Why Is #MoscowMitch Trending So Strongly On Twitter?

Former Florida congressman, former Republican Party hack, former Trumpanzee amigo Joe Scarborough first pounded and pounded and pounded on the term "Moscow Mitch" on his MSNBC morning show this past Friday. If you missed it, watch what may well wind up being an historic television moment in the video clip above.

You have Robert Mueller, a lifelong Republican, the most respected FBI director in the history of this country, a Vietnam War hero, a guy who made the U.S. Army Rangers Hall of Fame, a guy who said "Russia is trying to invade Americ right now"... Moscow Mitch says it's a hoax. You have his own Intelligence Committee in the Senate, led by Republican Richard Burr, saying that Russia tried to infiltrate all 50 states in 2016 and is going to it again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have the Republican, Trump-appointed FBI director saying that the Russians infiltrated America's democracy and are going to try again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have the Director of National Intelligence saving that the Russians tried to infiltrate our election system, tried to subvert American democracy [and] they're going to try it again. Moscow Mitch said it's a hoax. You have Trump's appointed director of the CIA saying that the Russians are trying to undermine American democracy, that the Russians tried in '16 [and] will try again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have military intel community knowing-- because they were fighting the Russians in 2015-2016 and are still fighting them everyday to stop they from continuing to infiltrate American democracy... Moscow Mitch says it's a hoax. I understand that there's an oligarch that;'s going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in Moscow Mitch's home state...

"What am I supposed to call him," Scarborough continued, all worked up into a self-righteous rage, "Cocaine Mitch?... He's Moscow Mitch! He is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin's on-going attempts to subvert American democracy according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI, Intel Committee... all Republicans-- are all saying Russia is subverting American democracy and Moscow Mitch won't even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is unAmerican!

McConnell is under fire-- and not just by Scarborough. Reporting for the New Republic, Seth Hettena, author of Trump/Russia: A Definitive History wrote on Thursday that close to the end of Mueller's day of testimony, Raja Krishnamoorthi, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, "got Mueller to admit that the FBI currently has an ongoing investigation involving false statements by Michael Flynn, President Trump’s short-lived national security advisor... The job of FBI counterintelligence was and is to neutralize the threat posed by foreign intelligence-- which, in this case, means dealing with what the special counsel’s report called Russia’s 'sweeping and systematic' effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. But the investigation’s low visibility shouldn’t diminish its importance, which is no less than a probe into whether the president himself was acting on behalf of Russia’s interests.

The FBI, as the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil, sent officials with the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division to meet regularly with members of the special counsel’s team. For more than a year, FBI agents were embedded in Mueller’s office. Their purpose, according to a little-noticed section of the special counsel’s report, was “to review the results of the investigation and to send-- in writing-- summaries of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information to FBIHQ and FBI Field Offices.” But not all of the information in those summaries appeared in Mueller’s final report.

...While Mueller may not have found enough evidence to support criminal charges over the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government, there is little doubt that the president’s behavior toward Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, poses a threat to national security. A criminal president is obviously a threat to the nation, but so is a president who can’t or won’t respond to the ongoing threat of foreign interference.

Mueller said Wednesday that Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections were occurring “as we sit here,” and he almost seemed to regret that the danger posed by Russia wasn’t more strongly emphasized in his report. “Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy,” Mueller said. “The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious.”

Mueller warned that during the coming presidential election, the U.S. would face an even bigger threat than the one he investigated. “Many more countries are developing the capability to replicate what the Russians have done,” he said.

“This deserves the attention of every American,” said Mueller, reiterating a plea from his brief May 29 press conference.

But attention will not likely come from Trump. During last month’s G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the president treated the threat to the 2020 election as an opportunity to further bond with his Russian counterpart. Responding to a reporter’s question, Trump playfully pointed his finger at Putin and said, “Don’t meddle in the election.” Putin just laughed.

The president might think that the ongoing Russian effort to interfere in American democracy is still a big joke. Here’s hoping the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division still doesn’t.

