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Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler confronted Comey about the appearance of a double standard during a congressional hearing, after then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who had been briefed on aspects of the Trump-Russia probe by CIA Director John Brennan, wrote a letter to Comey imploring him to go public.
“After you investigated Secretary Clinton, you made a decision to explain publicly who you interviewed and why,” Nadler said to Comey. “You also disclosed documents, including those from those interviews. Why shouldn’t the American people have the same level of information about your investigation with those associated with Mr. Trump?”
According to The Times, "Mr. Comey never considered disclosing the case. Doing so, he believed, would have undermined an active investigation and cast public suspicion on people the FBI could not be sure were implicated."
FBI Director Comey. Thomson Reuters
The New York Times published a lengthy retrospective on Saturday about FBI Director James Comey's decision to revisit the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails 11 days before the presidential election, offering fresh insight into Comey's thinking and sparking a new debate over whether he cost Clinton the election.
Nate Silver, the editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, said The Times' report showed "the case that the Comey letter — or the media's handling of the letter — cost Clinton the election is painfully obvious."
On October 28, Comey wrote a letter to Congress saying that the FBI had learned of "the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent" to the investigation into Clinton's email server, which had originally been closed in July. The emails were discovered as the FBI was examining former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, which he shared with his wife, Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide.(Weiner had been accused of exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl.)
The letter was promptly released by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, and dominated the headlines of major media outlets in the days leading up to the election. Stocks fell sharply and Clinton's poll numbers dropped by 3 points over subsequent days, Silver pointed out — a last-minute slip political scientists attributed to "the Comey effect,"according to The Times.
Then, on Election Day, Clinton lost Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — each by less than 1 percentage point.
"Not complicated," Silver said. "Clinton was up by a lot. Comey letter hits. Treated as massive story. Suddenly she was up by not-a-lot. She loses narrowly."
Silver received pushback for concluding that Comey's letter — reportedly the result of weeks of deliberation over how the FBI should proceed after it uncovered the new emails in early October — was so consequential.
Many say Clinton's loss was her own fault and she has been using the Comey letter as a scapegoat. (Her campaign has publicly blamed Comey for the loss.) Journalist Ron Fournier, for example, shot back at Silver's argument with a link to a piece he wrote in July 2016 titled "Hillary Has No One to Blame But Herself."
"When I wrote this column, you were still predicting a Clinton win," Fournier told Silver. "Nice work."
The back-and-forth quickly descended into a feud over "how probability works," as Silver put it. But few doubt that Comey's revelation had a negative effect on Clinton's candidacy, even if it was not enough to swing the election at the last minute.
Whereas many Clinton backers felt vindicated by Comey's revelation last month that the FBI had been investigating Trump and his associates for their ties to Russia since last July, others were outraged that Comey broke FBI protocol to disclose the existence of new Clinton emails just days before the election, but didn't tell voters that Trump was also under FBI investigation until four months after the election.
People familiar with Comey's thinking told the Times that he wanted to shield the FBI from what he perceived to be then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's bias toward Clinton, which prompted him to handle the Clinton and Trump investigations "in starkly different ways."
But the different approaches didn't go unnoticed. Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler confronted Comey about the appearance of a double standard during a congressional hearing, after then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who had been briefed on aspects of the Trump-Russia probe by CIA Director John Brennan, wrote a letter to Comey imploring him to go public.
“After you investigated Secretary Clinton, you made a decision to explain publicly who you interviewed and why,” Nadler said to Comey. “You also disclosed documents, including those from those interviews. Why shouldn’t the American people have the same level of information about your investigation with those associated with Mr. Trump?”
According to The Times, "Mr. Comey never considered disclosing the case. Doing so, he believed, would have undermined an active investigation and cast public suspicion on people the FBI could not be sure were implicated."
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Hackers linked to the same Russian military unit that hacked Democratic computers in the United States during last year’s election also have sought to penetrate the networks of a leading candidate in France’s presidential elections, a leading cybersecurity firm says.
Researchers from Trend Micro, a global security software company, said Monday that Russian hackers took aim last month at the networks of Emmanuel Macron, a centrist who advocates a strong pan-European stance to combat meddling by Moscow.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin openly favors Macron’s opponent, Marine Le Pen, a far-right candidate who’s faced allegations that her campaign received Russian financing. Le Pen and Putin share antipathy toward the European Union.
Macron and Le Pen were the top vote-getters in Sunday’s first-round presidential elections, and will face one another in a runoff May 7.
The hackers who went after Macron are the same ones who penetrated the networks of the Democratic National Committee in 2015-16 and hacked emails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, which were later published by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group, Trend Micro experts said.
The Russian hacking group is known by many names, including Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, APT28, Strontium and Sofacy. Another cybersecurity group, ThreatConnect, says the hackers are linked to the GRU, an elite Russian military intelligence unit.
Trend Micro is to issue a comprehensive report on the group Tuesday, but experts there spoke in advance to describe the hacking group’s actions in the French elections.
A Dutch analyst for Trend Micro, Feike Hacquebord, said in an email that the hackers had set up fake internet domains on March 15 and on April 12, 14 and 17 that were similar to ones used by Macron’s En Marche! party or his official campaign.
The intent, he said, was that hackers could send “spearphishing” emails to people associated with the campaign and lure them to click on safe-sounding links that would allow hackers to get a foothold in networks.
They don’t give up easily. Like the name suggests, Pawn Storm will attack from different sides.
Feike Hacquebord, threat researcher at Trend Micro
“We did notify French authorities. Generally speaking, Pawn Storm is known to have very good social engineering skills,” Hacquebord said, referring to the GRU-affiliated unit by his company’s name for it. “They don’t give up easily. Like the name suggests, Pawn Storm will attack from different sides.”
Trend Micro gave the group the name Pawn Storm two years ago after a strategy in chess in which a player moves pawns in quick succession toward an opponent’s defenses.
It is not known whether the Russian hackers succeeded in gaining a foothold in the Macron campaign’s networks.
EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM
Hacquebord said a single registrant unrelated to Macron’s campaign had set up the domain names onedrive-en-marche.fr, portal-office.fr, mail-en-march.fr and accounts-office.fr – all designed to appear connected to his campaign or to the Microsoft cloud services it uses.
“They increase the likelihood that their targets will fall for the phishing with excellent social engineering, precise targeting and by registering domain names that are very similar to the domains of the legitimate Macron campaign and Microsoft services,” Hacquebord said.
The hackers went to the trouble of getting certificates so the disguised sites appeared even more legitimate and used encryption.
It’s definitely a shift in their strategy.
Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer for Trend Micro
“They take a great amount of energy to be able to disguise their attacks. It’s definitely a shift in their strategy,” said Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer for Trend Micro, which was founded in Los Angeles but now has its headquarters in Tokyo.
EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM
The hacking group also appears to be ramping up targeting of the German political establishment. Hacquebord said the Russian hackers had set up or activated domains this month to launch attacks on two prominent think tanks, Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert, foundations linked, respectively, with the Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties. The German general elections are in September.
Macron’s campaign manager, Richard Ferrand, complained bitterly in February of “hundreds if not thousands of attacks” on the campaign’s computer networks.
During the campaign, Russian media strongly attacked Macron, a former investment banker, accusing him of being a “fraud” and a tool of the U.S. banking industry.
