Posted by How Russia helped Trump win election on Tue, 25 Sep 2018 08:16 | #

New Yorker, “How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump”, Oct 2018:

A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.

Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office. Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,” “ridiculous,” and “a hoax.” He finds the subject so threatening to his legitimacy that—according to “The Perfect Weapon,” a recent book on cyber sabotage by David Sanger, of the Times—aides say he refuses even to discuss it. In public, Trump has characterized all efforts to investigate the foreign attacks on American democracy during the campaign as a “witch hunt”; in March, he insisted that “the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever.”

Few people, including Trump’s opponents, have publicly challenged the widespread belief that no obtainable evidence can prove that Russian interference changed any votes. Democrats, for the most part, have avoided attributing Hillary Clinton’s defeat directly to Russian machinations. They have more readily blamed James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, for reversing Clinton’s thin lead in the final days of the campaign by reopening a criminal investigation into her mishandling of classified e-mails. Many have also expressed frustration with Clinton’s weak performance as a candidate, and with her campaign’s tactical errors. Instead of investigating whether Russia tipped the electoral scales on its own, they’ve focussed on the possibility that Trump colluded with Russia, and that this, along with other crimes, might be exposed by the probe being conducted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

The U.S. intelligence community, for its part, is prohibited from investigating domestic political affairs. James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, told me, “We try not to spy on Americans. It’s not in our charter.” He emphasized that, although he and other intelligence officials produced—and shared with Trump—a postelection report confirming an extensive cyberattack by Russia, the assessment did not attempt to gauge how this foreign meddling had affected American voters. Speaking for himself, however, he told me that “it stretches credulity to think the Russians didn’t turn the election.

[...]

Indeed, when I met recently with Jamieson, in a book-lined conference room at the Annenberg Center, in Philadelphia, and asked her point-blank if she thought that Trump would be President without the aid of Russians, she didn’t equivocate. “No,” she said, her face unsmiling. Clearly cognizant of the gravity of her statement, she clarified, “If everything else is a constant? No, I do not.”

Jamieson said that, as an academic, she hoped that the public would challenge her arguments. Yet she expressed confidence that unbiased readers would accept her conclusion that it is not just plausible that Russia changed the outcome of the 2016 election—it is “likely that it did.”

An airtight case, she acknowledges, may never be possible. In the introduction to her new book, she writes that any case for influence will likely be similar to that in a civil legal trial, “in which the verdict is rendered not with the certainty that e=mc2 but rather based on the preponderance of evidence.” But, she points out, “we do make most of life’s decisions based on less-than-rock-solid, incontrovertible evidence.” In Philadelphia, she noted to me that “we convict people on probabilities rather than absolute certainty, and we’ve executed people based on inferences from available evidence.” She argued that “the standard of proof being demanded” by people claiming it’s impossible to know whether Russia delivered the White House to Trump is “substantially higher than the standard of proof we ordinarily use in our lives.”

Her case is based on a growing body of knowledge about the electronic warfare waged by Russian trolls and hackers—whom she terms “discourse saboteurs”—and on five decades’ worth of academic studies about what kinds of persuasion can influence voters, and under what circumstances. Democracies around the world, she told me, have begun to realize that subverting an election doesn’t require tampering with voting machines. Extensive studies of past campaigns, Jamieson said, have demonstrated that “you can affect people, who then change their decision, and that alters the outcome.” She continued, “I’m not arguing that Russians pulled the voting levers. I’m arguing that they persuaded enough people to either vote a certain way or not vote at all.”

The effect of such manipulations could be momentous in an election as close as the 2016 race, in which Clinton got nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump, and Trump won the Electoral College only because some eighty thousand votes went his way in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In two hundred and twenty-four pages of extremely dry prose, with four appendixes of charts and graphs and fifty-four pages of footnotes, Jamieson makes a strong case that, in 2016, “Russian masterminds” pulled off a technological and political coup. Moreover, she concludes, the American media “inadvertently helped them achieve their goals.”

Posted by Israeli spy group tried to help Trump campaign on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 16:40 | #

Jewish Interference in US Elections Revealed by New Yorker Magazine

TNO, 22 Feb 2019:

A spy company staffed by Jews from Israel attempted to influence a local US election as part of a larger attempt to infiltrate American politics, a report in The New Yorker magazine has revealed.

The Jews used fake websites, social-media posts, and staged interactions as part of an effort to influence the public perception of specific targets, the report said.

In addition, the group tried numerous times to work with Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 and engaged in other efforts that targeted the US State Department.

Psy-Group, a defunct private intelligence agency staffed with former Israeli spies, attempted to influence at least one local US election and other domestic affairs, according to a report from The New Yorker‘s Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow.

The company even courted President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and is now under investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, the report said.

The company attempted to pitch to the Trump campaign through advisers Newt Gingrich, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr., but was eventually rebuffed by the campaign’s digital director, Brad Parscale.

