Microsoft’s cybercrimes unit in Redmond, Wash. Firms like Microsoft and Google, because they sit atop global networks, have a front-seat view of suspicious activity. Credit…Kyle Johnson for The New York Times

The Russian military intelligence unit that attacked the Democratic National Committee four years ago is back with a series of new, more stealthy hacks aimed at campaign staff members, consultants and think tanks associated with both Democrats and Republicans.

That warning was issued on Thursday by the Microsoft Corporation, in an assessment that is far more detailed than any yet made public by American intelligence agencies.

The findings come one day after a government whistle-blower claimed that officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security suppressed intelligence concerning Russia’s continuing interference because it “made the president look bad,” and instructed government analysts to instead focus on interference by China and Iran.

Microsoft did find that Chinese and Iranian hackers have been active — but often not in the way President Trump and his aides have suggested.

Federal officials insisted that the Microsoft report was consistent with their own warnings, which named Russia, China and Iran as three nations seeking to gather information from the campaigns, and perhaps try to influence the outcome. But the most recent assessment by the director of national intelligence, last month, also said China preferred that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. win the 2020 election.

The Microsoft assessment may have complicated that finding because it found that Chinese hackers focused their attacks on the private email accounts of Mr. Biden’s campaign staff members, along with a range of other prominent people in academia and the national security establishment, including groups like the Atlantic Council and the Stimson Center.

Notably, only one of the Chinese targets detected by Microsoft was affiliated with Mr. Trump, a former administration official whom Microsoft declined to name.

Firms like Microsoft and Google, because they sit atop global networks, have a front-seat view of suspicious activity, and increasing motivation to make it public to warn their customers. The result, inevitably, is a tumble of reports from the private sector, which government intelligence officials will be forced to assess, along with their own findings.

Thea McDonald, the deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said: “We are a large target, so it is not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign or our staff. We work closely with our partners, Microsoft and others, to mitigate these threats.” She would not comment on specific cybersecurity measures the campaign was taking.

The Biden campaign said that it was “aware of reports from Microsoft that a foreign actor has made unsuccessful attempts to access the noncampaign email accounts of individuals affiliated with the campaign,” and that it was preparing for the inevitable onslaught of attacks in the coming weeks. While the campaign did not confirm the company’s reporting, it has taken issue with the director of national intelligence’s assessment, issued several weeks ago, that Chinese leaders prefer Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump.

The Microsoft investigation also concluded that hackers related to Russia’s G.R.U., the military intelligence unit that oversaw the “hack and leak” efforts in 2016 that made emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign public, were going to new lengths to hide their tracks. They are routing some of the attacks through Tor, a service that conceals the attackers’ whereabouts and identity, which slowed the effort to identify the hackers.

So far, Microsoft officials said they found no evidence that hacking efforts this year were successful, but corporate officials noted that they had limited vision into Russia’s overall operations. They cannot say definitively that no materials were stolen, or what Russia’s motivations may be. That, they said, was the role of U.S. intelligence officials.

Microsoft’s findings come just two weeks after the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, declared that he would no longer let intelligence agencies give detailed, in-person briefings about election interference to Congress. He said the restrictions were because of leaks.

In a statement, Christopher Krebs, who directs the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, said, “We are aware that Microsoft detected attempts to compromise email accounts of people and organizations associated with the upcoming election.”

Mr. Krebs noted that “none are involved in maintaining or operating voting infrastructure and there was no identified impact on election systems.” He also said that the company’s “announcement is consistent with earlier statements by the intelligence community on a range of malicious cyberactivities targeting the 2020 campaign and reinforces that this is an all-of-nation effort to defend democracy.”

Mr. Krebs, who was a Microsoft executive before joining the Trump administration, said his agency was releasing on Thursday “guidance for improving cyberdefenses against account compromise attacks.”

There is no question that Microsoft’s assessment complicates the administration’s narrative that China is a bigger threat to U.S. elections than Russia, as both the national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, and Attorney General William P. Barr said in interviews last week.

