Three Trump Officials Have Confirmed Russian Interference In Last 10 Days

There are a large number among Trump's base who will often claim, as Trump himself will sometimes do, that the "Russia thing" is made up. This is at complete odds with not only the assessment of the last administration but also with those of the current one.

In the last ten days, the Secretary of State, Director of the CIA and the DHS's cybersecurity chief have all confirmed Russian interference in the last election in no uncertain terms, one of them said he expects attacks in the midterms and another that the Russians are already meddling in the midterms.

Most recently, it was the DHS's head of cybersecurity, Jeanette Manfra, who confirmed in an NBC interview that of election-related systems targeted in 21 states during the 2016 election, a small number had been successfully penetrated.



Fox News - Top DHS official says Russian hackers infiltrated US voter systems in 2016

The head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security revealed Wednesday that Russia managed to hack into voter registration rolls of several states during the 2016 presidential election.

U.S. intelligence official Jeanette Manfra told NBC News her department saw a small number of states where Moscow was “successfully” able to hack voters systems, despite there being no evidence that registration rolls were altered in anyway.

“We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated,” she said.

She declined to go into further detail about the classified information but said there was “no doubt” the Russian government was behind the attacks.

From what has been reported going back to the Summer, the systems in question were not directly involved in the voting process itself. So there's no indication that anything was compromised that could have led to something like vote tallies being changed or voters being removed from the registry. These are election-related, public facing servers. However, some of them did contain voter rolls and at least a small number of them were successfully hacked.

As the Fox News article points out, this week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Russians are already meddling in the midterms.

Fox News - Russians already meddling in US midterms, Tillerson says

“I don't know that I would say we are better prepared, because the Russians will adapt as well,” Tillerson said in an exclusive interview with Fox News in Bogota, Colombia. “The point is, if it's their intention to interfere, they are going to find ways to do that. We can take steps we can take but this is something that, once they decide they are going to do it, it's very difficult to preempt it.”

Russia is already attempting to interfere “in the U.S. in 2018” ahead of congressional midterm elections as it did in the 2016 general election, he said.

“I think it's important we just continue to say to Russia, ‘Look, you think we don't see what you're doing. We do see it and you need to stop. If you don't, you're going to just continue to invite consequences for yourself,’” said Tillerson.

While I'm on the topic of Trump admin officials plainly confirming Russian interference in our elections, I'll also note that a bit over a week ago, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a BBC interview that he had every expectation of the Russians trying to interfere in the 2018 midterms.

Russia 'will target US mid-term elections' says CIA chief

Mike Pompeo told the BBC there had been no significant diminishing of Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.

Even though there has been co-operation in counter-terrorism (the CIA helped stop a plot in St Petersburg last year), Mr Pompeo says he still sees Russia primarily as an adversary, sharing the concerns in many European countries about its subversion. "I haven't seen a significant decrease in their activity," he said.

Asked if his concerns extended to the upcoming US mid-term elections in November, he replied: "Of course. I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that, but I'm confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won't be great."
Image caption Mr Pompeo says his mission has been to unleash and unburden the CIA

Mr Pompeo says the US is engaged in trying to counter Russian subversion. Some of this work was not the mission of the CIA such as helping people validate sources of information.

But hey, that Russia stuff — totally made up by Democrats who were trying to do *something bad* to Trump — and pushed through the left-leaning media.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Already posted

DHS cyber chief: Russia 'successfully penetrated' some state voter rolls

a reply to: watchitburn

Well, we can fix that. Hold on.

ETA:

The part about Jeanette Manfra's statements was only the first third of the OP and the overarching point the OP was really about how Russian interference in our election is reality, that the admin (sans Trump depending on how he feels and the venue) doesn't deny it and furthermore, that they we can expect more of the same.

Already Posted HERE As previously stated

Closed Duplicate

Thread is reopened.

ATS allows a legit Breaking New thread and another on the same topic in another forum.

a reply to: theantediluvian

How do you "hack" freely available information like voter registration rolls? Everyone says nothing was altered, so how does that work?

They accessed it maybe? and looked at the state web sites?

LOL

So in "no uncertain terms", where are the event logs from the servers that show a malicious attack regarding the election? These 20 states had nothing done to them, so the attack was a test? What systems were tested for penetration?

Unless you have more information, this is opinion appealing to authority.

The DHS has had to retract these exact statements in the past when they were pushed and responded that definitively they were HACKED. That is not true by the farthest stretch of the word.

