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Megan Flanagan

Reviled by G.O.P., WikiLeaks Embraced by Trump for Clinton Email Leaks - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ks-hillary-clinton-emails.html

donald trump clinton US politics wikileaks new york times election

shared by Megan Flanagan on 13 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Donald J. Trump is suddenly embracing an unlikely ally: The document-spilling group WikiLeaks,
  • increasingly seizing on a trove of embarrassing emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign
  • an extraordinary turnabout after years of bipartisan criticism of the organization
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • or past disclosures of American national security intelligence and other confidential information.
  • President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia insisted on Wednesday that his nation was being falsely accused.
  • Clinton, the Republican candidate said: “Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia,” he said, as part of an effort to “tarnish me.”
  • Based on a few emails plucked from the account, Mr. Trump and his team have accused Clinton aides of improperly receiving inside information from the Obama administration
  • the campaign received an update from the Department of Justice about the timing of the release of Mrs. Clinton’s State Department emails
  • Republican allies say he has come to believe that WikiLeaks could yield a critical mass of negative and destructive information — if not a smoking gun — that drives up Mrs. Clinton’s already high unfavorable ratings with voters and perhaps even derails her candidacy.
  • emails began to appear on Friday afternoon, just hours after the director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement attributing previous hacks to the Russian government
  • The Clinton campaign is trying its own political jujitsu with the hacks,
  • there was “the possibility that Trump’s allies had advance knowledge of the release of these illegally obtained emails.”
  • Republicans have previously condemned WikiLeaks and similarly blasted the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor, and said they were evidence of carelessness by the Obama administration
  • if he keeps on pressuring on it, it really will help,”
  • touched off a feverish debate over government invading people’s privacy,
  • “I thought what Snowden did was disgraceful, treasonous. But the reality is the information is out there, and if Hillary doesn’t deny it then to me it certainly has to be used.”
  • Democrats showed no compunction about using unauthorized material when it came to Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax returns, or a leaked NBC audio recording of Mr. Trump boasting about groping
  • information that WikiLeaks and other outlets had made public from hacking collectives is “relevant.”
  • “But for this information, a number of revelations would remain secret — how Hillary Clinton really feels, how paranoid she really was about an Elizabeth Warren challenge, her ability to articulate a message that’s cohesive and credible,”
  • insisted showed “bias” toward Catholics.
  • the Clinton campaign seemed uncertain about how to navigate the disclosures,
  • Democrats expressed deep concern about how much more widespread the breaches could be.
  • WikiLeaks email will do little to help Mr. Trump attract more undecided voters, especially women, or reassure wavering Trump supporters.
  • “They ought to spend less time figuring out how to reinforce those people and more time trying to add to his vote column.”
  • He said the emails “make more clear than ever, just how much is at stake in November and how unattractive and dishonest our country has become.”
  • aggressively pushed the Clinton camp emails in news media briefings and cable news appearances
  • “reaffirmed” comments that he has made as a candidate about the two-faced nature of politicians and alleged malfeasance in government.
  • “It’s really backing up what the people have been feeling all of this time about the corruption of government, embedded, just the trickle-down corruption.”
  • the emails are highly unlikely to influence undecided voters
  • But 55 to 60 percent of the country is open to a Clinton presidency and wants to see the next president get to work with Congress to help the country.”
izzerios

Donations to Foundation Vexed Hillary Clinton's Aides, Emails Show - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nton-foundation-wikileaks.html