“What we want is for authorities at the highest level to take the matter in hand to guarantee that there is no foreign meddling in our democracy. The Americans saw it but it came too late,” Ferrand said, according to a Reuters report at the time.
U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report Jan. 6 that Russian state hackers, under direction from the Kremlin, had broken into networks of the Democratic Party and into emails of Clinton campaign officials in 2016 with the aim of assisting Donald Trump’s campaign.
Putin has dismissed the charges. After initially rejecting any Russian involvement in the hacking, Trump acknowledged earlier this year that Russia was responsible. The FBI is leading an investigation into the Russian meddling, and several committees on Capitol Hill also are conducting probes.
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· · · ·
French election: Russian hackers 'targeted Emmanuel Macron camp'
The Independent-2 hours ago
Researchers with the Japanese anti-virus firm Trend Micro say the campaign of French presidential front-runner Emmanuel Macron has been ...
French presidential frontrunner's campaign hit by phishing attempts ...
The Verge-13 hours ago
French presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron has qualified for next month's runoff election, but a Russian government-linked group seems ...
Amid Hacking Threat, Macron Campaign Blacklists Putins TV Network
Highly Cited-Daily Beast-15 hours ago
Highly Cited-Daily Beast-15 hours ago
How Russia hacked the French election
POLITICO.eu-Apr 22, 2017
In fact, Moscow has already interfered in French elections. In 1974, the KGB launched a covert propaganda campaign to discredit both François ...
Russian hackers are believed to have targeted France's favorite to ...
Business Insider-14 hours ago
The campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the favourite to win France's presidential election, has been targeted by a cyber espionage group linked ...
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· ·
WASHINGTON —
As a young federal prosecutor in the 1990s, Rod J. Rosenstein played a key role in the highly charged independent investigation of the President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, over their investments in a failed real estate company known as Whitewater.
Rosenstein now is poised to take over another sensitive investigation: the FBI counterintelligence inquiry into whether President Donald Trump's current or former aides colluded with Russian intelligence to interfere with last year's election.
The Senate is expected to confirm Rosenstein as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 position in the Justice Department, after clearing a procedural vote Monday night with bipartisan support. The final vote is expected on Wednesday.
Rosenstein will decide whether to file criminal charges, to drop the case entirely, or to hand it off to an independent counsel, as the Whitewater investigation was later run by special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr.
Rosenstein rose through the ranks
Rosenstein, who has served under Republican and Democratic presidents, will be responsible because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation after news reports revealed that during his Senate confirmation hearing, he failed to disclose his own meetings with a Russian diplomat last year.
In all, Rosenstein has spent 27 years at the Department of Justice, the last 12 as U.S attorney for the District of Maryland. He rose steadily through the ranks with a reputation as a hard-edged career prosecutor uninterested in politics.
Rosenstein's by-the-numbers work stood out in the highly politicized, widely criticized Whitewater investigation, colleagues recall.
"He's a very thoughtful guy — and I wouldn't say that about everybody at the independent counsel's office," said Bruce W. Udolf, now a defense lawyer in Miami. "He's a solid guy and can be relied on to do the right thing, no matter what the politics."
Confident in ability to handle case
During his contentious Senate confirmation hearing on March 7, Rosenstein would not say whether he would appoint a special prosecutor for the Russian investigation, as some Democrats demanded.
But he expressed confidence that the Justice Department could handle even the most politically fraught case without compromising its independence. He said he wouldn't have qualms about questioning Sessions or even Trump, if the investigation led to them.
"I've done that before," said Rosenstein, who was part of the team that questioned President Bill Clinton at the White House in the Whitewater case. "I've been involved in questioning a president of the United States."
Rosenstein told lawmakers he had "no reason to doubt" the conclusion of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia's government sought to influence the U.S. presidential race through cyberhacks of Democratic Party leaders and other operations.
His role as Sessions’ deputy
As deputy attorney general, Rosenstein will oversee day-to-day operations at the Justice Department and help carry out the conservative shift in legal priorities that Trump and Sessions have promised.
Rosenstein will lead the department's efforts to investigate more violent crime, one of his priorities as a prosecutor in Maryland.
He also will help lead efforts aimed at tougher enforcement of immigration laws, including trying to compel so-called sanctuary cities to share information on people in the country illegally and to hand over suspects for deportation.
Early life
Rosenstein grew up in a Philadelphia suburb, where his father ran a company that processed mortgage payments for banks. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. He and his wife have two teenage daughters.
A young lawyer
After law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1990, he joined the Justice Department, landing a spot in the "honors program" for young lawyers that grooms future stars.
He soon joined the agency's top levels, working as a counsel for Deputy Attorney General Philip B. Heymann in Clinton's first term.
"For me, the grand hallways of Main Justice echo with the voices of mentors and friends," Rosenstein told lawmakers last month. "They taught me to ask the right questions. First, what can we do? Second, what should we do? And third, how will we explain it?"
Helped investigate the Clintons
In 1995, he joined the independent counsel investigation looking into real estate investments in Arkansas by the Clintons and several of their associates. He was part of the trial team that won convictions against Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and two others. The Clintons were never charged.
Rosenstein later led an investigation into whether the Clinton administration had improperly obtained FBI background reports, and questioned Hillary Clinton at the White House in January 1998. No one was charged in that case.
Rosenstein left the special prosecutor's office before it veered into the extramarital affair between President Clinton and White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. That investigation ultimately led to a House vote to impeach Clinton in 1998, although he later was acquitted in the Senate.
Nominated and confirmed under George W. Bush
After working several years as a federal prosecutor in Maryland, Rosenstein ran the Justice Department's tax division. In May 2005, President George W. Bush nominated him to be U.S. attorney in Maryland, and he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
When he arrived in Baltimore, the office was just beginning Project Exile, a program his predecessor planned to attack violent crime. In the first year, the program looked like a flop because the violent crime rate didn't budge, said Steve Levin, one of Rosenstein's top deputies at the time.
"It would have been very easy for Rod to end the program and blame it on a predecessor and say, 'Let's try something else,'" said Levin. "He was willing to take any hits he was getting. He wasn't concerned about himself. He was concerned with the office."
Reappointed to U.S. attorney by Obama
In November 2007, Bush nominated Rosenstein to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. But the Democratic-controlled Senate refused to schedule a hearing and the nomination lapsed. Obama then reappointed him to the U.S. attorney's job.
Stood by law enforcement, fought corruption
As a federal prosecutor, supporters say, Rosenstein forged close relationships with local law enforcement, devoting resources to gritty drug and gun cases and standing with police chiefs at raucous community meetings.
He also handled some notable public corruption cases, including a bribery case that sent a powerful county executive to jail for seven years.
'He's seen it all, nothing surprises him'
Rosenstein's office chose not to file charges in the case of Freddy Gray, whose death from injuries in police custody sparked riots in Baltimore in 2015. But he filed racketeering charges last month against seven Baltimore police officers in another case.
"He's seen it all, so nothing surprises him," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, who has watched Rosenstein's work closely over the years. He said he was impressed with Rosenstein's collegiality and willingness to hash out strategy on complex investigations.
"When you get to that level of leadership, you know that every day can be your last day on the job," Davis said. "He'll be able to sleep eight hours a night. He's going to make decisions in the right interests of justice."
