So yesterday I saw a report on
Arstechnica that stated:
The scope of the attacks was so broad, Bloomberg reports, that in October of 2016, then-President Barack Obama directly called Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin on the "cyber-hotline." The cyber-hotline "red phone" was set up in 2013 by Obama and Putin as part of an effort to reduce the risk of a "cyber incident" escalating; Obama used it to present evidence of the attacks and warn Putin that the intrusions could trigger a larger conflict between the US and Russia.
Now this, if true is a big deal. Therefore we MUST go to the
original Bloomberg article.
In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter.
Further:
That idea would obsess the Obama White House throughout the summer and fall of 2016, outweighing worries over the DNC hack and private Democratic campaign emails given to Wikileaks and other outlets, according to one of the people familiar with those conversations.
After the Obama administration transmitted its documents and Russia asked for more information, the hackers’ work continued. According to the leaked NSA document, hackers working for Russian military intelligence were trying to take over the computers of 122 local election officials just days before the Nov. 8 election. [my underlines]
So according to this reporting, as soon as July of 2016 and as late as "days before" Nov 8, the Obama administration apparently KNEW of "Russian hacking". What did Obama tell the public during this time?
Here's
Obama on August of 2016:
Obama ridiculed Donald Trump's recent suggestion that the election system could be rigged, called on the candidate to act like a president since he's soon to be briefed on confidential information and implied that he didn't believe the billionaire businessman could be trusted with America's nuclear codes...
Of course the election won't be rigged. What does that mean?" Obama said, struggling to disguise his contempt. "If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is propagated across the country, including in places like Texas where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense."
Did Obama or anyone else know, in AUGUST about this alleged Russian activity? Lets' assume he did not. Lets move forward.
Here's
a report from the NY Times dated Oct 18 2016:
At a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said, “I have never seen in my lifetime, or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place.”..
...it fell to Mr. Obama to rebut Mr. Trump’s assertions. The president did so with obvious relish.
There is no evidence, he said, that a presidential election has ever been rigged. He said there was little indication that it could be, given that elections are run by state and local authorities, with people from both parties supervising polling sites and ballot counting.
Mind you Obama was referencing charges that internal election rigging could occur, BUT Obama said directly that "there is
no evidence of a presidential election
ever being rigged and that there was "
little indication that it could be"
Well this is either a flat out lie or Obama did not know at this time of the alleged Russian hacking.
Here's a later
report from after the election:
“Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people,” it added...
The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials that they did not see “any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day.”
The administration said it remained “confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out.” It added: “As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”
We know this is after Obama phoned The Kremlin, because Bloomberg says so. So Obama is purposely not telling the public what he allegedly knows. Why? The reason given back then was that to discuss the scope of what they "knew" would have influenced the election. Now I suppose the argument is that publishing this information helps to depose Trump who was elected under what they
told the public was a fair election.
Now personally I'm not buying into the entire Russian hackers argument. We already know that intelligence agencies can and do create code and mount operations that look like some other agency. I also believe that Putin is using this US "own goal" of public discrediting of their own election to bolster his own image. The elected officials in Washington and elsewhere, both Republican and Democrat are doing far more damage to the US "democracy" [sic] with their so called "resistance" than anything Putin could have dreamed up while high on LSD.
