Botched Russia meddling analysis makes U.S. intel agencies appear politically motivated

(National Sentinel) Faulty Assessment: Just two weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump took office, President Obama’s intelligence heads made public a unanimous analysis that Russian operatives, under orders from President Vladimir Putin, staged an influence campaign in order to help Trump win the 2016 election.

As the Washington Times reported, it was a significant event: The CIA, NSA, and FBI were all challenging the legitimacy of a presidential election.

While the charges at the time seemed persuasive and sharp, some 10 months later they are unraveling, which is raising questions about the legitimacy of the initial assessment and whether it was politically motivated to undermine the incoming commander-in-chief.

“It left me scratching my head,” said one intelligence source with personal access to former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and former CIA Director John O. Brennan, two of the men who had signed off on the assessment.

Both men have since publicly criticized Trump, which in and of itself is nearly unprecedented.

What’s more, the Times reported:

The 15-page document presented to the president-elect at Trump Tower in Manhattan was mostly filler — a republication of a years-old CIA analysis of the Kremlin’s global television network Russia Today. A mere five pages were dedicated to [the] charge that Moscow blended cyberhacking with state-backed propaganda and social media trolls to defeat Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

There was no supporting documentation of how America’s top spies arrived at the brazen conclusion that Russians had “gained access to” and “exfiltrated large volumes of data” from Democratic National Committee computers, an explosive claim that sent shock waves across the U.S. political and intelligence landscapes.

And yet, because of the source of the report, those five pages have cast a pall over Trump’s presidency ever since, hurting his credibility abroad and forming the backdrop for five separate congressional and special counsel investigations.

This, despite the fact that the document’s singular conclusion — Russian collusion with Team Trump — looks less and less believable by the day.

And now, members of both parties say that the Russian efforts to undermine the November election were neither new nor aimed at electing Trump, but merely to ‘undermine’ American democratic processes.

The Times said in interviews with scores of former U.S. national security, intelligence community vets at the highest levels as well as foreign diplomats who all thought the initial assessment was devoid of much detail.

“I actually called them both the day after it came out and asked, ‘Why was it so thin?’” said the source close to Clapper and Brennan. “The answer I got was simple: There was a serious counterintelligence operation going on.”

The Times noted, “U.S. spies were neck-deep in an elaborate counterintelligence operation, and they didn’t want to jeopardize it by revealing too many details, according to various officials inside and outside the intelligence community.”

Trump did not see it that way; he believed that the Obama intelligence apparatus had been politicized and, as we have learned since, it likely was, just like Obama’s Justice Department.

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Other intelligence vets agree:

Fred Fleitz, a 19-year CIA veteran who served as a chief of staff for John R. Bolton during the George W. Bush administration, first laid out the argument in a Fox News op-ed the day after the assessment was made public.

The entire purpose of the report was apparently “to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election,” Mr. Fleitz wrote on Jan. 7. He called the assessment “rigged for political purposes” and lamented that it contained “serious accusations of Russian interference” but “did not back them up with evidence.”

At least one Russian envoy interviewed by the Times agreed. “I believe it was a total fraud and it was very badly concocted, to say the least,” he said. “It was clearly done to divert attention away from all the infighting and backstabbing that was going on inside the Democratic Party. It was also a perfect move to place the blame on someone else — a foreign power — for Hillary’s defeat.”

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Russian hacking FAIL: DHS tells 21 states Moscow’s ballot offensive was NOT successful

(National Sentinel) Election 2016: There are still people within the Democratic Party and among their supporters who believe the lie that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia to “steal the election” from Hillary Clinton.

There are also people who believe Moscow was able to successfully hack into voting machines and change votes from Clinton to Trump.

The former narrative has been disproven time and time again.

The latter narrative has just been disproven — not that it will convince the most ardent Left-wing conspiracy theorists otherwise.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the Department of Homeland Security has put to rest any suspicions that Russian hackers changed the outcome of the 2016 Election:

The Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states Friday that Russian hackers attempted unsuccessfully to interfere with their voting systems in the 2016 election.

DHS reported that no votes were changed by Russian hacking, Reuters reports. DHS refused to disclose which state governments it approached, but Wisconsin officials made it known that they were among the group.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said that he was informed that “Russian government cyber actors” targeted his state’s voter registration systems.

However, while hackers “scanned internet-connected election infrastructure likely seeking specific vulnerabilities such as access to voter registration databases, but the attempt to exploit vulnerabilities was unsuccessful,” Haas said.

In June, DHS informed Congress that 21 states were targeted by hackers, but that while a few were breached, no votes were changed.

Wisconsin went for Trump. It was the first time since 1984 the state backed a Republican candidate.