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· · · · · ·
Poll: Majority of Americans wants to keep, fix ObamaCare
The Hill (blog) - 16 minutes ago
A majority of Americans want lawmakers to keep and fix ObamaCare rather than replace it with a Republican alternative, according to a new poll released Tuesday. The ABC/Washington Post poll found that 61 percent of voters want ObamaCare fixed instead ...
Gov't shutdown, health bill rescue at stake in Congress
The Detroit News - 53 minutes ago
Washington — Bipartisan bargainers are making progress toward a budget deal to prevent a partial federal shutdown this weekend, a major hurdle overcome when President Donald Trump signaled he would put off his demand that the measure include ...
 How an alternative Donald Trump opening act might have unfolded
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Let's imagine an alternative opening act to the Trump presidency. Specifically, let's imagine a presidency that attempted from the outset to take advantage of the fact that Donald Trump isn't an ideological conservative or a traditional Republican, but ...
 Talk it Out: Should America pay for the wall between U.S. and Mexico?
<a href="http://cleveland.com" rel="nofollow">cleveland.com</a> - 1 hour ago
In this photo taken Feb. 28, 2017, a flag flies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Lawmakers return to Washington this week to a familiar quagmire on health care legislation and a budget deadline dramatized by the prospect of a protracted battle between ...
 Only 37 percent say Trump should repeal and replace Obamacare (POLL)
ABC News - 1 hour ago
As President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress gear up for another attempt at repealing and replacing Obamacare, an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds broad public preference for keeping and improving it -- including high levels of ...
With Shutdown Looming, Trump Is Tweeting Out Demands. Will He Stick By Them?
KAWC - 1 hour ago
President Trump walks on the South Lawn after returning to the White House earlier this month. A government shutdown is just three days away, and Trump is digging in on demands. Olivier Douliery-Pool / Getty Images. "I also protect myself by being ...
Trump opens the door to delaying funding of border wall
ABC News - 1 hour ago
President Trump signaled to a gathering of conservative media reporters on Monday that he may be open to delaying the funding of his proposed border wall. The president said -- according to tweets from conservative media at the gathering this evening ...
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· ·
But nearly every day of his presidency, President Donald Trump has picked up the phone and turned to a network of more than two dozen fellow billionaires and millionaires, sports figures and informal advisers outside the White House.
Trump has struggled in many ways to apply his decades of experience in real estate and entertainment to governing in his first 100 days in office. But he's had no problem maintaining the same kind of line of communication that he relied on during his decades in business and throughout his unconventional campaign. It's now a fundamental part of how he's running the country, according to a half-dozen friends and advisers familiar with the calls.
The network of outsiders with whom Trump speaks regularly have also served as a key bulwark to the isolation every president feels at one point or another at the White House -- an effect magnified for Trump, who took office with few true friends in Washington after his establishment-bashing campaign ended in unexpected victory.
Nearly every day of his young presidency, Trump has picked up the phone to seek counsel, friendship and fresh perspective from dozens of people: He's reached out to decades-old sounding boards like Tom Barrack and Phil Ruffin, "winning" sports figures like retired Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight and Patriots coach Bill Bellichick, as well as political advisers like his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski and Rudy Giuliani, New York's former mayor.
The calls come at all hours of the day: in the evenings, late at night and sometimes as early as "three or four o'clock in the morning" -- whenever inspiration strikes -- said one source who speaks regularly with Trump. They typically lack a set agenda and are marked by Trump's propensity for bouncing from one subject to the next, according to friends and advisers familiar with the calls, one of whom described calls with Trump as "stream of consciousness."
But that doesn't mean Trump is looking to come up empty-handed after hanging up the phone.
"He gets a lot of opinions," said Ruffin, the casino magnate who has been friends with Trump for two decades. "He just gets other views ... as many views as he can ... and then makes the final decision on what he wants to do."
Ruffin described his calls with Trump, who was best man at Ruffin's 2008 wedding, as "friendly conversations" that sometimes veered toward policy issues, though he declined to offer details, calling the conversations confidential.
Others who have spoken to Trump since he took office said the President has sought their advice on policy issues, but also calls to ask for their reviews of his latest actions, amassing a bank of feedback -- and sometimes even criticism -- of his progress as president and the performance of his White House advisers.
"His circle of friends is large and deep. And he has relied on these people to give him honest input regardless of what the issue is," said a source close to Trump who speaks with him regularly. "Most of the people that he speaks to are contemporaries of his who don't need or want anything from him."
Breaking out of the bubble
It's a model Trump pulled from his decades in real estate and casinos and is now putting to the test at the White House, where it's also serving as a way for Trump to break out of the "bubble" the presidency can foster.
"The White House is very -- there's only so much information you're going to get. You're limited," the source said. "The President likes to get as much information as possible from as many people as possible."
The calls are also an outlet for his frustrations, coming as bad news days ended and Trump retreated to the privacy of his White House residence, where he is often alone as first lady Melania Trump continues to live in New York.
It's often when he's alone that he's picked up the phone and fumed about the Republican Congress' failure to pass health care reform, or unfavorable coverage in the media.
When his attorney general recused himself from investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign amid political pressure from Democrats, a livid Trump dialed one of his friends outside government and unleashed an expletive-laced rant, according to a source familiar with the call.
Most presidents reach outside their circle of advisers inside the White House to get outside perspectives, but presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said past presidents have typically used relied on former government officials and "so-called wise men" for advice.
'Wise men'
Trump does take the counsel of some of those "wise men," albeit those with an anti-establishment streak like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. (
The New York Times reported Saturday
Trump counts at least 20 confidantes.)
Unlike the small group of friends Trump frequently phones, Gingrich said his relationship with Trump isn't a "social chit-chat relationship," but more politically oriented -- though, "if he has time, he chats at length," said Gingrich.
"I think that he tries to sort through what he learns from a wide range of sources," said Gingrich, who speaks with Trump occasionally. "What you end up with is somebody who gathers information from an amazing range of sources, forms intuitive opinions about what it all means and then finds himself making decisions."
Current House Speaker Paul Ryan has also begun fielding calls from the President. A source familiar with the calls said they've come both late at night and early in the morning, during Ryan's gym workout.
But Trump is largely sticking to the counsel of longtime friends and outsider advisers.
And that can sometimes be an enabling force that fuels some of his worst impulses -- whether by reaffirming his attacks on the media or sharing personal anecdotes that Trump later seizes on as evidence to support his political views and sometimes his most unfounded opinions.
During the campaign, Trump often let his conversations with friends and business associates spill into his stump speech. One friend couldn't afford to buy Caterpillar tractors anymore and had been forced to turn to the US manufacturer's Japanese competitor, Komatsu. Another friend told Trump he had stopped going to France after a spate of recent terrorist attacks, declaring, "France is no longer France."
And days into his presidency, Trump cited a story about potentially unlawful activity at a polling place on Election Day as evidence of his debunked claim that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election.
Now, those calls are informing policy.
As he signed executive actions in February aimed at rolling back financial reform regulations enacted under the Dodd-Frank Act, Trump cited the plight of fellow millionaire and billionaire businessmen.
"We expect to be cutting a lot from Dodd-Frank because, frankly, I have so many people -- friends of mine -- that have nice businesses, they can't borrow money. They just can't get any money because the banks just won't let them borrow it because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank," Trump said, contradicting public data that shows bank lending has been consistently on the rise since the law went into effect in 2010.
