Hacker News Reader

> Bill Clinton's not in power, last time I checked

And neither is his wife.

One does wonder though if the same standards of foreign nations interfering in a U.S. election would have applied to Hillary if she'd been elected.

If memory serves me correctly however, anyone mentioning such things before the election was told that the U.S. election can't be rigged/influenced and to suggest so was an attempt to undermine democracy.

> People like Louise Mensch going around shouting "impeachment is coming!" to anyone who will listen isn't helping.

That's exactly my point. That overreaction is what's derailed it. There have been nothing but empty promises for "that's it, it is just around the corner, we have the smoking gun" and then digging deeper, there is not much to go on there.

> It's a modus-operandi of the Russian intelligence apparatus

I believe that. KGB has been doing that since it was formed. Technically they might not have been sophisticated but they were good at planting stories and spinning narratives. I remember the "US govt created AIDS to kill all the black people" fake news.

> Was it small-scale, or a massive operation?

The investigation has been going for a quite a while, I don't believe there is any evidence of meaningful interference at this point. Mostly it is about fatigue listening to empty promises. There is an opportunity cost here. The more effort is spend here, the less time, effort and attention is left for more important things.

But I also believe that any country out there with enough resources would trying to influence US officials. I gave an example of a Qatar handing out a $1M birthday gift to the husband of the US Secretary of State.

> Why? Bill Clinton's not in power, last time I checked?

His wife was in power. Who also later ran for President. Thought it was an interesting connection there.

> Almost the entire Wikipedia page for the foundation is taken up with "Legal & Ethical Controversies".

Exactly. Let's talk about that, there seems to be more there to go on than Russia.

> Going "but look at the Clintons!" rather undermines the discussion.

As I mentioned, that was more about the scale of what kind of evidence is expected given the allegation made, and the energy and time put into this topic. $100k worth of ads for Black Activism don't fall near that.

Honestly, with the level of scrutiny Trump is receiving by the types of people who would be willing to edit Wikipedia pages and who are prominent in tech and the media in general, it's completely unsurprising to see such a large "Legal & Ethical Controversies" section. The left is drowning in their own data because criticizing Trump is such a cheap way to get clicks these days. It's what leads to so many duds in terms of scandals, like this Russia nonsense.