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Russia and American elections, now featuring radical republicans as co-stars

Pancho

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bolverk

bolverk 30,313

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8 minutes ago, maninblack said:

Maybe Clinton is her own voter suppression effort. She should give it another go in 2020 and find out for sure though.

Maybe you shouldn't be so glib about (and, apparently, pleased by) the Russian propaganda campaign used to influence our internal democratic elections with the apparent complicit cooperation of our corrupt president.

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brakeman
brakeman

If I were Putin, I'd be a little worried that Trump thinks my invasion plan is "genius."

Neonmoon
Neonmoon

I think most people you call “left” on this board would agree with you. In fact, I would say the majority of the “liberals” on this board gripe often about Democrats being pussies that never get shit

Creasy Bear
Creasy Bear

My question is simple.  Why is Biden against domestic oil & gas production but is for increased oil & gas production overseas?

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4,846

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https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/allies-of-vladimir-putin-funneled-money-to-senior-republicans-hR1nirIpK0-Au1Xg74novg/?utm_source=Amplify&utm_medium=Intellectualist&utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_term=Cheri

 

 

Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans

A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.

And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.

 

The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:

Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.

The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

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maninblack

maninblack 7,975

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Maybe you shouldn't be so glib about (and, apparently, pleased by) the Russian propaganda campaign used to influence our internal democratic elections with the apparent complicit cooperation of our corrupt president.

Don't really care about your reindeer games. The whole thing is amusing to me.
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Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,624

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2 hours ago, pyrohornIII said:

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/allies-of-vladimir-putin-funneled-money-to-senior-republicans-hR1nirIpK0-Au1Xg74novg/?utm_source=Amplify&utm_medium=Intellectualist&utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_term=Cheri

 

 

Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans

A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.

And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.

 

The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:

Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.

The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

Fuck these fuckers.

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Goredho

Goredho 17,649

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11 hours ago, pyrohornIII said:

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/allies-of-vladimir-putin-funneled-money-to-senior-republicans-hR1nirIpK0-Au1Xg74novg/?utm_source=Amplify&utm_medium=Intellectualist&utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_term=Cheri

 

 

Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans

A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.

And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.

 

The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:

Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.

The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

I appreciate this post.  Tl;dr the umbrella of GOP congressmen that has been protecting Trump from Mueller as much as is politically feasible have received millions in campaign donations from Russia through individuals one or two degrees removed from Putin.  This is all perfectly legal because of Citizen’s United vs FEC.   Once again, Trump is beginning to look like the least of the GOP’s Russian problems.

Aside from the necessary will, what would it take to make that go away or be modified so that it cannot be a vector for foreign influence of our politicians?

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4,846

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8 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

What's up with the negative entries? 

I think those are the contributions that are returned after they have been received.  I vaguely remember some white nationalist group trying to sneak in a donation to a Cali Dem candidate.  Trying to make it look like an illegal contribution somehow that later they could hang them out on.  But they were very clumsy in how they did it, and the money (cash) was returned, and the campaign videoed the whole thing.  Apparently some campaigns do due diligence to determine where their contributions are coming from, and some turn back those contributions, so they come off as negative entries? 

6 minutes ago, Goredho said:

 

I appreciate this post.  Tl;dr the umbrella of GOP congressmen that has been protecting Trump from Mueller as much as is politically feasible have received millions in campaign donations from Russia through individuals one or two degrees removed from Putin.  This is all perfectly legal because of Citizen’s United vs FEC.   Once again, Trump is beginning to look like the least of the GOP’s Russian problems.

Aside from the necessary will, what would it take to make that go away or be modified so that it cannot be a vector for foreign influence of our politicians?

They are closing ranks.   Although these contributions are legal, it doesn't make them moral or right.  And it doesn't mean what they did to deserve these contributions was legal or ethical either. 