A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.
Trump attends a news conference in 2005 that announced the establishment of Trump University. From 2005 until it closed in 2010, Trump University had about 10,000 people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp rejected the suits' claims as "baseless." And Trump has charged that the New York case against him is politically motivated.
Trump attends the U.S. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron, in 2006. Trump and Knauss married in 2005.
Trump wrestles with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania in 2007. Trump has close ties with the WWE and its CEO, Vince McMahon.
For "The Apprentice," Trump was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007.
Trump appears on the set of "The Celebrity Apprentice" with two of his children -- Donald Jr. and Ivanka -- in 2009.
Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in 2011. Trump had been executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants since 1996.
In 2012, Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Trump speaks in Sarasota, Florida, after accepting the Statesman of the Year Award at the Sarasota GOP dinner in August 2012. It was shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa.
Trump appears on stage with singer Nick Jonas and television personality Giuliana Rancic during the 2013 Miss USA pageant.
Trump -- flanked by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, left, and Ted Cruz -- speaks during a CNN debate in Miami on March 10. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.
The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April.
Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April 28. After Trump won the Indiana primary, his last two competitors dropped out of the GOP race.
Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President. "I have had a truly great life in business," he said. "But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country -- to go to work for you. It's time to deliver a victory for the American people."
Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize," Trump said, referring to lewd comments he made during a previously unaired taping of "Access Hollywood." Multiple Republican leaders rescinded their endorsements of Trump after the footage was released.
Trump walks on stage with his family after he was declared the election winner on November 9. "Ours was not a campaign, but rather, an incredible and great movement," he told his supporters in New York.
Trump is joined by his family as he is sworn in as President on January 20.
President-elect Donald Trump has been in the spotlight for years. From developing real estate and producing and starring in TV shows, he became a celebrity long before winning the White House.
Trump at age 4. He was born in 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump in New York City. His father was a real estate developer.
Trump, left, in a family photo. He was the second-youngest of five children.
Trump, center, stands at attention during his senior year at the New York Military Academy in 1964.
Trump, center, wears a baseball uniform at the New York Military Academy in 1964. After he graduated from the boarding school, he went to college. He started at Fordham University before transferring and later graduating from the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania's business school.
Trump stands with Alfred Eisenpreis, New York's economic development administrator, in 1976 while they look at a sketch of a new 1,400-room renovation project of the Commodore Hotel. After graduating college in 1968, Trump worked with his father on developments in Queens and Brooklyn before purchasing or building multiple properties in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Those properties included Trump Tower in New York and Trump Plaza and multiple casinos in Atlantic City.
Trump attends an event to mark the start of construction of the New York Convention Center in 1979.
Trump wears a hard hat at the Trump Tower construction site in New York in 1980.
Trump was married to Ivana Zelnicek Trump from 1977 to 1990, when they divorced. They had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.
The Trump family, circa 1986.
Trump uses his personal helicopter to get around New York in 1987.
Trump stands in the atrium of the Trump Tower.
Trump attends the opening of his new Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1989.
Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump has published at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."
Trump and singer Michael Jackson pose for a photo before traveling to visit Ryan White, a young child with AIDS, in 1990.
Trump dips his second wife, Marla Maples, after the couple married in a private ceremony in New York in December 1993. The couple divorced in 1999 and had one daughter together, Tiffany.
Trump putts a golf ball in his New York office in 1998.
An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Tower in 2004. The show launched in January of that year. In January 2008, the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice."
A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.
Trump attends a news conference in 2005 that announced the establishment of Trump University. From 2005 until it closed in 2010, Trump University had about 10,000 people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp rejected the suits' claims as "baseless." And Trump has charged that the New York case against him is politically motivated.
Trump attends the U.S. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron, in 2006. Trump and Knauss married in 2005.
Trump wrestles with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania in 2007. Trump has close ties with the WWE and its CEO, Vince McMahon.
For "The Apprentice," Trump was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007.
Trump appears on the set of "The Celebrity Apprentice" with two of his children -- Donald Jr. and Ivanka -- in 2009.
Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in 2011. Trump had been executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants since 1996.
In 2012, Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Trump speaks in Sarasota, Florida, after accepting the Statesman of the Year Award at the Sarasota GOP dinner in August 2012. It was shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa.
Trump appears on stage with singer Nick Jonas and television personality Giuliana Rancic during the 2013 Miss USA pageant.
Trump -- flanked by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, left, and Ted Cruz -- speaks during a CNN debate in Miami on March 10. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.
The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April.
Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April 28. After Trump won the Indiana primary, his last two competitors dropped out of the GOP race.
Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President. "I have had a truly great life in business," he said. "But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country -- to go to work for you. It's time to deliver a victory for the American people."
Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize," Trump said, referring to lewd comments he made during a previously unaired taping of "Access Hollywood." Multiple Republican leaders rescinded their endorsements of Trump after the footage was released.
Trump walks on stage with his family after he was declared the election winner on November 9. "Ours was not a campaign, but rather, an incredible and great movement," he told his supporters in New York.
Trump is joined by his family as he is sworn in as President on January 20.
President-elect Donald Trump has been in the spotlight for years. From developing real estate and producing and starring in TV shows, he became a celebrity long before winning the White House.
Trump at age 4. He was born in 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump in New York City. His father was a real estate developer.
Trump, left, in a family photo. He was the second-youngest of five children.
Trump, center, stands at attention during his senior year at the New York Military Academy in 1964.
Trump, center, wears a baseball uniform at the New York Military Academy in 1964. After he graduated from the boarding school, he went to college. He started at Fordham University before transferring and later graduating from the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania's business school.
Trump stands with Alfred Eisenpreis, New York's economic development administrator, in 1976 while they look at a sketch of a new 1,400-room renovation project of the Commodore Hotel. After graduating college in 1968, Trump worked with his father on developments in Queens and Brooklyn before purchasing or building multiple properties in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Those properties included Trump Tower in New York and Trump Plaza and multiple casinos in Atlantic City.
Trump attends an event to mark the start of construction of the New York Convention Center in 1979.
Trump wears a hard hat at the Trump Tower construction site in New York in 1980.
Trump was married to Ivana Zelnicek Trump from 1977 to 1990, when they divorced. They had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.
The Trump family, circa 1986.
Trump uses his personal helicopter to get around New York in 1987.
Trump stands in the atrium of the Trump Tower.
Trump attends the opening of his new Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1989.
Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump has published at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."
Trump and singer Michael Jackson pose for a photo before traveling to visit Ryan White, a young child with AIDS, in 1990.
Trump dips his second wife, Marla Maples, after the couple married in a private ceremony in New York in December 1993. The couple divorced in 1999 and had one daughter together, Tiffany.
Trump putts a golf ball in his New York office in 1998.
An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Tower in 2004. The show launched in January of that year. In January 2008, the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice."
A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.
'Everything ... is strategic'
The White House held up Trump's contact with friends and informal advisers as a way for the President to get a range and diversity of opinions and, ultimately, an asset.
"Everything he does is strategic, especially his many relationships and constant communication with a vast network of individuals," Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email.
Trump has displayed his desire to aggregate information in public as well, albeit from selective sources, turning campaign rallies into public polling opportunities and asking invited guests as events he attends for inputs on hiring decisions -- like he did during the vice presidential and Cabinet nominee search process.