Looking for something to do August 12th? Bring a Russian flag

What's this all have to do with McConnell and why #MoscowMitch is a thing. McConnell blocked Obama from going public with the information about Russia trying to steal the election in real time while it was happening. (I bet Obama is sorry he was such a woos and paid any attention to the treasonous McConnell.) And now McConnell is preventing the Senate from even voting on legislation from preventing Russian meddling again in 2020. Schumer, too scared to refer to McConnell as Moscow Mitch, said, not-memorably this week, "We are not going to let Leader McConnell put the bills passed by the House into his legislative graveyard without a fight. You're going to hear from us on this issue over and over again." The Senate Democrats are such a bunch of pussies they deserve this kind of non-leadership. But we don't.

At least Wyden (D-OR) publicly called McConnell "Russia's biggest ally" and Durbin (D-IL) accused him of "abdicating his responsibility to protect American democracy so he can protect a President who unravels it day-by-day."

Miss McConnell MoscowMitch, with as straight a face as a compulsive liar and lifelong closet case can ever have, claimed the legislation he blocked was "partisan." One bill requires the use of paper ballots and the other mandates that candidates and campaign officials notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments. That could only sound "partisan" to traitors working for a foreign pay-master.

I hate to see the endearing term "McTurtle" disappear, but... because it's Mitch McConnell, we're talking about, there's got to be even more money changing hands. And, sure enough, Nicole Goodkind's report last week for Newsweek covered that:

"McConnell said he wouldn't allow a vote on the bills because they were 'so partisan,' but, as previously reported, earlier this year McConnell received a slew of donations from four of the top voting machine lobbyists in the country," wrote Goodkind. "The plans would likely burden the two largest electronic voting machine vendors in the United States, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, with new regulations and financial burdens. Together, the companies make up about 80 percent of all voting machines used in the country and both have far-reaching lobbying arms in Washington D.C. Many of those lobbyists have contributed to the McConnell campaign, reported Sludge last month, an investigative outlet that focuses on money in politics."

"It's not surprising to me that Mitch McConnell is receiving these campaign contributions," the Brennan Center for Justice's Lawrence Norden told Sludge last month. "He seems single-handedly to be standing in the way of anything passing in Congress around election security, and that includes things that the vendors might want, like money for the states to replace antiquated equipment."

McConnell's actions seemed even more out of balance with his party, as the Senate Intelligence Committee⁠—led by Republicans⁠—released a report later on Thursday claiming Russians have targeted voting systems in all 50 states in 2016. Though there was no evidence votes were changed, in Illinois "Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data."

Laughably, most Senate Republican zombies are absolutely behind McConnell on this; in other words: traitors. Last month it was Tennessee traitor Marsha Blackburn. This time it was Mississippi traitor Cindy Hyde-Smith-- who blocked two election protection bills and cybersecurity legislation on the Senate floor right after Mueller’s testimony and then dismissed the storm of criticism she got as nothing more than "political theater." Other Republicans are claiming it's too late to do anything for 2020 and they should focus on protecting the voting systems for the 2022 midterms and just let "nature" take its course for 2020; Oklahoma Republican James Lankford leads that camp.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Knowing what we do about Trump, it's easy to imagine that, right now as you read this, Trump is asking Kellyanne Conway or some other Russian asset on his staff how he can get all of those Russians that are supposedly leaving Venezuela jobs in his administration and on his campaign staff, maybe even the Federal Elections Commission. Maybe Mitch McConnell will have room for some of them on his staff or the staffs of his Senate cronies. That's where we are, as we approach the fourth of July 2019.

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?

Facebook Says It Will Prevent History From Repeating Itself

Early Tuesday morning, the NY Times reported that "Facebook is preparing to announce that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity ahead November’s midterm elections. In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week, the company told lawmakers that it detected the influence campaign as part of its investigations into election interference. It has been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the center of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved, according to two of the officials. Facebook is expected announce its findings Tuesday afternoon." And it did: Removing Bad Actors on Facebook.

Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing.

We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts-- including who may be behind this. But we are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week. We will update this post with more details when we have them, or if the facts we have change.

It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past. We believe this could be partly due to changes we’ve made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder. But security is not something that’s ever done. We face determined, well-funded adversaries who will never give up and are constantly changing tactics. It’s an arms race and we need to constantly improve too. It’s why we’re investing heavily in more people and better technology to prevent bad actors misusing Facebook-- as well as working much more closely with law enforcement and other tech companies to better understand the threats we face.

What We've Found So Far

About two weeks ago we identified the first of eight Pages and 17 profiles on Facebook, as well as seven Instagram accounts, that violate our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior. We removed all of them this morning once we’d completed our initial investigation and shared the information with US law enforcement agencies, Congress, other technology companies, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a research organization that helps us identify and analyze abuse on Facebook.