hillary clinton foundation

shared by izzerios on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • In the years before Hillary Clinton announced she would run again for president, her top aides expressed profound concerns in internal emails about how foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s own moneymaking ventures would affect Mrs. Clinton’s political future.
  • The emails, obtained by hackers and being gradually released by WikiLeaks this month,
  • personal income from some foundation donors and “gets many expensive gifts from them.”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Clinton Foundation gathering in Morocco at the behest of its king, who had pledged $12 million to the charity.
  • “She created this mess and she knows it,” a close aide, Huma Abedin, wrote of Mrs. Clinton in a January 2015 email.
  • Founded in 1997, when Mr. Clinton was still president, the foundation has raised roughly $2 billion to fund projects around the world, helping African farmers improve their yields, Haitians recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake and millions of people gain access to cheaper H.I.V./AIDS medication, among other accomplishments.
  • At the time, she was beginning to exert influence at the foundation, expressing concerns that Mr. Band and others were trying to use the charity to make money for themselves, and accusing another aide in her father’s personal office of installing spyware.
  • One such donor, Laureate International Universities, a for-profit education company based in Baltimore, was paying Mr. Clinton $3.5 million annually “to provide advice” and serve as its honorary chairman
  • Chelsea Clinton helped enlist an outside law firm to audit the Clinton Foundation’s practices.
  • the foundation “ensure that all donors are properly vetted and that no inappropriate quid pro quos are offered to donors in return for contributions.”
  • In August, the foundation said it would no longer accept foreign donations should Mrs. Clinton win the White House.
  • Russian government’s efforts to use cyberattacks to influence the election in favor of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.
  • asked whether Mrs. Clinton’s name would be used in connection with the foundation, which is formally known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. “It will invite press scrutiny and she’ll be held accountable for what happens there,”
  • a lawyer and top aide, said she discussed with Mrs. Clinton various “steps” to take to adjust her relationship with the foundation, including her resignation from the foundation’s board.
  • Mr. Band, who helped Mr. Clinton build the foundation, clearly felt irritated by Chelsea Clinton’s stream of implications that he had padded his own pockets from his work for her father.
  • “As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far,” he wrote. “A kiss on the cheek while she is sticking the knife in the back, and front.”
ethanmoser

October surprises: How Wikileaks and ObamaCare hikes are shaking up the race | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...hikes-are-shaking-up-race.html

wikileaks obamacare politics us

shared by ethanmoser on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • October surprises: How Wikileaks and ObamaCare hikes are shaking up the race
  • This roller-coaster campaign has a couple of twists and turns left, and that’s not good news for the woman who many in the media are ready to inaugurate.
  • The spike in ObamaCare premiums and dwindling insurance options gives Donald Trump a much-needed issue against Hillary Clinton, a longtime champion of universal health care.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The latest Wikileaks dump shows that Clinton’s own inner circle was worried about her dissembling and reluctance to apologize over the email mess, even as the campaign ripped the press for raising those questions. --The media are a bit bored with the story line that she’s clobbering him and want the race to tighten.
  • But now we have Podesta himself and former Clinton aide Neera Tanden writing frankly about Hillary’s penchant for secrecy and terrible political judgment.
  • Podesta ripped two longtime loyalists, lawyer Cheryl Mills and spokesman Philippe Reines, along with Clinton attorney David Kendall, for not being “forthcoming on the facts.”
  • “A lot has to do with her instincts.” Tanden concurred again: “Her instincts can be terrible.”
  • When the press was harping on the fact that Clinton would not apologize for having a private server, and campaign officials were pushing back hard, it turns out that some privately agreed with the critics.
  • “Everyone wants her to apologize. And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles heel.”
  • The disclosure that ObamaCare premiums are rising an average of 25 percent—more in some states, less in others—has provided a measure of vindication for the program’s conservative detractors. It has also given Trump, who wants to repeal ObamaCare, new ammunition against Clinton, who wants to reform it—in part by increasing government subsidies.
  • The steep premium hikes, and dwindling insurance options in some areas, make clear that President Obama oversold the program.
  • Now Trump clearly bobbled a statement about his own employees being affected by ObamaCare—only a small percentage are, his company pays the rest—but that doesn’t neutralize the larger issue.
  • he press has been hungry for a new story line so people don’t check out in the final two weeks. The Wikileaks dump, ObamaCare news and some tightening polls in Florida are all it takes. Perhaps the media will shelve the speculation about Clinton’s Cabinet and treat this once again as a horse race.
Megan Flanagan

