"Hoax" Revisited. Pt. 2
Oh yes, there was Russian interference.
I do not believe for a second that Donald Trump and his sycophant Tulsi Gabbard seriously intend to indict former President Barack Obama. That’s really not the point of these and other “investigations” that he and his allies in Congress. It’s just retaliation and harassment on a monumental scale.
But this time, Trump resurrecting the issue of Russian interference may well cause people to take another look at the entire issue.
Some people may even decide to read the Mueller Report.
Who here remembers that 700-page tome published in March of 2019? I made it a point to buy a copy of the Washington Post edition at my local Barnes & Noble (which happens to be my happy place) and tucked into it the moment I returned home. The WP edition accompanies the report with a timeline of key events, a guide to key players in the whole sorry episode, and important government filings and indictments.
It took Robert Mueller and his massive group of lawyers, agents and staff over 18 months to put together. Mueller took flak by some who thought that he was being too methodical and slow in producing results, but the report that came out was well worth the time and effort expended by Mueller and his staff who, keep in mind, were attacked on an almost daily basis by Trump, the right-wing media and congressional Republicans who you think would welcome the effort to shed light on what actually happened in the interests of national security and the rule of law.
Unfortunately, their hard work was never recognized or appreciated by the Washington establishment, and its findings were buried under the flurry of lies, conspiracy theories and an endless stream of tweets. At the end of the day, the findings had no significant impact on the political landscape.
Even before its publication, Attorney General Robert Barr had decided that he would not charge Trump with anything, the legal reason being his belief that a sitting president is immune from prosecution. Barr sent a four page letter to Congress spelling out his reasons.
But what truly inappropriate was that, prior to the release of the Mueller Report to the public, Barr held a 90 minute press conference in which he pushed his own biased defense for not charging Trump and did everything in his power to plant the preconceived idea that the report completely exonerated Donald Trump, without mentioning anything in regards to its findings on Russia’s interference in 2016. Republicans eagerly jumped on board with this narrative, making sure that no one was talking about what the report actually said.
Sadly, Robert Mueller’s efforts to clear up the impression ended in failure, especially when he testified before House and Senate committees on June 24, 2019. By any account, it was a disaster, where it seemed at times that Mueller did not even know what was written in the document that bears his name. With that last failed effort, the Mueller Report was relegated to the dustbin of history.
But now, Tulsi Gabbard may have given people (and hopefully democrats) a reason to revisit the question of Russian involvement, and why Trump and the GOP had made it a point to bury the information contained.
To begin with, Russia’s involvement largely revolved around two agencies: the Internet Research Agency and the Main Intelligence Directorate, more commonly known as the GRU.
The IRA’s focus was obviously media manipulation and disinformation. Countless false accounts were set up in social media platforms, run by “specialists” who were usually just IRA staffers. They soon moved up to creating social media pages that supposedly were from political and grassroots organizations. One example cited in the report was “@TEN_GOP,” that was supposed to be from the Tennessee Republican Party. On Facebook there were several groups like “United Muslims for America,” and “Don’t Shoot Us” that attracted anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 followers each. In 2016, the IRA was able to buy over 3,500 advertisements, almost all of them decidedly anti-Clinton.
The report describes how IRA agents went so far as to organize political rallies across the country, flooding social media with advertisements rallies and signing on U.S. citizens who would serve as the “event coordinator.” Records indicate that these rallies at most might attract a couple hundred attendees, but usually only drew only a handful.
This agency was dissolved on July 1, 2023.
The GRU is Russia’s primary military intelligence agency. Originally formed in 1942, the GRU has been the military counterpart to the KGB, and is responsible for maintaining Russia’s special forces unit, Spetsnaz.
Among the GRU’s many other responsibilities is cyber warfare; more specifically it is run by the agency’s Sixth Directorate.
Two units of the Sixth Directorate are believed to have been involved in Russia’s 2016 operations. Military Unit 26165 dealt with hacking, penetrating and attacking various political, military, and government agencies. This was the unit responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 26165 also targeted specific email accounts of individuals inside the Clinton campaign in “spearphishing” attacks, such as the account of the campaign chairman, Jon Podesta.
Military Unit 74455 was tasked with the dissemination of hacked material through third parties or under bogus accounts. They first set up two phony online personas, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. DCLeaks was the vehicle through which personal data “spearphished” from campaign officials was released online. This included personal financial information, internal correspondence and fundraising records.
Guccifer 2.0 was used to disseminate documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC in June of 2016. Much of what was posted was transferred to media outlets and individual journalists.
But most of the DNC and Clinton documents and emails were transferred to a third, independent online source: Wikileaks. In the report, it is unclear as to whether Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, knew that this goldmine of Clinton material, especially that pertaining to her time as Secretary of State, was with the compliments of Russian intelligence. But it seems that Assange didn’t care.
Assange was motivated by a deep, personal dislike for Hillary Clinton. In the Mueller Report, Assange is quoted as describing her as a “bright, well-connected, sadistic sociopath.” To bring her down, he was willing to make Clinton the primary focus of any document drops during the campaign. Keep in mind that Assange was by no means conservative. But in correspondence with other members of his network he asserted that, all things considered, it would be better for the Republicans to win, arguing that the Democrats and media would be able to “reign in their worst qualities,” while the GOP would be pushing for her “worst qualities.” (American politics is clearly not Assange’s strong suit.)
Wikileaks has always positioned itself as a champion of truth, to expose the secrets of governments, corporations, and other entities from documents hacked from many anonymous sources. This is certainly not a bad thing. But at least in this case, Wikileaks’ willingness to accept Clinton related material may have caused them to unwittingly serve the interests of the same kind of people that it is dedicated to exposing.
There is no dearth of evidence that indicates that there indeed was an effort by Russian intelligence to influence the 2016 election and do so in Donald Trump’s favor. Just how much their efforts had done this, however, is hard to discern. In all likelihood it always will.
(In Part III I will go into what the Mueller Report uncovered about what connections, if any there were between the Russians and with the Trump campaign)