US intelligence report: Vladimir Putin 'ordered' operation to get Trump elected | Hacker News Reader

US intelligence report: Vladimir Putin 'ordered' operation to get Trump elected

theguardian.com

9 pointsUdik7 comments

That our intelligence communities are brazen enough to release reports without evidence, expecting us to believe them with appeal to their authority alone, should cause anyone who considers themselves a liberal, classical or otherwise, to take pause, regardless of who you voted for this election.

This undermines our democratic institutions far more than any possible Russian attempts to manipulate events to get Trump elected.

The situation feels tragic. We have the most powerful country in the world, a country that has almost always adopted an aggressive attitude towards its enemies, that is openly accusing an enemy superpower of having influenced the democratic elections of its new president. Implicitly, it is delegitimizing its own democratically elected president.

Trump has been democratically elected, the people have spoken and the elections can hardly be invalidated. But if he stays, he's at high risk of being considered by the institutions of his own country and by international political actors the puppet of a rival country.

Nothing good can come out of this.

I share the sentiment.

I am almost certain it is worse to sow distrust in the institution of the presidency than any minor campaign influence Russia might had had. The campaign to delegitimize the presidency seems to be coming from our own media sensationalizing these reports.

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.

Was the head of the FBI taking orders from Putin?

MY intelligence report: The NSA 'ordered' to hack voting machines, to leak DNC and Clinton mails, to get Donald Trump elected and to blame Vladimir Putin.

Face the truth: this is CLASSIFIED. Couldn't they just shut up?

Those emails were actually written by Clinton and Co. So the accusation is the Russians told Americans the truth?

Says report consisting of Not One tiny tit-bit of evidence and a whole lot of moaning about Russia Today.

slow clap

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