WikiLeaks hack collateral damage can be deeply personal - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US wikileaks hack privacy

shared by Megan Flanagan on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • type your name into WikiLeaks to see what damage the day's hacked emails might hold for you.
  • ype your name into WikiLeaks to see what damage the day's hacked emails might hold for you.
  • the emails include the private information of a large number of bystanders, ranging from email addresses to financial data.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Because you say that to your friends, you confide in your friends, and who knows what's in there of your personal life and your professional life."
  • The Clinton campaign has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of any of the emails
  • The website has faced criticism in the past for its tendency not to screen releases for personally identifiable information or security sensitivities,
  • Podesta emails -- which go back to the 2008 race -- have contained personal email addresses and even cellphone numbers for a wide range of DC personalities,
  • including personal security and financial fraud.
  • information introduces these peripheral individuals to a range of risks.
  • sensitive financial information was contained in the emails published online.
  • the possibility that they may be targeted by phishing or scams to try to lure them into further traps.
  • the dangers can increase to identity theft and the risk extended to family, friends and professional contacts.
  • I've got all kinds of new security provisions, new computers, and I'm changing how I use email.
  • "I hired a cybersecurity firm and I'm not rich," he added. "I've spent for me what's an enormous amount of money."
  • I figured out that a new batch of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, had been released, including a note I wrote to Podesta with my cell number.
  • all the contents of your emails for 10 years dumped out into public, think about how that feels.
  • saying the First Amendment freedom trumps personal privac
  • 'It's like somebody robbed a bank and as they're running away the money is spilling out of the backpack and instead of catching the criminal everyone is stopping to chase the money.'
nataliedepaulo1

WikiLeaks proposes tracking verified Twitter users' homes, families and finances - The ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rs-homes-families-and-finances

wikileaks

shared by nataliedepaulo1 on 09 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations.
  • WikiLeaks would seek to uncover information about the financial lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom are verified on Twitter.)
  • But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.
katyshannon

Julian Assange says he'll surrender if U.N. rules against him - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...julian-assange-investigation

julian assange un court rules politics US crisis wikileaks

shared by katyshannon on 05 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may at last leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for three and a half years.
  • But even though he may leave with the support of a United Nations working group, he is still likely to be arrested in Britain on sex crime charges for alleged crimes in Sweden that date back several years.
  • Assange had said he would surrender to British police for arrest Friday if the U.N. group ruled he had not been unlawfully detained. However, any judgment by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention would be only a "moral recommendation" and would not be legally binding.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The U.N. working group is believed to have decided that Assange is being unlawfully detained, according to the Press Association, a British news organization. The decision is scheduled to be published Friday.
  • Whatever the U.N. group decides, it won't affect how Swedish authorities look at Assange's case. Nor will it necessarily affect what police in London will do.
  • The Swedes issued an arrest warrant for Assange on sex crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks in 2010. Assange was in London at the time, and as he fought to have the warrant dismissed, Ecuador granted him political asylum. He's been living in the embassy since June 2012.
  • The Swedish prosecutors' statement noted a May 2015 court ruling that Assange "should still be detained" and that Ecuadorian officials haven't allowed Swedish authorities to interview him.
  • London police ended their 24-hour guard of the Ecuadorian Embassy in October, saying it was no longer "proportionate."
  • Assange said he submitted a complaint to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about his case in 2014. Justice For Assange, a site set up to fight for his release, said the panel is expected to rule this week on whether Assange's detention arbitrarily deprived him of his liberty -- in other words, whether it is illegal.
  • But Assange added that if the panel ruled in his favor, "I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me."The Australian has not been charged and has denied the rape claim. He says it is retaliation for WikiLeaks having released thousands of pages of government secrets.He has said he fears Sweden would extradite him to the United States, where he could face the death penalty if he is charged and convicted of publishing those documents.
  • In his appeal to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange said his confinement has deprived him of access to fresh air, sunlight and adequate medical care. He says he is subject to round-the-clock surveillance and remains in a constant state of insecurity.
  • In other instances of detention, the U.N. working group called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar after years of house arrest. The group has also ruled for the release of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy, but he remains in prison.
rachelramirez

