Mueller probing alleged Flynn plan to deliver cleric to Turkey: WSJ

[Firgof Umbra]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52880453]You were the one wondering where they got the 4 million votes from between June and November...[/quote]
You say voter enthusiasm. I say voter manipulation.

[quote]I missed the voter purge part, sorry. Where is the evidence of significant voter purges?[/quote]
I already stated that we can't tell how significant those purges were because the states are refusing to cooperate on that front. All we know is what the IC testified to, which was that Russia engaged in a huge, sophisticated, multi-tier run on our elections, including gaining access to state and local voter registration databases and at very least investigations on our voting machines.

We do have evidence that they were active in many states by DHS authorities - but those same states aren't giving evidence over to determine how significant those hacks were. Many states were targeted, including: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Three of those states state they were targeted and successfully repel'd their hacks. Many of the others had no comment. Another earlier report from someone involved in the investigation mentioned 31 states.

For Illinois in particular, 15,000,000 records on voters (half of whom were actively registered to vote) were exposed to Russian hackers and as many as 90,000 were compromised. Meanwhile, in Florida a private contractor was managing critical election systems and traces of the same hackers who hit Illinois were found in their databases as well. Some of their data was tampered - but not significantly - leading their investigation to believe it was a 'trial run' for a more disruptive attack.

That's just the information we [I]know[/I] about the voter rolls that's been made public. Many states are refusing to look further into these matters. The potential for there to have been targeted voter purges in significant states where Trump needed only a marginal lead to win the state is very high. I can understand their desire to not allow 'the fed' to look at their systems though, as I suspect the GOP (and perhaps the DNC as well) was subtly 'tilting the scales' there themselves in addition.

They looked for ways in to our election systems, found some, and had the targeting information and the ability to engage with the voting roll systems to effect the changes they needed to swing the election in their favor. The only thing to debate over here is whether they pulled the trigger or not, despite having gone through the trouble of finding, loading, and aiming their gun.

As for the voting machines, Russian military intelligence attempted to infiltrate an election software vendor's computer systems in order to send malware to 122 local election offices - but there's no evidence that those emails were opened so they likely didn't succeed. So they definitely made an attempt here - a significant one - and if they made another one and we didn't catch it, that would've been significant - of course we can't prove it while states refuse to hand over their machines for investigators to check out. Also, we wouldn't necessarily know if some local officials fell for a phishing attack and thought the e-mails they received were kosher.

[quote]I am drawing a distinction between changing votes and influencing voters. What I mean by "Fixing the election" is changing final vote tallies, increasing Trump's votes and reducing Clinton's, tangibly. Voter purges could classify as that, but I don't know if that happened.[/quote]
Would you consider it 'reducing Clinton's votes' if Russia purged particular Clinton voters from the voting rolls? If so, then we're on the same page on that at least.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]FACT: There is evidence of only a small number of successful hacks of voter registration databases.[/quote]

FRAUD: There were many more reports than that, those reports coming from the DHS, and the 'evidence' is what is publicly available. You can't say 'therefore there was only a small number of successful hacks' is a fact when you refuse to incorporate 90% of the cases where there were potential hacks and for which whether they were or weren't successfully hacked is an unknown. To claim it as a fact is deliberately disingenuous and as a result I find your source to be incredibly suspect on the face of their claims.

[quote]FACT: There remains zero evidence that hackers affected the vote counts.[/quote]

FACT: States continue to refuse to turn over those voting rolls to be examined for said affects.

[quote]and I use sources[/quote]
I find the DHS (who conducted the stated investigation) to be a better source than yours. Also, congressional testimony.

[url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?430128-1/senate-intel-panel-told-21-states-targeted-russia-2016-election]You want sources? I can provide raw, unfiltered, sources.[/url]
[url=https://www.npr.org/2017/09/22/552956517/ten-months-after-election-day-feds-tell-states-more-about-russian-hacking]How about NPR?[/url]
[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dhs-tells-states-about-russian-hacking-during-2016-election/2017/09/22/fd263a2c-9fe2-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.ed57c47823f4]I can go to the Washington Post on this too.[/url]

FACT: Our VR systems were targeted and Russians had the credentials to get into them. We still do not know how many of them Russia decided to use their credentials on or how many, if any, registrations were purged or changed - primarily because the folks in charge of those systems still refuse to turn said systems over for investigation as it is a voluntary thing and they elected not to.