Still, election hacking is a serious matter, and it has some states thinking of abandoning electronic voting and returning to paper ballots in the future.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh says FBI report PROVES Seth Rich, not the Russians, gave DNC emails to Wikileaks

(National Sentinel) Political intrigue: For months now various reports and various figures have claimed that murdered Democratic National Committee IT staffer Seth Rich was responsible for turning over scores of emails belonging to the political organization to the whistleblower website Wikileaks — not the Russians.

Now, additional evidence indicates that Rich, and not Moscow, was indeed responsible.

It’s important to note that this story first began in December, when the UK’s Daily Mail reported that a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan — Craig Murray — said he flew to Washington, D.C., specifically to meet a shadowy DNC insider who gave him the emails.

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” Murray said. “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks [emphasis added].”

The reason, Murray said, is that the source was disgusted “at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against [then-Democratic presidential contender Sen.] Bernie Sanders.”

While Rich wasn’t mentioned in that report as the leaker, subsequent reporting by other media began to implicate, then name, him directly. In May, for instance, Fox News published a story (later retracted) naming Rich, saying he had multiple contacts with Wikileaks officials. Later that same month, legendary hacker Kim Dotcom said he knew for sure that Rich was the one who gave Wikileaks all of the emails — not the Russians.

In July, an independent forensic analysis of files belonging to the DNC that were summarily published by the persona Guccifer 2.0 indicates they were most likely downloaded locally instead of being hacked, especially by anyone from Russia.

And now, we learn that a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who exposed the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, and who revealed in 1974 the CIA was spying on Americans — Seymour Hersh — says the FBI has found evidence on Rich’s computer that he downloaded the emails from the DNC. (Related: The Russian hack narrative is just a media hoax, the real leak came from inside the DNC.)

According to an interview linked by Wikileaks, Hersh says [warning: graphic language]:

[The DC police took Seth Rich’s computer, but couldn’t get past his password.] So they call the FBI cyber unit.

The Feds get through [the password-protection on Rich’s computer], and here’s what they find. This is according to the FBI report.

What the report says is that – sometime in late spring or early summer – he [Rich] makes contact with WikiLeaks. That’s in his computer.

They [the FBI] found what he [Rich] had done was he had submitted a series of documents – of emails, of juicy emails – from the DNC.

By the way, all this s**t about the DNC, where the hack, it wasn’t hacked …

He [Rich] offered a sample, an extensive sample, I’m sure dozens of emails, and said I want money. [Remember, WikiLeaks often pays whistleblowers.]

Later, WikiLeaks did get the password. He [Rich] had a Dropbox, a protected Dropbox, which isn’t hard to do.

They got access to the Dropbox. That’s in the FBI report.

He also let people know with whom he was dealing … the word was passed, according to the FBI report, “I also shared this box with a couple of friends, so if anything happens to me, it’s not going to solve your problem.”

But WikiLeaks got access before he was killed.

I have a narrative of how that whole f**king thing began. It’s a [former CIA director John] Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation [campaign].

As noted by Washington’s Blog, #NeverTrumper Brennan, a serial liar, is very much responsible for the narrative blaming “Russian hacking” for the DNC leaks.

Once again the “official Washington narrative” — and more specifically, the official Democratic narrative — is being proven demonstrably false.

From the outset, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said on the record the Russians did not provide him the DNC data. It seems he was being honest the whole time.

This story originally appeared at Trump.news.

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Intel veterans are challenging the ‘Russian hack’ narrative, citing lack of forensic evidence

(National Sentinel) Conspiracy: Earlier this month we reported that “a meta-analysis independent researcher” said files belonging to the Democratic National Committee which were summarily published by Guccifer 2.0 most likely were downloaded locally and were not hacked, especially by someone from Russia.

Now comes yet another forensic analysis, this one from former U.S. intelligence professionals, who are also challenging the Deep State narrative that Russia “hacked” the Democratic National Committee’s emails last year, then summarily turned them over to Wikileaks.

In a letter to President Donald J. Trump, as reported at Zero Hedge via Consortium News, the intel vets including former NSA analysts question whether the “hack” was really just “an inside job.”

“Forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia,” says an executive summary of the group’s letter.

The letter states further:

After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East Coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled “Cyber-Forensic Investigation of ‘Russian Hack’ and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers,” and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA “alumni” in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

NOTE: There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 “hack” of the DNC server. In earlier VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer 2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the Russians [see here and here].

Addressing this point at his last press conference (January 18), he described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as “not conclusive,” even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6 expressed “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it acquired from the DNC … to WikiLeaks.”

Obama’s admission came as no surprise to us. It has long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a “Russian hack” to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

The intel pros go on to tell Trump in their letter that blaming the “hack” on “Russia” was the perfect cover because Moscow was “the ideal culprit.”

Further:

And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, “We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own “forensic facts” and prime the media pump to put the blame on “Russian meddling.” Mrs. Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that her “mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.”

