together. (See credits at the end of this report) But saying this has been a difficult task and that there has been little cooperation from our normal sources is a gross understatement.

This report will be our ONLY such report going forward, so it is lengthy and detailed. We will present it in two parts to make it easier to digest. And we’ll hold our Summary until the end of Part II that you’ll see tomorrow.

Read carefully! There’s much “meat” in this. And it explains much and answers many questions you may have. But it will also initiate new questions for you. Let’s go!

The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election

I knew that the Russians had attempted on numerous occasions to impact the elections of foreign countries. So do the Chinese, and, for that matter, so does the United States! We’ve reported on those in previous reports here at TruthNewsNetwork. That being said, my assumption has always been that the NSA and the CIA as the two foremost U.S. intelligence agencies on the frontlines of defense of the nation’s IT infrastructure stopped every threat. Surely their protections extended into our election system. Because of the cloak of secrecy that covers both agencies, I assumed it was for that secrecy that none of their methods were known to the public.

I was shocked to learn that those “experts” probably were right. What was a bigger surprise was the way the Russians had sneaked into our IT infrastructure.

It’s not surprising the Russians use spies. They always do. We do, China does, and every other country on Earth does too. But apparently, the Russians in 2016 didn’t (at least on the most part) use actual Russian spies. They created “fake” Americans to be their spies.

Russian Spies in America

Melvin Redick of Harrisburg, PA, a friendly-looking American with a backward baseball cap and a young daughter, posted on Facebook a link to a brand-new website.

“These guys show hidden truth about Hillary Clinton, George Soros and other leaders of the US,” he wrote on June 8, 2016. “Visit #DCLeaks website. It’s really interesting!”

Mr. Redick turned out to be a remarkably elusive character. No Melvin Redick appears in Pennsylvania records, and his photos seem to be borrowed from an unsuspecting Brazilian. But this fictional concoction has earned a small spot in history: The Redick posts that morning were among the first public signs of an unprecedented foreign intervention in American democracy.

The DCLeaks site had gone live a few days earlier, posting the first samples of material, stolen from prominent Americans by Russian hackers, that would reverberate through the presidential election campaign and into the Trump presidency. The site’s phony promoters were in a cyber army of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.

The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the onslaught of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far more difficult to trace was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into the sources of deception and propaganda.

An investigation by The New York Times and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. Recently, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.

On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts, called bots, that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart — and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers. On Election Day, for instance, they found that one group of Twitter bots sent out the hashtag #WarAgainstDemocrats more than 1,700 times.

The Russian efforts were sometimes crude, with a trial-and-error feel, and many of the suspect posts were not widely shared. The fakery may have added only modestly to the din of genuine American voices in the pre-election melee, but it helped fuel a fire of anger and suspicion in a polarized country.

A Times investigation reveals missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of a campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Given the powerful role of social media in political contests, understanding the Russian efforts will be crucial in preventing similar, or more sophisticated, attacks in the 2020 congressional races and the presidential election. Multiple government agencies have investigated the Russian attack, though it remains unclear whether any agency is focused specifically on tracking foreign intervention in social media. Both Facebook and Twitter say they are studying the 2016 experience and how to defend against such meddling.

“We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, wrote in a post about the Russia-linked fake accounts and ads. “We believe in protecting the integrity of civic discourse.”

Critics say that because shareholders judge the companies partly based on a crucial data point — “monthly active users” — they are reluctant to police their sites too aggressively for fear of reducing that number. Remember: Facebook and Twitter are free to users. Advertising pays the bills AND investors their stock dividends. The more accounts, the more ads get sold and at higher prices.

The companies use technical tools and teams of analysts to detect bogus accounts, but the scale of the sites — 328 million users on Twitter, nearly two billion on Facebook — means they often remove impostors only in response to complaints.

Though both companies have been slow to grapple with the problem of manipulation, they have stepped up efforts to purge fake accounts. Facebook says it takes down a million accounts a day — including some that were related to the most recent French election and upcoming German voting — but struggles to keep up with the illicit activity. Still, the company says the abuse affects only a small fraction of the social network; Facebook officials estimated that of all the “civic content” posted on the site in connection with the United States election, less than one-tenth of one percent resulted from “information operations” like the Russian campaign.

Twitter, unlike Facebook, does not require the use of a real name and does not prohibit automated accounts, arguing that it seeks to be a forum for open debate. But it constantly updates a “trends” list of most-discussed topics or hashtags, and it says it tries to foil attempts to use bots to create fake trends. However, FireEye found that the suspected Russian bots sometimes managed to do just that, in one case causing the hashtag #HillaryDown to be listed as a trend.