Edit: And so the situation is thus, at this time. Russia put forward a crapton of effort to try to at least gain access to more than 40% of the US (state) voter registration systems, managed to find ways to access them, conducted experiments on some of them in preparation for a larger attack and then... what? Did they go that far and just decide not to do so? Or did they do so and use their available targeting information to selectively purge certain voters from particular rolls in order to change the outcomes of key elections?

That's the question - did Russia go that far only to turn back at the last second? I'd think it's pretty crazy to argue that they would as it would only benefit them to do so, so long as Trump becomes elected President or so long as they are able to whip up his supporters about the election being illegitimate - in part because they attempted to make it illegitimate.

[Big Dumb Patriot]

Lawfare wrote quite a thorough assessment of the legal threat that Flynn and Flynn Jr are under.

[url]http://lawfareblog.com/what-make-latest-story-about-flynn-and-gulen[/url]

This also deepens the pit for probable obstruction of justice charges against Trump, who ordered Comey to, "let this go."

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote] States aren't all idiots trying to undermine the federal government. [/quote]
I think it's less they're trying to undermine the federal government and more like they're trying to cover their ass as they go 'oh shit, I thought those purges were ours'.

Also, the DHS knew about it and didn't inform the right people about it to begin with so that is also an [I]actual, factual, thing[/I] that I could argue. That said, the DHS can only see the activity - they wouldn't be able to tell remotely whether anything was changed. That'd require inspecting the rolls which, as I've pointed out, they're being denied access to and in one case already the rolls were purged (including their offsite backup) when they were ordered to be produced to be examined.

[quote]I am still waiting for you to admit you had no idea where those 4 million votes came from while you were purely speculating Kremlin made Erdogan gain them, and you have no real solid grounds to allege a massive voter purge swinging the election and you are again speculating, this once with a hint of reality.[/quote]

Why would I admit such a thing? My idea is that they were manipulated and drawn out by Russia, as Russia has been driving those sorts of efforts for many years now. You're just saying 'those aren't real or solid grounds!' because, I guess, Russia just 'can't'.

I guess I should just ignore what, historically, Russia has been doing in the world. I feel like this is an Austin Powers scene where you're stating 'but Russia would never do anything like that and you have no evidence', meanwhile things fly by on the screen demonstrating that Russia had done things exactly like that in the past, that this is what they're in to, and that their aggression on Turkey definitely doesn't show a Russian willingness to attempt to destabilize their neighbor so as to take it over - not that they haven't already made land grabs to that effect, calling them 'military exercises' at first.

[G-Man]

[URL="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-gulen/turkey-denies-ludicrous-reports-of-plan-to-seize-cleric-from-u-s-idUSKBN1DC0DL?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a082adf04d301392565e57d&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook"]Turkey denies that they ever planned to have Fethullah Gulen illegally seized.[/URL]
[QUOTE]In a statement, the Turkish embassy in Washington repeated Ankara’s request for the extradition of the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who it says masterminded last year’s failed military coup, but said Turkey would not operate outside the law to achieve that goal.

The statement followed a Wall Street Journal report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged proposal under which former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son would receive up to $15 million for seizing Gulen and delivering him to the Turkish government.

NBC also reported an alleged December 2016 meeting, saying Mueller’s team was investigating whether Flynn met senior Turkish officials before President Donald Trump’s inauguration about a possible quid pro quo in which Flynn would be paid to do the bidding of Turkey’s government while in office.

“Turkey and the Turkish people expect the immediate extradition of Fethullah Gulen from the United States to Turkey, so that he can stand trial,” the embassy statement said, in the first official Turkish reaction to the newspaper report.

“As we stated previously... all allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law for his extradition are utterly false, ludicrous and groundless”.[/QUOTE]