Photo: Trump receives an enthusiastic welcome at the Army-Navy Game, the first President-elect to attend, with the Army ending the Navy’s 14-year winning streak
Contrary to claims made by Democrats about Russian interference helping President-elect Donald J. Trump, there is no definitive proof that the Kremlin ordered such cyber attacks. It’s all based on circumstantial evidence, innuendo, and anonymous sources that are bound by an apparent inter-agency feud between the CIA and the FBI. On December 10, The Washington Post reported that both agencies were not on the same page, which seemed to have angered Democrats:
Sitting
before the House Intelligence Committee was a senior FBI counterintelligence
official. The question the Republicans and Democrats in attendance wanted
answered was whether the bureau concurred with the conclusions the CIA had just
shared with senators that Russia “quite” clearly intended to help Republican
Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton and clinch the White House.
For
the Democrats in the room, the FBI’s response was frustrating — even shocking.
During
a similar Senate Intelligence Committee briefing held the previous week, the
CIA’s statements, as reflected in the letter the lawmakers now held in their
hands, were “direct and bald and unqualified” about Russia’s intentions to help
Trump, according to one of the officials who attended the House briefing.
[…]
The
competing messages, according to officials in attendance, also reflect cultural
differences between the FBI and the CIA. The bureau, true to its law
enforcement roots, wants facts and tangible evidence to prove something beyond
all reasonable doubt. The CIA is more comfortable drawing inferences from
behavior.
The Post added that the meeting from the FBI briefer
reportedly devolved into Democrats trying to corner the briefer on whether
Russia had a favorite in this election. It all boiled down to a lack of
evidence to definitively say that Russia helped Trump in this election, which
is something President Obama has been quiet on, despite the palace intrigue
that has permeated the air waves.
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept also tore into the
claims that Russia hacked the election to help Trump, slamming Democrats for
jumping the gun on the CIA’s incomplete claims as gospel.
Greenwald added that there should be some pretty basic
ground rules when it comes to Russia, hacking, and the 2016 election. No one
should be making claims, like Democrats have, concerning hacking without
evidence (a no-brainer, right?), that CIA reports should be subject to extreme
scrutiny since they lie for a living, that people should take into account the
FBI-CIA feud, and that the last 24-48 hours have been rife with contradictions,
which should add to the uncertainty.
No one is saying don’t investigate these claims, but the
Left, in their inability to actually take responsibility for nominating one of
the most flawed candidates to ever run for the presidency, have gone gung-ho
with these Russians totally hacked the election to help Trump claims that are
unsubstantiated at best.
Moreover, Greenwald also adds the biases between the two
agencies; how the intelligence community was staunchly opposed to Trump,
whereas those who were investigating Clinton’s email fiasco at the FBI were
hoping she would get prosecuted for not following protocol concerning sensitive
material or at least stripping her of her security clearance.
At the same time, it’s also a bit surprising since the
Clintons reportedly made even members of the intelligence community nervous due
to her penchant to play by a different set of rules—or at least that’s what
David Ignatius postulated.
Frankly, an unauthorized and unsecure server that was
capable of being hacked by foreign actors and most certainly had classified
material sent through it (though not classified at the time) is more startling.
She actually skirted protocol; Trump didn’t. Three emails that were sent
through Clinton’s server were determined to be classified at the time they were
sent and received, but were marked improperly.
Regardless, in the end, Greenwald’s main point is that
anonymous sources are not akin to actionable evidence:
Needless
to say, Democrats — still eager to make sense of their election loss and to
find causes for it other than themselves — immediately declared these anonymous
claims about what the CIA believes to be true, and, with a somewhat sweet,
religious-type faith, treated these anonymous assertions as proof of what they
wanted to believe all along: that Vladimir Putin was rooting for Donald Trump
to win and Hillary Clinton to lose and used nefarious means to ensure that
outcome. That Democrats are now venerating unverified, anonymous CIA leaks as
sacred is par for the course for them this year, but it’s also a good
indication of how confused and lost U.S. political culture has become in the
wake of Trump’s victory.
[…]
…The
reasons no rational person should blindly believe anonymous claims of this sort
— even if it is pleasing to believe such claims — should be obvious by now.