Chris Ruddy, founder and CEO of the conservative news site Newsmax who befriended Trump more than a decade ago, called Trump a "moving, roving focus group post" and said he believes Trump "will be the most accessible president in modern times."
"It makes people feel like they're part of his decision-making process and, second, it does give him information he might not get from others," said Ruddy, who met with Trump in the Oval Office last week and has spoken with him several times in recent weeks at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, where Ruddy is a member.
Trump's habit of hopping on the phone can also be a way of garnering good will. Trump will sometimes call people he's never met but sees speaking favorably on TV to "congratulate them on doing a great job," a source close to Trump said.
The calls are also simply about keeping in touch, one close Trump adviser said.
"He's a human being and these aren't people he's necessarily calling for advice or input. They're his friends," the longtime adviser said.
Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and one of Trump's top campaign surrogates who has been friends with Trump for nearly two decades,
told The New York Times this month
that while Trump often calls for advice, the two sometimes "don't talk about business at all."
"He'll be shooting the bull about sports or some show he saw on television or a movie or whatever, or he'll be asking me about (my wife) Mary Pat and the kids," Christie said.
One former campaign official also described the calls in social terms: "You get a beer with buddies, he gets on the phone with a bunch of people."
Read the whole story
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How Trump works: A network of friends and advisers on the outside
CNN - 58 minutes ago
Washington (CNN) Sometimes he calls to ask for advice. Other times he just wants to vent. But nearly every day of his presidency, President Donald Trump has picked up the phone and turned to a network of more than two dozen fellow billionaires and ...
This is why the first 100 days is a 'ridiculous standard' for judging presidents
Washington Post - 2 hours ago
President Trump, who has yet to pass any major legislative initiatives, recently tweeted his frustration with the “ridiculous standard of the first 100 days” as a benchmark for judging a new president's accomplishments. The historical record suggests ...
Infighting cools down in Trumpland
The Hill - 2 hours ago
President Trump's White House is making an effort to heal the wounds from the infighting and leaks that have dogged the administration over its first 100 days. Trump appears to have brokered at least a temporary peace between son-in-law Jared Kushner, ...
Trump has followed through on fewer than half of his 100-day promises
CBS News - 19 minutes ago
WASHINGTON -- Sure enough, the big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast, climate change action is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama era have been scrapped. It's also a safe bet President Donald Trump hasn't raced a bicycle since Jan.
Trump Wants It Known: Grading 100 Days Is 'Ridiculous' (but His Were the Best)
New York Times - 10 hours ago
President Trump during a meeting with ambassadors from the United Nations Security Council on Monday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. WASHINGTON — In case anyone was wondering, President Trump wants it known that he does not ...
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· · ·
A Russian national has been handed the ‘longest sentence ever'. A US court sentenced Roman Seleznev on 22 April to 27 years in prison for stealing nearly US$170 million (£132 million) from over 3700 banks worldwide.
Seleznev, known as Track2 in the world of cyber-criminality, was convicted in 2016 of 38 counts including wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. More specifically, Seleznev hacked into point of sale devices, the kind of machines used every day to process any number of card transactions in-store, and stole private credit card numbers from over 500 US businesses.
Court documents call Seleznev a “criminal entrepreneur whose innovations shaped the carding industry”.
The 32-year-old Russian national was particularly fond of targeting financial institutions and small businesses, some of which went into bankruptcy after Seleznev was done with them. After stealing the data, Seleznev would send it back to his servers in Ukraine, Russia and Virginia before selling it on to other cyber-criminals, through two automated vending sites created by the hacker. This, according to his prosecutors, made buying stolen credit card data “as easy as buying a book on Amazon.”
When Seleznev was arrested in the Maldives in 2014, law enforcement seized a laptop containing 1.7 million credit card numbers.
The sheer scale of Seleznev's activities surely contributed to what has been called the longest sentence ever for hacking. Over two years, Seleznev proved a difficult defendant to try. He got rid of six sets of defense lawyers, rejected plea deals handed to him and committed perjury. He was also judged to pose a high risk of reoffending, should he return to Russia. However, the 27 years that Seleznev was given still fell below the 30 years that prosecutors asked for.
Court documents name Seleznev as “one of the most revered point-of-sale hackers in the criminal underworld”, and prosecutors recommended the unprecedented sentence of three decades, in line with Seleznev's crimes: “Never before has a criminal engaged in computer fraud of this magnitude been identified, captured, and convicted by an American jury.”
Simply put, the prosecutors added, “Roman Seleznev has harmed more victims and caused more financial loss than, perhaps, any other defendant that has appeared before the Court.”
Commenting on the sentence, acting assistant attorney general Blanco said, “we will not tolerate the existence of safe havens for these crimes – we will identify cyber-criminals from the dark corners of the Internet and bring them to justice.”
The statement released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) of his sentencing gives credit to the “extraordinary collaborative effort” by the Secret Service, US Attorney's Office and the Seattle Police department.
The sentencing coincides with the indictment of the alleged spam king, hacker and master of the Kelihos botnet, Peter Levashov, in a similar international crackdown on foreign cyber-criminals. US attorney Annette L. Hayes noted, “The notion that the internet is a Wild West where anything goes is a thing of the past. As Mr. Seleznev has now learned, and others should take note – we are working closely with our law enforcement partners around the world to find, apprehend, and bring to justice those who use the internet to steal and destroy our peace of mind.”
Seleznev may yet have more years piled on top of that 27-year sentence. He still faces organised crime related charges in Nevada and a variety of fraud charges in Georgia.
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Intelligence officials from 'Five Eyes' gather in New Zealand: sources
The Globe and Mail - 10 hours ago
New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English was flying to the mountainous resort city of Queenstown on Tuesday to meet intelligence officials from the “Five Eyes” network, which includes the U.S. FBI, CIA and National Security Agency. The meetings ...
'Five Eyes' network meets in Queenstown
Sky News Australia - Apr 23, 2017
Some of the world's most powerful spy bosses are in Queenstown in New Zealand for a meeting of the 'Five-Eyes' intelligence network. CIA director Mike Pompeo and FBI director James Comey were spotted flying into Queenstown on two private Gulfstream ...
PM confirms 'Five Eyes' conference in Queenstown
Radio New Zealand - Apr 23, 2017
Prime Minister Bill English has confirmed a meeting of the 'Five Eyes' intelligence group is being held in New Zealand this week. Bill English. PM Bill English Photo: RNZ. The meeting of intelligence leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom ...
Private jet said to be for Five Eyes conference lands in Invercargill
Stuff.co.nz - Apr 23, 2017
An unusual USA aircraft at Invercargill Airport on Monday is suspected to be for a top-secret Five Eyes intelligence network meeting in Queenstown. The airport's chairman says it is one of the largest private jets to land in Invercargill. At a press ...
DETAILS: FBI, CIA Heads Huddle at Secretive New Zealand Conference
Fox News Insider - 15 hours ago
The Five Eyes sporadically meet to share intelligence as a result of their promise not to spy on one another. Catherine Herridge reported that the 500-acre resort is scattered with snipers and bodyguards and that New Zealand's interior ministry would ...