If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn't Need WikiLeaks - 0 views

thefederalist.com/...tergate-wouldnt-need-wikileaks

wikileaks politics US culture

shared by rachelramirez on 26 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn’t Need WikiLeaks
  • By September, though, the Post and New York Times were fully on board with the investigation, and the administration had gone into full cover-up mode. Even though the FBI had confirmed that the administration had conducted a political sabotage conspiracy, it was not enough to keep Nixon from being reelected in a landslide in November.
  • the “two lions of journalism” have little interest in covering the avalanche of revelations pouring forth against the Clinton campaign. Instead, both publications are working around the clock to bring the Democratic nominee to power.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • They’re going to keep digging dirt on Trump, and they’re going to continue to minimize, to the best of their ability, a story that may well have historic and damaging implications, both for the nation as a whole and our entire political system moving forward.
  • it is likely to forever damage the reputation of mainstream American journalism, and it most certainly will continue to encourage the American public to look elsewhere for the unvarnished truth.
  • There is no doubt that, whatever his reasons, if Putin is involved he is not acting on behalf of or for the benefit of the American people.
  • One thing is certain: reporters didn’t always adhere to standard journalism protocols when attempting to get to the bottom of this vital story.
  • It was also revealed that 18.5 minutes of tape had been erased. The furor that erupted from all corners, including the media, was enormous. It was considered one of the most reprehensible single acts in the history of American politics.
Javier E

How Donald Trump Made Russia's Hacking More Effective - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...511880

russia hacking election 2016 trump

shared by Javier E on 02 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The content of the Russian-hacked emails was actually remarkably unexplosive. Probably the biggest news was that Hillary Clinton had expressed herself in favor of a hemispheric common market in speeches to Wall Street executives. Otherwise, we learned from them that some people at the Democratic National Committee favored a lifelong Democrat for their party’s nomination over a socialist interloper who had joined the party for his own convenience. We learned that many Democrats, including Chelsea Clinton, disapproved of the ethical shortcomings of some of the people in Bill Clinton’s inner circle. We learned that Hillary Clinton acknowledged differences between her “public and private” positions on some issues. None of this even remotely corroborated Donald Trump’s wild characterizations of the Russian-hacked, Wikileaks-published material.
  • Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump.
abbykleman

Justice Dept. debating charges against WikiLeaks members in revelations of diplomatic, ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-a1b3-faff0034e2de_story.html

shared by abbykleman on 20 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 20 Apr 17
     
    Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring criminal charges against members of the WikiLeaks organization, taking a second look at a 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents and investigating whether the group bears criminal responsibility for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cyber-tools, according to people familiar with the case.
ecfruchtman

Trump adviser Roger Stone repeatedly claimed to know of forthcoming WikiLeaks dumps - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by ecfruchtman on 20 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • ecfruchtman on 20 Apr 17
     
    In the final months of the 2016 campaign, longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone repeatedly discussed his backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and claimed knowledge of forthcoming leaks from the group, a CNN KFile review of his public statements shows.
davisem

Donald Trump's tough path to the White House - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by davisem on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • He largely avoided incessant talk about allegations of sexual assault by multiple women and claims that the election is rigged -- both of which made wavering Republicans nervous.
  • "Just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump," he quipped during a rally in Toledo, Ohio.
  • But the Fox News poll, like some other recent surveys, suggested Trump is underperforming 2012 nominee Mitt Romney among this core constituency. Romney won white voters by 20 points over Obama according to exit polls, but Trump is only 14 points ahead of Clinton in the poll with the same voting group.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Trump donated just $31,000 to his campaign in early October despite promises to give up to $100 million to his campaign, according to a fundraising report filed Thursday. He has only donated $56 million to his race as of October 20.
  • The drumbeat of WikiLeaks disclosures yielded material to lambast Hillary Clinton and her family's foundation. And news of rising Obamacare premiums gave him an opening to criticize President Barack Obama's legacy that Clinton is running to inherit.
  • But 11 days before the election, Trump is down six points in CNN's Poll of Polls. His path to the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency remains daunting and it will be tough to overcome the deficit in the remaining time. Trump seemed to acknowledge the challenges Thursday.
  • davisem on 28 Oct 16
     
    Shows the struggles of Trump and how it has been a bumpy road
abbykleman

WikiLeaks, D.N.C. Hacks and Julian Assange's Years-Old Vision - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sange-wikileaks-dnc-hacks.html

shared by abbykleman on 09 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 09 Jan 17
     
    But what's up with Mr. Assange, who seems equally comfortable being a hero of the American left as he is being one of the American right, or even of Russian Putinists? What does he want, anyway? The answer has been in front of us all along.
Javier E