• In total, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017. The latest was created in May 2018.
• The most followed Facebook Pages were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.” The remaining Pages had between zero and 10 followers, and the Instagram accounts had zero followers.
• There were more than 9,500 organic posts created by these accounts on Facebook, and one piece of content on Instagram.
• They ran about 150 ads for approximately $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, paid for in US and Canadian dollars. The first ad was created in April 2017, and the last was created in June 2018.
• The Pages created about 30 events since May 2017. About half had fewer than 100 accounts interested in attending. The largest had approximately 4,700 accounts interested in attending, and 1,400 users said that they would attend.

We are still reviewing all of the content and ads from these Pages. In the meantime here are some examples of the content and ads posted by these Pages.

These bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we’ve taken to prevent abuse over the past year. For example they used VPNs and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf. As we’ve told law enforcement and Congress, we still don’t have firm evidence to say with certainty who’s behind this effort. Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below. But there are differences, too. For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here.

We found this activity as part of our ongoing efforts to identify coordinated inauthentic behavior. Given these bad actors are now working harder to obscure their identities, we need to find every small mistake they make. It’s why we’re following up on thousands of leads, including information from law enforcement and lessons we learned from last year’s IRA investigation. The IRA engaged with many legitimate Pages, so these leads sometimes turn up nothing. However, one of these leads did turn up something. One of the IRA accounts we disabled in 2017 shared a Facebook Event hosted by the “Resisters” Page. This Page also previously had an IRA account as one of its admins for only seven minutes. These discoveries helped us uncover the other inauthentic accounts we disabled today.

The “Resisters” Page also created a Facebook Event for a protest on August 10 to 12 and enlisted support from real people. The Event-- “No Unite the Right 2-- DC”-- was scheduled to protest an August “Unite the Right” event in Washington. Inauthentic admins of the “Resisters” Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event. These legitimate Pages unwittingly helped build interest in “No Unite Right 2-- DC” and posted information about transportation, materials, and locations so people could get to the protests.

We disabled the event earlier today and have reached out to the admins of the five other Pages to update them on what happened. This afternoon, we’ll begin informing the approximately 2,600 users interested in the event, and the more than 600 users who said they’d attend, about what happened.

We don’t have all the facts, but we’ll work closely with others as we continue our investigation. We hope to get new information from law enforcement and other companies so we can better understand what happened-- and we’ll share any additional findings with law enforcement and Congress. However, we may never be able to identify the source with the same level of confidence we had in naming the IRA last year. See Alex Stamos’ post below on why attribution can be really hard.

We’re seeing real benefits from working with outside experts. Partners like the Atlantic Council have provided invaluable help in identifying bad actors and analyzing their behavior across the internet. Based on leads from the recent US Department of Justice indictment, the Atlantic Council identified a Facebook group with roughly 4,000 members. It was created by Russian government actors but had been dormant since we disabled the group’s admins last year. Groups typically persist on Facebook even when their admins are disabled, but we chose to remove this group to protect the privacy of its members in advance of a report that the Atlantic Council plans to publish as soon as it concludes its analysis. It will follow this report in the coming weeks with an analysis of the Pages, accounts and profiles we disabled today.

Back to to the Times article: "Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues. Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people briefed on the findings. That echoed efforts in 2016 to fan division around the Black Lives Matter movement.

"After being caught flat-footed by the Internet Research Agency’s efforts to use social media to sow division ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is trying to avoid a repeat disaster in 2018. The company has expanded its security team, hiring counterterrorism experts and recruiting workers with government security clearances.

"The company is using artificial intelligence and teams of human reviewers to detect automated accounts and suspicious election-related activity. It has also tried to make it harder for Russian-style influence campaigns to use covert Facebook ads to sway public opinion, by requiring political advertisers in the United States to register with a domestic mailing address and by making all political ads visible in a public database."