And hours after his own Treasury Department announced fresh sanctions for election interference, Mr. Trump seemed to claim Moscow’s involvement was a hoax. “What about China?” he said at a campaign rally on Thursday night. “What about other countries? It’s always Russia, Russia, Russia. They’re at it again.”
The report concludes that the Russian military intelligence unit has only accelerated its attacks, even after a series of financial sanctions, indictments of Russian intelligence officers and retaliatory cyberstrikes by United States Cyber Command before the 2018 midterm elections.

Microsoft’s researchers concluded that the G.R.U. hacking unit — alternatively known as Fancy Bear, APT 28 or Strontium to different industry researchers — has been aggressively hacking the personal email accounts of American politicians, campaigns staff members and consultants on both sides of the aisle.

In just the two weeks between Aug. 18 and Sept. 3, the group targeted 6,912 email accounts at 28 organizations, obfuscating the attacks through Tor.

Microsoft’s finding that it is Mr. Biden — not Mr. Trump — whom Chinese hackers are targeting also complicates a narrative pushed by the White House that China is interfering in the 2020 election to help the former vice president’s campaign.

While the Biden campaign said it would not comment on the specifics of the Microsoft findings, it disputed the American intelligence assessment, arguing that China’s preference in the election was clear: the re-election of Mr. Trump.

“There are very obvious reasons China’s leadership would prefer four more years of President Trump,” said Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’s longtime foreign policy adviser and a former deputy secretary of state. “He’s helped China advance its most important strategic goals: weakening American alliances; leaving a vacuum in the world for China to fill; giving Beijing a green light to trample human rights in Xinjiang and democracy in Hong Kong; and debasing our own democracy and so reducing its appeal.”

“He also publicly echoed their propaganda downplaying COVID-19 while privately admitting how dangerous it was,” he said. “All of this benefits China at the expense of our nation.”

Currently, there are sharp and telling differences between the Russians and the Chinese.

China’s attack on Mr. Biden’s campaign appears to be an attempt at standard espionage, similar to its hacking of the presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008, when Chinese spies gained access to internal position papers and emails of top campaign advisers for both candidates. Microsoft’s findings echo those of Google researchers last spring, who determined that the same Chinese group was targeting Mr. Biden’s campaign.

Microsoft also said on Thursday that Iran’s hackers have continued to target Mr. Trump’s campaign, as the company first warned last October, albeit with limited success. Microsoft has managed to take control of 155 of the web domains that Iran is using for its attacks.

But Iran has remained persistent. Between May and June, according to Microsoft investigators, Iran’s hackers went into overdrive trying to break into the personal email accounts of Trump administration officials and campaign officials, apparently without success.

In terms of sophistication, security researchers overwhelmingly say it is Russia’s G.R.U. hackers who present the gravest threat.

“Multiple cyberespionage actors are targeting organizations associated with the upcoming election, but we remain most concerned about Russian military intelligence, who we believe poses the greatest threat to the U.S. democratic process,” said John Hultquist, the director of intelligence analysis at FireEye, which has worked with both parties. “The G.R.U. routinely violates international norms and has not been dissuaded by indictments and other attempts to halt their malicious activity.”

Just before Microsoft’s announcement on Thursday, the Treasury Department announced new sanctions on three Russians and a member of Ukraine’s Parliament — who was described as a Russian agent — for their efforts to influence the upcoming election.

“Russia has used a wide range of influence methods and actors to target our electoral process, including targeting U.S. presidential candidates,” the department said in a statement.

But the whistle-blower complaint made public on Wednesday, with its allegation that federal intelligence analysts were told to edit out references to Russian interference, has put the integrity of the government’s own assessments in doubt. The complaint says that in May, Mr. O’Brien instructed Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, to stop providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference and report instead on China and Iran.

“If that whistle-blower report is true, the people responsible are violating their oath of office,” said Thomas P. Bossert, Mr. Trump’s first homeland security adviser. “Short of war, the best way to defeat a foreign influence operation is to expose it publicly. Sanctions alone aren’t going to stop Putin from messing with U.S. elections.”