Wikileaks Reaction: How The Leaks Strike At The Heart Of American Exceptionalism | The ... - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...-heart-american-exceptionalism

exceptionalism foreign policy US liberalism conservatism

shared by Javier E on 18 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • For the right, America is quite simply the last, best hope of mankind, and anything that is in the interest of the United States is, by definition, in the interests of humanity.
  • For the progressives, America has many flaws but it is still humanity’s best hope.
  • David Brooks wrote that he foresaw a new movement arising in America whose goal would “be unapologetic: preserving American pre-eminence. It will preserve America’s standing in the world on the grounds that this supremacy is a gift to our children and a blessing for the earth."
Javier E

Opinion | It's Not the Collusion, It's the Corruption - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mueller-report-corruption.html

trump crisis threat democracy report governance politics

shared by Javier E on 19 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • The Mueller report is like a legal version of a thriller movie in which three malevolent forces are attacking a city all at once. Everybody’s wondering if the three attackers are working together. The report concludes that they weren't, but that doesn’t make the situation any less scary or the threat any less real
  • The first force is Donald Trump, who represents a threat to the American systems of governance
  • I don’t know if his actions meet the legal standard of obstruction of justice, but they certainly meet the common-sense standard of interference with justice.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The second force is Russia. If Trump is a threat to the institutional infrastructure, the Russians are a threat to our informational infrastructure.
  • The third force is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. They are a threat to our deliberative infrastructure. Any organization needs to be able to hold private conversations in order to deliberate
  • it shows that many of the Trumpists, the Russians and the WikiLeaks crowd all understood that they were somehow adjacent actors in the same project.
  • It’s easy to recognize when you are attacked head-on. But the U.S. is being attacked from below, at the level of the foundations we take for granted.
  • that’s the report’s central importance. We are being threatened in a very distinct way. The infrastructure of the society is under threat — the procedures that shape government, the credibility of information, the privacy rules that make deliberation possible.
  • These forces are motivated by self-interest, but their common feature is an operational nihilism. They are trying to sow disorder at the foundation of society. The goal is not really to convert anybody to a cause; it is to create cynicism and disruption that will open up the space to grab what you want to grab.
  • They rig the system and then tell everybody, “The system is rigged!” And therefore, all values are suspended. Everything is permitted.
  • today, across society, two things are happening: Referees are being undermined, and many are abandoning their own impartiality. (Think of the Wall Street regulators, the Supreme Court, the Senate committee chairmen, even many of us in the blessed media.)
  • The Mueller report indicates that Trump was not colluding with Russia. But it also shows that working relationships were beginning to be built
  • In all societies there are rules defining good conduct, and there are supposed to be impartial, honest referees that enforce those rules and make sure the game is fair.
malonema1

House Republicans release redacted Russia report - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US trump politics policy

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • The House Intelligence Committee on Friday released a redacted version of the Republican report on the committee's year-long Russia investigation, in which GOP members say they found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and disputed the intelligence community's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help elect Donald Trump.
  • House Intelligence Committee rules that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump Campaign and Russia. As I have been saying all along, it is all a big Hoax by the Democrats based on payments and lies. There should never have been a Special Councel (sic) appointed. Witch Hunt!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
  • But Democrats say Republicans failed to interview key witnesses and issue subpoenas to obtain necessary information, charging their colleagues were not interested in uncovering collusion. They are now continuing their own investigation without Republicans into Russia's election meddling. They released a 98-page document that pushes back on the Republican conclusions.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • t also states that the Trump campaign's "periodic praise for and communications with Wikileaks-a hostile foreign organization-to be highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests."The Republican report also faults Hillary Clinton's campaign for its role in the opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia, stating that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee "paid for opposition research on Trump obtained from Russian sources, including a litany of claims by high-ranking current and former Russian government officials."
  • The Republicans say they did not find any evidence, for instance, that Trump associates were involved in the publication of hacked emails by WikiLeaks and others, including Roger Stone, the Trump confidant who had appeared to predict releases of hacked emails.
  • The Republican report cites "significant intelligence tradecraft failings" in that assessment, which they argue "undermine confidence" in the judgments about Putin's objectives in the 2016 election, saying that the draft was "subjected to an unusually constrained review and coordination process." Republicans plan to issue a follow-up report with more detail on the matter.
  • The Republicans also devote a section of their report to leaks in the intelligence community, which is heavily redacted but concludes the leaks "may have damaged national security and potentially endangered lives."
Javier E

