Matthew Yglesias: “Allegations now floating around range from the salacious (Russia has Trump sex tapes made at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow) to the serious (using intermediaries, Trump and Russia agreed to an explicit quid pro quo in which Russia would give him electoral help and in exchange he would shift US foreign policy). None of this is proven, and much of it is unprovable (if the FSB has a secret sex tape, how are we going to find it?) but the truth is that these kind of allegations, though difficult to resist, simply shouldn’t matter much compared to what’s in the public record.”
Ex-British Spy Fears Reprisals from Russia
A former MI6 officer who produced a dossier making lurid allegations about Donald Trump is “terrified for his safety” after he was unmasked by an American publication, the Telegraph reports.
“Christopher Steele, 52, fled from his home in Surrey on Wednesday morning after realizing it was only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge. A source close to Mr Steele said on Wednesday night that he now fears a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow.”
New York Times: How a sensational, unverified dossier became a crisis for Donald Trump
Commission Should Investigate Trump-Russia Ties
Max Boot: “There is only one way to get to the bottom of this tawdry affair: Appoint a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate all of the allegations and issue a public report. The former C.I.A. directors Leon E. Panetta and Michael V. Hayden, among other possible choices, would provide instant credibility if they were appointed to lead such a panel.”
“If Mr. Trump is genuinely innocent of any untoward connections with the Kremlin, wouldn’t he want a full investigation to clear his name? That he so adamantly opposes any such inquiry speaks volumes.”
“Yet the speculation, which was gaining currency even before the publishing of the dossier by BuzzFeed, isn’t going away. The reason is obvious: Mr. Trump appears to be infatuated with the autocrat in the Kremlin.”
Grassley Says Trump Would Be Immune from Blackmail
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) told WBZ in Boston that he’s not concerned that Russia may have information which could compromise President-elect Donald Trump.
Said Grassley: “It seems to me that when you go back through the campaign and all the things that Trump said that ought to give him political problems and all the things that were caught on tape — that he would probably just as soon not have the world know about it – it’s kind of improbable to me that anybody who knows anything about Trump — that’s going to end up hurting Trump. And he was elected President of the United States.”
Russia Says It Has No Compromising Material on Trump
Russia “denied it has compromising material on Donald Trump, calling a dossier of unverified allegations an ‘absolute fabrication’ and an attempt to damage U.S.-Russian relations,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “This is a clear attempt to damage our bilateral relations. Truly, there are those who whip up this hysteria, who will break their necks to support this ‘witch hunt'”
He added that “the Kremlin wasn’t involved in collecting compromising information on anyone, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”
Mike Allen: “Just asking: Would they really tell us if they had the goods on the president-elect?”
FBI Sought Surveillance of Trump Campaign Officials
The Guardian “has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The FISA court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus.”
“According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.”
Officials Say Russia Has Compromising Info on Trump
“Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump,” CNN reports.
“The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.”
And there’s this: “The two-page document also noted allegations that there was an exchange of information between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government during the campaign, two national security officials told CNN.”
Where’s the Outrage Over the DNC Hacking?
Robby Mook: “Imagine the headlines if, in 2015, Russian agents had leapt out of a van at 2 a.m. in Southeast Washington and broken into the Democratic National Committee offices using sophisticated tools and techniques to steal tens of thousands of documents, including the names and Social Security numbers of donors and employees, and confidential memorandums about campaign strategy for the presidential election.”
“The world would have been aghast. It would have been, people would say, worse than Watergate.”
“Something similar did, in fact, happen at the D.N.C. two years ago, and it was worse than Watergate. This wasn’t just one party spying on the other; these were hackers under orders from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who were trying to ‘undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process,’ according to a report released Friday by the office of the director of national intelligence. But the immediate reaction to the break-in was nothing like what followed Watergate.”
Quote of the Day
“Most Republicans are condemning what Russia did. And to those who are gleeful about it – you’re a political hack. You’re not a Republican. You’re not a patriot.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by The Hill.
Hackers Tried to Break Into DNC Again
“The FBI alerted the Democratic National Committee as recently as New Year’s Eve that hackers were once again trying to break into their computer systems,” BuzzFeed News has learned.
Said one official: “There was activity the day after the president issued sanctions against Russia, looking for ways to get into the servers.”
Report Concludes Putin Ordered Election Interference
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a widespread influence campaign intended to help elect Donald Trump, according to a declassified report released this afternoon.
From the report: “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
Trump Calls Focus on Russia a ‘Witch Hunt’
President-elect Donald Trump told the New York Times that “the storm surrounding Russian hacking during the presidential campaign is a political witch hunt being carried out by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss to him in the election last year.”
Said Trump: “With all that being said, I don’t want countries to be hacking our country. They’ve hacked the White House. They’ve hacked Congress. We’re like the hacking capital of the world.”
First Read: “You can count on maybe one hand the issues where Trump has been very consistent. So his constant position here — at least before today’s briefing — is striking.”
U.S. Knows Who Gave Info to Wikileaks
U.S. intelligence has identified the go-betweens the Russians used to provide stolen emails to WikiLeaks, CNN reports.
“In a Fox News interview earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails that roiled the 2016 election to the detriment of President-elect Donald Trump’s rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.”
Russian Officials Celebrated Trump’s Win
“Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome,” the Washington Post reports.
“The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.”
Russia Definitively Linked to Hacking After the Election
“U.S. intelligence agencies obtained what they considered to be conclusive evidence after the November election that Russia provided hacked material from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks through a third party,” Reuters reports.
“U.S. officials had concluded months earlier that Russian intelligence agencies had directed the hacking, but had been less certain that they could prove Russia also had controlled the release of information… The timing of the additional intelligence is important because President Obama has faced criticism from his own party over why it took his administration months to respond to the cyber attack. U.S. Senate and House leaders, including prominent Republicans, have also called for an inquiry.”
Tensions Flare In Republican Party Over Russia
“Tensions within the Republican Party over how to handle Russia are becoming increasingly public as the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings on President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state and presses ahead with a review of alleged Russian cyberattacks during the 2016 election,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“At the heart of the intraparty split over Russia—which pits GOP lawmakers like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham against Mr. Trump and his national security adviser designate, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—is disagreement over a basic question: How much danger does President Vladimir Putin’s Russia pose to the U.S.?”
Putin Moves to Take Advantage
Politico: “From Moscow, Vladimir Putin has seized the momentum of this unraveling, exacting critical damage to the underpinnings of the liberal world order in a shockingly short time. As he builds a new system to replace the one we know, attempts by America and its allies to repair the damage have been limited and slow. Even this week, as Barack Obama tries to confront Russia’s open and unprecedented interference in our political process, the outgoing White House is so far responding to 21st century hybrid information warfare with last century’s diplomatic toolkit: the expulsion of spies, targeted sanctions, potential asset seizure. The incoming administration, while promising a new approach, has betrayed a similar lack of vision. Their promised attempt at another ‘reset’ with Russia is a rehash of a policy that has utterly failed the past two American administrations.”
“What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.”
Trump Minimizes Claims of Russian Hacking
President-elect Donald Trump distanced himself “from the Obama administration’s plans to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump: “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind of security we need.”