Intelligence officials privately warned the White House and lawmakers in February that Russia was actively working to re-elect Mr. Trump and divide Democrats by supporting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The Trump administration has contended that it has been tough on Russia, despite Mr. Trump’s refusal to criticize President Vladimir V. Putin and its latest efforts to downplay Moscow’s recent interference.

For two years now, Mr. Trump has been unwilling to lead meetings on election security related to Russia. In April 2019, The New York Times reported that Kirstjen Nielsen, then the homeland security secretary, was instructed not to hold meetings in Mr. Trump’s presence describing the concerns about renewed Russian interference. Ms. Nielsen was soon forced to resign.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/us/politics/russian-hacking-microsoft-biden-trump.html

The post Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Schiff responds to House GOP members wanting Hunter Biden to testify first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The GOP witness list, obtained by Fox News earlier Saturday, included Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden, and the anonymous intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky triggered the impeachment inquiry.

“The committee … will not facilitate efforts by President Trump and his allies in Congress to threaten, intimidate and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm,” Schiff said in a letter to Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif. ” … The whistleblower has a right under laws championed by this committee to remain anonymous and to be protected from harm.”

REPUBLICANS WANT HUNTER BIDEN, UKRAINE WHISTLEBLOWER AS IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY WITNESSES

“The impeachment inquiry, moreover, has gathered an ever-growing body of evidence — from witnesses and documents, including the president’s own words in his July 25 call record — that not only confirms but far exceeds the initial information in the whistleblower’s complaint … ” Schiff concluded his letter. “In light of the president’s threats, the individual’s appearance before us would only place their personal safety at grave risk.”

Earlier in his letter, Schiff had warned Nunes that the impeachment inquiry and the House Intelligence Committee “will not serve as vehicles” for what he called “sham investigations into the Bidens or debunked conspiracies about 2016 U.S. election interference that President Trump pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit.”

The impeachment inquiry began when a whistleblower reported that Trump had pushed Zelensky to launch an investigation into the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine— specifically, why former Vice President Joe Biden pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire a top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where Hunter held a lucrative role on the board, bringing in a reported $50,000 per month.

Republicans noted that testimony from former State Department official George Kent raised concerns about “the appearance of a conflict of interest stemming from Mr. Biden’s position on Burisma’s board,” and added that former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich was prepared by the Obama State Department to address questions about Mr. Biden’s position on Burisma during her Senate confirmation process.

Republicans also planned to call the younger Biden’s former long-time business partner, Devon Archer, who also sat on the board of Burisma. Republicans claim Archer can help the public to understand “the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption information that bears directly on President Trump’s longstanding and deeply-held skepticism of the country.”

Schiff himself said in September the whistleblower would appear before Congress “very soon,” but in recent weeks has suggested that testimony is unnecessary.

The post Schiff denies GOP request to have Ukraine whistleblower testify publicly, warns against ‘sham investigations’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Good morning and welcome to Fox News First. Here’s what you need to know as you start your Thursday …

Whistleblower complaint on Trump-Ukraine call declassified, contains ‘no surprises,’ GOP lawmaker says 
Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart announced on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” and on social media late Wednesday that the explosive whistleblower complaint concerning President Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s leader has been declassified — and Stewart said that it doesn’t contain any damning information. “The entirety of it is focused on this one thing, and that’s the transcript of one phone call,” he said. Stewart added that he was initially “anxious” before viewing the complaint but concluded “this is going to go nowhere. … there are just no surprises there.”

Stewart was among bipartisan select group of intelligence committee lawmakers in the House and Senate who gained access to the whistleblower complaint in a classified setting on Wednesday. House Democrats emerging from a secure room would not divulge details of the document, but described it as disturbing and urgent. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said it “exposed serious wrongdoing.” The complaint was not immediately available to the public but was expected to be released Thursday morning. Click here for more on our top story.