They are all rolling into the Party of Trump.  Their only hope now is Trump and his loyal base to protect them from the investigations that are about to drop.   Before 2016 election they were playing both sides against the middle.  But going into 2016 they went pretty much fully behind the Rs in a really big way.  That destroyed the "both sides are dirty" argument, at least as far as the Russkies are concerned. 

So if they can stir up the population of trumpkins enough to incite riots and domestic terror, then they can call martial law, which lead to who knows what?   They are definitely circling the wagons, and these contributions are the first of many russian connections we are going to see.  It will be like those nesting dolls...one tucked in another and another and another. 

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happyfunball

happyfunball 481

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Posted
On 12/17/2018 at 9:31 PM, pyrohornIII said:

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/allies-of-vladimir-putin-funneled-money-to-senior-republicans-hR1nirIpK0-Au1Xg74novg/?utm_source=Amplify&utm_medium=Intellectualist&utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_term=Cheri

 

 

Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans

Starting to listen to season 1 of Slow Burn podcast makes me believe more and more that Trump has dirt on a lot of republicans and how / where they received campaign donations which were not legal.

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4,846

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1 hour ago, happyfunball said:

Starting to listen to season 1 of Slow Burn podcast makes me believe more and more that Trump has dirt on a lot of republicans and how / where they received campaign donations which were not legal.

I think some of them got lazy in researching where the money was coming from, as in channeled from Russia through NRA and other lobbies.  When they found out, it was too late.  I really think that is why Graham all the sudden went soft on Trump, and we saw a lot of them jump ship.

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suddenly shaggy

suddenly shaggy 929

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13 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

I think some of them got lazy in researching where the money was coming from, as in channeled from Russia through NRA and other lobbies.  When they found out, it was too late.  I really think that is why Graham all the sudden went soft on Trump, and we saw a lot of them jump ship.

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12,271

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2 hours ago, happyfunball said:

Starting to listen to season 1 of Slow Burn podcast makes me believe more and more that Trump has dirt on a lot of republicans and how / where they received campaign donations which were not legal.

It’s not like the republicans are the party of treason because they really wanted to be. They found out after the fact they were fucked and compromised due to their greed and in many cases ignorance and now they’re flailing about in full on self preservation mode. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12,271

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And we all owe that so called “moderate” Anthony Kennedy a big collective fuck you for his idiotic citizens united opinion for making it all possible. 

So here’s to you “Justice” Kennedy. Go fuck yourself! You wrote the modern and new Dred Scott opinion. Congrats and enjoy your legacy in infamy. 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 106,873

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It’s not like the republicans are the party of treason because they really wanted to be. They found out after the fact they were fucked and compromised due to their greed and in many cases ignorance and now they’re flailing about in full on self preservation mode. 

I think this is pretty spot-on. What’s enraging is their after-the-fact shameless efforts to distract from and justify their fucking treasonous alliance with one of our biggest enemies. They will always be the party of treason. Always. Forever.
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triplehorn

triplehorn 2,664

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On 12/31/2018 at 4:12 AM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

 

Re the stage getting set for a Trump/Putin exchange of Butina for Marine* Paul Whelan - as if it couldn't get any stranger. 

check this thread:

 

VV

 A disgraced serviceman, turned easy mark for RU, tasked to assume role of a caught spy to leverage for the REAL Russian spy sitting in a US jail ??

Even if the guy isn't acting in the service of RU, what piece of shit !

 

 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12,271

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4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I’m thankful our media didn’t fall for this obvious plot.  They could have pushed non-stop coverage of this Russian loving Trumpkin getting arrested...while he was visiting the Kremlin.

Fucking imbecile 

Yeah I’m not sure what this guys gonna do for putin and the Russians. The dems are just gonna think, well the guys a trumpkin he probably is some sort of spy or at a minimum an idiot. And the trumpkins are gonna think, we’ll trump tells us that putin and the Russians always tell the truth and they’re claiming he’s a spy so I guess he probably is. 

They need to kidnap someone else if they’re looking for leverage. 