But according to the report, Psy-Group wasn’t finished there. The company went on to use fake websites, online avatars, and staged in-person interactions as part of an effort to influence the results of local elections or change the perception of certain events in the US, at the behest of a series of “private clients.”

The revelation shows that the disturbing efforts to influence US elections weren’t limited to the 2016 presidential election and that state actors weren’t the only perpetrators.

The Tulare Local Healthcare District board election in Tulare, California, in 2017 was the primary subject of Farrow and Entous’ investigation and was the focus of a $230,000 campaign by Psy-Group.

Psy-Group was paid by the physician Yorai Benzeevi, who ran the Tulare hospital, to conduct “a coordinated intelligence operation and influence campaign” that would stop a recall bid on the board member Parmod Kumar, according to The New Yorker.

Psy-Group, owned by the wealthy, well-connected Israeli son of a mining magnate, dug up information on the opposition candidate, Senovia Gutiérrez, and smeared her on a series of newly created websites, including Tularespeaks.com, Tulareleaks.com, and Draintulareswamp.com, The New Yorker report said.

According to Gutiérrez, in-person operations were conducted as well. She said that one day, a stranger knocked on her door and handed her an envelope while someone standing next to an SUV across the street was taking pictures. The pictures reportedly ended up online accompanied with accusations of bribery.

The day before the election, Gutiérrez’s son’s house burned down. He suspected foul play, but authorities said there wasn’t evidence to support that, The New Yorker report said.

According to the report, the campaign prompted Psy-Group to pitch more than 50 other political groups and campaigns at similar price points, but nothing stuck.

But the one election wasn’t the full extent of their activities.

Psy-Group’s other notable domestic campaign, according to the report, was its effort against student activists who were part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which calls for international economic pressure against Israel over human-rights abuses against Palestinians.

The piece said Psy-Group engaged in doxxing campaigns against specific activists and professors, in which agents would unearth unsavory online information about specific activist students and professors and distribute it. The report said some campuses were targeted because Psy-Group’s clients were parents of students there.

The report said the campaign’s architects were Ram Ben-Barak, who was previously a deputy director of Mossad, and Yaakov Amidror, the former national security adviser to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Psy-Group’s attempts to bring on new clients were largely unsuccessful, according to The New Yorker‘s report — hence the company’s eventual demise. But while it was around, it had courted the Trump campaign and the US State Department.

Additional reporting from The New York Times indicated that Psy-Group’s pitch reached the highest levels of the Trump campaign. In 2016, the company was connected to the Trump organization through Rick Gates, a longtime associate of Trump’s jailed former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was second in the pecking order behind Steve Bannon.

After drafting a plan that featured social-media tactics, most likely involving avatars and fake profiles judging from Psy-Group’s other activities, Newt Gingrich passed the company on to Jared Kushner, who then passed the pitch along to the campaign’s web director Brad Parscale who reportedly declined their services.

Psy-Group’s owner, Joel Zamel, got together with Trump representatives one more time, according to The New Yorker‘s report, meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Erik Prince (the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) at Trump Tower to pitch the company’s services. Nothing came of the meeting, the report said.

For another failed pitch to the US State Department, Psy-Group reportedly attempted to illustrate its effectiveness in creating fake social-media avatars on Facebook. To do this, they created a false profile in the image of an American teenager named Madison who had a Christian background but also had a demonstrated interest in Islam on her profile.

Using the profile, the Psy-Group had the avatar recruited and converted by two imams. The process included a Skype prayer recitation. The operation was terminated after Madison was invited by an ISIS fighter in Raqqa to become his bride.

“We are looking at the tip of the iceberg in terms of where this can go,” a former Israeli private intelligence worker reportedly told The New Yorker.

Posted by Lessons Learned from The Mueller Report on Wed, 14 Aug 2019 12:12 | #

House Hearing on ‘Lessons Learned’ From Mueller Report

House Judiciary holds hearing on ‘Lessons from the Mueller report’ | Part 2

Posted by Trump's foreign beholdings on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:03 | #

With all the talk (narrative) of “the Russian probe hoax” and “no collusion”, Trump’s tax returns and the fact that he pays almost nothing to the U.S., while his investments pay to foreign governments, reveals a possibility that the narrative - focusing on literal collusion - has been diverting from the likelihood of Trump’s being indebted to the help of foreign interests - such as Russia, Jewish groups like Chabad, Russian/Jewish organized crime, Israel - for bailing out his failed real estate investments. Hence, while it may not exactly be “collusion” there certainly could be pressure and quid pro quo of foreign interests having disproportionate say in Trump’s Presidency.

Posted by Frank Figliuzzi on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 08:23 | #

‘Why Is This President Paying More To Foreign Nations In Taxes Than He Is To The U.S.?’

We are still asking: Who does President Trump owe money to? Dirty money expert and author of “Kleptopia,” Tom Burgis and former Assistant Director for counterintelligence at the FBI Frank Figliuzzi join Stephanie Ruhle to discuss why the lack of clarity on the president’s debts should worry every American. Aired on 10/01/2020.