Fox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. But It Insisted on One Unusual Condition. - The Ne... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...news-seth-rich-settlement.html

fox news lawsuit responsibility lies propaganda

shared by Javier E on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • There’s only one multibillion-dollar media corporation that deliberately and aggressively propagated these untruths. That’s the Fox Corporation, and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch; his feckless son Lachlan, who is nominally C.E.O.; and the chief legal officer Viet Dinh, a kind of regent who mostly runs the company day-to-day.
  • These are the people ultimately responsible for helping to ensure that one particular and pernicious lie about a 27-year-old man’s death circulated for years. The elder Mr. Murdoch has long led Fox, to the extent anyone actually leads it, through a kind of malign negligence, and letting that lie persist seems just his final, lavish gift to Mr. Trump.
  • That’s why the story was so appealing to Fox hosts like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, who kept hyping it for days after it collapsed under the faintest scrutiny. There has never been a shred of credible evidence that Seth Rich had contact with WikiLeaks, and a series of bipartisan investigations found that the D.N.C. had been breached by Russian hackers.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The Murdoch organization didn’t originate the lie, but it embraced it, and it served an obvious political purpose: deflecting suspicions of Russian involvement in helping the Trump campaign
  • It was like “throwing gasoline on a small fire,” Mr. Rich’s brother recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Denver. “Fox blew it out of everyone’s little echo chamber and put it into the mainstream.”
  • The story collapsed immediately, and in spectacular fashion. The former Washington, D.C., police detective whom Fox used as its on-the-record source, Rod Wheeler, repudiated his own quotes claiming ties between Mr. Rich and WikiLeaks and a cover-up, and said in a deposition this fall that the Fox News article had been “prewritten before I even got involved.”
  • “He never got back to me to say, sorry for ruining your family’s life and pushing something there’s no basis to,” he said. “Apparently, ‘sorry’ is a hard five-letter word for him.”
Javier E

What Would Trump's Second Term Look Like? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...616466

