Tag Archives: Russian attack

Report confirms it: Russians attacked our election in 2016

(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

As if we didn’t know it already.

KHOU-TV in Houston reports that a Senate committee has determined that Russia attacked our electoral system in 2016, a notion that Donald John Trump has disputed, siding with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and denigrating our intelligence community’s analysis.

KHOU said: A bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday confirms the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to sow chaos. Senators warned that it could happen again this presidential election year.

What do you know about that?

This whole story became served as the starting point for the lengthy investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump fought it like crazy. He disparaged special counsel Robert Mueller III’s work to get at the truth. Trump kept insisting it was “fake news,” and a “hoax.”

It was nothing of the sort.

Then he stood before the world in Helsinki and said he believed Putin’s denial and dismissed the consensus developed by the nation’s intelligence network.

This investigation effectively closes the book on that terrible chapter in our electoral history. However, the warning from senators should not be ignored, that the Russians are doing it again this year. They are seeking to sow chaos once more.

Are we going to impose security measures that build impenetrable walls around our voting process? Isn’t this a matter of national security?

Donald Trump took an oath to protect our way of life, to be on guard against hostile actions from foreign nations and to take action to defend us.

This prediction is an easy one to make: Donald Trump is going to violate his oath of office once again by doing nothing to stop this likely attack from a hostile power.

Acting DNI set to jump into the fire

At first blush, it appears that Donald Trump has selected a grownup, a mature counterintelligence official to become the acting director of national intelligence.

He is Joseph Maguire, head of the National Counterintelligence Center. He succeeds Dan Coats, who is leaving his DNI post on Aug. 15. Coats’s deputy DNI, Sue Gordon, also is leaving on the same day.

My major concern about Joseph Maguire, though, centers on something I have noted already in the wake of Coats’s decision to leave the post.

Will the next DNI, whether acting or permanent, be allowed to tell the commander in chief the truth about threats to this country? Will the president of the United States actually listen to what he says and will he act on recommendations that come from the DNI?

Trump has demonstrated an inability to do that during Coats’s tenure as the nation’s top spook. Indeed, it appears that resistance led to Coats’s decision to leave.

What’s next? If only the president would heed the opinions offered by the nation’s intelligence network. You know, such as: The Russians attacked our electoral system in 2016 and are doing so again … and we need to respond to it aggressively.

Donald Trump isn’t listening. He needs to pay attention.

How on Earth does this POTUS do the right thing?

U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe’s decision to pull out of the director of national intelligence job puts Donald John Trump squarely in the middle of a quandary he seems to have no interest in solving.

Trump selected the toadie Ratcliffe — a Northeast Texas congressman — to succeed Dan Coats as DNI, only to face a storm of criticism over Ratcliffe’s partisan leanings and allegations that he embellished his resume. Trump blamed the media for doing their job in “vetting” this individual.

Ratcliffe is out. Coats will be gone Aug. 15. Who will fill the vital job as head of the nation’s intelligence network? How in the world does this president do the right thing and find someone who (a) is willing to work for Donald Trump and (b) would provide Trump with the critical analysis of the existential security threats to the nation.

More to the point, how does Trump resist the impulse to rely on those who tell him what he wants to hear and ignores what he needs to hear?

Coats and other intelligence chiefs said the same thing: Russia attacked our election in 2016. Trump has dismissed them. Indeed, just this week he said former special counsel Robert Mueller — who said yet again that the Russians posed a serious threat to our electoral system — didn’t know what he was talking about.

The heads of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff all have said the same thing: The Russians attacked us.

Coats spoke “truth to power.” Ratcliffe spoke quite the opposite.

What in the world is Donald Trump going to do to fill this job? He needs critical thinking. He needs to hear the truth. He needs to be told where the threats exist and he needs to consider strategies to protect our system against further assaults from Russia and perhaps other hostile powers.

Who in the world is willing to provide what the president of the United States won’t accept?

OK, Mr. President, look for a legitimate DNI nominee

Donald J. Trump has yanked John Ratcliffe’s name from consideration as the next Director of National Intelligence.

Ratcliffe, the congressman from Northeast Texas who also happens to be a staunch — damn near rabid — Trump supporter, had no business being considered for the top job in our nation’s vast intelligence-gathering and analysis network.

Why? Because he demonstrated a palpable disregard for the work done by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who has said categorically that Russians attacked our electoral system in  2016 and were poised to do it again in 2020.

Ratcliffe, moreover, reportedly embellished his resume, suggesting he had taken part in anti-terror operations while serving as U.S. attorney in East Texas when he did no such thing.

Trump, though, said the media would “slander and libel” him, and suggested that Ratcliffe remain in Congress.

Hey, here’s an idea for the president to consider. He ought to find someone with the gravitas of the outgoing DNI, former U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, who is leaving because he and Trump had disagreements over the very thing we’ve been discussing here: the Russian threat to our democratic process. Coats blames the Russians for behaving with evil intent; Trump sides with the Russians. Game over for DNI Coats.

Oh, wait! Just how does the president find a grownup such as Coats to take over the DNI job if he’s going to insist that the intelligence presented to him is phony, that it’s wrong and that the Russians aren’t doing what the spooks are telling him?

Ratcliffe wasn’t qualified for the DNI job, the alleged embellishment notwithstanding. The POTUS needs a DNI to tell him what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear.

As for the media that did their job, they performed a valuable public service in outing Ratcliffe as a Donald Trump toadie who wasn’t up to the job.