The only successful hack was to the DNC servers and Clindin staff email accounts. The DNC attack was a local (not remote from Russia) hack as there was actually evidence of such within the leaked files. The emails COULD have been hacked remotely but who did it is still unresolved. It wasnt Guccifer 2.0

But you knew all that.

a reply to: theantediluvian

My vote for Trump had nothing to do with Russia.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Most intel grpups have been saying russians have been doing things like this for years, yet no one carewd until trump won.

Strange isnt it?

In fact Obama laughed at romney for even suggesting russia was a problem, and claimed there was no way russia could hack an election. Heck, he sold them rights to uranium knowing this.

So of course it not surprising this happened, just like the US is doing similar things and far worse in other elections.

However, looking at voter rolls, facebook trolls, twitter bots; none of that seems to be even close to flip the election.

It pales in comparison to say, the BBC favoring hillary. Or the MSM that overwhelmingly did.

And lets not forget the DHS themselves have been connected hacked voter rolls.

www.cnbc.com...

Strange isnt that?

Now we have claims that russia is pushing BLM, pipeline protests, anti trump protests. ALso Jill stein has been named in the dossier for having connections to russia.

SO I guess we need to view all of those causes with suspicion now too, right?

Of course we shuld up cyber security, of course we should not let russians do this; but lets not be naive that this was the first time, ot that russians are the only ones doing it.

The hysteria is just because people want to use this as an excuse to bring down trump. If that wasnt the case, there would be outrage and investigations into Obam not only laughing about this problem he knew was occuring, but going so far as to help russia accomplish their goals by selling uranium rights.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

a reply to: theantediluvian
I don't believe that the argument was ever about if Russia tried to influence the election.

The U.S. does it all the time.

The argument was if Trump colluded with the Russians to sway the election. Something which there is simply no evidence of!

The left just moves the goal post every time their story falls apart.

Show me some evidence of Trump collusion. There is none.

By the way there is plenty of evidence that shows Hillary Russian collusion.

a reply to: Diisenchanted


lololol

always with - show the evidence, and ignore the fact that 4 have already been indidted.

the investigation isn't over in case you didn't know.

evidence of hillary - hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a reply to: knoxie
She paid for the dossier. Plenty of evidence there.

So you simply repeat the narrative.

a reply to: knoxie

Indicted on collusion with Russians?


Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI, in cooperating with Mueller. He is now suing and asking for charges dropped considering how the investigation was founded on a failure of the judicial process.

Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI about speaking to a Russia's ambassador. Not for COLLUDING with him.

Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were indicted in October. They pleaded not guilty and had been ordered under house arrest. The charges against Manafort and Gates are unrelated to the Trump campaign.

George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to making a false statement to the FBI after he lied about his interactions with foreign nationals, including two Russians. The FBI said Papadopoulos "falsely described his interactions with a certain foreign contact who discussed 'dirt' related to emails" concerning Clinton.

None of that is about collusion. Those indicted are mostly for lying to people heading a weaponized federal witch hunt. Go figure. I would have lied about not knowing my commie neighbor during the Mccarthy era trials.

But Eff it right?

EDIT TO ADD:

One week after the election, Jeh Johnson, President Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, admitted that our election system had not been hacked and that no ballot counts had been changed.

Recently, the Department of Homeland Security had to retract a claim that Russian hackers had gone after voter-registration systems in places such as California and Wisconsin after they said their systems hadn’t been targeted.

link

Looks like the DHS is not a trustworthy source for these claims.

a reply to: tadaman

How do you "hack" freely available information like voter registration rolls? Everyone says nothing was altered, so how does that work?

They accessed it maybe? and looked at the state web sites?

There hasn't been enough information released about the details of what was probed/hacked to speculate as to what their goals were but I would presume it wasn't to obtain public records. (not particularly cost effective if nothing else)

That said, how many non-nefarious motives can you think of?

Unless you have more information, this is opinion appealing to authority.

What opinion are you referring to? "No uncertain terms?" When asked if the Russian government was behind the attacks in question, she said, "No doubt." That seems fairly definitive to me. If you don't believe Trump's DHS, I don't necessarily blame you but the fact remains, that's what she said.

The DHS has had to retract these exact statements in the past when they were pushed and responded that definitively they were HACKED. That is not true by the farthest stretch of the word.

Under Jeh Johnson?

The only successful hack was to the DNC servers and Clindin staff email accounts. The DNC attack was a local (not remote from Russia) hack as there was actually evidence of such within the leaked files.

You're referring to the arguments set out in the blog post from "The Forensicator?" I'd be happy to point you to posts I've authored rebutting the analysis. Even if you accept the plausibility of the hypothesis — which is built on a bunch of dubious assumptions — it does not "prove" anything. It's a possible interpretation of the data that ignores a whole host of scenarios that are at least equally likely.

