Do The Republicans Have An Ace Up Their Sleeves For November?

Last week, Señor Trumpanzee schlepped his fat ass to upstate New York to campaign for Congresswomen Elise Stefanik (NY-21) and Claudia Tenney (NY-22). Stepfanik didn't want one of his raucus, hate-filled. red-meat rallies so they orchestrated a bill signing ceremony at Fort Drum. Trump managed to make a spectacle of himself anyway, signing the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act without mentioning John McCain's name.

Later he went down to Utica, to hold a high-dough fundraiser at the Doubletree Hotel for Tenney. He called her wing-wing Blue Dog opponent, Anthony Brindisi, "a puppet of Nancy Pelosi" and babbled one of his inauthentic, one-size-fits-all lines about how Tenney won't have a problem beating him. Outside the event there were about 100 racist Trump supporters screaming about illegals. They were out-numbers by protesters. Two days later Inside Elections changed the rating for Tenney from Tilt Republican to Toss Up. Nathan Gonzales also changed ratings for Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Mike Coffman (R-CO), Pete Roskam (R-IL), and John Faso (R-NY). He also changed the ratings for the open CA-49 race (Issa's seat) and for Barbara Comstock's race to Tilt Democratic from Toss Up. In all. he shifted 30 races away from Republicans and towards Democrats. He said the Republicans aren't facing a wave as much as raging fires. "Whether it’s GOP Members in Hillary Clinton districts, extraordinary Democratic challengers and fundraising, competitive open seats, or lazy incumbents," wrote Gonzales, "Republicans have dozens of fires around the country, and the party might not have enough resources to put them all out."

I'm not so sure about that "might not have enough resources to put them all out" resources. Conservative billionaires are ready to spend more money than on any midterm in history. According to a NY Times report yesterday, the GOP tax scam that is so unpopular with ordinary Americans is a big hit with corporations multimillionaires and billionairesand they ponying up, "unlocking tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations from the wealthy conservatives and corporate interests that benefited handsomely from it... Billionaires and corporations that reaped millions of dollars in tax cuts are pumping some of that windfall into the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan that is flooding the airwaves and front porches of swing congressional districts with increasingly sharp attacks on the Democratic candidates vying to wrest control of the House."

Is in enough to thwart the massive anti-red wave that has been forming up ever since Trump started tweeting from the White House? If the polling, special elections and primaries we've seen so far are an indication, it doesn't matter how much the millionaires and billionaires flush down Ryan's toilet to save the compliant Republican majority in the House. At this point, it would be a safe bet to assume the Republicans are going to lose not the 23 seats that will put them in the minority, but as many as 70 seats that will put them in the history books.

Is there anything that could save them? Absolutely-- the same thing that saved Trump in 2016: the Kremlin. Ken Dilanian, reporting for NBC News, noted that Bill Nelson wasn't making things up when he said Russians hacked Florida's election system.. At this point Florida appears to be the most likely state to miss the anti-red wave. That's odd considering the wretched GOP candidates, from Rick Scott to Ron DeSantis-- until you factor in Russian hacking. The GOP enablers of the Russian efforts are losing their shit over Nelson blowing the whistle on Kremlin penetration of the state's voting system-- especially Rick Scott, the most crooked and corrupt governor in America, who "blasted his claim as irresponsible. The top Florida elections official, also a Republican, said he had seen no indication it's true." And the Washington Post, that bastion of Beltway status quo, agreed and "all but accused Nelson-- without evidence-- of making it up."

However, three people familiar with the intelligence tell NBC News that there is a classified basis for Nelson's assertion, which he made at a public event after being given information from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The extent and seriousness of the threat remains unclear, shrouded for reasons of national security.

The episode illustrates the extent to which secrecy, politics and state-federal rivalries can stand in the way of a unified response to the threat from Russian attacks on a diffuse U.S. election system run by state and local officials. Through a spokesman, Nelson declined to comment.

At a, Aug. 7 campaign event in Florida's capital, Nelson said Intelligence Committee leaders asked that he "let supervisors of elections in Florida know that Russians are inside our records." He added that Russian hackers "have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about."

