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Comment by raxxorrax | Hacker News Reader

The whole Russian story was a scam. We have documents saying that is was told to abuse FISA powers. Not that I like the persons it was employed against, but it is far larger than watergate if we had honest discussion about it.

If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.

You are spreading lies.

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But it worked. Look at how easily we can be manipulated once we're told we're under attack by a foreign power. Propaganda works.

James Comey knew this just as well as Senator McCarthy did. They didn't even need to change the protagonist.

This time the candidates are going to fight over which is more antagonistic to China. Turns out Russia is a weak country that has very little reach outside of itself other than the activities of its billionaire oligarchs. China is a far more believable big bad.

>The whole Russian story was a scam.

Tell that to Adrian Chen or anyone that has actually investigated Russia's meddling in foreign affairs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

This was reported before the election detailing the agency that would go on to be fingered by the state department and others in their role in US election meddling.

This involved actual reported places, actual employees. Same with with "Guccifer 2.0" and "CyberBerkut" or any of the other Russian fronts Assange worked with.

>You are spreading lies.

You'll be able to find specific things I've said and detail how they are lies right? Because you have factual information about this yes?

Of course Russia meddles in election, the US does that too. That is not relevant to the FISA abuse wich let to severe surveillance of the current administration to find a straw to attach it to them. They didn't find one btw. which is unusual in politics. Trump may indeed be extremely clean and that is something quite hard to say.

I downvoted this comment because it is dizzying how quickly you moved the goal posts from "the whole Russia thing was a scam" to "of course Russia meddled".

I've got to say, when I hear 'the whole Russia thing' I assume people mean that the Trump administration broke the law to co-operate with Russia. That is a very different question from whether Russia decided to throw it's weight behind a candidate. Doesn't look to me like a shifting of goal posts at all.

A reading of the actual facts seems to be in conflict with "The trump administration did not break the law" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

There's very little argument about whether trump broke the law (he did) - it was just a matter of whether his corrupt party would vote for impeachment (they didn't.)

The link you posted refers to the Ukraine aid scandal, not 'that whole Russia thing'. Do people honestly not remember that in 2016-2017 the smoking gun was thought to be 'Russian Collusion'?

Interesting. That is not what President Trump means when he talks about "the Russia scam". He still maintains (in conflict with his own intelligence apparatus) that there was no active campaign to meddle in the election at all. If he had been making the argument from the start that yes, there was meddling, but that his campaign was completely uninvolved in it, and that even if it may have benefitted him this time, we should take defensive steps for the future because that is in our nation's best interest, then I would be a lot more sympathetic to your argument here. But that is not what happened; he has maintained that the whole thing is a scam, so I think a more narrow reading of what scam we're talking about is extremely over-charitable.

Would admitting that the country of Russia exists be a goalpost move from "the whole Russia thing was a scam"?

The idea that if Russia had an opinion about a US election and utilized its diplomatic powers to encourage its preferred outcome, all of the endless conspiracies about Russian meddling have been verified - it's not good.

It's not as bad as the thing where if a Russian national ever spoke to anyone, "Russia" was involved.

Russia meddled on both sides of the political aisle in the 2016 election - The Steele dossier was primary evidence used in the FISA surveillance warrant application for Carter Page [1] despite earlier official statements from House Democrats that the dossier did not inform the FISA court [2]. We also have significant evidence in the form of State Dept official communication with Steele (released by FOIA) [3] that two of the sources for the Steele dossier information were Russian government officials, one a former head of Russian intelligence (summarized here [4]). This is not to mention the other malfeasance by the FBI including forging e-mails in order to obtain a FISA renewal. This is serious stuff.

So the one-sided reporting of Russia meddling is indeed a scam. Russia meddled on behalf* (originally said behest - wrong word as far as we know) of both candidates in order to sow discord. The meddling against Clinton is well known, probably the wikileaks emails and a bunch of Facebook ads. The meddling against Trump's campaign resulted in constitutional violations by a court which is only made accountable to the public by the Inspector General report - which the mainstream media has broadly ignored or mischaracterized because it does not support their narrative that Russia meddled only on behalf of Trump. As well as Russia, our own government also meddled against Trump's administration - and they appeared to coordinate to do so. See 18 U.S. Code § 2384.

[1] https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf (pp. vii)

[2] https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/redacted_minori...

[3] https://www.scribd.com/document/409446360/CU-FOIA-Document-R...

[4] https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/16/steele-dossier-sources-st...

Adrian Chen actually complained about how people were exaggerating and misusing his reporting on the Internet Research Agency.[1]

> The thing is, I don't really want to be an expert on the Internet Research Agency and Russian online propaganda. I agree with my colleague Masha Gessen that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. In the Times Magazine article that supposedly made me an authority, I detailed some of the Agency's disturbing activities, including its attempts to spread false reports of a terrorist attack in Louisiana and to smear me as a neo-Nazi sympathizer. But, if I could do it all over again, I would have highlighted just how inept and haphazard those attempts were.

Adrian Chen also gave an interview with Chris Hayes on the Internet Research Agency, in which he made the point that it was an unsophisticated marketing campaign, staffed by around 90 people with a poor grasp of the English language, American politics and culture.[2]

1. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-so-cal...

2. https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/inside-the-russian-troll-...

There is so much to talk about with Russia though.

a) Widespread evidence not just from US but from UK and EU of efforts to interfere in elections and referenda e.g. Brexit.

b) State sponsored propaganda via social networks which even as recent as last week was having to be removed.

c) Continued meetings between Trump and Putin where only translators are present i.e. no State Dept representatives.

d) 20+ years of Trump Organization taking loans from Russian oligarchs via Bayrock.

Yes, if I need an explanation of governance failure, I would blame Russia too. I just don't get why you believe it without any evidence.

Not only was it a scam, it was the first time in US history that a shadowy cabal of unelected federal government officials tried to invalidate the results of an election. It also led to the erosion of rule of law, which will impact the US greatly in the future.

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