I'm also pretty sure I remember that when I looked into it, the files in the archive were from the DCCC, not the DNC.

The emails COULD have been hacked remotely but who did it is still unresolved. It wasnt Guccifer 2.0

Just about anything is "unresolved" in somebody's eyes. There are people who legitimately believe the Earth is flat and won't be convinced otherwise. I've posted plenty about publicly available data from multiple independent sources. I've pointed out evidence from within the WikiLeaks released emails. I've pointed out other threads of evidence such as the fact that the FBI knew the DNC was hacked and tried to warn them. Most recently, two Dutch media outlets reported that Dutch intelligence had compromised and monitored Cozy Bear during the period of the DNC hacks which I posted about here.

There's no amount of evidence that will suffice for people who are determined to believe otherwise. All evidence presented will either be ignored, not enough or suspect.

But hey, it's cool, by all means believe what you want.

a reply to: theantediluvian

There's no amount of evidence that will suffice for people who are determined to believe otherwise. All evidence presented will either be ignored, not enough or suspect.

How do you start with saying "there is no evidence to show you" and end with that crapola.

You are implying I should listen to the opinion of intelligence officials saying the election was influenced, hacked, altered, manipulated, whatever.

I ask for evidence since thats all a logical person can do. I don't even care if you like me when you do provide it. You have not yet.

I have no idea what the "forensicator" is. I dont care either.

EDIT TO ADD:
The DCCC was also targeted. That WAS Guccifer 2.0. He is a state controlled hacker as far as I am aware. LOL

The SEPARATE, and original, DNC hack was the source of the main WIKILEAKS that influenced the election next to the podesta emails. That was a physical USB connection to a local network computer not connected to wifi or the internet. It was an internal network.

The DCCC attack was a cake walk /permitted controlled intrusion. There is much speculation since the leaked emails werent really damning. They were fluff. Also, much more important information was somehow ignored altogether like financial info and such.


ALSO
All those 3 links have been addressed. The emails COULD have been Russia, but your threads have zilch beyond assumptions its them, because no one else tries to hack famous peoples crap.

Hacking is mentioned in name as a POSSIBILITY in the rest. Not a definitive or even plausible argument. Specifically "Russian" hacking is even more of an assumption, since there is no evidence of Russia on all this beyond some TOR exit nodes mentioned out of hundreds more on some of the later disseminations of the WIKILEAKS leaks. Thats retarded and shows they know less than me and dirt.

I really have been paying attention my friend. You need to be honest. There is no evidence.

a reply to: Grambler

Most intel grpups have been saying russians have been doing things like this for years, yet no one carewd until trump won.

Strange isnt it?

"Things like this?" No, the Russians have never hacked the servers of one candidate's party and dumped emails and documents, meted out over the course of months to maximize impact, in a US presidential election. They haven't phished the emails of one candidate's campaign chairman and dumped those either.

Social media, despite how it might seem now, of course hasn't been around very many presidential election cycles so it's unlikely that they were running tens of thousands of bots in the past and nobody noticed. The bots they didn't have weren't pushing fake news from fake news websites that didn't exist.

How big were Twitter and Facebook in 2012 compared to now? How about 2008? Prior to that, nothing.

I could go on here but the point is what happened in the last election was unprecedented and making vague statements about *somebody* saying that "things like this have been happening" is just false equivalency for the purposes of being dismissive.

And so no, I do not find it strange and I don't think that "people only care now" is a legitimate assertion because I wholly disagree that anything in recent memory compares.

In fact Obama laughed at romney for even suggesting russia was a problem, and claimed there was no way russia could hack an election. Heck, he sold them rights to uranium knowing this.

Yeah and millions of the next election's Trump voters were busily defending Romney at the time and are singing a completely different tune now. Also, again, false equivalency. What Obama was talking about was the military threat in the context of the usual GOP claims that we need to dump ever more money into the military industrial complex.

So of course it not surprising this happened, just like the US is doing similar things and far worse in other elections.

Did we do it to Russia? Has Russia done it elsewhere? Why is this argument supposed to be persuasive? Would the Russian sit on its hands and say, "Oh well comrades, the Americans got us! Guess we had it coming!"

However, looking at voter rolls, facebook trolls, twitter bots; none of that seems to be even close to flip the election.

It pales in comparison to say, the BBC favoring hillary. Or the MSM that overwhelmingly did.

Kinda useless to debate since there's no proving anything. You can say that and I can say that Hillary would have one without the hacking and neither us will ever be able to prove anything either way.

And lets not forget the DHS themselves have been connected hacked voter rolls.

This was dubious when it was claimed. IG findings said no.