Independent cyber-investigators have now completed the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not do. Oddly, the “hand-picked” intelligence analysts contented themselves with “assessing” this and “assessing” that. In contrast, the investigators dug deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack.

They found that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

The Deep State’s “Russia” narrative continues to fall apart under closer scrutiny. The fact that the so-called “mainstream media” isn’t reporting any of this proves they are complicit the perpetuating the false narrative as well as the ensuing cover-up.

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False narrative: New report discounts ‘Russian hacking’ claim regarding DNC servers

(National Sentinel) Political intrigue: A new report by a meta-analysis independent researcher suggests that files belonging to the Democratic National Committee and summarily published by Guccifer 2.0 were most likely downloaded locally rather than being hacked, especially by someone from Russia, Disobedient Media reported Monday.

“The document supplied to Disobedient Media via Adam Carter was authored by an individual known as The Forensicator. The full document referenced here has been published on their blog. Their analysis indicates the data was almost certainly not accessed initially by a remote hacker, much less one in Russia. If true, this analysis obliterates the Russian hacking narrative completely,” the site noted.

Specifically, the independent meta-analysis researcher talks about data that Guccifer 2.0 eventually published under the banner “NGP-VAN,” and thus should not be associated with separate publications of DNC emails via Wikileaks. Rather, Disobedient Media noted further:

Disobedient Media previously reported that Crowdstrike is the only group that has directly analyzed the DNC servers. Other groups including Threat Connect have used the information provided by Crowdstrike to claim that Russians hacked the DNC. However, their evaluation was based solely on information ultimately provided by Crowdstrike; this places the company in the unique position of being the only direct source of evidence that a hack occurred.

The group’s President Shawn Henry is a retired executive assistant director of the FBI while their co-founder and CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which as we have reported, is linked to George Soros. Carter has stated on his website that “At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation.” Carter’s website was described by Wikileaks as a useful source of primary information specifically regarding Guccifer 2.0.

Previously, legendary hacker Kim Dotcom has claimed that murdered DNC worker Seth Rich was responsible for downloading the organization’s documents and giving them to Wikileaks, not the Russians.

There’s more to suggest that Rich — or someone from within the DNC — leaked the organization’s documents to WikiLeaks and not the Russians. A December a report noted that a disgruntled supporter of Sanders leaked the emails to the whistleblower site via Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who personally met the leaker in a wooded area near American University.

The leaker was motivated by “disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders,” The Daily Mail reported.

Rich’s murder has been officially labeled a “botched robbery attempt” by the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. It remains unsolved.

The “robbers” shot Rich multiple times in the back. They didn’t take a thing — not a watch, cell phone, money or wallet.

This independent meta-analysis marks the latest evidence that the Deep State created the “Russian hacking” narrative out of thin air as part of a wider “Russia” conspiracy to discredit Donald J. Trump and continually undermine his presidency.

Putin: The Trump ‘on television very different from the one in person’

(National Sentinel) Foreign Policy: The unhinged Left continues its apoplectic response to the first face-to-face meeting between President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After Trump said, “I had a tremendous meeting yesterday with President Putin,” followed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s observations that the two men  had “positive chemistry” and “connected quickly,” Putin himself opined on the meeting.

The Trump on TV “is very different from the real Trump,” the Russian leader said during a 25-minute press conference following the meeting. On another level, he said, “As for personal relations, I think they are established.”

Putin also addressed the American Left-wing media’s obsession with the “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative and Russian “hacking,” which we reported last week was completely bogus, as President Obama’s own cyber security czar admitted to Israeli media.

The Hill reported that Putin reiterated that there is no reason to believe that Russia meddled in the U.S. electoral process in 2016, and made it clear that he feels the president believes him.

“He [Trump] asked many questions on that subject. I answered those questions as best I could. I think he took it into consideration and agreed with me, but you should really ask him how he feels about it,” Putin said.

Regarding improving future U.S.-Russia relations — something the Obama administration failed miserably to establish — Putin said, “As for personal relations, I think that they are established.”

“I think that if we continue building our relations like during our conversation yesterday, there are grounds to believe that we’ll be able to – at least partially – restore the level of cooperation that we need,” Putin said.

RT.com reported that, regarding the issue of cyber security, both Putin and Trump “agreed that there should never be a situation of uncertainty, especially in the future, in this sphere.”

“The US president and I agreed that we’ll create a working group and work together on how to jointly monitor security in cyberspace, how to ensure unconditional compliance with international legal norms, and how to prevent interference in internal affairs of foreign countries,” Putin said.

“If we manage to organize this work – and I have no reasons to doubt that – then there will be no more speculation on this topic [of Russia meddling],” he added.

On Syria, where there are deep disagreements between the two sides:

“I think the [US] position became more pragmatic. It doesn’t seem to have changed drastically [compared to the Obama administration], but there’s an understanding that we can achieve a lot by joining forces,” said Putin.