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent who has closely tracked Russian activity online said that Facebook and Twitter suffered from a “bot cancer eroding trust on their platforms.” But he added that while Facebook “has begun cutting out the tumors by deleting false accounts and fighting fake news,” Twitter has done little and as a result, “bots have only spread since the election.”

Asked to comment, Twitter referred to a blog post in June in which it said it was “doubling down” on efforts to prevent manipulation but could not reveal details for fear of tipping off those trying to evade the company’s measures. But it declared that Twitter’s “open and real-time nature is a powerful antidote” to falsehoods.

“This is important because we cannot distinguish whether every single Tweet from every person is truthful or not,” the statement said. “We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth.”

Part I Wrapup

During an interview with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Barack Obama denounced the conspiracy theory that Russians tampered with the American voting process. “We were frankly more concerned in the run-up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of,” he admitted. “And we’re confident that we can guard against.”

Then Breitbart.com reported that: Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected.

“None of this should be a big surprise,” Obama said, “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.” Obama dismissed the hack and the leaked emails as “not very interesting” and lacking “explosive” revelations. He puzzled as to why it was an “obsession” by the news media despite the knowledge that the Russians were responsible.

He also criticized President-elect Donald Trump for calling on the Russian government to hack Hillary’s emails to reveal the contents of the deleted emails from her private server, and reminded the audience that Trump had campaign officials connected to Russia.

“What’s happened to our political system where some emails that were hacked and released ended up being the overwhelming story, and the constant source of coverage – breathless coverage – that was depicted as somehow damning in all sorts of ways when the truth of the matter was it was fairly routine stuff?” he said.

Watch (and Listen) closely to exactly what Obama said to Trevor Noah about Russian hacking in 2016:

What I find interesting is how the former President of the United States, who had just completed 8 years in office, downplayed in this interview just after the election of Donald Trump the seriousness of the role the Russians played in the 2016 election and apparently in previous elections — perhaps even his own in 2008 and 2012!  The book is still out on that.

In Part 2, we will look further into what actually happened with the Russians in 2016 and how it happened. We discuss the impact it made on vote totals and what has happened regarding Russian election hacking in our elections since 2016. You don’t want to miss it! Catch it first thing tomorrow at www.TruthNewsNet.org!

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The Department of Justice released news that the redacted version of the Mueller Report will be made available to Congress and the American public Thursday morning, April 18, 2019. That will be a memorable day in American history that most on both sides of the political spectrum have been salivating over while waiting. And based on the “summary” sent to Congress shortly after Mueller announced he had finished and sent his final report to the DOJ, both sides will probably find red meat in the full version. We need to discuss that. But before we do, “if” you read Attorney General Barr’s summary letter, you’ve probably forgotten most of it. We’ll talk about specifics he included. But before we do, here’s a link to his summary. Please read it again.

Attorney General Summary of Mueller Report

Our Thoughts

While reading Attorney General Barr’s letter, several things became obvious to us:

• The AG included Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the process of digesting Mueller’s near 400-page report, dissecting its parts, and determining the reasoning for Mueller’s findings, and the included evidence in the report that supports his not taking any further actions via indictments;
• The investigation was exhaustive. Mueller employed 19 attorneys who had help from 40 FBI agents, “intelligence analysts, forensic accountants….”
• Mueller issued more than 2800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, more than 230 “orders for communication records,” 50 more orders authorizing the use of “pen registers,” 13 requests of foreign governments for evidence, and 500 witnesses were interviewed; (A pen register, or dialed number recorder (DNR), is an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular telephone line)
• While Mueller referred several other matters to various legal offices for further investigation, Mueller did not recommend any further indictments;
• Also, Mueller did not obtain any sealed indictments of which details are still unknown and if existing, might lead to further legal actions.

Regarding the two areas that the Special Counsel and his team investigated in this matter — collusion by members of the Trump Campaign or the President with Russia and possible obstruction of justice by the President — Mueller concluded there was NO collusion with Russia committed. Secondly, there was not sufficient evidence of obstruction of justice to prove that “beyond a reasonable doubt” any such obstruction occurred. (IMPORTANT: we will go into detail on “Alleged Obstruction” below)

The Investigation DID conclude that the Russians DID attempt to impact the 2016 presidential election. “The first involved attempts by a Russian organization to conduct disinformation and social media operation in the U.S. designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election.”

The second element involved the Russian government’s “efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.”