Acting Director of National Intelligence to testify before Congress on whistleblower complaint

Rep. Stewart’s claim came hours before Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was set to testify before Congress on Thursday. On Wednesday, Maguire denied a Washington Post report that he had threatened to turn in his resignation over concerns that the White House might try to make him stonewall Congress over the whistleblower controversy. Meanwhile, Fox News is told there was serious conversation among lawmakers as to how far Maguire could go in an open session at the hearing. One source tells Fox News the administration may have declassified the document so it could be discussed publicly during the hearing.

Read the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president

The White House on Wednesday released a declassified transcript of President Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It showed that Trump sought a review of former Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts to have Ukraine’s former top prosecutor fired. The president made the request on the call only after Zelensky first mentioned Ukraine’s corruption issues, and after Trump separately requested as a “favor” that Ukraine help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server involving the data security company CrowdStrike.

Multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, inaccurately reported that the “favor” related specifically to investigating Biden. The transcript also did not show that Trump leveraged military aid to Ukraine to obtain a “promise” on a Biden investigation, as a widely cited report in the Post had claimed. Click here to read the transcript.

The president’s comments signaled that the White House would seek to turn the tables against Democrats who have initiated a formal impeachment inquiry. Biden, Trump’s potential challenger in the 2020 presidential election, said the allegations against the president are impeachable, but his job is to “beat him” in the election.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-whistleblower-complaint-declassified-impeachment-biden

The post Trump whistleblower complaint declassified, contains ‘no surprises,’ GOP lawmaker says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

To chants of “USA,” Trump took the stage after brief remarks by Vice President Mike Pence and first lady Melania Trump and recalled his unlikely rise to power.

“We stared down the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors and special interests who made a living bleeding our country dry,” Trump said. “The swamp is fighting back so viciously and violently. For the last two and a half years, we have been under siege.”

And after polling the boisterous crowd, Trump appeared to settle on a new campaign slogan: “Keep America Great.”

He went on to tout the economy and the planned Space Force, celebrate the “obliteration” of ISIS, and declare that “Republicans believe that every life is a sacred gift from God” amid a newly energized national pro-life movement.

Just over four years ago, Trump descended through the pink marble and brass atrium of Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president, the first step on a journey few analysts believed would take him all the way to the White House.

This time, thousands of Trump supporters arrived more than 40 hours in advance to secure a spot in the Amway Center, despite sweltering heat. Some had been camped in chairs for several nights.

Trump told attendees he had begun not only a “great political campaign but a great movement” committed to the idea that a government must “care for its own citizens first.”

He called his election that year as a “defining moment in American history” — and then directed the crowd to “ask them, right there,” referring to the media assembled in the back, which many in the crowd jeered.

In one of the most dramatic moments of the rally, Trump charged that Democrats want a “do-over” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report — and then, his voice approaching a shout, Trump blasted Democrats’ apparent lack of interest in misconduct within their party.

Supporters of President Trump waiting in line hours before the arena doors opened Tuesday in Orlando. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

“Our patriotic movement has been under assault from the very first day,” Trump said. He specifically called out the “phony” dossier used by the FBI to secure a secret surveillance warrant to surveil one of his former aides, Carter Page.

After Trump noted that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC), the crowd again broke into a chant, this time cheering, “Lock her up.”

“If you want to know how the system is rigged, just look at how they came at us for three years with everything they had, versus the free pass they gave to Hillary and her aides after they set up an illegal server, destroyed evidence, deleted and acid-washed 33,000 emails, exposed classified information, and turned the State Department into a pay-for-play cash machine,” Trump said, his voice rising with the crowd’s.

“Lock her up,” the crowd responded again.

DOJ REACHED DEAL WITH CLINTON LAWYERS TO KEEP CLINTON FOUNDATION EMAILS FROM FBI

“33,000 emails deleted, think of it!” Trump said. “You know, there was a lot of corruption on the other side. But, you know, they get a subpoena from the United States Congress, and they decide they’re not gonna give it, so, Lindsey Graham, they delete and they acid wash — which is very expensive, nobody does it — those emails, never to be seen again!