So, there’s this first meeting, now in the books. We’ll see what happens from here. But given Trump’s foreign policy chops thus far, there is no reason to believe (yet) that relations won’t improve from here on. As an early observation, the principle difference now versus the Obama administration is that Putin appears to have a modicum of respect for Trump and his national security/foreign policy team and objectives.

And Trump didn’t even have to bring along a stupid “reset” button.

Image: RT.com

Obama’s cybersecurity czar: ‘NO evidence Russia hacked election’

(National Sentinel) Election 2016: President Obama’s trusted cyber security expert just said that he is certain – certain, mind you – that the Russians did not “hack” the presidential election last fall, but if you didn’t know that you are excused: No major U.S. media is reporting it.

Rather, it’s being reported in Israel, because former White House Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel was giving an interview to Israel Army Radio, not American media.

As reported by two trusted Israeli sources (here and here), Daniel said he is confident that last year’s election outcome did indeed reflect the will of the American people.

“I certainly think that the Russians or anyone else — they certainly didn’t change any votes, so that the votes that were cast properly reflect the votes of the American people,” Daniel said, as reported by the Times of Israel.

The news site reported further:

The FBI is also investigating ties between Trump’s staff and Moscow figures. US security agencies have said they discovered widespread attempts by Russian hackers to access voter details and have pointed the finger at Moscow as being behind the hack and subsequent leak of Democratic National Committee emails.

However, earlier this month US officials told the Senate committee that the cyber-assaults did not affect the eventual vote count.

This is the clearest admission yet from the Obama administration – and it certainly comes from someone who would be in the know regarding cybersecurity and hacking issues – that the entire Democrat- and Left-wing media-driven “Russia hacked the election” to help Donald J. Trump “steal” it from Hillary Clinton is nothing but a hoax.

This admission also exposes the Team Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative as a lie. Consider: If there is no evidence of ballot tampering, what was there to “collude” about?

Whether Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee, tried to hack the Republican National Committee or broke into Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email account is of little consequence, considering that Moscow and Washington have been alternately attempting to undermine each other’s political systems for decades.

So, the two principle questions – did the Russians change election results via their “hacking,” and was their collusion between Team Trump and Moscow to hijack the election results – have now been answered.

No, and no.

Can we move on now?

Trump: ‘Obama knew’ about Russian hacking attempt but ‘did nothing’

(National Sentinel) Political espionage: President Donald J. Trump continued over the weekend to push back against the Deep State’s attempts to dislodge him from the Oval Office using the bogus “Russia collusion” narrative, blaming his predecessor for being aware of the Kremlin’s hacking attempts but doing nothing much about it.

“I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox and Friends on Sunday, as reported by Breitbart News.

The president was making reference to a report that said the CIA gave Obama information about Russian attempts to influence the U.S. election, but then proceeded to quote former administration officials who complained that the Obama White House failed to properly respond.

“The question is if he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it?” Trump asked, adding that it was “sad” that the news media didn’t focus on Obama’s failure.

The topic continued to be on the president’s mind over the weekend as he sent messages to his followers on Twitter.

“Obama Administration official said they ‘choked’ when it came to acting on Russian meddling of election,” he wrote. “They didn’t want to hurt Hillary?”

Sessions on the hot seat now as Dems mark him as next Trump administration casualty

(NationalSentinel) Politics: The Washington establishment is 1-1 versus the Trump administration, as it now appears that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the most conservative AG in decades, is the next target.

And, of course, the narrative is the same: The Russians hacked the election!

Democrats and some RINOs were successful in having former National Security Advisor and retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn tossed out for allegedly lying to Vice President Mike Pence over “inappropriate contact” with Russian officials during the interim period after the Nov. 8 elections and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. But the establishment has been unable to sack close Trump advisor Steven Bannon.

So now it appears as though it’s Sessions’ turn on the hot seat over contacts he had with Russian diplomatic officials.

As reported by The New York Times:

Congressional Republicans began breaking ranks on Thursday to join Democrats in demanding that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuse himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Those calls came after the disclosure that Mr. Sessions himself spoke with the Russian ambassador last year, in seeming contradiction to his testimony at his confirmation hearing.

Well, yes, Sessions did speak with the Russian ambassador, as is revealed later in the Times’ article:

[T]he Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday that Mr. Sessions had twice communicated with the Russian ambassador last year. The first time was in July, at the Republican National Convention, after he gave a speech at an event for ambassadors sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The second time was a visit to his office by Mr. Kislyak in September. 

The Washington Post:

The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year. The other lawmakers on the panel did not respond as of Wednesday evening.

So – what’s the context of the question by the Post? Because the very next paragraph says this:

“Members of the committee have not been beating a path to Kislyak’s door,” a senior Senate Armed Services Committee staffer said, citing tensions in relations with Moscow. Besides Sessions, the staffer added, “There haven’t been a ton of members who are looking to meet with Kislyak for their committee duties.”