trump second term politics crisis culture consequences

shared by Javier E on 15 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Perhaps the most consequential change Trump has wrought is in the Republican Party’s attitude toward democracy. I worked in the administration of George W. Bush, who was the first president since the 1880s to win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.
  • Bush recognized this outcome as an enormous political problem. After the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, on December 13, 2000, the president-elect promised to govern in a bipartisan and conciliatory fashion: “I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation,”
  • You may believe that Bush failed in that promise—but he made that promise because he recognized a problem. Two decades later, Trump has normalized the minority rule that seemed so abnormal in December 2000.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Republicans in the Trump years have gotten used to competing under rules biased in their favor. They have come to fear that unless the rules favor them, they will lose. And so they have learned to think of biased rules as necessary, proper, and just—and to view any effort to correct those rules as a direct attack on their survival.
  • What I wrote in 2017 has only become more true since: “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered.”
  • No one has stopped him from defying congressional subpoenas looking into whether he was violating tax and banking laws. No one has stopped him from hiring and promoting his relatives.
  • Trump’s clemency to Stone reminded others who might hold guilty knowledge—people like Paul Manafort and Ghislaine Maxwell—of the potential benefits to them of staying silent about Trump.
  • How did Trump get away with using a public power for personal advantage in this way? There’s nothing to stop him. The Constitution vests the pardon power in the president.
  • a second-term Trump could demand that associates break the law for him—and then protect them when they are caught and face punishment. He could pardon his relatives—and even try to pardon himself.
  • Abuse of Government Resources for Personal Gain
  • Mr. Trump’s aides said he enjoyed the frustration and anger he caused by holding a political event on the South Lawn of the White House, shattering conventional norms and raising questions about ethics law violations. He relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him,
  • “No one could do anything to stop him.” No one has stopped Trump from directing taxpayer dollars to his personal businesses.
  • Trump has a lot to hide, both as president and as a businessman. The price of his political and economic survival has been the destruction of oversight by Congress and the discrediting of honest reporting by responsible media
  • No one has stopped him from using government resources for partisan purposes. No one has stopped him from pressuring and cajoling foreign governments to help his reelection campaign.
  • No one has stopped him from using his power over the Postal Service to discourage voting that he thinks will hurt him.
  • The Hatch Act forbids most uses of government resources for partisan purposes. By long-standing courtesy, however, enforcement of that law against senior presidential appointees is left to the president. It’s just assumed that the president will want to comply. But what if he does not? The independent federal agency tasked with enforcing the Hatch Act, the Office of Special Counsel, has found nine senior Trump aides in violation of the law, and has recommended that Trump request their resignation. He has ignored that recommendation.
  • Abuse of the Pardon PowerOn July 10, 2020, Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone. As Stone’s own communications showed, he had acted as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks in 2016. Had Stone cooperated with federal investigators, the revelations might have been dangerous to Trump. Instead, Stone lied to Congress and threatened other witnesses.Just as Stone was supposed to go to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. Commutation was more useful to the cover-up than an outright pardon. A commuted person retains his Fifth Amendment right not to testify; a pardoned person loses that right.
  • The Justice Department would be debauched ever more radically, becoming Trump’s own law firm and spending taxpayer dollars to defend him against the consequences of his personal wrongdoing. The hyper-politicization of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments would spread to other agencies.
  • Directing Public Funds to Himself and His CompaniesIn the 230-year history of the United States, no president before Trump had ever tried to direct public dollars to his own companies—so no Congress had ever bothered to specifically outlaw such activity.
  • Trump’s superpower is his absolute shamelessness. He steals in plain view. He accepts bribes in a hotel located smack in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. His supporters do not object. His party in Congress is acquiescent. This level of corruption in American life is unprecedented.
  • A willingness to line the Trump family’s pockets has become a mark of obeisance and identity, like wearing cowboy boots during the George W.  Bush administration
  • The result of this almost-universal Republican complicity in Trump’s personal corruption has been the neutering of Congress’s ability to act when corruption is disclosed.
  • Republicans in the House cheerfully support Trump when he defies subpoenas from Democratic chairs, setting a precedent that probably will someday be used against them.
  • “No one could do anything to stop him.” In his first term, Trump purged the inspectors general from Cabinet departments and punished whistleblowers. In a second Trump term, the administration would operate ever more opaquely to cover up corruption and breaches in national security.
  • In a second Trump term, radical gerrymandering and ever more extreme voter suppression by Republican governors would become the party’s only path to survival in a country where a majority of the electorate strongly opposes Trump and his party. The GOP would complete its transformation into an avowedly antidemocratic party.
  • Inciting Political ViolenceTrump has used violence as a political resource since he first declared his candidacy, in the summer of 2015. But as his reelection prospects have dimmed in 2020, political violence has become central to Trump’s message. He wants more of it
  • “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Fox & Friends on August 27. Two nights later, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters headed into downtown Portland, Oregon, firing paintball guns and pepper spray, driving toward a confrontation during which one of them was shot dead.
  • The people best positioned to regulate the level of political violence in the country are local police, whom Trump has again and again urged to do their work in ways that support him, no matter how “tough” that requires them to be. The police are represented by unions often aligned with the Trump campaign
  • “I can tell you,” Trump said in a March 2019 interview with Breitbart News, “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
  • Trump’s appeal is founded on a racial consciousness and a racial resentment that have stimulated white racist terrorism in the United States and the world, from the New Zealand mosque slaughter (whose perpetrator invoked Trump) to the Pittsburgh synagogue murders to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. In recent weeks, political violence has caused those deaths in Kenosha and Portland
  • It’s a trick of authoritarian populists like Trump to proclaim themselves leaders of “the people,” even as large majorities of the electorate reject them. The authoritarian populist defines “the people” to exclude anyone who thinks differently. Only his followers count as legitimate citizens.
  • Legend has it that in the 1870s, “Boss” William Tweed, the famously corrupt New York City politician, taunted his critics by saying, “What are you going to do about it?”* Trump’s relentless defiance of law and decency does the same. Congress has done nothing. So it’s up to voters.
Javier E