“But we may find them again somewhere deep in the State Department,” Trump mused. “Can you imagine if I got a subpoena? Think of this — if I deleted one email, like a love note to Melania, it’s the electric chair for Trump.”

STATE DEPT INVESTIGATION FINDS ‘MULTIPLE’ SECURITY VIOLATIONS UNDER CLINTON LEADERSHIP, AS PROBE CONTINUES

For the most part, the rally focused on Trump’s policy successes, on a range of matters including criminal justice reform and the economy.

“Our country is soaring to incredible new heights,” Trump asserted, to loud applause. “Our economy is the envy of the world, perhaps the greatest economy we’ve had in the history of our country, and as long as you keep this team in place — we have a tremendous way to go — our future has never, ever looked brighter or sharper.”

Trump continued: “The fact is, the American Dream is back. It’s bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before.”

The president emphasized his success in appointing federal judges, and lamented Democrats’ treatment of now-Justice Brett Kavanuagh, telling the crowd, “They didnt just try to win, they tried to destroy him with false and malicious accusations” in the name of “political dominance and control.”

Trump called Kavanaugh a “great gentleman” who is “highly respected” throughout the judiciary, and said Democrats also targeted his family. Kavanuagh, speaking to Fox News last year, said his wife had received numerous death threats.

“Just imagine what this angry left-wing mob would do if they were in charge of this country,” Trump said.

“We just finished [confirming judge] number 107, already approved, sitting on the bench — how about that?” Trump then asked. “By the time we’re finished with the rest, we will have record percentages [of judges appointed] — our percentage will be a record, except for one person. One person has a higher percentage … George Washington.”

At one point, outgoing Press Secretary Sarah Sanders took the stage, bringing the crowd to its feet.

“We want people to come into our country based on merit,” Trump said, after praising Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials as underappreciated heroes securing the border.

He went on to condemn “crazy” Bernie Sanders, and vowed again that America would “never” become a socialist country.

The festive and lively environment was evident both outside and inside the arena. Caps and shirts and mugs and ponchos were being hawked in corners far and wide in Orlando, with slogans ranging from “God, Guns and Trump” to “Trump’s Deplorables” to “Working to Defeat Liberals since 1854.”

“Think of this — if I deleted one email, like a love note to Melania, it’s the electric chair for Trump.”

— President Trump

“Bikers For Trump” volunteer security members managed traffic in and out of the rally areas as jubilant Trump devotees partied to a band while in line, occasionally breaking into “USA, USA” chants.

Others wandered the blocks around the venue urging people to sign a petition to “prevent voter fraud.”

“Only U.S. citizens should be able to vote,” explained Donny, a Jacksonville native. “That’s what we want in Florida.”

Joe Biden, the frontrunner among Democrats in both polling and fundraising, sought to blunt the momentum from the Tuesday launch shortly before Trump took the stage.

ON THE GROUND BEFORE TRUMP’S BIG RALLY, A CARNIVAL-LIKE ATMOSPHERE

“Donald Trump is launching his campaign for re-election tonight and the American people face a choice — we can make Trump an aberration or let him fundamentally and forever alter the character of this nation,” Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.

Hats and other merchandise were flying off the racks Tuesday afternoon in Orlando, ahead of Trump’s rally. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

“Our country cannot afford four more years of Trump diminishing America’s role on the world stage, cutting access to health care, ignoring the climate emergency that is an unprecedented threat to our national security, tearing children from their parents at the border, giving enormous new tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working families, and dividing our country by embracing toxic bigotry and racism that’s antithetical to who we are,” Bedingfield added.

Sanders, meanwhile, hosted an “Ask Me Anything” open forum on Reddit on Tuesday. The self-described democratic socialist condemned what he called Trump’s “rejection of science,” and lamented the “incredible attacks against working families that have taken place under unfettered capitalism.”

Sanders, in a video response to Trump’s address later in the day, issued a series of personal insults. He called Trump a “racist” and “sexist,” among other attacks.