But the Times said Kislyak went to Sessions’ office – not the other way around.

So, a smoking gun? Hardly, per the Times:

While confirming the conversations, the department played down both. Of the Heritage Foundation encounter, a Justice Department official said the Russian ambassador was among a small group of diplomats who approached Mr. Sessions as he was leaving the stage. The ambassadors, the official said, thanked Mr. Sessions for his remarks and invited him to join them at various events they were sponsoring, but he made no commitments to do so.

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Of the office visit, the official said, the discussion focused on relations between the United States and Russia and issues the two countries were facing, although the department left open the possibility that there had been “superficial” comments about news related to the election.

Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said Sessions did not mislead anyone during his Senate confirmation hearing – the Times is making it sound as though he lied to Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., over “Russian contacts” – nor was his office meeting with the Russian ambassador. She said as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he also had at least 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors, including those from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Poland and Russia.

“He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” she said [and now would be a good time for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the same committee, to stand up for his former colleague and confirm that committee members do indeed have such conversations with foreign officials].

As for Sessions, he has left the door open to recusing himself from any subsequent “Russia investigations” moving forward, but has unequivocally denied any intrigue.

“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Mr. Sessions said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

Fellow conservative and onetime GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, backed his fellow Senate Armed Services Committee colleague.

“I’m not concerned about that. I think what we are seeing is a lot of political theater,” Cruz told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

He continued:

Could Jeff have been more clear in what he said [in answering Franken’s question, which was based on a CNN report about Trump campaign ‘contacts with Russian officials’].

Yes. I think it — that was unfortunate. But I think context matters a lot. Jeff was being asked about the Trump campaign communicating with the Russians. I think he understood that he was answering in that capacity. And that is perfectly understandable.

And the reason I say it’s political theater is the underlying meeting, you know, this morning, everyone is in high dungeon about the meeting. The underlying meeting is a nothing burger. It’s what senators do every day, meeting with foreign ambassadors; that’s part of the job.

And Jeff is a — was a very hard-working senator; he will be a hard-working attorney general. And so I think everyone is getting all worked up because it’s a chance to beat up the attorney general and beat up the president. But I think the underlying meeting is simply doing his job.

So – what was the Obama administration doing all along, since “U.S. intelligence has confirmed” that Russia “hacked the election” to help Trump (which is complete BS)?

The Times clears up that little riddle:

In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Wow – sounds so  cloak and dagger, doesn’t it? So “official.” Er, but again, we can’t know just who is doing the spilling of information, because, well, it’s classified.

There is no doubt the Obama administration began the narrative that “Russia hacked the election.” We’ve known that from the beginning – and we know why (to assuage Democrat consciences over Hillary Clinton’s loss to a reality TV billionaire and to undermine him, period).

There is also this: If the Obama regime had been tracking all of this stuff in real time, months before November 8, why wasn’t it “leaked” to the Clinton campaign?

As we’ve reported, this is all a big psychological operation designed to undermine Trump, perpetuate the status-quo and thwart any effort by the president to truly transform Washington, as he promised. The deep state, the establishment and the intelligence community careerists don’t want a ‘reset’ with Russia, because of the big, bad, boogeyman is eliminated, so is their influence, prestige and budget.

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Unorthodox, sure, but the media hated Trump’s press conference because he owned them

By J. D. Heyes

(NationalSentinel) Watching President Donald J. Trump’s rambunctious, sometimes rambling but always entertaining press conference on Thursday was nearly good enough to have sold tickets.

Of course, some of the princelings in the pampered Washington press corps, used to getting all the attention and long ago having decided how press conferences should be conducted, were none to happy.

“Crazy” is how Fox News’ Shepard Smith described it.

“It is crazy what we are watching every day, it is absolutely crazy,” Smith said. “He keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all and sort of avoiding this issue of Russia as if we are some kind of fools for asking the question.”

Continuing, Smith ranted, “Really? Your opposition was hacked, and the Russians were responsible for it, and your people were on the phone on the same day it was happening, and we are fools for asking those questions? No sir, we are not fools for asking those questions, and we demand to know the answer to this question. You owe this to the American people.”

This, coming from an overzealous schmuck who once ran over a woman with his car during election coverage in 2000.

Jake Tapper, he of perhaps the fakest of fake news networks, CNN, had this to say: “President Trump, if you are watching. You are the president. You legitimately won the presidency. Now get to work and stop whining about it.”

Later, CBS News’ Scott Pelley said on Thursday’s newscast, “Today, we learned the length of the president’s fuse: 28 days.”

Oh, the delicious tears of the defeated Leftist media. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

First, to Smith and the other lame brains in the establishment media who don’t hear things they choose not to: Trump didn’t avoid the “Russia” issue yesterday, he took it head on and essentially called it what it is: Bullshit. And what’s more, it’s bullshit that the Washington press corps still thinks is real, which was his point in addressing it with you. More on the implications of perpetuating this phony narrative in a moment.