Xi Jinping's Terrifying New China - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...620645

china Xi Jinping politics policy economics Culture history

shared by Javier E on 16 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • A century ago, when the CCP was formed, this ideology appealed greatly to young radicals who sought to strengthen a China laid prostrate before imperial powers. Chen Duxiu, one of the party’s founders, wrote that China must be purged of its entire traditional civilization if the Chinese people were to rise again. “I would much rather see the past culture of our nation disappear,” he wrote, “than see our race die out.”
  • In sum, the individual edicts form part of a larger, more important shift. For much of his rule, Xi has worked to reassert the power of the state and party, which had somewhat receded during the decades of reform.
  • A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, which was written before Xi became China’s paramount leader, paraphrases a professor and former friend of Xi’s who described him as “repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self-respect.” The professor speculated that if Xi gained power, “he would likely aggressively attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of the new moneyed class.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • We can’t rule out, however, that Xi sincerely believes in the course he’s taking. (Indeed, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive.) It’s easy to discount the CCP’s Marxist pronouncements as a necessary but rhetorical cover for the country’s raging capitalism, but Xi regularly reminds the nation that it is socialist, and praises the successes of China’s version of the ideology.
  • this current movement could follow those of the Communist past, which had “a pattern of first cracking down on whomever is identified as the corrupt, and then cracking down on whomever is identified as the impure, and then widening the lens to a more broad mass movement.”
  • Xi and his propaganda machine are presenting China’s authoritarian governance as a more appropriate model for the world than democratic capitalism, better able to create a more harmonious, just, and prosperous society, and more capable of achieving great tasks, such as conquering the coronavirus pandemic, than a dysfunctional, decadent, and declining America.
  • Xi “may believe the recent wave of crackdowns is necessary to bring about socialism at home to differentiate from capitalism as practiced in the West.”
  • That raises the ugly prospect of the competition between the U.S. and China becoming more like the Cold War—a battle between ideologically opposed political, economic, and social systems.
  • That is, if Xi’s new China succeeds. By attacking the wealthy, constraining private enterprise, and strangling education, Xi could discourage entrepreneurship and independent thinking, the magic ingredients for technological breakthroughs and innovative products. Starting a company is already a risky business. Why attempt it if you’ll end up in trouble? By experimenting with Chinese society, Xi is gambling that his bid for social control won’t smother the incentives and initiative that the economy requires to excel.
  • The West is convinced that political and social freedoms and economic progress are inseparable. Xi and his Communist cadres do not agree, and, in their minds, they have China’s four-decade record of triumphs to prove their point. China’s leader appears to believe that greater top-down control will ensure his country’s continued ascent, not derail it.
zachcutler

American vigilante hacker The Jester defaces Russian government website - Oct. 22, 2016 - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

US cyber crisis

shared by zachcutler on 24 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • American vigilante hacker sends Russia a warning
  • "Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message," he wrote. "Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed."
  • Stolen emails have been taken by Russia and published by WikiLeaks. Russia and President Vladimir Putin have denied involvement. The Jester referenced Putin's denial in his webpage graffiti.
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  • MID.ru is the official website of the Russian agency that is in charge of maintaining that country's international diplomacy -- equivalent to the U.S. Department of State.
  • Jester has taken down jihadist websites, hacking into communication forums, and identifying potential terrorist threats. Ex-FBI agents have called him "the Batman of the internet." CNNMoney profiled this mysterious vigilante last year.
  • In an exclusive interview with CNNMoney this weekend, Jester said he chose to attack Russia out of frustration for the massive DNS cyberattack that knocked out a portion of the internet in the United States on Friday.
  • As of 11 a.m. ET Saturday, the message remained online. Jester wants the Russians to take it seriously. He's not the only American hacker with this kind of capability. "Think of this as a professional courtesy," his public warning states. "Or if you prefer message from 'USA with love.'"
abbykleman

'We Need to Clean This Up': Clinton Aide's Newly Public Email Shows Concern - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ks-hillary-clinton-emails.html

shared by abbykleman on 26 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 26 Oct 16
     
    In a March 2015 interview, President Obama said that he had learned about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state "the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports." But that assertion concerned aides of Mrs.
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