WhatFinger


What an honest journalist might ask is if the Russians had really been trying to influence the US presidential election and help Donald Trump win, then why didn’t they release all of the emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her private server?

It wasn’t the Russians—they wanted Hillary not Trump



Watching the sequel to the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming that played on Capitol Hill yesterday, one was reminded of the conclusion attributed to John Adam’s that “one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.” In response to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s statement that he was more resolutely convinced than ever that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets” Senator Lindsey Graham said it was time to start “throwing rocks” at Russia, while John McCain asked Clapper if the Russian hacking constituted “an act of war.”
No one at the hearing was giving any credence to Julian Assange’s statement that the Russians did not provide the emails that WikiLeaks released. Assange, who has never been accused of lying about WikiLeaks’ sources, said with “1,000 percent confidence” that the Russian government was not responsible for the hacking of DNC and Clinton campaign emails. We would expect Assange’s statements to be rejected out of hand by Democratic Senators intent on delegitimizing Trump’s election, but John McCain, who like Lindsey Graham seems intent on helping the Democrats destroy Trump even before he is inaugurated, asked Clapper if he thought “there was any credibility we should attach” to statements by Assange. Clapper, naturally, responded, “Not in my view.” Yet Assange has never lied to Congress, while Clapper has. What an honest journalist might ask is if the Russians had really been trying to influence the US presidential election and help Donald Trump win, then why didn’t they release all of the emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her private server? James, Comey, the FBI Director, had said that Clinton’s emails were less secure than gmail. Surely, given the “highly-advanced offensive cyber program” which the US intelligence agencies credit the Russians with having, they must have hacked Clinton’s private server and read and analyzed every email that she sent and received during the four years she was Secretary of State.

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Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden has said he would “lose respect” for a number of foreign intelligence agencies if they hadn’t hacked her server. He added that he ‘would have moved heaven and earth” to get his hands on the emails of the Russian Foreign Minister if that Minister had been foolish enough to use a private server. So since it is a forgone conclusion that the Russians hacked Hillary’s server, why didn’t they release her emails? The polls all were reporting the election would result in a Clinton landslide. The best way to prevent that would have been to release her emails—her quid pro quo dealings for the Clinton Foundation alone would have been enough to derail her election. During the campaign Trump was making pro-Russian gestures so wouldn’t the Russians have wanted him to be elected. While that sounds plausible, there is one big problem. What Trump might do, as opposed to what he might say on the campaign trail, was unknowable. He could be a good friend or a dangerous unstable enemy. On the other hand, having Hillary’s emails and letting her worry that any meaningful unfriendly actions toward Russia would lead to their release, which in turn could lead to her impeachment, made her a safer bet in the White House than Trump. In Putin’s mind Hillary’s emails were a trump card, and that was better than a Trump.


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Al Kaltman -- Bio and Archives

Al Kaltman is a political science professor who teaches a leadership studies course at George Washington University.  He is the author of Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant.


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