And this is nice... from Trump's Twitter feed

As Trump And Putin Plan To Steal The Midterms, Democrats Are... Dismayed

Sadly, I don't see Putin-Gate as being decisive in the midterms. As Republican Congressman Darrell Issa told Neil Cavuto on GOP-TV yesterday, that id Trump is "proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt, and if someone offers it, you listen to them, nobody’s going to be surprised. There are some things in politics that you just take for granted." What it says about my fellow citizens is mind-boggling-- but, of course, we had a hint of that when so many of them (albeit not a majority) voted for a cheap huckster and fascist in 2016. Character, apparently, doesn't count for these voters. How could anyone not have seen him as the lesser of two evils? Maybe all this Russia stuff keeps chipping away at Trump's approval... but it never seems to drop below 38% no matter how blatant his affinity for Putin. It's important for the rest iff us to be aware of info like the Atlantic essay by Natasha Bertrand this week: The Case for a Trump-Russia Conspiracy Just Got a Little Stronger, even if we already know everything there is ti know about his "character, truthfulness, and culpability... If Trump knew about the meeting and was okay with it, Trump and those around him could be guilty of an inchoate conspiracy." Does it matter?

[I]f Trump approved a meeting with foreign nationals in the hopes of obtaining something of value-- i.e., opposition research at the height of the presidential election-- the intent alone could provide prosecutors with an important piece in understanding the campaign’s willingness to conspire with Russia, legal experts told me.

...“President Trump’s track record of dishonesty will cast all of the hard evidence in the most negative light in the minds of the prosecutors who decide whether the interests of justice call for charges to be brought.”

OK, nice. But I'm not counting on prosecutors saving us from the scourge of Trumpism. I'm counting on the midterms. I believe only one thing stands between a 40-50 seat Democratic majority in the House and GOP retention of control: Putin-Gate II. Everyone has heard about Russian hacking of Claire McCaskill by now. Republicans seem completely fine with the help.

Friday Trump chaired a brief meeting on his NSA, but it seemed like he was there for just one reason: to find out what the plans were so he could pass them along to Putin. It lasted less than an hour "and no new directives on how to counter or deter threats against election meddling were discussed. Officials only discussed actions taken so far to repel attacks against the US election system." I hope no one gave Trump anything in writing. NBC News reported Friday night that the regime has no central strategy for election security, and no one's in charge.

[E]ven members of Trump's national security cabinet have acknowledged the need for a central, unifying effort-- one that experts say is missing. Senior officials have also admitted that the government has failed to take steps necessary to give the Russians second thoughts about intervening in American politics. Trump hasn't done so, and neither did Barack Obama, whose response to election meddling-- expelling diplomats and closing Russian compounds in December 2016-- has been described by some of his own former aides as tepid.

If any evidence was needed that the Russians haven't been deterred, a Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, said Thursday she was the target of an unsuccessful Russian hacking attempt. A Microsoft official says that company has also observed attempted Russian hacks against two other unnamed candidates.

"I do think we need to do more as a government. It requires a whole of government, because it's not just the elections," Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, told NBC's Peter Alexander at the Aspen Security Forum earlier this month.

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said in a speech this month that "the system is blinking red" on Russia cyber threats but "we have to do better in what we deliver to our customers."

In April, a top National Security Agency official said the U.S. doesn't "yet have the political fortitude to say how we'll strike back" against Russian misbehavior in cyberspace. No additional fortitude has been on display in the months since. NSA director Paul Nakasone, asked about those comments last week, said he wasn't aware of them.

"We have to as a nation bring all of the elements of our power against our adversaries," he said.

In February, his predecessor, Adm. Mike Rogers, told Congress the Russians "haven't paid a price at least that's sufficient to get them to change their behavior," adding later that "we're taking steps, but we're probably not doing enough."

Last week, House Republicans voted down a proposal by Democrats to increase election funding to states by $380 million-- the cost of about four F-35 fighter jets.

Democrats in Congress are deeply dismayed.

"In a normal White House, there would be a point person on the National Security Council, to coordinate all the different agencies and to work with the states and the social media companies to make sure our electoral systems aren't so vulnerable to attack," Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who is helping lead an investigation into Russian interference as ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC News.

"But President Trump's inability to acknowledge that the Russians interfered in 2016 and that they will be back in 2018 is really hampering the government's response to this threat. We just don't have a whole-of-government strategy for dealing with this problem, and it leaves us incredibly vulnerable to continued interference by the Russians or, for that matter, any other adversary who might try to steal their playbook."