Read the whole story
· ·
The Globe and Mail |
Intelligence officials from 'Five Eyes' gather in New Zealand: sources
The Globe and Mail New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English was flying to the mountainous resort city of Queenstown on Tuesday to meet intelligence officials from the “Five Eyes” network, which includes the U.S. FBI, CIA and National Security Agency. The meetings ... and more » |
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The Times (subscription) |
Western spy chiefs head for the hills
The Times (subscription) Spy chiefs from the West's intelligence alliance have arrived at a mountain resort in New Zealand for a secret strategy session expected to be dominated by North Korea's nuclear ambitions. An unmarked Gulfstream corporate jet — identified by its US ... and more » |
FBI Director Jim Comey and CIA Director Mike Pompeo are reportedly 9,000 miles from Washington, huddling with their counterparts from five other nations at a super-secret conference.
Neither agency would confirm details of the trip or its existence, but local media at the five-star Millbrook resort in Invercargill, New Zealand report that the registration number on the Gulfstream jet carrying Pompeo traces back to the CIA.
The meeting is said to involve spy agencies from five member nations, called the "Five Eyes."
The group traces its roots back to World War II when Britain and the United States shared intelligence on the Soviet Union.
It now also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The Five Eyes sporadically meet to share intelligence as a result of their promise not to spy on one another.
Catherine Herridge reported that the 500-acre resort is scattered with snipers and bodyguards and that New Zealand's interior ministry would not confirm who was attending the meeting.
Radio New Zealand reported that Prime Minister Bill English however did confirm the existence of the conference.
Public security is also said to have increased in the nearby city of Queenstown.
Read the whole story
· · · ·
The first reports about the arbitrary detention and possible extrajudicial killings of men suspected of being gay in Chechnya were bloodcurdling. The authorities began rounding up men after activists had sought permission to hold gay pride parades in other parts of the North Caucasus region, which is predominantly Muslim, according to a newspaper report and activists. At least three turned up dead. Some people reported being tortured.
Then came the baffling denial. “If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Alvi Karimov, a spokesman for the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
This abominable crime by a Russian republic and its reprehensible cover-up warrant a strong response from Moscow and the international community. That would be a stretch for the Russian government, which is denying that there is evidence of any crimes and has sought to keep its own gay population invisible. In 2013, it enacted a so-called anti-propaganda law that criminalizes promoting or celebrating non-straight conduct and identity — while government officials claimed that all Russians were entitled to protection from discrimination and violence.
Moscow’s “reaction to the allegations of systematic human rights violations against gay men in Chechnya constitutes a litmus test on whether this rhetoric was disingenuous,” said Fabrice Houdart, a human rights expert at the United Nations who specializes in issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Moreover, it should force a debate about how that kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach contributes to the stigmatization and victimization of vulnerable communities. Gay and transgender people have gained societal acceptance and legal rights in several countries over the past two decades by demanding to be seen and heard. The Russian government persists in forcing its gay citizens to remain largely underground.
Moscow is unlikely to take meaningful action against Chechnya, or to rethink its broader policy toward gay rights, in the absence of strong and sustained international pressure. In recent years several countries from the Americas and Europe have promoted equality for gay and transgender people as universal human rights. The Obama administration, and in particular former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, deserves much credit for making this a diplomatic priority.
The crimes in Chechnya have presented the Trump administration with its first major test on this issue on the international stage. Last Monday, Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, issued a strong statement calling for a prompt investigation and accountability for the culprits.
“We are against all forms of discrimination, including against people based on sexual orientation,” Ms. Haley said. “When left unchecked, discrimination and human rights abuses can lead to destabilization and conflict.”
It would be encouraging to see Ms. Haley take on this cause with as much passion and perseverance as her predecessor, Samantha Power. Without American leadership, forging a global consensus that gay rights are human rights will take longer. Time is not on the side of gay people living in terror in places like Chechnya.
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· ·
The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appears to be the same Russian operatives responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election, a cybersecurity firm warns in a new report.
The report has heightened concerns that Russia may turn its playbook on France in an effort to harm Mr. Macron’s candidacy and bolster that of Mr. Macron’s rival, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen, in the final weeks of the French presidential campaign.
Security researchers at the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, said that on March 15 they spotted a hacking group they believe to be a Russian intelligence unit turn their weapons on Mr. Macron’s campaign — sending emails to campaign officials and others with links to fake websites designed to bait them into turning over passwords.
The group began registering several decoy internet addresses last month and as recently as April 15, naming one onedrive-en-marche.fr and another mail-en-marche.fr to mimic the name of Mr. Macron’s political party, En Marche.
Those websites were registered to a block of web addresses that Trend Micro’s researchers say belong to the Russian intelligence unit they refer to as Pawn Storm, but is alternatively known by the name Fancy Bear, APT 28 or the Sofacy Group. American and European intelligence agencies and American private security researchers determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.
On Tuesday, Trend Micro’s researchers plan to release their report detailing cyberattacks in recent weeks against Mr. Macron’s campaign — as well as members of Germany’s Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, a political foundation linked to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party — in what appear to be the latest Russian effort to influence political outcomes in the West.
The Kremlin scoffed at the report. Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said Monday in Moscow that “this all recalls the accusations that came from Washington and which are still suspended in thin air.” In remarks to Russian news media, he added that Russia had “never interfered in foreign elections.
But the report’s findings gave some credence to the “strong suspicions” voiced weeks before Sunday’s voting by Mr. Macron’s digital director, Mounir Mahjoubi, that Moscow was the source of what he said had been a barrage of “highly sophisticated” efforts to gain access to the campaign’s email accounts.
Mr. Mahjoubi said both in an interview Monday and earlier in April that he had no proof of a Russian role, but that the nature and timing of so-called phishing attacks and Web assaults on the Macron campaign had stirred worries that Russia was repeating in France what American intelligence agencies say was a concerted effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“The phishing pages we are talking about are very personalized web pages to look like the real address,” Mr. Mahjoubi added. Anyone could easily think he was logging in to his own email. “They were pixel perfect,” he said Monday night. “It’s exactly the same page. That means there was talent behind it and time went into it: talent, money, experience, time and will.”
The goal was to obtain the email passwords of campaign staff members so a cyberattacker could lurk inside an email account reading confidential correspondence. “If you are speed reading as you sign on, and everybody speed reads online, it’s something you might not notice,” Mr. Mahjoubi said. “For instance, it uses a hyphen instead of a dot, and if you are speed reading you don’t look at the URL.”
This winter, the campaign’s website also came under attack. The attacks coincided with highly slanted articles about Mr. Macron on the French language services of Sputnik and RT, formerly Russia Today. Both are state-funded Russian news media outlets.
Mr. Mahjoubi described the phishing attacks as the “invisible side” of an apparent Russian campaign to hurt Mr. Macron, while the “visible side” took the form of fake news or highly slanted stories in the French-language Russian media.
Russia, or at least its state-controlled media, clearly favored Ms. Le Pen.
The success of its cyberattacks in the United States have only bolstered the group’s ambitions, security researchers say.
“This is the new normal,” said Tom Kellermann, a cyberintelligence expert and the chief executive at Strategic Cyber Ventures. “Geopolitical events will now serve as harbingers for these types of attacks.”
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Just after the election I did two posts considering the relative impact of the Jim Comey letter announcing FBI was reviewing the Anthony Weiner derived emails and the announcement of a huge ObamaCare premium spike.
I still think we don’t have enough data about the relative effect of the two events.
Nowhere in the post does Wang note what date Comey sent his letter, though. It was October 28.
