Democracy Has Prevailed.

December 30, 2016

THE FBI/DHS REPORT And The Delegitimization Of The Trump Presidency

On December 29, a Joint Assessment Report (JAR) issued by the FBI and Homeland Security described the efforts the Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) went through to "to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election."

From the report, this is the most important sentence:
The U.S. Government confirms that two different RIS actors participated in the intrusion into a U.S. political party.
It's confirmed.

And with that confirmation, this happened - by Executive Order, President Obama expelled about 3 dozen Russian diplomats accused of being spies.

Of course Trump said this:
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things” after the Obama administration issued sanctions against Russia for its alleged 2016 election hacking.

“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said in a written response released four hours after the announcement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
Next week?

The FBI confirms Russian Intelligence hacked their way into the US political system and you're waiting until after the Rose Bowl Parade to get the details?

From The Atlantic we read:
“It’s all just an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump.” That’s the argument you hear from Trump supporters each time new information comes to light about how hard Russian spy services worked to damage Hillary Clinton. You heard it again on Thursday.

The Trump supporters are 100 percent right: The information is delegitimizing. The president-elect of the United States reportedly owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service. It’s hard to imagine a crisis of presidential legitimacy more extreme than that. But that’s no argument against airing this information. It’s precisely why the information must be aired. [Italics in Original.]
You remember the years our BFFs on the right spent demanding to see Obama's Birth Certificate (even though two were issued), right?  (Reminder: The little-handed pussy-grabber was one of them.)  That was their attempt to delegitimitize Obama's presidency.

To an extent, it worked as this poll data from the NYTimes show.  Just before the election ("election"?) a fifth of the electorate and a third of Republicans believed the lie that Obama wasn't born in the US.

That was a false attempt at delegitimization whereas this shit is real.  The Russians tilted the scale - the FBI and Homeland Security confirmed it.

And if Trump decides (as he can) to undo this Executive Order?
“If a future president decided he wanted to allow in a large tranche of Russian intelligence agents, presumably a future president could do that,” a senior Obama administration official said on a Thursday press call. “We don’t think it would make much sense to reopen Russian intelligence compounds. ... We don’t think it makes much sense to invite back in Russian intelligence agents.”
Especially since they're from the same intelligence services that helped him win the election ("election"?) in the first place.

Hmmm, wouldn't that be...treasonous?

Resist normalization of the vulgar sexual predator/war crimes loving Trump.