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,367

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4 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Yeah I’m not sure what this guys gonna do for putin and the Russians. The dems are just gonna think, well the guys a trumpkin he probably is some sort of spy or at a minimum an idiot. And the trumpkins are gonna think, we’ll trump tells us that putin and the Russians always tell the truth and they’re claiming he’s a spy so I guess he probably is. 

They need to kidnap someone else if they’re looking for leverage. 

We’ll probably give them Butina for him...When we’re finished with her in six months.

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,367

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Just now, DDD Dad said:

China will be our overlord well before that ever would occur.

China operates on a much slower trajectory, they’ll sit out and watch us go at with the Kremlin again, then take it all.

Putin on the other hand would absolutely LOVE to restore the Soviet Union, if in name only. 

The Russians love their land grabs. 

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bolverk

bolverk 30,313

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This seems like an underreported story from last week that could eventually be kind of a big deal.

Huge Trove of Leaked Russian Documents Is Published by Transparency Advocates

A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia’s dissemination of hacked emails to influence the American presidential election in 2016.

Most of the material, which sheds light on Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as ties between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the business dealings of oligarchs and much more, had been released in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, sometimes on obscure websites. There were no immediate reports of new bombshells from the collection.

But the sheer volume of the material — 175 gigabytes — and the technical challenges of searching it meant that its full impact may not be felt for some time. The volume is many times greater than the total known material stolen by Russian military intelligence from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign nearly three years ago.

The core files from the new collection, called “The Dark Side of the Kremlin,” included “hundreds of thousands of messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine,” said the group that posted it, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets. The name is a play on the term for a common cyberattack known as a distributed denial of service.

The documents include a voluminous archive of material hacked from Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs that WikiLeaks had declined to publish in 2016, telling Foreign Policy magazine the next year that it “rejects all submissions that it cannot verify” or that it finds “insignificant.”

Also posted are a large collection of Russian emails and other material obtained by Shaltai Boltai, a Russian hacking group; documents from the Russian arms exporting agency Rosoboronexport; and material obtained in what DDoSecrets called a “hacking spree” against Russian targets accused of falsifying the story of the downing in Ukraine of a passenger plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in 2014.

The Russian documents were posted simultaneously on the DDoSecrets website and on the Internet Archive.

Spoiler

 

Emma Best, a journalist and transparency advocate in Boston who helped organize Distributed Denial of Secrets late last year, said the Russian collection was not posted explicitly as payback for Russia’s 2016 hacks and leaks, though she acknowledged “it does add some appreciable irony.”

“Our motive is to collect and make available materials for a subject that was very underexplored — Russian power circles, how they interconnect, their influence operations,” Ms. Best said. “People have a cursory understanding of that, but outside of a few experts it hasn’t been looked at in detail and contextualized.”

Ms. Best, 32, who has published at the investigative site MuckRock and elsewhere, noted that the Distributed Denial of Secrets site already hosts thousands of leaked documents from dozens of countries, the largest number from the United States.

The new site operates roughly on the model pioneered by WikiLeaks — inviting hackers and whistle-blowers to send confidential documents for posting. But Ms. Best has been quite critical of that site and its founder, Julian Assange, who played a central role in distributing the Democrats’ emails that Russians hacked in 2016. Distributed Denial of Secrets has posted a large archive of internal documents from WikiLeaks itself.

“Personally, I am disappointed by what I see as dishonest and egotistic behavior from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” Ms. Best said. But she added that she had made the Russian document collection available to WikiLeaks ahead of its public release on Friday, and had posted material favorable to Mr. Assange leaked from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has lived for more than six years to avoid arrest.

Russian and Eastern European hackers have for many years been among the world’s most active, many operating, initially, from a criminal underground in search of profit. But over the last decade, Russian intelligence agencies have become adept at using cyberintrusions to pilfer documents abroad as part of intelligence gathering and to leak for political purposes.