Investigation shows DHS did not hack Georgia computers

"We have recently completed our investigation into these allegations and have determined that the activity Georgia noted on its computer networks was the result of normal and automatic computer message exchanges generated by the Microsoft applications involved," Inspector General John Roth wrote in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Monday.

Details in the article.

Strange isnt that?

Not so much as it turns out.

Now we have claims that russia is pushing BLM, pipeline protests, anti trump protests. ALso Jill stein has been named in the dossier for having connections to russia.

SO I guess we need to view all of those causes with suspicion now too, right?

Another false equivalency. You're talking about apples and... ants when it comes to the scale of their activities. Also, it's incorrect that Russia interfering to favor Trump is necessarily reason to suspect Trump or his people of anything. The fact that he surrounded himself with the people he did, including Paul Manafort, while fawning over Putin, while all this was happening does however seem a little strange.

Of course we shuld up cyber security, of course we should not let russians do this; but lets not be naive that this was the first time, ot that russians are the only ones doing it.

Well at least we can agree on that!

The hysteria is just because people want to use this as an excuse to bring down trump.

I disagree with the hysteria characterization. There are definitely excitable idiots aplenty wherever you look but that's got nothing to do with what actually happened, which is of serious concern no matter what those idiots feel about it.

And of course, every theory in TrumpWorld ends with "to hurt Trump." Nobody does more to hurt Trump than Trump. Well, that might not be entirely true. He's gotten plenty of help from his entourage.

If that wasnt the case, there would be outrage and investigations into Obam not only laughing about this problem he knew was occuring, but going so far as to help russia accomplish their goals by selling uranium rights.

As previously noted, I disagree with the notion that "this problem was occurring" and as I said, the laughing at Romney in the debate was not about election meddling, it was about the military threat. I'm not really sure how you tie that in with Uranium One other than the failed Russia Reset was probably responsible for the admin being more favorable to the deal than they otherwise would have been.

It's funny that you find Obama's attempts to improve relations with Russia to be a problem but his successor — knowing exactly how that bit us in the ass only a few years prior — came out yammering about "wouldn't it be nice to be friends with Russia?" and I don't recall anything but cheering from the Trump supporters.

Related:

New report claims DNC hack was an inside job — not Russia

By Bob Fredericks

August 15, 2017 | 12:46pm

A group of former US intelligence officials contend that the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computers in 2016 was an inside job.

The group, which calls itself the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS, said there was an insider leak that occurred thanks to someone with access to a DNC computer.

Their arguments were first reported by the left-wing magazine The Nation, which said that the group claimed to have forensic evidence to back up its contentions.

The handful of ex-CIA and NSA officials also argued there was no evidence that a Romanian hacker identified as Guccifer 2.0 broke into the DNC system and passed embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton to WikiLeaks at the behest of the Russians.

link

We can get into the actual details of this if anyone would like to.

January 5, 2017

It has been several weeks since the New York Times reported that "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" led the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin "deployed computer hackers" to help Donald Trump win the election. But the evidence released so far has been far from overwhelming.

The long anticipated Joint Analysis Reportissued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI on Dec. 29 met widespread criticism in the technical community. Worse still, some of the advice it offered led to a very alarmist false alarmabout supposed Russian hacking into a Vermont electric power station.

Advertised in advance as providing proof of Russian hacking, the report fell embarrassingly short of that goal.

The thin gruel that it did contain was watered down further by the following unusual warning atop page 1: "DISCLAIMER: This report is provided 'as is' for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within."

link

a reply to: theantediluvian

No one denies Russia interfered.. they've done it for many elections in the past - just like the US interferes in every election around the world for the last few decades - funny, OBAMA and Clinton didn't seem to care about it during 2004, 2008 or 2012....

What we (logical thinking people) do push back on is this ridiculous concept that you seem to push that Trump's administration/campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary.

That did not happen,

What did happen, was Clinton colluded with Russia, DOJ, FBI, media and Obama administration to try and rig an election.
They then went on a campaign of misinfo, lies, false evidence and slander with the media to try and tear down an elected president.

There's a difference and you know it!

a reply to: Grambler

However, looking at voter rolls, facebook trolls, twitter bots; none of that seems to be even close to flip the election.

It pales in comparison to say, the BBC favoring hillary. Or the MSM that overwhelmingly did.

Precisely. They did everything they could, including ham fisting other contenders,*cough* Berney, and she still lost. Blaming Russia or alluding to interference gives them an out to the public and media (who are complicit in the game).

They need to use that political tactic of “repeat it until its true”.

Russian interference is factual true but did not effect the the election. Hilary did that when she ran.