“The working class of this country has been decimated for decades by a coordinated attack from corporate America,” Sanders told one Reddit user. “Bad trade deals have allowed corporations to ship millions of jobs abroad, companies have bitterly resisted unionization and the minimum wage has not been raised for almost 10 years.”

Not all of the participants in Sanders’ Reddit event gave him a warm welcome, however, with some pointing out Sanders’ recent, dramatic rise to wealth.

“People like you have destroyed the working class by taking more of their taxes to fund a corporate-run utopia that never can exist,” one user replied. “Wealth is decided by the rarity of your skill set, not how hard you work, Mr. 3 mansions and an Audi R8.”

Trump is ahead of his Democrat rivals in key battleground states and “voters overall” support re-electing him, a Republican National Committee (RNC) memo obtained by Fox News claimed.  The memo came amid reports of the president struggling in polls putting him up against potential 2020 opponents, including Biden. A Fox News poll showed similar numbers.

But, according to the RNC, its own massive data operation told a different story. According to the committee’s numbers, Trump has a higher approval than disapproval rating in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania while a majority of Florida voters (53 percent) supported re-electing him.

Trump has an unprecedented $40.8 million in cash-on-hand, as of the start of the second quarter of fundraising on April 1. While that would be a massive war chest on its own, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their joint fundraising committees had a combined $82 million cash-on-hand going into the second quarter.

Fox News’ Mike Emanuel, Hollie McKay, Sam Dorman, Paul Steinhauser, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-launches-2020-re-election-campaign-orlando-arena

The post Trump launches re-election bid before jam-packed arena, vows to ‘Keep America Great’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

No wonder Donald Trump was so angry.

No wonder he wanted to stop the Mueller investigation.

He didn’t collude with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

He knew he was innocent.

And almost three years ago he foresaw that a biased fishing expedition by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his liberal lawyers would undermine his ability to govern and provide Democrats and the liberal media with an endless supply of damaging political ammo.

Now that Attorney General William Barr released the redacted Mueller report, the whole world knows that Mueller completely exonerated Trump of collusion with Russia.

Mueller was unable to decide whether the president was guilty of obstruction of justice. But the desperate Democrats in the House and the disappointed fake journalists over at CNN don’t care that Mueller found Trump guilty of no crime.

They’ll spend the next 20 months parsing the Mueller report’s footnotes and milking the unanswered question of obstruction for every possible drop of political poison they can find.

By noon on Thursday CNN’s all-liberal panel of eight Trump-hating pundits and legal experts like Jeffrey Toobin already were back to their usual tricks.

They spent half the morning spinning the importance of the inconclusive “obstruction” part of Mueller’s report and trashing Attorney General Barr as a shill for the president.

Dana Bash and crew showed no sympathy for the unfair, incorrect, and deranged assault they and their soulmates at MSNBC, The New York Times, and elsewhere have subjected Trump to for three years.

You’d think Toobin and a few of the others would have been pleased to find out that the president of the United States did not collude or conspire with the Russians to fix the 2016 election.

Instead, ignoring how wrong they were about everything, they were excitedly talking about how the Mueller report’s examples of presidential obstruction attempts could serve as a handy road map to impeachment for House Democrats.

Some CNN panel members, to their shame, were visibly disappointed that Trump was saved by several staffers who had the good sense and ethics to refuse to do what he asked of them.

According to the Mueller report, there were ten examples of Trump trying to get control of the Russia investigation.

They included firing FBI Director James Comey, urging Trump’s useless Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “re-recuse” himself, and trying to get various staffers to lie or not cooperate with Mueller.

The facts surrounding those presidential attempts to interfere are not in dispute.

But the president never fired anyone, even though he had the Constitutional power to do it, and he never obstructed Mueller from doing his work.

The White House even turned over millions of documents and the president waived his right to use executive privilege.

If any of his White House staff had followed the president’s requests concerning the Mueller investigation there might have been a legitimate case for obstruction.

But they ignored him. And they did exactly what they are supposed to do — they kept the boss from making a serious mistake.