According to this summary, there is NO doubt that the Russians were definitely working hard to influence our election. But it is important to remember that they have been doing that for years, and not just to the U.S. For that matter, the United States has on numerous occasions attempted in numerous ways to impact the national elections of other foreign countries! In fact, TruthNewsNetwork has detailed the specifics of several of those. To be honest, the Chinese, the French, British, and even modern-day Germany is known for doing so.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections! In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions. (See our story with complete details published here February 18th of 2018)

Special Counsel Mueller’s Methodology is Suspicious

Do you like me wonder why Mueller would with so many investigative resources at his disposal — subpoenas, grand juries, witness questioning, and testimony, cutting deals with people — using 19 of the most well-known investigative attorneys in U.S. history, spending a reported $25 million over 2 years would NOT give a conclusion in his report regarding both Russia collusion AND Obstruction of Justice? Conventional wisdom says “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” which means to most “if there is proof/evidence of any obstruction of justice indictments should be made.”

Why did Mueller — if there was an obstruction on the part of the President — not take the evidence to a grand jury to get an indictment? And if there was NO evidence of obstruction, why did he NOT say so in his report? (No, the report is not out yet, but Barr’s summary plainly states that Mueller instigated no indictments of the President) There are two reasons or excuses:

1. Those on the Left immediately upon reading Barr’s letter stated the reason Mueller did not indict Trump for obstruction was because most believe a sitting president CANNOT be indicted for obstruction of justice, and that Mueller was afraid that a huge federal court battle would be initiated if he had pushed for an indictment of the President that would keep the furor going  for another two years or so to the chagrin of Americans.
2. Our conclusion is the second: that Mueller’s team could not (at least by a majority of those 19 attorneys with Mueller added) unite on an obstruction decision. It appears that one or several of those Mueller attorneys — almost all of which are Democrats and are not fond of President Trump — thought that not recommending indicting this president would initiate even more investigations by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and even by the federal Southern District of New York. In that scenario, the rage, anger, and vitriol from the Left would continue and certainly even heighten in intensity while those additional investigations go on. And their feeling is certain that all of the unknowns and continuous allegations and questions without answers would guarantee the President’s credibility and integrity would be attacked by the attack dog media all the way through the 2020 elections.

The Mueller Investigation is the first one in U.S. history that occurred at the federal level in which NO conclusion was reached! THAT’S why the Mueller report left the question unanswered, “Did Donald Trump commit Obstruction of Justice?”

Summary

I would love to say that Mueller’s report will bring to an end to what the President has continually called “A Witch Hunt.” But it will not. Think about it: Democrats are desperate. Yes, they won the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Yes, the Democrats have a choke-hold on the media who breathlessly and continuously perpetrate whatever the Democrat talking point “of the day” is each and every day.

But there are more “matters” that few are talking about. As of last week, there are more than 82,000 sealed federal indictments, some issued by federal courts in each one of the federal courts in all 50 states, all issued and sealed since November of 2017. Some expected some of those would be “Mueller indictments.” But according to his report, he obtained no indictments that were or are sealed. And no one is certain for whom those name, how many, or who initiated them. But it’s a serious matter. In U.S. history, no more than 3000 have been issued in a 12-month period. Something is up there.

And there’s one more thing: Attorney General Barr lit the media world up when he responded to a Senator’s questions in the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing when he testifed before that committee. Listen/watch closely to his responses:

Attorney General Barr made it clear that the DOJ is looking into spying during the 2016 campaign against the Trump Campaign. Immediately after the hearing, the media went into a frenzy about his statements. Several stated “He has no evidence. If he had proof he would have given it during the hearing,” and “AG Barr showed he’s nothing more than a mouthpiece and conspiracy theorist for President Trump.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you listen to his responses in the video and audio given above, you hear him respond to the Senator’s question about any evidence NOT by saying he has no evidence, but by saying this, “I am not going to discuss the evidence NOW. I’m going to wait for details to be finalized and I’ll come back with my report.”

There’s a BIG difference between what he said and that he HAS NO EVIDENCE.

So what can we expect when the report is released? More chaos, more vitriol, more media and political attacks against Attorney General Barr and, of course, President Trump. And what good can possibly come from it all? The Democrats will get exactly what they want and need: more negativity about President Trump and his Administration. They’ll scream louder and blame more, and in doing so, keep the anti-Trump rhetoric alive with absolutely no proof of any of the allegations!

Remember this: The Democrat Party has NO unity right now, NO real leadership, NO party platform for 2020. The only thing they have to use against the President is THE MUELLER REPORT! And since there’s “no there-there,” they MUST manufacture their own brand of truth.

But don’t think the other side will sit idly by. You can bet the President will amp up his twitter account, his campaign rally derision of Democrats and each 2020 candidate.

It’s not going to be fun very long. I promise Americans will (if they haven’t already) get tired of the constant back and forth between camps. I just hope Americans can stand solid for facts, not get distracted by more allegations without truth, and certainly do not lose sight of the massive swing to all things Left by every one of the Democrat 2020 presidential candidates.

Socialism has never and is not now working for ANY country in the World.

If that’s the only reason to re-elect Donald Trump that can be found, it certainly will be good enough!

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