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In Trump’s actual words, the Russia story is “a ruse.” The president was as clear as he could be – he has no ties to Russia, no business in Russia, no ties to Putin and no “involvement” with the Russian government. The “Russia hacked the election” narrative is completely fabricated, he said, created out of whole cloth by Obama operatives, the deep state and other #nevertrump types to undermine his presidency, period.

That’s pretty head-on, Shep. And it’s spot-on. As for Russian hacking of Trump’s opponent, the Washington media will continue to defend the false narrative it helped create, so I get that. But conveniently lost in this cesspool of half-truths and innuendo is that, on several occasions the man whose organization published all of the hacked Democratic National Convention/Clinton campaign data, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, says unequivocally that the information did not come from the Russians.

Actually, sorry Shep. Your network did report that.

As for Tapper, CNN has been guilty so many times of publishing fake news about Trump and his administration I’ve lost count. And it’s rich that he would accuse the president of “whining” when members of the Democratic Party still have not stopped “whining” about Clinton’s loss and Trump’s victory. They were among the first to latch onto the phony “Russia hacked the election in favor of Trump” narrative.

Pelley? Well, if he thinks Thursday’s presser is Trump losing his cool, then he is conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump stated plainly he wasn’t rattled and that idiots like Pelley in the press would nevertheless report that he was. Prescient? No, it’s just that Trump knows these people and how they think.

One final thing, and this is the most important aspect of Trump’s disgust with the establishment press over the fake Russia connection, in my view. There are some very real things that are taking place in the world involving U.S. and Russian military forces – buzzing of U.S. warships by Russian planes; parking intelligence ships off our coastline; Moscow deploying ballistic missiles in violation of treaties, and so forth. When asked about that, Trump thinks it’s because Russian President Vladimir Putin believes there is too much pressure on the U.S. president to “make a deal” with Moscow that would ease tensions and improve relations (after the failed efforts by Obama and Clinton, as secretary of state), and that pressure is being put on the White House by the very media Trump is scolding, through there perpetuation of the fake ‘Russia hacked the election’ narrative. So Putin has figured, “What the hell, might as well press any advantage I can,” and is acting in a provocative manner. That is incredibly insightful, and thus far, I’ve seen no mention of this by anyone else in the media.

All they’re talking about is how pissed off they are that Trump essentially owned them during yesterday’s presser.

To the Washington Press Corps, I’ll break down Trump’s message to you: While some details of classified conversations that have been leaked are true, the premise and the insinuations behind your stories related to those leaks (that would be this BS Russia narrative) are false. You all have essentially reported as much by including caveats that no one in the U.S. intelligence or law enforcement communities have verified anything or have found anything regarding Trump team connections to Russia, or Russian meddling that actually changed the outcome of the election.

If you didn’t hear the man tell you that as plainly and as forcefully on Thursday as I did, then I say that’s intentional on your part.

Hillary’s latest reason for why she lost: It was Obama’s fault

(NationalSentinel) Unable to fathom that she could be so bad of a presidential candidate she would lose (for a second time) to someone like Donald Trump, now Hillary Clinton is looking to blame something else: Our former president and her former boss, Barack Obama.

First it was the “fake news” that did her in; then it was Russian hacking; then it was our constitutional system. Now, it’s because Obama didn’t do enough, according to staffers who spoke to Axios.

The site reported:

Clintonites feel that if Obama had come out early and forcefully with evidence of Russian interference in the campaign, and perhaps quicker sanctions, she might be president today. His caution, they argue, allowed the public to have a foggy sense of clear, calculated, consistent Russian meddling in the campaign. We can’t stress enough how upset some Democrats are. It’s testing relationships between Clinton and Obama loyalists. It’s making efforts to form a new Trump opposition coalition harder.

“The White House was like everyone else: They thought she’d win anyway. … If he had done more, it might have lessened a lot of aggrieved feelings, although I don’t think it would have altered the outcome,” one staffer said. “The Russia thing was like a spy novel, and anything he had said or done would have helped get people to believe it was real.”

Except that it wasn’t real. U.S. intelligence found no evidence whatsoever that the Russian government tampered with voting or otherwise altered the results. So how could Moscow have “hacked the election” to hurt Clinton and help Trump?

As ARSTechnica reported:

Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, [a 13-pate report by DHS and the FBI] largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers’ “tradecraft and techniques” and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups.

Clinton needs to face the fact that she was a compromised, criminally implicated candidate who did not resonate with enough voters in enough states. Period.

And the fact that she couldn’t even beat a former reality TV host is oh so delicious.

