1. The DNC reported a hack of its emails by a Russian server a month ago.
2. A cybersecurity company agreed with the identification of the hacker as Russian and noted that one of the hacking groups involved was operated by the Russian military intelligence service.
In mid-June the company announced that the intruders appeared to include a group it had previously identified by the name “Cozy Bear” or “APT 29” and been inside the committee’s servers for a year. A second group, “Fancy Bear,” also called “APT 28,” came into the system in April. It appears to be operated by the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, according to federal investigators and private cybersecurity firms.
3. From the same article: Pro-Putin Russian hackers have been a thorn in the side of American cybersecurity for years now.
The first group is particularly well known to the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence unit, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It was identified by federal investigators as the likely culprit behind years of intrusions into the State Department and White House unclassified computer system.
4. Wikileaks, along with publishing the emails, published unredacted credit card numbers, passport numbers, social security numbers, and home addresses of hundreds of Democratic donors. They called this “not an error.” This is known as doxxing, and it is illegal in US jurisdictions.
Doxing is always illegal, whether it is done against a federal employee, a state employee, or a regular person. There are federal and state laws that specifically address doxing government employees. With regular citizens, doxing falls under various state criminal laws, such as stalking, cyberstalking, harassment, threats, and other such laws, depending on the state. Since these doxing threats and activities are made on the internet, the law of any state may be invoked, though most often an investigator will look to the state in which the person making the threat is located, if this is known, or the state in which the victim is situated. A state prosecutor can only prosecute violations of the laws of his or her own state, and of acts that extend into their state. When acts are on the internet, they extend into all the states.
Misinformation was spread that doxing is legal. I am not sure how or why anyone fell for that misinformation. Surely, people must understand instinctively, even if they were misled about the law, that if they are threatening someone or putting them at risk, or tormenting or harassing the other on the internet, that this must be illegal. Common sense would tell you that bullying or jeopardizing another would be illegal in some way. So yes, doxing is illegal, no matter who the target.
5. Wikileaks has offered support to the racist, sexist agitator and Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos after his ban from Twitter for inciting hate mobs. This support was not merely a tweet or two extending a hand: it was an offer to build an entire new social network fine-tuned to Yiannopoulos’ needs.
6. Milo is a vocal Trump supporter and headlined an event at the RNC.
7. Wikileaks is run by Julian Assange, an accused rapist, who has for years taken a paycheck from Russia Today, the English-language propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
8. Trump, blacklisted as he is from borrowing form most US banks, has enticed mostly investors from Russia to prop up his floundering enterprises.
After his bankruptcy and business failures roughly a decade ago Trump has had an increasingly difficult time finding sources of capital for new investments. As I noted above, Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks with the exception of Deutschebank, which is of course a foreign bank with a major US presence. He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.
9. Trump is pro-Putin to the point where he would not defend other NATO member nations against Russian attacks.
10. Trump’s right hand man, Paul Manafort, was for almost a decade an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted president of Ukraine who now lives in exile in Russia and is a major Putin ally. Trump’s other top staffers tend towards supporting the Russian government/elite in various ways.
11. There is nothing in the DNC emails that indicates breaking of any laws.
12. Bernie Sanders only declared himself a Democrat this election cycle. The DNC was not obligated to support him, and yet they did – there are emails where staffers complain about bending over backwards for the Sanders campaign. There’s also an email from the Sanders campaign demanding a private jet to be paid for by the DNC after Bernie had reached the point where it was mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination. (They also called Lin-Manuel Miranda a baby for not doing a fundraiser on his off day, which is frankly hilarious.)
12c. Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination by 3,775,437 votes. He lost badly among registerd Democrats, black Democrats, and Latino Democrats. If the DNC is incompetent enough not to secure their servers against hackers, they are sure as shit not capable of stealing nearly four million votes.
13. Hillary Clinton does not have mind-control powers and is not responsible for every single word typed in a private DNC email server.
14. The release of the emails was timed for when Trump would have a large amount of goodwill – the “convention bump,” as noted in several large-scale polls by reputable organizations – and before the Democrats/Hillary would have a chance to respond to the bump at their own convention.
15. Trump has engaged in much worse political ratfucking of his same-party opponents than the DNC did in its emails, in public, and it is widely known that the RNC has been attempting to sabotage him for months.
16. It ain’t like Putin hasn’t done shit like this before. He killed a journalist with plutonium. I could go on about what he does inside his country, but I’m not super familiar with it, and frankly "sitting head of state ordered the assassination of a journalist in exile by means of nuclear material" is fucked up enough.
Conclusions that can be reasonably drawn from these facts:
1. Wikileaks, whatever its intentions in the past, is not a neutral whistleblower and cannot be, given the money their founder draws from the Russian government.
2. The DNC did not engage in any political ratfuckery beyond what is normal for any and especially this cycle, nor did they break any laws.
3. Wikileaks is not a progressive actor, given its support for both Milo Yiannopoulos and Vladimir Putin.
4. The hackers sat on the material for more than a month, and the reveal of the documents was timed to hurt Hillary Clinton and buck up Trump.
Other conclusions that can be drawn:
1. Trump and Putin colluded somehow on this hack job.
2. Putin wants Trump in the White House because Trump has, among other things, publicly stated that he will not defend NATO states bordering Russia if Russia invades, and is willing to sponsor illegal activity to make this happen.
Conclusions the FBI has drawn:
The FBI is publicly saying that they suspect the Russian government did this. Several unnamed US officials suspect this was “a deliberate attempt to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, according to five individuals familiar with the investigation of the breach.”
(Also, on that note – the DNC is not gonna accuse a foreign state of trying to influence the election via cyberterrorism without some cold hard proof. That’s not an accusation you throw around lightly, especially when you represent one of the two largest parties in America.)
TL;DR
Debbie Wasserman Schultz complaining about an independent tanking her anointed candidate should not make you mourn the death of American democracy. What should be making you furious – and terrified, honestly – is that a foreign state, led by an autocrat with a history of human rights abuses, has used a “pro-transparency” organization to achieve its goal in installing a malleable strongman and has committed cyberterrorism in the process.
Please don’t vote third party this election. Please.
It was probably inevitable that somebody was going to get their hands up Wikileaks’s ass & turn it into a puppet.
Meg's Mumbles 