Whoever the PR firm was that was hired to take charge of this Trump-Russia-Election-Hacking story, I think they may owe their clients a refund. Rasmussen reports that only 42% of likely U.S. voters can be induced to say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election more than the FBI did. 34% think the FBI did more interfering, while the other 24% aren't quite sure and are waiting to see what new admissions are contained in this weekend's data dump of whatever private texts have been forensically rescued from the FBI's records-maintenance procedures after three or four minutes concentrated attention from digital experts with some actual interest in disclosure.
I mean, Russia definitely was playing, so it really is a question of 'more' or 'less' at this point.
ReplyDeleteTo whit, FDD's May has a good piece on Russian disinformation.
ReplyDeleteI'll be blunt, I don't think they were to the extent you seem to be assuming if you think it even comes close to balancing out using the DOJ/FBI to bug your opposition's campaign HQ.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've seen publicly reported, actual identified Russian attempts at interference amount to a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of ad buys on Facebook (compare to almost 2.5 BILLION spent by the candidates and their affiliates), and an effort to provide fake Clinton opposition research partially run by GPS Fusion that got nowhere with even a half-light bulb like Donald Jr.
I think we're going to find in the coming days that Steele's anonymous Russians are anonymous because they flat out don't exist, and his entire Russian Dossier story got cooked up because Trump said nice things about Putin early on the campaign. It made sense, therefore, to launder the junk that Sid Blumenthal and Cody Shearer were producing as if Putin had some kind of blackmail material on or illegal dealings with Trump, with additional unclassified material like Carter Page's travel itinerary added to provide a veneer of plausibility.
The DOJ and FBI, at the leadership level at least, put their reputation through the shredder. They'll be a long time building it back up. I'd like to see some slammer time; failing that, at least a Petraeus deal: a couple of years of probation and a crystal-clear allocution with no cowardly evasions.
ReplyDeleteYuri Bezmenov still has the best briefing on Russian Disinformation.
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