"Either Bill Nelson knows of crucial information the federal government is withholding from Florida election officials, or he is simply making things up," said Scott, who is seeking to take Nelson's Senate seat, which the senator has held since 2001.

But Scott, who as governor has a security clearance, has not actually disputed Nelson's assertion. His spokesman said the governor had not personally called anyone at the Department of Homeland Security to seek a classified briefing to get to the bottom of the matter. The governor's appointee to supervise elections in Florida, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, was reaching out to federal officials for clarity, spokesman McKinley Lewis told NBC News.

Detzner faced criticism this year for delaying an application for federal funds to improve Florida election security, only to be overruled by the governor.

A February report by the left-leaning Center for American Progress gave Florida an "F" grade for election security, one of only five states that received a failing grade. Florida was one of 21 states notified by DHS that it had been targeted by hackers in the 2016 election.

NBC's sources declined to provide the exact details of what Nelson was attempting to describe, because they remain classified. They said Nelson was talking about intelligence related to ongoing repercussions stemming from a 2016 hack of a Florida elections vendor, VR Systems, based in Tallahassee. They said the intelligence had been described to Nelson by Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC), the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat.

A Top Secret National Security Agency document leaked last year to The Intercept website said that VR Systems had been penetrated in August 2016 by hackers working for Russian military intelligence, and that the hackers "likely used data obtained from that operation to... launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations."

The NSA report didn't name the company but it described some of its products, making clear which company was being referenced, the Intercept reported. VR Systems Chief Operating Officer Ben Martin did not respond to a request for comment.

The report described a scheme in which Russian hackers tricked local government voter systems officials into clicking on bogus links that would allow the hackers to access credentials for voting systems.

The report said it was unknown to what extent the campaign had been successful, and what data on "election-related hardware and software applications" may have been obtained.

"The threat from that breach seems to be ongoing," a cybersecurity expert briefed on the matter told NBC News. In addition to Florida, VR Systems has contracts in California, Illinois and Indiana, its website says.

The sources say Nelson was not supposed to speak publicly about the matter, and he erred by suggesting that the information was new. Still, Nelson and Florida's other senator, Republican Marco Rubio, were asked to warn local officials about the ongoing threat to election systems by Russian state-sponsored hackers, two sources told NBC News. Rubio alluded to the matter with county officials in private, according to the Tampa Bay Times, which cited two sources who were in the room.

None of the senators on the intelligence committee would confirm Nelson's assertions. Nor would they deny it.

"While I understand your questions regarding Senator Nelson's recent public comments, I respectfully advise you to continue engaging directly with those federal agencies responsible for notifying you of and mitigating any potential intrusions," Burr said in a letter to Florida's top election official.

The Department of Homeland Security also declined to confirm or deny Nelson's comments.

Sara Sendek, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement: "While we are aware of Senator Nelson's recent statements, we have not seen any new compromises by Russian actors of election infrastructure. That said, we don't need to wait for a specific threat to be ready."

Nelson's remarks came after he and Rubio sent a letter to Florida officials urging them to take seriously the threat of Russian election intervention.

"We encourage you in the strongest terms to take advantage" of help from federal officials, the letter said.

Warner said in a statement that "Russian activities continue to pose a threat to the security of our elections, as Senators Nelson and Rubio rightly pointed out in their letter… I hope all state and local elections officials, including Florida's, will take this issue seriously."

Rubio, who serves on the intelligence committee and has frequently expressed concerns about discussing classified information, declined to address Nelson's assertion directly.

"Given the importance of Florida in our national politics, our state's election systems have been and will remain a potentially attractive target for attacks by foreign actors," the Republican senator said in a statement.

Nelson, who had served in the past on the intelligence committee, has been unable to fully respond to the criticism of his comments, presumably because he spoke out of turn about classified information.

When he made the remarks Aug. 7, he was asked, "Do you know which records the Russians are accessing?"

He replied, "That's classified."

Yeah, that's literally the only way the Republicans can save themselves from electoral catastrophe in November. Selling out our democracy-- our country-- to the Russian kleptocrat. Easy enough too see Trump doing that... but Ryan, McConnell... the whole party? Has it gone that far down the road?