2020 Russian Election Interference

The four leading Democrats in Congress just sent a letter to the FBI instructing them, as is their right and duty, to deliver a briefing to ALL OF CONGRESS on Russian efforts to skew the 2020 election. This includes the dissemination of disinformation.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who is leading an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden, has apparently been taking information from Russian operatives, and sharing it with Congress and the public as if it is reliable. The FBI has warned him that it is Russian disinformation but he has continued to spread their propaganda.

Interesting times.

If the GOP has decided that the FBI is part of this great 'Deep State' conspiracy they're weaving, what credence will they place in a classified briefing that says the information they're getting from the Kremlin is wrong?  It's the classic cult dilemma -- if you believe all unbelievers are enemies, you can't be convinced that you're wrong.

Rachel tonight says Sen. Johnson and Sen. Grassley are taking misinformation on Joe Biden from a Ukrainian operative named Andriy Derkach.  The NCSC sent a warning today, the briefing requested in the above post, that Russian interference ramping up as the election nears, and warned Congress specifically that Derkach is a Russian spy, deliberately spreading provably-false misinformation.

Grassley and Johnson are both preparing reports on the supposed misdeeds of Biden, to be delivered in September, just before the election.  Apparently, the GOP has no qualms about accepting Russian disinformation and presenting it to the public as fact.

What does one do?  How do you counter something like that?

It's like the McCarthy Hearings turned inside out -- instead of rooting out foreign agents in Congress, Congress -- the GOP side anyway -- is actively courting foreign agents to guide their political decision-making.

Infuckingcredible.

If I was Adam Schiff and/or Chuck Schumer, I would make it clear, in no uncertain terms, to Grassley and Johnson that if they publicize Russian misinformation, without attempting to verify it independently first, that they would be charged with treason by the US Congress.

It is unfathomable to me how Congressional Republicans have gotten in bed with Russia to try to destroy American democracy.  How and why is this even possible?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Rachel tonight says Sen. Johnson and Sen. Grassley are taking misinformation on Joe Biden from a Ukrainian operative named Andriy Derkach.  The NCSC sent a warning today, the briefing requested in the above post, that Russian interference ramping up as the election nears, and warned Congress specifically that Derkach is a Russian spy, deliberately spreading provably-false misinformation.

Grassley and Johnson are both preparing reports on the supposed misdeeds of Biden, to be delivered in September, just before the election. 

The report was released today. Hunter Biden's conflict of interest seems terribly quaint now, in the wake of Trump's and Barr's abominations.

Despite Sen. Johnson's (and Andriy Derkach's) best efforts the long-promised report is widely dismissed as a big fat nothing.

The BBC wrote:

Hunter Biden's lucrative work at a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was vice-president was "problematic", a report by Republican senators says.  But it found no evidence that US foreign policy was influenced by it.

However, the report found little additional information that had not already been publicly revealed in news reports and testimony to the impeachment committee.  Mr Trump has claimed that Mr Biden meddled in Ukraine to help his son's business interests, but lawmakers found no evidence of this.  Mr Trump claimed that Mr Biden, who was vice-president under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, had sought to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to assist energy firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden worked. But the prosecutor whom Mr Biden was seeking to remove due to allegations of corruption, Viktor Shokin, had also been criticised by European and US officials - including Republicans.

The 87-page report called the younger Biden's role at a company suspected of corruption "awkward" and "problematic" at a time when the US was trying to help clean up corruption in Ukraine.

If there is an autumn bombshell coming at the Biden campaign regarding the former vice-president's family involvement in Ukraine or China, this report from Senate Republicans isn't it.

There's something going on, I can feel it.

Last night, during the "debate" Trump said at least 20 times that Hunter Biden took $35 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow.  Joe replied each time, "That is thoroughly discredited."

He never ONCE said, "That is Russian disinformation."

He would have, if he had intelligence to the effect it was.  We must be getting a different story out here than what's being said in their classified briefings.  Something doesn't smell right.

Hmmm, the story is more complicated than a yes-no.

NoCoPilot wrote:

It is unfathomable to me how Congressional Republicans have gotten in bed with Russia to try to destroy American democracy.  How and why is this even possible?