While the 2016 American election attack, carried out by Russian military intelligence hackers from the agency known as the G.R.U., has gotten the most attention, similar hack-and-leak operations have been carried out on a daily or weekly basis for years in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian hackers have worked aggressively to expose Russian covert activities in Crimea and the regions of eastern Ukraine controlled by separatist rebels.

Business tycoons have used hackers to go after rivals. Activists have sought to expose wrongdoing by the police and security agencies. The resulting archives of emails and inside documents have been posted all over the web, and the new collection seeks to gather it all in one place.

Ms. Best said Distributed Denial of Secrets is operated by fewer than 20 people who live in multiple countries, most preferring to remain anonymous. She said the Russian project began last year when she connected with a journalist looking for a collection of emails hacked by Shaltai Boltai, the Russian group whose name means Humpty Dumpty.

She said she was able to find those emails and then “we decided to flesh out our Russian section a little bit.” They put the word out that they were looking for additional hacked or leaked Russian documents to host and began to get submissions.

“At some point we thought we were ready to go,” she said. “Then more rolled in.”

Ms. Best said the group has not heard from Russian government officials about their project — not directly, at least. About two weeks ago, she said, after they had collected the Russian material but not yet posted it publicly, someone tried to erase one of the group’s servers.

“We try not to draw solid conclusions, but we are obviously aware of the possibilities” as to who might have tried to disrupt their project, she said. The group accelerated the public posting by several weeks and have made sure to cache copies of the entire archive, in multiple places, to prevent its destruction, she said.

 

 

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bolverk

bolverk 30,313

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6 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Ms Best may not be long for this world.

Definitely "a bold move, Cotton" letting her name get out there. But, as has been pointed out before, there's apparently an unwritten rule that the Russians will assassinate their own but will very rarely move on a Westerner - though I'm not sure how much confidence in that I'd have if I were here. But at least she's got that going for her, which is nice.

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UpperWestside

UpperWestside 6,268

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On 12/31/2018 at 2:21 PM, Brisketexan said:

They will always be the party of treason. Always. Forever.

I think that this is something future generations need to be taught once the history of this era comes into their books. They have to know how American politicians wound up committing treasonous acts that benefitted a hostile foreign power. I can only hope that part of that as yet unwritten American history ends with several of them in Leavenworth. 

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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19,453

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On 12/18/2018 at 4:31 AM, pyrohornIII said:

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/allies-of-vladimir-putin-funneled-money-to-senior-republicans-hR1nirIpK0-Au1Xg74novg/?utm_source=Amplify&utm_medium=Intellectualist&utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_term=Cheri

 

 

Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans

A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.

And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.

 

The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:

Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.

The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

Totally legal, totally cool.

Fuck the Supreme Court.

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,367

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Posted
1 minute ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Bitch please.  Once dotard is run off, if those vodka swillin' degenerates try anything they will get their asses kicked sideways.

Right but it needs repeating for the people that hear and say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia?”

Yeah, it would be great but you see they want to destroy us.  It’s impossible to build a good faith relationship with a country that views you as their eternal enemy and will only exploit you if you soften your position with them.

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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19,453

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5 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Right but it needs repeating for the people that hear and say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia?”

Yeah, it would be great but you see they want to destroy us.  It’s impossible to build a good faith relationship with a country that views you as their eternal enemy and will only exploit you if you soften your position with them.

You got to admit that small window of time with Gorbachev and drunk Yeltsin wasn't too bad.  Hell, even the first couple of years of Putin didn't seem that bad but I guess he was just setting his traps back then.

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F250

F250 29,195

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I'm curious how long the Trumpkins will tolerate Trump's direction with Russia. I imagine it will last as long as Trump is in office but will it last beyond that? Many of these older Trumpkins were wearing Nuke Moscow tshirts in the 80's.

I know an older Trump supporter that will express a lot of uneasiness with the whole Russian situation. He usually mentions his time in the military in Germany during the cold war and his deep rooted distrust of Russia but then follows up with a "Trump knows what he is doing."

It reminds me of all those aggy cadets reluctantly giving each other hand jobs because it's tradition.

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