Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From McClatchy article:

The BBC reported that the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia. One of McClatchy’s sources confirmed the report.

Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she had no knowledge that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant had been issued. However, she stressed that such warrants are issued only if investigators can demonstrate “probable cause” that a crime has been committed and the information in Steele’s dossier couldn’t have met that test.

“If, in fact, law enforcement has obtained a FISA warrant, that is an indication that additional evidence exists outside of the dossier,” she said.

Wait, no! Don't tell me - the IC might know more than they want to reveal? That cannot be!

So is someone able to determine/verify if a FISA warrant has been issued?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From McClatchy article:

The BBC reported that the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia. One of McClatchy’s sources confirmed the report.

Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she had no knowledge that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant had been issued. However, she stressed that such warrants are issued only if investigators can demonstrate “probable cause” that a crime has been committed and the information in Steele’s dossier couldn’t have met that test.

“If, in fact, law enforcement has obtained a FISA warrant, that is an indication that additional evidence exists outside of the dossier,” she said.

Wait, no! Don't tell me - the IC might know more than they want to reveal? That cannot be!

Anonymous wrote:There is plenty. Unfortunately, we will learn the details a bit too late.

Anonymous wrote:From McClatchy article:

The BBC reported that the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia. One of McClatchy’s sources confirmed the report.

Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she had no knowledge that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant had been issued. However, she stressed that such warrants are issued only if investigators can demonstrate “probable cause” that a crime has been committed and the information in Steele’s dossier couldn’t have met that test.

“If, in fact, law enforcement has obtained a FISA warrant, that is an indication that additional evidence exists outside of the dossier,” she said.

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.

Investigators are examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win, the two sources said. One of the allegations involves whether a system for routinely paying thousands of Russian-American pensioners may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers, the two sources said.

The BBC reported that the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia. One of McClatchy’s sources confirmed the report.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Different PP. I appreciate your sharing these sources and alternative viewpoints. My take on them is that they amount to an attempt to find holes in the information that has been provided to the public thus far. This is an important thing to do, and I hope people continue to do it. But to suggest that these are definitive evidence that the claims that Russia is behind the hacks or that the information compromising Trump is a complete overstatement. I think the articles go too far (or at least as far as the people they are criticizing) in ascribing motivation to the IC and Obama Administration to completely fabricate this information or to be overly quick to blame Russia. The article casting doubt on the dossier is even more ludicrous, since it mostly amounts to a journalist arguing that a former MI6 agent's information must be suspect because he was unable to get similar information from credible sources. Again, no one has said that every thing in that dossier is true...but there is a suggestion that enough of it could be true to warrant further investigation. The nature of espionage is that you are going to get a lot of half-truths and fabrications, but they are clues about where to investigate further. Steele did not dump those memos into the public sphere, he gave them to investigative and law enforcement agencies for further follow up.

The reality is that the general public has only been made aware of a portion of the information the IC has. It's not surprising to me that the information that they've shared so far is not definitive, because it's the unclassified portion of what they've shared. Nothing in the links you've shared points to an alternative, more plausible culprit. It just states that the evidence is not enough to "convict" Russia...which I think most reasonable lefties believe to be the case.

It's notable that Counterpunch is raising alarms that blaming Russia could lead to a new Cold War, which suggests that they have a concrete motive in casting doubt on these accusations. If you ask me, Russia's behavior over the past few years seems to be angling for a new Cold War, and I agree that if they are indeed found to be behind these activities it could start one. I'm certainly not in favor of that outcome, but I'm also not in favor of dismissing information and conclusions out-of-hand just to avoid it either.

I've been hesitant to reply to you, as I worry you're a troll, but breifly:

-Journalists are supposed to question the powerful, finding "holes" in their narratives. That's much of their value proposition to consumers, they shouldn't be stenographers.

-Nothing factual has been presented as evidence of 'Russian hacking'. Nothing. It's all opinion at this point, it's plausible yes, but these pronoucements fail to acknowledge (deliberately?) that there are clearly other possibilities. Given the severity of the allegations, claiming the IC knows more, but refuses to share any of that, should be a red flag to anyone with even minimal skepticism.

-Doubting a shoestring website's motives since they don't want a 'second cold war' is silly. Remember that a second cold war is worth many trillion $ to some, money that comes from the rest of us. Doubt the people who will be receiving those trillions first, they have much more reason to lie through their teeth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
-Nothing factual has been presented as evidence of 'Russian hacking'. Nothing. It's all opinion at this point, it's plausible yes, but these pronoucements fail to acknowledge (deliberately?) that there are clearly other possibilities. Given the severity of the allegations, claiming the IC knows more, but refuses to share any of that, should be a red flag to anyone with even minimal skepticism.

The bolded statement s patently false. This has been covered over and over again. On top of that, even Trump acknowledges the Russians did the hacking.

+1 This is why Trump needs to be more careful about what he says. People believe what he says. He shouts out lies for all to hear, for weeks on end, but his mea culpa is quieter and stated only once. But his followers don't hear that part. They just hold on to the lies.

Haha, keep dreaming. I've poured over the evidence presented publicly and it's all about conjecture.

Basically, the malware was constructed with X-agent, formerly a Russian project, though currently available to anyone if you know where to look.
The computer security firm Crowdstrike lumped the malware in with a whole set of other malware based on a black box methodology. Basically it 'looks similar' to other malware, also tagged with an unverified claim of being Russian, upon a few suppositions, including one that says Russian hackers work 9-5, Moscow time, so if we look at malware compiled then, we should suspect GRU/FSB. That's basically it and why the DNI report needed to hype the sorry Russian propaganda channel.

The "Russian's hacked the election" is birther-level stupidity. I guess we know that whatever people's politics are, they are equally stupid, particularly when an election is won in a surprising fashion by their opponents. Lol!

That you rely on an obvious liar like Trump (it was actually Preibus, btw) for confirmation it makes this even more hilarious!