Unless Wang’s chart is totally mislabeled (Update: In an “explanation” added to his post, Wang effectively says his graph is off by three — though not four — days due to the way he presents multi-day polls; he has, at least, now told his readers when the actual letter came out) but what it shows seems to be consistent with what I showed in this post, which shows a Hillary dip and a Trump spike moving in concert on before October 28), then his chart show doesn’t support a Comey effect at all — it shows the opposite. The differential started narrowing after October 24. By October 28, when the letter was released, the differential had plateaued before it turned up again.
As it turns out, the ObamaCare spike was announced on October 24 (and reported heavily starting October 25).
That’s precisely when we see the differential moving.
If we’re assuming an immediate response in polls in response to an event, then the ObamaCare premium spike would be a far better explanation than the Comey letter, which took place later.
Frankly, I suspect both had an impact, and further suspect there may have been something else driving the differential late turn to Trump in the Rust Belt. And I suspect we still don’t have the data to explain what made a bunch of Rust Belt voters move to Trump right before the election.
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Trump Adviser’s Visit to Moscow Got the F.B.I.’s Attentionby By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ADAM GOLDMAN
The visit by Carter Page last July was a significant trigger for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign.
‘The Daily’: James Comey and the 2016 Electionby By MICHAEL BARBARO
How the F.B.I. director handled investigations into Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and powerfully shaped the 2016 election.
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It was an election year that no one could have predicted: both candidates for president under investigation by the F.B.I.
At the center of it all was one man, James Comey, making calculations that could shape history. A new Times investigation tells the definitive story of what Mr. Comey did and why he did it.
On today’s episode:
In this special episode, my colleague Matt Apuzzo takes us inside Mr. Comey’s decision-making as he shaped the presidential election through major investigations into both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Background reading:
Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Tweet me at @mikiebarb. And if that isn’t enough, we can even text.
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Open the Alexa app. From the navigation panel on the left, select “settings,” then “flash briefing,” then “get more flash briefing content.” Look for “The New York Times” and select “enable skill.” Now you can say, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” and you will hear that day’s episode of “The Daily.”
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Former FBI agent Clint Watts testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday in Washington, D.C. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption
Former FBI agent Clint Watts testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans.
"So that way whenever you're trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it's much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures," Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia's role in interfering in the U.S. elections.
In an interview Monday with NPR's Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn't stop with the election of President Trump.
"If you went online today, you could see these accounts — either bots or actual personas somewhere — that are trying to connect with the administration. They might broadcast stories and then follow up with another tweet that tries to gain the president's attention, or they'll try and answer the tweets that the president puts out," Watts says.
Watts, a cybersecurity expert, says he's been tracking this sort of activity by the Russians for more than three years.
"It's a circular system. Sometimes the propaganda outlets themselves will put out false or manipulated stories. Other times, the president will go with a conspiracy."
One example, he says, is Trump's claim that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower by the Obama administration. "When they do that, they'll then respond to the wiretapping claim with further conspiracy theories about that claim and that just amplifies the message in the ecosystem," Watts says.
Politics
Sorting Out The Congressional Russia Investigations
"Every time a conspiracy is floated from the administration, it provides every outlet around the world, in fact, an opportunity to amplify that conspiracy and to add more manipulated truths or falsehoods onto it."
Watts says the effort is being conducted by a "very diffuse network." It involves competing efforts "even amongst hackers between different parts of Russian intelligence and propagandists — all with general guidelines about what to pursue, but doing it at different times and paces and rhythms."
The White House has blamed Democrats for the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, saying the theory is a way to shift the blame for their election loss. But Watts says "it's way bigger" than that. "What was being done by nation-states in the social media influence landscape was so much more significant than the other things that were being talked about," including the Islamic State's use of social media to recruit followers, he says.
Gabe O'Connor is a production assistant with All Things Considered. You can follow him @Galacticmule.
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· · · · ·
After the release of the Comey letter, Trump's favorability shot up six points. It's dipped slightly since then, but only by a few hairs. In over a year of campaigning, only one thing had a serious impact on the presidential race. James Comey.
Questions to the FBI
M.N.: Comey's overall "motivations" might be complex and and at the same time simple: the security of the country. The details of these complexities are not easy to read. A lot of specific questions could and should be asked, especially with regard to the "October 2016 Surprise", and the ridiculous (it is hard to find a different word) "Weiner sexting scandal", and the directly related Weiner's-Abedin computer email trove investigation. We still do not have an answer ("any answer" at this point, well or or not so well, substantiated and reasoned) as to how this enormous amount (650,000) of the e-mails (not just the casual after work reading) got in their laptop: who, how, and why dumped them. And if Weiner case was the FBI's so called "sting operation" (and the clearly politically motivated at that), and if the Russians or any other foreign (intelligence) entity assisted in damping these e-mails, then the questions arise, if there was any collusion, spoken or not, between the FBI (or its part, pursuing Weiner) and these entities. The question also arises if the "Clinton's e-mails investigations" were the deliberate and planned (and flawlessly performed) diversionary tactic: to deflect the attention and the resources from the FBI Investigation of Donald Trump, at the time a Presidential candidate.
It is also worth remembering that at that time, very close to the Election day, the rumors were spread, including the Russian propaganda outlets and the social media, about the impending and the inevitable Weiner's arrest by the NYPD, apparently planted by none else but Erik Prince, who was as reported, seeking the "backdoor" communications channels with the Russians. Mr. Guiliani's acute political omniscience, apparently fed and fortified by his old FBI friends, is also of note, and also fits the pattern of smoke from the camp fire. The appointment of the new chief of the FBI's New York Field office (considered, rightly or wrongly, a bastion of the FBI's Trumplandia) in July of 2016, at the strategic point of the Presidential campaign, relevant or not, is also a curious occurrence.
The statistical effects of the clearly significant (rather rapid, bullet-like) changes in the voters sentiments after the October 28 Letter can be considered as the practically established fact: see the graphs below. The most interesting detail is that this sudden, abrupt changes started well before the October 28, 2016 date.
See: "statistical change in trump and clinton supporters after october 28 letter"
- Google Search
This can be deduced from this graph based on the "Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll Oct. 24-27, 2016":
As is evident from this graph, the voters' sentiments started to change somewhere on October 20 - 24, probably in response to some pointed mass media campaign, which, as it is known, was facilitated by the presumably Russian cyber-bots. The letter itself might be just the contributing factor, synergistic with the adverse media campaign led by the Russian propaganda machine, of which the "Pizza-gate" was the latest offshoot.
The reversal point in the "Tone of media coverage" can be pinpointed to the October 16, 2016 date, when, after some compensatory waves, this "tone" continued the same pattern and the directions through the Elections:
The FBI - Comey's letter boosted this continuity in the directions of the "tones of media coverage", but did not initiate or start them, it looks like it was secondary in importance and significance to these general "tones of media coverage".
"The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)
This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians...
The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said."
While the statistics of the Russian propaganda bots activities around that time could not be found but would be interesting to see, the descriptive accounts of its intensification during the last 10-7 days prior to Elections, as in the above piece, are quite convincing.