...While U.S. intelligence officials have said they don't see a Russian effort to go after voting systems timed to the midterms this fall, they acknowledge that there is little to stop the Russians from doing so. Meanwhile, the social media manipulation has never stopped, and the hacking attempts appear to continue.

Coats, the nation's top intelligence official, spoke at length about his worries in a speech this month, given just days before Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin and seemed to undercut his intelligence agencies on Russian interference.

"Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor-- no question," Coats said. "And they continue their efforts to undermine our democracy."

As to the upcoming midterm elections, he said, it's fairly meaningless that there are no signs of interference in specific states, because "we fully realize that we are just one click of the keyboard away from a similar situation repeating itself."

Moreover, Coats added, "we are seeing aggressive attempts to manipulate social media and to spread propaganda focused on hot-button issues that are intended to exacerbate socio-political divisions. Despite public statements by the Kremlin to the contrary, we continue to see individuals affiliated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency creating new social media accounts, masquerading as Americans, and then using these accounts to draw attention to divisive issues."

He continued: "These actions are persistent, they are pervasive, and they are meant to undermine America's democracy on a daily basis, regardless of whether it is election time or not. Russian actors and others are exploring vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure as well."

"The warning signs are there, the system is blinking, and that is why I believe we are at a critical point."

Dark Triad by Chip Proser

Republican Traitors Are Making Sure The Doors Are Open For Russian Election Hacking In November

Polling the other day was very clear: most normal Americans are very concerned about Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections-- and most Republicans are not concerned at all. Before we get into the current Russian tampering with the elections on behalf of the GOP, I just want to mention that during the American war of independence, Patriots weren't only facing the British, they were also fighting American conservatives who sided with the British.

During the American Revolution, colonists like Benjamin Franklin who supported republicanism and eventually, independence, came to be known as Patriots. Historians estimate that about 40-45% of white men were patriots. Those men who chose to continue supporting the king, like William Franklin, were called Loyalists, or Tories. They made up about 15-20% of the white male population. The last 35-45% never publicly chose sides.

Just like political affiliations today, loyalists, patriots, and neutrals came from all social and economic classes, and many people took sides based not on principle but on who they thought was going to win or which side would profit them the most personally. But then, as now, there were demographic trends.

Poor farmers, craftsmen, and small merchants, influenced by the ideas of social equality expressed in works like Thomas Paine's Common Sense, were more likely to be Patriots. So were intellectuals with a strong belief in the Enlightenment. Religious converts of the Great Awakening made strong connections between their faith and a developing sense of nationalism. Loyalists tended to be older colonists, or those with strong ties to England, such as recent immigrants. Wealthy merchants and planters often had business interests with the empire, as did large farmers who profited by supplying the British Army. Some opposed the violence they saw in groups like the Sons of Liberty and feared a government run by extremists.

The U.S. intelligence community has been warning for over a year that the Kremlin, successful at placing their candidate into the White House, intended to steal the 2018 congressional elections as well. There's no reason to think that Trump isn't encouraging them-- collusion on steroids. The Kremlin is not going to steal deep blue seats in New York City and Chicago and Los Angeles. That would be silly. But they may well put an electronic thumb on the scale in swing districts like ME-02, which we talked about earlier today. If I had to pick a dozen districts-- and I think there are at least 2 dozen Trump wants them involved with besides ME-02-- I'd expect the Kremlin to tamper with these:

• CA-48- Rohrabacher v Rouda
• NE-02- Bacon v Eastman
• CA-25- Knight v Hill
• PA-17- Rothfus v Lamb
• TX-07- Culberson v Fletcher
• Wi-01- Steil v Bryce
• IL-06- Roskam v Casten
• CA-45- Walters v Porter
• TX-17- Sessions v Allred
• NC-09- Harris v McCready
• WA-05- McMorris-Rodgers v Brown
• KY-06- Barr v McGrath

On Friday, Lily Hay Newman, writing for Wired, reported that "early signs of attack have already arrived-- just as the US intelligence community warned. And yet Congress has still not done everything in its power to defend against them." In fact, congressional Republicans refusing to spend more money on increasing election cyber security! The Democratic motion to protect our elections failed 182-232, every single Republican voting to leave the doors open for the Russians to do it again!

At the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday, Microsoft executive Tom Burt said that phishing attacks-- reminiscent of those carried out in 2016 against Hillary Clinton's campaign-- have targeted three midterm campaigns this year. Burt stopped short of attributing those efforts to Russia, but the disclosure is the first concrete evidence this year that candidates are being actively targeted online. They seem unlikely to be the last.