I say bravo to the president’s staff for saving his butt. They did their job. They protected President Trump from himself.

As the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Thursday, the president reacted to the Russia collusion charges the way any innocent man would react to a frame up.

President Trump had every right to be outraged and frustrated by Mueller’s investigation, which he always knew was a Democratic witch hunt.

If he never colluded with anyone in the first place, as Mueller has proved to the satisfaction of everyone except maybe Rachel Maddow and Adam Schiff, it’s hard to see how the president could be guilty of the crime of obstruction.

If anything, the only thing President Trump was guilty of was trying to obstruct injustice.

Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker’s bureau. Read more reports from Michael Reagan — Go Here Now.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ari-fleischer-trump-russia-dems-impeachment-plank

The post Ari Fleischer: Trump should move on from Russia, let Dems ‘walk that impeachment plank’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Thousands of people participate in Third Annual Women’s March in Washington, US, January 19, 2019.. (photo credit: REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS)

The post Third Annual Women’s March Marked by Antisemitism among its leadership first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON — The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election issued an indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign. The indictment came only three days before President Trump was planning to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland.

The 29-page indictment is the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day.

From phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

The timing of the indictment, by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, added a jolt of tension to the already freighted atmosphere surrounding Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin. It is all but certain to feed into the conspiratorial views held by the president and some of his allies that Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors are determined to undermine Mr. Trump’s designs for a rapprochement with Russia.

The president has long expressed doubt that Russia was behind the 2016 attacks, and the 11-count indictment illustrates even more the distance between his skepticism and the nearly unanimous views of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies he leads.

“Free and fair elections are hard fought and contentious, and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us,” Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said Friday during a news conference announcing the indictment.

“So long as we are united in our commitment to the shared values enshrined in the Constitution, they will not succeed,” he said.

It was a striking statement a day after Republican members of Congress, engaging in a shouting match during a hearing, attacked Peter Strzok, the F.B.I. agent who oversaw the early days of the Russia investigation, and questioned the integrity of the Justice Department for what they charged was bias against the president.

The announcement created a bizarre split screen on cable networks of the news conference at the Justice Department and the solemn pageant at Windsor Castle in England, where Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, were reviewing royal guards with Queen Elizabeth II.

Russia has denied that its government had any role in hacking the presidential election, and on Friday, Mr. Trump said he would confront Mr. Putin directly. But the president said he did not expect his Russian counterpart to acknowledge it.

“I don’t think you’ll have any, ‘Gee, I did it, you got me,’” Mr. Trump said during a news conference hours before the indictment was announced. He added that there would not be any “Perry Mason” — a reference to the 1950s and 1960s courtroom TV drama in which Perry Mason, a criminal defense lawyer played by Raymond Burr, often got people to confess. “I will absolutely firmly ask the question.”

But Mr. Trump also said he believed that the focus on Russia’s election meddling and whether his campaign was involved were merely partisan issues that made it more difficult for him to establish closer ties with Mr. Putin.

The Kremlin agreed. A statement on Friday from Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that the indictment was meant to “spoil the atmosphere before the Russian-American summit.”

[Read the indictment here.]

After the indictment was announced, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and others in his party called on Mr. Trump to cancel his one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin.

The indictment, Mr. Schumer said in a statement, was “further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win.” He added that “glad-handing with Vladimir Putin” would “be an insult to our democracy.”

The indictment builds on a declassified report released in January 2017 by several intelligence agencies, which concluded that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

Mr. Trump has long questioned the findings of intelligence agencies, suggesting alternate scenarios for who might have carried out the hacking campaigns. “It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, O.K.?” Mr. Trump said during the first presidential debate in September 2016.

Friday’s indictment did not include any accusations that the Russian efforts succeeded in influencing the election results, nor evidence that any of Mr. Trump’s advisers knowingly coordinated with the Russian campaign — a point immediately seized upon by the president’s allies.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said in a Twitter post that the indictment showed “no Americans are involved,” and he called on Mr. Mueller to end the inquiry. “The Russians are nailed,” Mr. Giuliani wrote.