Obama’s revenge? Russia says it is facing increased cyber attacks from abroad

(NationalSentinel) Has President Obama using the phony narrative that ‘Russia hacked the U.S. elections’ to launch cyberattacks against President Vladimir Putin? Could be.

As reported by Reuters, senior U.S. intelligence officials appear to be once again leaking sensitive information, most likely in an effort to keep the fake narrative alive ahead of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in five days:

Russia is facing increased cyber attacks from abroad, a senior security official was quoted on Sunday as saying, responding to Western accusations that Moscow is aggressively targeting information networks in the United States and Europe.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber campaign aimed at boosting Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.

As often as the discredited establishment media reports the lie, we will refute it: No evidence whatsoever has been presented to the American people that Russian hacking a) even occurred; and b) had any affect on the outcome of the Nov. 8 presidential race. Nor has anyone stepped up to explain why Russia would assist Trump and not Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whom Russia (and several other nations) most likely had real blackmail-worthy information on after hacking her home-brew server, as the FBI has stated. [RELATED: Stay current on cyber attacks and hacking news at Cyberwar.news]

It is also likely that Obama is attempting to torpedo the Trump administration’s expected effort to shore up relations with Russia, even though his nominee for Defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis has said Russia is the United States’ primary threat.

Thankfully, once again, Moscow isn’t biting, per Reuters:

“Recently we have noted a significant increase in attempts to inflict harm on Russia’s informational systems from external forces,” Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, according to excerpts of an interview to be published in full on Monday.

 “The global (Internet) operators and providers are widely used, while the methods they use constantly evolve,” said Patrushev, a former head of the FSB secret service and a close ally of Putin.

Patrushev accused the outgoing U.S. administration of President Barack Obama of “deliberately ignoring the fact that the main Internet servers are based on the territory of the United States and are used by Washington for intelligence and other purposes aimed at retaining its global domination”.

But he added that Moscow hoped to establish “constructive contacts” with the Trump administration.

Contrary to the Democratic narrative that Trump’s a dunderhead and dangerous, he has already demonstrated through his actions and his Cabinet picks that he’s just the opposite of those characterizations. His administration, however, will be sabotaged up to and beyond Obama’s tenure by insider careerists loyal to a failed administration whose leader did more to aid and abet our enemies than our friends.

Russia helped Trump? No, Ukraine helped CLINTON

(NationalSentinel) The Obama administration, top Democrats and even some Republican establishment types have been pushing the false narrative that “Russia hacked the election” to assist Donald J. Trump. Not a shred of proof has been offered to substantiate this claim, though many fake news stories attempting to push the narrative have been identified.

Now we learn that there was a former Soviet country involved in actively trying to influence the outcome of the election: Ukraine, and for the purposes of helping Hillary Clinton win.

From Politico:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

The piece began typically–by still claiming that Russia interfered in an attempt to help Trump. But as The Observer noted, when you take away the obvious partisan angle in the report, there is more to the Ukrainian angle:

Yesterday, Politico reported that the Ukrainian Government worked to aid Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential elections. The actions taken by government officials included disseminating “documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.”

Those documents implicated Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who worked as an adviser for now-ousted Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych. However, the concerns that the documents raised weren’t in fact over any quasi-Russian ties, though partisan reporting pushed his narrative. Rather, the documents raised the question of whether Manafort declared the income that he had received from the position. The Podesta Group, a lobbying firm co-founded by Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, also conducted work for Yanukovych. However, the Manafort narrative not only painted Trump as pro-Russian, but also provided the Clinton campaign with a smear campaign while reaffirming its stance against Russia. It was in Ukraine’s best interest to tilt the election in support of Clinton, who strongly advocated for providing Ukraine with military aid and financial support in order to fight Russian separatists in the country.

There’s much more, and it involves all of the political intrigue you might expect from such high-level espionage. But suffice to say that while Left-wing Politico continues to push the Obama administration’s false narrative of ‘Russian hacking’ as much more pervasive than any Ukrainian effort, the fact that there was any effort at all to influence Clinton’s outcome by any nation is striking, as it makes much more sense given what she brings to the table in terms of being legitimately compromised (say, through donations to her family foundation or perhaps via blackmail with information hacked/stolen from her unsecured personal email server).

The one thing that’s been missing the entire time from the ‘Russian hacking’ narrative is the why–why does Russian President Vladimir Putin think a President Trump is more favorable to Russia than a President Hillary Clinton? The idea being pushed by some Clinton sycophants is that she would have been tougher on Russia, but that is pure speculation; there is nothing to suggest that, and everything to suggest she wouldn’t be. After all, she was the presidential candidate with the most to lose in terms of being compromised; Trump, on the other hand, is owned by no special interest and has zero ties to Moscow. Plus, given the serious players Trump is adding to his foreign policy team, Putin has to respect those choices.