“The 2018 midterms remain a potential target for Russian actors," said Matt Masterson, a senior cybersecurity adviser to DHS, at a Senate hearing last week. "The risks to elections are real."

Meanwhile, a trend of destabilizing denial-of-service attacks against election-related systems has also emerged, including one that caused a results-reporting website to crash during a municipal primary in Knox County, Tennessee, in May, along with two reported DDoS assaults on unnamed Democratic campaigns. DDoS attacks have become common enough that both Alphabet's Project Shield and Cloudflare's Athenian Project have been offering free DDoS protection to election-related groups, like political campaigns, state and local governments, and boards of elections.

Homeland Security assistant secretary Jeanette Manfra noted this week that DHS has so far not seen the volume of phishing activity and election infrastructure probing it recorded at this time in 2016. But that could simply mean that attackers have already done their reconnaissance, or have moved on to more refined techniques. And in addition to evolving threats, reports continue to surface new, critical vulnerabilities in areas like voting machines-- several of which have inadvisable remote-access software installed-- and voter data handling.

Top officials have made it clear that they are bracing for attacks. "The warning lights are blinking red again," said director of national intelligence Dan Coats last week during a talk at the Hudson Institute think tank. "Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack." On Thursday, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein echoed this conclusion. "These actions are persistent, they are pervasive, and they are meant to undermine America’s democracy," Rosenstein said.

Despite these active, ongoing concerns, the Trump administration's mixed messages about the extent of the Russian threat have hampered momentum on defense. President Trump indicated on Monday that he still doubts that Russia attempted to disrupt US democracy in 2016, and on Wednesday he appeared to dismiss the current threat from Russia as well. He later walked back some of those statements, and the White House released a compendium of its work on election defense, stating, "President Donald J. Trump and his Administration are defending the integrity of our election system."

The National Association of Secretaries of State said in a pointed response on Tuesday, "Secretaries of State ... across the nation are working hard each day to safeguard the elections process ... We ask, however, the White House and others help us rebuild voter confidence in our election systems by promoting these efforts and providing clear, accurate assessments moving forward."

...Five states, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, and South Carolina, use only paperless voting machines. A bill to replace the machines in Georgia failed in March. Pennsylvania, which has paperless machines in some counties, has committed to eliminating them before the 2020 election. In a recent survey, only 13 states told Politico this week that they plan to use federal money to replace voting machines.

More money could be on the way soon; a promising bill specifically tailored to promoting election and voting defense, known as the Secure Elections Act, gained two cosponsors this week in the Senate, South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds and Florida Democrat Bill Nelson. But experts agree that realistically, no more funding will be available to states in time for the midterms. And in a Thursday House of Representatives vote related to a 2019 spending bill, Republicans shot down an effort by Democrats to appropriate another $380 million in election security funding. Republicans said that the March HAVA distribution was adequate and that states have the funding they need.

Analysts are clear, though, that federal funding is still urgently needed to prepare for 2020, even if it's too late for 2018 now. "There seems to be more of an understanding among lawmakers than there was before the 2016 election that Congress has a responsibility in this area," Norden says. "But some members have a mindset that paying for elections is the responsibility of the states. And while that’s defensible up to a point, I think it hasn’t quite sunk in for them that this is now a national security issue and Congress actually does have a responsibility in that arena."

In the final weeks before the midterms, experts have advised states to work on their contingency plans and emergency procedures so they can handle whatever problems or attacks arise. While widespread attacks on the midterms are not a foregone conclusion, there are plenty of signs that at least some have already started.

"We’re going to have to see what happens with the 2018 election-- will there be any meddling? Will there be any things that go awry in 2018?" says Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a group that promotes election system best practices. "Because to the extent that things don’t go swimmingly, unfortunately, that may be an impetus for Congress on funding."

Schneider notes, as do many security analysts, that though election process issues are often mired in bureaucratic and political controversies, the stakes transcend party lines. "I want to underscore that this is not a political issue-- it’s not partisan," she says. "It really is a national security issue. This is about standing together shoulder to shoulder to protect our democracy against external threats. That’s what we have to do."

