BY FRANK SALVATO
The hot-button topic today is whether or not the Russian government hacked into the email servers of the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and whether or not they did so to support one candidate or detract from another. While the CIA has declared it as “quite clear” that electing Donald Trump was Russia’s goal, the FBI calls the evidence “fuzzy” and “ambiguous.” The only thing that is clear is that there is no definitive evidence to deduce anything.
These divergent conclusions by the FBI and CIA reflect the cultural differences in the two organizations. While the CIA is adept at drawing conclusions based on probability, inference and established behavior, the FBI – who recently came under-fire for not acting on overwhelming evidence of criminal acts in the Clinton email scandal, in true law enforcement form, relies on the weight of evidence; evidence required at a threshold to “convict.” The CIA’s conclusion, additionally, demonstrates that the Agency is willing to delve into American politics through the advancement of its conclusions.
While the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities debate the merits of the facts that have brought them to their respective conclusions, the mainstream media has already decided that the Russian did, in fact, commit cyberattacks and hacks upon the DNC and Clinton campaign. The only question they are asking is what the Russian motives might have been: To damage Clinton, aid Trump or attack the American election process as an institution.
It is undeniable that the Russian hacks – if in fact, it was the Russians who hacked into the DNC and not “black hat” independent hackers or another nation State using Russian hacker fingerprints – exposed a wholly unethical and, in fact, criminal mindset deemed acceptable for American electoral politics by the Democrats, Progressives and the Clintons.
In the hacking of the DNC it was exposed that the Democrat hierarchy was quite alright with weighting the Primary Election in favor of one candidate over another. In stepping down from the post of DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tacitly acknowledged that a culture of oligarchic corruption schemed to disenfranchise almost half of the Democrat rank-and-file. This conspiracy to defraud the Democrat voters is, at the very least, unethical to the maximum degree. At its worst, it could be criminal, although not a soul called for a criminal investigation into the matter.
The hacks into the Clinton campaign apparatus revealed much more, and some actions that were criminal in nature.
The woman tapped to temporarily replace Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazile, was caught red-handed not once but twice affording the text of questions to Hillary Clinton in advance of two debates. When confronted about her grotesquely unethical actions she feigned outrage at “being persecuted” by the media.
Then there was proof positive that Progressive operatives – in unspoken coordination with the Clinton campaign and with full knowledge of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman – paid thugs and anarchists to commit acts of violence at Trump campaign rallies. Their motive was clear, to paint a public picture of Trump supporters being violent, bigoted and a danger to our country.
Hacks into the Clinton apparatus also exposed the commingling of actions and assets between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation in what was tantamount to a racketeering scheme worthy of a RICO prosecution. They also exposed the truth about Hillary Clinton’s purposeful inaction during the attacks on our diplomatic consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.
It cannot be denied that the information that came out of WikiLeaks – which both federal law enforcement and intelligence authorities believe were facilitated by a more advanced entity, be it the Russians or another actor – was damaging to the Clinton campaign and the Progressive enterprise in the United States. At every turn, they exposed a tolerance, zeal and acceptance of an unethical status quo to include criminal acts and transgressions against the American people.
But those exposures simply revealed the true soul of the Clintons, the leadership of the Democrat National Committee and the Washington Progressive-Democrat establishment. They also exposed the incredible bias that exists in the American mainstream media; a media that went to bat – viciously – for Hillary Clinton and the DNC to its own detriment. The Russians didn’t advance false-narratives or “fake news” that championed the Trump campaign, they exposed damning realities that existed within the Clinton camp and the DNC.
The fact of the matter is that the American people voted against Hillary Clinton, not because of false-narrative propaganda manufactured by a foreign entity against her campaign, they voted against Hillary Clinton because she was proven to be an intensely corrupt political figure whose policies were found to be detrimental to the people of the United States. They voted against the realities that Hillary Clinton created for herself.
Are cyberattacks on any sovereign American enterprise by any entity – foreign or domestic – illegal? Yes, and they should be investigated and prosecuted when evidence of criminal actions have been established. Our elected officials are correct in demanding a full, open, unbiased and comprehensive investigation into the possibility of a cyberattack on our political institutions.
But we cannot lose sight of the fact that what those hacks exposed was a deeply embedded and inbred unethical cancer within the Progressive and Democrat political circles at the highest level; a cancer that was – and is – embraced as acceptable behavior in Liberal politics.
Investigate the possibility of a cyberattack by whoever would have targeted the outcome of the 2016 General Election. But let’s not allow the Leftist spin doctors to wallpaper over what was exposed by those hacks. Like it or not, the byproduct of that “crime” was the exposure of the truth; the dark, dirty, elitist soul of Democrat politics.