To
begin with, CIA officials are professional, systematic liars; they lie
constantly, by design, and with great skill, and have for many decades, as have
intelligence officials in other agencies. Many of those incidents demonstrate,
as hurtful as it is to accept, that these agencies even lie when there’s a
Democrat overseeing the executive branch.
Beyond
that, what makes claims from anonymous sources so especially dubious is that
their motives cannot be assessed.
Who are the people summarizing these claims
to the Washington Post?
What motives do they have for skewing the assertions
one way or the other?
Who are the people inside the intelligence community who
fully ratify these assertions and who are the ones who dissent?
It’s impossible
to answer any of these questions because everyone is masked by the shield of
anonymity, which is why reports of this sort demand high levels of skepticism,
not blind belief.
The timing of the leaks:
To
start with, the timing of these leaks is so striking. Even as Democrats have
spent months issuing one hysterical claim after the next about Russian
interference, the White House, and Obama specifically, have been very muted
about all of this.
Perhaps that’s because he did not want to appear partisan or
be inflammatory, but perhaps it’s because he does not believe there is
sufficient proof to accuse the Russian government; after all, if he really
believed the Russians did even half of what Democrats claim, wouldn’t he (as
some Democrats have argued) be duty-bound to take aggressive action in
retaliation?
It
was announced yesterday afternoon that Obama had ordered a full review of
hacking allegations: a perfectly sensible step that makes clear that an
investigation is needed, and evidence disclosed, before any definitive
conclusions can be reached. It was right on the heels of that announcement that
this CIA leak emerged: short-cutting the actual, deliberative investigative
process Obama had ordered in order to lead the public to believe that all the
answers were already known and, before the investigation even starts, that
Russia was guilty of all charges.
Greenwald also notes how the Democrats’ anti-Russia
fetish is coalescing into a new neo-McCarthyite ethos that’s rather annoying,
though entertaining at times, where any mention to the contrary about the
Left's claims concerning Russia's intentions during the 2016 election is taken
as support for Russia and Putin:
…here’s
how I defined the McCarthyite atmosphere that Democrats have deliberately
cultivated this year:
So
that’s the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2016 election. Those who
question, criticize or are perceived to impede Hillary Clinton’s smooth,
entitled path to the White House are vilified as stooges, sympathizers and/or
agents of Russia: Trump, WikiLeaks, Sanders, The Intercept, Jill Stein. Other
than loyal Clinton supporters, is there anyone left who is not covertly
controlled by or in service to The Ruskies?
Concerns
over Democrats’ McCarthyism never had anything to do with a desire for an
investigation into the source of the DNC and Podesta hacking; everyone favored
such investigations. Indeed, accusations that Democrats were behaving in a
McCarthyite manner were predicated — and still are — on their disgusting
smearing as Kremlin agents anyone who wanted evidence and proof before
believing these inflammatory accusations about Russia.
To
see the true face of this neo-McCarthyism, watch this amazing interview from
this week with Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the party’s leading Russia
hawks (he’s quoted in the Post article attacking Obama for not retaliating
against Putin). When Schiff is repeatedly asked by the interviewer, Tucker
Carlson, for evidence to support his allegation that Putin ordered the hacking
of Podesta’s emails, Schiff provides none.
What
he does instead is accuse Carlson of being a Kremlin stooge and finally tells
him he should put his program on RT. That — which has become very typical
Democratic rhetoric — is the vile face of neo-McCarthyism that Democrats have
adopted this year.
Admittedly, maybe I jumped the gun to say that there was
no proof of a Russia-Trump alliance based solely on anonymous sources; I
usually make a note stressing when something is rumor or based on an anonymous
source.
And I’ve always made sure that such stories have a “stay
tuned” mention towards the end. Because often times, especially with these
stories—we don’t know.
But this is different. As you can see, Democrats are so
desperate in their attempts to undercut the president-elect and avoid slamming
Clinton as a horrible candidate, that they’re using rumor as proof.
I’ll be sure to make a note of such sources in future
posts because as you can see—this whole thing has gone off the hinges. We have
the Huffington Post reporting that this unsubstantiated claim of Russian
interference in our election is the “political equivalent of 9/11.”
I’m going to sit back until we get on the record remarks
from U.S. officials. Because as Greenwald and the Post noted, we really can’t
say for sure that Russia directed such cyber attacks to help Trump.