Tell it to the American Royalists (or Tories) in 1777 who shot Patriots in the back on behalf of the British. According to Wikipedia "When their cause was defeated, about 15 percent of the Loyalists (65,000–70,000 people) fled to other parts of the British Empire, to Britain itself, or to British North America (now Canada). The southern Loyalists moved mostly to Florida, which had remained loyal to the Crown, and to British Caribbean possessions, often bringing along their slaves."

Ready For Putin-Gate II? Is The Kremlin Targeting The Midterms?

When I read Tuesday evening that Trumpanzee chief of staff John Kelly had been calling members of Congress and telling them to feel free to criticize Trump for his treasonous behavior in Helsinki, I assumed Kelly had cleared that first with Señor T and that, for once, Trump was thinking strategically instead of like a self-obsessed 4 year old. But I was wrong. Trump had no idea what Kelly was up to. Gabriel Sherman explained for Vanity Fair readers what actually did happen: "THIS WAS THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO": THE WEST WING REVOLTS AFTER TRUMP EMBRACES PUTIN

Trump was furious that Americans weren't overjoyed by his supine posture towards Putin and that no one in the political universe was defending his treason. "The mood among West Wing advisers," wrote Sherman, "was downright funereal. 'This was the nightmare scenario,' another Republican in frequent contact with the administration said. This was viewed as much worse than Access Hollywood, Charlottesville or the "shithole countries."

While National Security Adviser John Bolton, according to a source, thought Trump’s remarks were ill-advised, he believed that walking them back would only add fuel to the outrage pyre and make the president look weak. But Chief of Staff John Kelly was irate. According to a source, he told Trump it would make things worse for him with Robert Mueller. He also exerted pressure to try to get the president to walk back his remarks. According to three sources familiar with the situation, Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan held televised press conferences to assert that Russia did meddle in the election.

Trump was boxed in. With seemingly only Rand Paul, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson in his corner, Trump decided to backtrack. Appearing before reporters this afternoon, Trump blamed his comments on a grammatical mistake. “I would like to clarify, in a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” he said, reading from a statement. “The sentence should have been: ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’”

To those who know Trump best, the 24-hour reversal is a sign that he’s unnerved by the intensity of the backlash he provoked. “The president sent a very clear message [that] his worldview is in sync with his base and members of his party,” former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told me. “Any of these other kerfuffles, if he had addressed it the next day, we wouldn’t have had that many days of things like shithole countries.”

But Trump's been tripping all over his messaging ever since. CNN reported that by yesterday he was contradicting his own intelligence agencies again. His latest was that even if the Russians did it in 2016 they've stopped. If you follow the way Trump's tiny and venal brain works you know what he said-- that means the Russians are absolutely doing it again and, again, colluding with Trump and his team. He messed up the messaging by declining "an opportunity to clarify his remarks when questioned by reporters on the White House South Lawn. It amounted to another day of shifting stories and confusing positions for a President whose ties to Russia are under scrutiny, and whose deference to Russian leader Vladimir Putin has garnered widespread condemnation."

Speaking during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump was asked by a reporter if Russia was still targeting the US.

"No," he responded, looking directly at the reporter. The President's answer was the latest in a series of changing statements about whether he endorses the US intelligence community's conclusions about Russia's interference in the 2016 election and its continued efforts to disrupt future US elections.

...On Monday, Trump's director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, emphatically said that Russia's attempts to attack the US were ongoing.

"We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy," Coats wrote in a statement released after Trump appeared to side with Putin, rather than US intelligence agencies, on who was to blame for the election interference.

Two days earlier, Coats was more forceful in his warnings that Russia and other countries would continue their attempts to breach US systems.

"The warning signs are there. The system is blinking. It is why I believe we are at a critical point," Coats said on Friday. "Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack."

He compared the "warning signs" to those the United States faced ahead of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and named the "worst offenders" as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea-- with Russia the "most aggressive foreign actor, no question."

"They continue their efforts to undermine our democracy," Coats said.

...Trump's appearances over the past two days were meant to quell the outcry, however, his assertion that Russia is no longer targeting the US did not help.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a confidant of Trump's, said on Twitter that there was "A BIG discrepancy between President Trump's statement and DNI Coates' warning," and expressed disagreement with Trump, saying, "My personal view: the Russians are at (it) again."

And Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer quickly criticized the President's comment, tweeting, "Mr. President. Walk this back too."