Yes, Trump ‘finally admitted’ recently that perhaps Russia ‘hacked’ the DNC, but that is not the same as admitting that Russia influenced the outcome of the election, which is what Democrats, #nevertrump careerists in the intelligence community and the Obama administration are asserting. There is zero evidence to support that.

The point is, Clinton had something of value to offer Ukraine (and, to another extent, Russia), which makes that angle much more believable. Trump brings nothing to the table for Russia, with the possible exception of better relations. That alone might be reason enough for Moscow to have interfered, but again, there’s no evidence to support the claim.

Why is Trump’s outreach to Russia bad, but Obama’s was okay?

(NationalSentinel) Once more, the usual RINO suspects and other establishment demagogues were on the Sunday “news” programs that few Americans even watch anymore to complain that President-elect Donald J. Trump is wrong, wrong, wrong in his attempt at calming relations between the U.S. and Russia.

“He’s going to be the defender of the free world here pretty soon,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a frequent Trump critic, said in remarks broadcast Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” as reported by The Associated Press. ”All I’m asking him is to acknowledge that Russia interfered, and push back. It could be Iran next time. It could be China.”

Graham, who barely managed 1 percent support when he was running for the GOP presidential nomination last summer, has been joined by his colleague, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also a frequent Trump critic and failed GOP presidential candidate. The two essentially form the core of the remaining #nevertrump troupe that has all but evaporated since the billionaire businessman won Nov. 8, which is why the discredited, Left-wing mainstream media continue to seek them both out for “comment” and “reaction” to whatever it is Trump is doing.

In this case, they’re upset with Trump for refusing to swallow the tripe that Russia attempted to ‘interfere’ in the Nov. elections because Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred him to his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump was provided an intelligence brief stating as much on Friday.

But again, the report was long on accusations and short on actual proof, which has been the problem all along: At some point, when you’re making such a substantial accusation against a major nuclear-armed power, don’t you have to produce some evidence (that has not been doctored or manufactured itself, by the way)?

As we have reported, the claim is not universally being accepted by intelligence officials and experts. Early on, the Intelligence Community couldn’t even agree on whether Russia had done anything. And remember, this is the same intelligence bureaucracy that missed picking up on warning signs Edward Snowden would likely betray us, and has politicized intelligence in the past to make the Obama administration look good. Finally, former

So why should Americans and Trump believe that this time, the intelligence bureaucracy is telling the truth?

In recent hearings, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told McCain that the intelligence community had no way of knowing if Russian “interference” actually changed the outcome of the election. And no one has yet given a reasonable explanation as to why the Kremlin would prefer Trump over a Hillary Clinton who was so obviously compromised for several reasons and a much better candidate for Putin to manipulate to Russia’s advantage.

And finally, no one has yet to explain why Trump’s attempts at patching things up with Russia is a bad thing, given that was one of the first objectives of the Obama/Clinton State Department back in 2009 (remember the goofy Russian ‘reset’ button?). Trump himself has tweeted out that improving ties with Russia is “a good thing, not a bad thing.” Trump added, “only ‘stupid’ people or fools” would come to a different conclusion.

He’s right. It is because of globalist/establishment objectives that NATO was not disbanded after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact group of nations the organization was founded to oppose, and the West’s expansion of the organization east, to Russia’s borders, that has caused so much antagonism with Moscow in the past two decades.

At the same time the West has sought cooperation with Russia on issues such as arms control and international proliferation of nuclear technology, it has essentially pushed Russia’s security concerns aside. The globalists in the West making the rules cannot have it both ways.

Trump’s promise of better relations with Russia is what is animating the old Cold Warriors in the U.S. and Western political establishment to oppose him. They see his actions as a direct assault on their base of power and influence, and they don’t want to lose that control.

The fact is, if it was okay for Obama and Clinton to “reset” relations with Russia, it should be okay for Trump to attempt to do the same thing, right? If not, those opposing Trump’s efforts should be made to explain why.

The FBI never asked for access to DNC computers, but still alleged ‘Russian hacking’

(NationalSentinel) Despite the fact that the FBI has insisted in a joint report with the Department of Homeland Security that ‘Russia hacked the U.S. election,’ the nation’s top domestic law enforcement agency never even asked the Democratic National Committee for access to services they say were hacked.

As reported by Buzzfeed:

Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,”Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

Instead, the FBI relied on the word a private cyber security contractor, CrowdStrike, which allegedly said in May that Russia-linked hackers had penetrated DNC servers.

Still, for the FBI to make such a bold claim, and with all of the resources available to it and the intelligence community writ large, why would a decision be made at the highest levels not to have FBI cyberforensics experts take a look at the evidence themselves?

And, of course, there is the nagging persistence of other experts who say there is absolutely no real evidence of Russian election tampering.

The federal government contracts out a lot of its work, but with the stakes this high–sanctioning a nuclear-armed global power–it seems prudent that the FBI would want to be doubly certain of its claims before making any recommendations to the president.