With Apologies In Advance To Trump-Putin’s Useful Idiots

Just a small handful of members of Congress objected to the certification of Putin’s puppet as president: Barbara Lee (D-CA), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), John Conyers (D-MI), James McGovern (D-MA), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and two of the freshmen Blue America backed this past cycle, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD). Biden, always the corporate asshole, presided over the joint session of Congress, and refused to accept the objections. No Senators— not Bernie, not Elizabeth Warren— joined them, an omission that makes Putin’s successful coup a settled matter. Pramila: “Tonight, I took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and made one last attempt to challenge Trump's presidency. When I stood up, I knew nothing I could say would undo the presidential election. But I felt it critical that the American people saw that we know how democracy has been undermined and votes have been suppressed. I raised my voice to show you what we progressives are going to do for the next four years: We're not going to stop being shocked. We're never going to become complacent. And we're never going to give up."

Today the American intelligence agencies— admittedly not the most trustworthy or reliable bunch— released the assessment Obama ordered about Russian interference in the U.S. election, something it’s worth mentioning the U.S. routinely does around the world on a very regular basis and has been doing for decades— not that that makes it OK for Russia to be doing it too. The declassified version of the report doesn’t deal with any Russian tampering with voting machines or anything of that nature, just, basically, with hacking into the DNC, Clinton’s campaign and using the stolen treasure trove for propaganda too help Putin’s candidate. Trump and most Republicans— and some naive progressives— have continued to defend Putin, even after the release of the report.

The report, a damning and surprisingly detailed account of Russia’s efforts to undermine the American electoral system and Mrs. Clinton in particular, went on to assess that Mr. Putin “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

The report described a broad campaign that included covert operations, including cyberactivities, with “trolling” and “fake news.”

In the unclassified version of the report, the intelligence agencies also concluded “with high confidence” that Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created the “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 and a website, DCLeaks.com, to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John D. Podesta.

The report makes the points that the cyber attack was unprecedented in scale, “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related activities and that it was ordered by Putin himself with the purpose for putting Trump into the White House. The intelligence agencies have been careful to not completely delegitimize Trump’s election.

"Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying."

"We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion."

The idea that Russia pushed Trump over the line, of course, is a big reason he hasn't embraced the intelligence community's findings. They risk de-legitimizing him. In the first statement here, the report says there is no evidence the actual vote was hacked. But it also says it can't conclude whether Russia's influence changed the result of the election (which is probably to be expected, given that's very difficult to determine and not the job of intelligence officials).

It's also worth noting here that a widely held Democratic belief -- 52 percent, according to one poll -- that Russia hacked the actual vote isn't supported.

…"This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment. This document’s conclusions are identical to the highly classified assessment, but this document does not include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign."

This is a disclaimer. The report has far less details because it's unclassified. That lack of detail, of course, makes it harder to prove any one given point and easier for Trump to cast doubt. Which he apparently will continue to do.