Wikipedia wrote:

Aleksandr Torshin has been a subject of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[6][16] In January 2018, McClatchyDC reported that Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation is pursuing allegations that Torshin has links to Russian organized crime, and laundered money from the Russian government to the NRA to benefit Trump's campaign.[6] Torshin is also the subject of a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into whether the Russian government attempted to illegally funnel money to the NRA in order to help Trump win the presidency.[6][21][22] On May 16, 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report[23] stating it had obtained "a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign" through Torshin and Butina, and that "The Kremlin may also have used the NRA to secretly fund Mr. Trump's campaign."[24] Most of that money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors. In April 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on 23 Russian nationals, including Torshin,[25] whose assets in the United States were frozen[15] and whose entry into the United States barred, besides being subject to other financial disabilities.

The GOP is in deep.  The NRA provides the lion's share of their funding, and if this comes from Mother Russia, at least 2/3 of Congressional Republicans (and 1/3 of Congressional Democrats) are unwitting(?) Russian assets.

In addition to the Johnson report on Hunter Biden (which flopped miserably), Trump was really counting on the Durham report on the origins of the Russia probe to drop just before the election.  He hoped it would lead to indictments of Obama and Biden and Clinton and the FBI and the CIA and all the other Democrats who had the audacity to investigate him.

Unfortunately for him, it's not even coming out. Apparently it was such a Russian disinformation disaster that no elected Republican could even throw his hat in with it.

Poor Don.  His world is crumbling around him.

Quote :

Durham is notoriously slow and methodical in his investigations, which typically stretch years, according to people familiar with how he works, an issue that has frustrated Justice officials, Trump and his congressional allies. Even more disappointing to Barr and Trump, current and former Justice officials say the Durham probe has yet to find evidence to bring any major indictments against the people Trump considers his political enemies.

Ratcliffe last month declassified unverified Russian intelligence that alleged Hillary Clinton was trying to "stir up a scandal" by connecting Trump to the Russian hacking. Democrats have charged that the information was Russian disinformation, and Ratcliffe acknowledged in the release the intelligence community did not know whether it was true or reflected "exaggeration or fabrication."

After the Johnson report landed with no splash, Russian operatives (with GOP enablement) are trying other avenues to spread their false narratives.  The GOP is calling this significant.  Most everyone else recognizes it as Russian disinformation.

Whoosh, the story is way too ridiculous to take seriously.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/questions-new-york-biden-hunter-biden-trump-campaign_n_5f88de1cc5b66ee9a5ee4aad

LOL. Criminal charges may result.

Yeah.  Giuliani has egg all over his face, the lying sack of shit.

Quote :

Giuliani, meanwhile, told the New York Times he took the anti-Biden smear to the New York Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out."

That makes it sound as if the president's personal attorney steered clear of news organizations that might scrutinize the smear before running with it.

Uh, yeah.  "Fact-checking."  It's a thing in journalism, Rudy.

Lindsay Graham just can't get enough of having his bottom spanked in public.  If Zuckerberg & Dorsey are smart -- which I believe they are -- they'll tie the Biden disinformation back to Russia and make it clear the GOP is in bed with the Kremlin.

Quote :

Facebook and Twitter faced widespread criticism earlier this month after each social media platform took steps to slow the spread of the New York Post’s report on emails taken a laptop that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden. The emails detailed Biden’s alleged overseas business dealings with contacts in China and Ukraine.

A Facebook representative said the company would limit the spread of the article until its claims could be fact-checked. Twitter blocked the article from being shared entirely, in a step it said was due to its "Hacked Materials Policy."

You know, the thing I hate the most about our present situation, where the Russian disinformation factory is allowed to run unchecked through our society, is the paranoia it has induced.

Whenever I read pro-Trump comments -- whenever I read anti-science comments -- whenever somebody promotes a non-fact-based narrative, I instantly wonder if the person is just stupid or possibly what I'm reading is Kremlin propaganda.  I no longer trust anything or anyone to be who they purport to be.

Over on Amazon I reviewed a few political books this year, and mostly got VOLUMINOUS and puzzlingly-nonsensical "rebuttals" from people who obviously hadn't read the book.  In some cases, their rebuttals went on for several hundred or a thousand words.  Who has time to argue with a review on Amazon like that, unless it's your job?

I've even begun to wonder if the anonymous editor over on Wikipedia who has been waging a one-man campaign to sabotage a wiki page, is a Russian agent.  Normal people wouldn't be that single-minded... would they?

It's annoying being this paranoid.