Still, the indictment added curious new details to the events leading up to the November 2016 elections.

The indictment revealed that on July 27, 2016, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into the servers of Mrs. Clinton’s personal offices. It was the same day that Mr. Trump publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The indictment does not mention those remarks.

Separately, the indictment states that the hackers were communicating with “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign.” Two government officials identified the person as Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump and the subject of close scrutiny by the F.B.I. and Mr. Mueller’s team. There is no indication that Mr. Stone knew he was communicating with Russians.

Communicating on Aug. 15 as Guccifer 2.0, an online persona, the Russian hackers wrote: “thank u for writing back … do u find anyt[h]ING interesting In the docs i posted?”

Two days later, the hackers wrote the person again, adding, “please tell me If i can help u anyhow … it would be a great pleasure to me.”

In another interaction several weeks later, the hackers, again writing as Guccifer 2.0, pointed to a document stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and posted online, asking, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.”

The person replied: “[p]retty standard.”

Friday’s indictment is a “big building block in the narrative being constructed for the American people regarding what happened during the election,” said Raj De, the chairman of the cybersecurity practice at Mayer Brown and the former general counsel of the National Security Agency.

By pulling together threads that Americans have read about for years — including the hacking of political institutions and campaigns, the dissemination of hacked emails and the attempts to compromise state election infrastructure — “this shows that the Russian campaign to impact the election was more coordinated and strategic than some have given it credit,” Mr. De said. “This indictment is our clearest window into that campaign.”

The document is a portrait of a coordinated and well-executed attack that targeted more than 300 people affiliated with the Clinton campaign, as well as other Democratic Party organizations. They implanted malicious computer code into computers, covertly monitored their users and stole their files that led to a series of disastrous leaks

Investigators identified the 12 individuals in the indictment more than a year ago, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Starting in April 2016, the hackers began to spread their stolen files using several online personas, including DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0. The tens of thousands of stolen documents were released in stages that wreaked havoc on the Democratic Party throughout much of the election season.

The Russians also worked with people and organizations that were in a position to spread the information, including WikiLeaks, identified in the indictment as “Organization 1.”

According to the indictment, WikiLeaks wrote to Guccifer 2.0 in July 2016 asking for “anything Hillary related” in the coming days.

Most of the Russian intelligence officials charged in Friday’s indictment worked for the Russian military intelligence agency, formerly known as the G.R.U. and now called the Main Directorate.

While many of the broad elements of the Russian scheme were known before, investigators have not previously said how the Russian agents paid for the hacking campaign. The hackers’ use of cryptocurrency was one of the last pieces to fall into place for investigators in a case that they have been working on for more than a year.

The indictment released Friday said that the agents handled the most delicate transactions with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The Malaysian computer server that hosted DCLeaks.com, for instance, was paid for with the virtual currency.

Because Bitcoin functions without any central authority, the technology “allowed the conspirators to avoid direct relations with traditional financial institutions, allowing them to evade greater scrutiny of their identities and sources of funds,” the indictment said.

The Russian agents had several methods for acquiring Bitcoin, according to the indictment. At one point, the agents were actually mining new Bitcoin, a process that involves using computers to unlock new Bitcoin by solving complex computational problems.

The indictment’s extraordinary details may raise pointed questions about actions taken and not taken by American intelligence agencies and the Obama administration as the Russian campaign unfolded.

In many instances, the indictment describes the actions of individual Russian intelligence officers on particular dates. It is unclear from the indictment whether American intelligence agencies, primarily the National Security Agency, were watching in real time as the Russians prepared for and carried out their attacks against Democratic targets in spring 2016.

It was not until October 2016 that the government put out its first public statement on the Russian intrusion. If Americans knew much earlier about Russian actions, there will be questions about why they did not warn the targets, try countermeasures or call Russia out publicly before they did.

It is possible, however, that American spies did not detect the Russian attacks in real time, but reconstructed them later by studying the hacked Democratic networks and possibly breaking into Russian systems to examine logs.

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