The graph on the top of this post illustrates the "statistical change in trump and clinton supporters after october 28 letter" (GS), as reflected in Trump's favorability ratings, most vividly. It also looks that the Comey's "clearance" 3 days before the Election day, was not reflected in any appreciable statistical effect. The "Intra-Trump" sentiments remained relatively stable after the elections, and started to diverge only in the beginning of April 2017, as is seen on the top graph. This might be an indication, that the cumulative effects of the Russian propaganda probably played the role more decisive than the "letters" per se. And the "blackening", negative propaganda apparently, sticks much stronger and longer, because the "embellishing, positive" white propaganda, is perceived as nothing of the ordinary, as something that is supposed to be this way.
The overall wave-like pattern was observed by the noted pollster, Nate Silver:
"Clinton’s poll numbers were arguably a bit inflated in mid-October amid a very rough period for Donald Trump. And even before Comey, the media seemed eager for one last twist in the news cycle, so Clinton may have been due for a period of greater scrutiny one way or the other — for example, over emails from the Clinton campaign released by WikiLeaks.
Trump should get some credit, as well, for having been comparatively disciplined on the campaign trail. He’s gained about 2 points in national polls since Oct. 28, while Clinton lost 1 point.
Still, if you look at our win-probability graphic, while Clinton’s chances were slightly declining already after she came off her post-debate peak, the rate of decline began to accelerate a couple of days after Comey, once we began to receive some post-Comey polls. Now the decline has leveled off, and her lead has held steady over the past several days. One advantage of having a model like ours that’s pretty quick to detect changes in the polls is that we can potentially make better inferences about the cause of polling shifts. And while it isn’t proof of anything, the pattern is at least consistent with a “shock” caused by a burst of negative news for a candidate, as opposed to a more gradual decline."
It is tempting to assume that the moods, the ebbs and flows of the voting public's preference sentiments are somewhat similar to the biological process of peristalsis, and to continue the analogy, are governed by the certain rules and habits of the mass mental digestion processes of the news fodder in their media cycles: it is slow, somewhat "autonomous", self-determined to a degree, and moves along the certain temporal - stretched out in time and the time-z sinusoidal patterns, with the interplay of the psychosocial tensions determining their shape. It is also similar to the sinusoidal, supply-demand tensions reflecting the movements of the stock prices, as the reflection of the mass psychology.
As N. Silver observed, Mrs. Clinton's "chances of winning", (which is a very different measure from the "intra-candidate" favorability ratings, as in the graph on the top), started to decline slightly after the highs of the "win" in the debates, and then, after the October 28 Letter, accelerated their declines rapidly,"consistent with a “shock” caused by a burst of negative news for a candidate".
Who and how managed this explosive burst of the negative and "fake news" about Mrs. Clinton?
In addition to these, many other questions including Mr. Trump's finances, and possible financial obligations, formal or informal, his conflicts of interests, his special warmth for Russia (a rather rare case of the pure and platonic love on the part of the businessman and the deal-maker), and many, many other questions are very much on the agenda.
Many good questions could and should al-zo be asked when Mr. Comey testifies in the closed session of the House Intelligence Committee this week, and al-zo for year-z to come. It is never too late to learn.
At mean time, I hope that James Comey and Mike Pompeo have a good time and enjoy the beautiful z-z-zunny weather in New Z-z-z-eeland and the environ-z-z-z.
Michael Novakhov
2:45 PM 4/23/2017
When FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Oct. 28 that he was reviewing additional emails pertinent to the case of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Clinton had an 81 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only forecast. Today, her chances are 65 percent according to the same forecast. The change corresponds with Clinton’s drop in the national popular-vote lead: from a 5.7-percentage-point lead in our estimate on Oct. 28 to a 2.9-point lead now — so a swing of about 3 points against her.
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When FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Oct. 28 that he was reviewing additional emails pertinent to the case of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Clinton had an 81 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only forecast. Today, her chances are 65 percent according to the same forecast. The change corresponds with Clinton’s drop in the national popular-vote lead: from a 5.7-percentage-point lead in our estimate on Oct. 28 to a 2.9-point lead now — so a swing of about 3 points against her.
How much of that can be attributed to Comey? And now that Comey told Congress on Sunday that the emails on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s computer won’t change his earlier conclusions about Clinton, should we expect her numbers to rebound? The cause and effect is hard to sort out. Clinton’s poll numbers were arguably a bit inflated in mid-October amid a very rough period for Donald Trump. And even before Comey, the media seemed eager for one last twist in the news cycle, so Clinton may have been due for a period of greater scrutiny one way or the other — for example, over emails from the Clinton campaign released by WikiLeaks.
Trump should get some credit, as well, for having been comparatively disciplined on the campaign trail. He’s gained about 2 points in national polls since Oct. 28, while Clinton lost 1 point.
Still, if you look at our win-probability graphic, while Clinton’s chances were slightly declining already after she came off her post-debate peak, the rate of decline began to accelerate a couple of days after Comey, once we began to receive some post-Comey polls. Now the decline has leveled off, and her lead has held steady over the past several days. One advantage of having a model like ours that’s pretty quick to detect changes in the polls is that we can potentially make better inferences about the cause of polling shifts. And while it isn’t proof of anything, the pattern is at least consistent with a “shock” caused by a burst of negative news for a candidate, as opposed to a more gradual decline.
In fact, the shift looks pretty similar to a period in July after Comey reprimanded but did not charge Clinton for her email server and testified before Congress about it. That period produced about a 2-point swing against Clinton.
The news may also have had an effect down-ballot. Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate were generally hovering around 70 percent in late October. Today, they’re 50 percent. It doesn’t take a lot to swing the numbers in the Senate forecast because of the large number of competitive races — even a 1-point swing toward Republicans because of higher turnout could affect the odds significantly.
So will the latest Comey letter help Clinton? That’s also hard to say, and any change will really come too late to be picked up on by most polls. It’s also plausible that the headlines themselves aren’t particularly helpful to Clinton, even if the news itself is. The Washington Post’s current web headline, for instance, is “FBI Director Comey says agency won’t recommend charges over Clinton email,” which reminds readers that Clinton was being investigated by the FBI for her email practices. Still, betting markets show Clinton’s probability of winning the election improving by about 3 percentage points on the news.
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Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.
During a Facebook live discussion, reporter Caitlin Dewey explained how fake news sites use Facebook as a vehicle to function and make money. (The Washington Post)
During a Facebook live discussion, reporter Caitlin Dewey explained how fake news sites use Facebook as a vehicle to function and make money. Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey talks about how fake news sites function and make money. (The Washington Post)
“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”
Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security online magazine War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns. (Update: The report came out on Saturday).
The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.
PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.
Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Consider these points before sharing a news article on Facebook. It could be fake. Consider these points before sharing an article on Facebook. It could be fake. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.
The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.
Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.
The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)
This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.
This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.
The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.
“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”
He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.
A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.
McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.
RT disputed the findings of the researchers in an e-mail on Friday, saying it played no role in producing or amplifying any fake news stories related to the U.S. election. “It is the height of irony that an article about “fake news” is built on false, unsubstantiated claims. RT adamantly rejects any and all claims and insuations that the network has originated even a single “fake story” related to the US election,” wrote Anna Belkina, head of communications.
The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”
The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.
The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union.
Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating.
Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.
“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”
RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.
Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.
Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN.
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The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.
“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.
In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times.
Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”
Correction: A previously published version of this story incorrectly stated that Russian information service RT had used the “#CrookedHillary” hastag pushed by then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. In fact, while another Russian information service Sputnik did use this hashtag, RT did not.
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