Steve Cunningham
The Intelligence Community on January 6th released the much awaited report that was supposed to detail how Russia was behind the cyberattacks during the recent election and advantaged Donald Trump. Instead, the report ignores how one of the hackers, Guccifer 2.0, leaked an anti-Trump document in June, how the Access Hollywood tape was obtained secretly, and how Trump’s confidential income tax form was obtained illegally. Nevertheless, the Obama-appointed authors of the report contend that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton,” (page ii).
The first hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) took place on June 15, 2016, when Guccifer 2.0 stole documents from the DNC. However, what was released on that day was largely Anti-Trump, not Anti-Hillary, because Guccifer 2.0 released the “Donald Trump Report“, which is a full 200 opposition research document chronicling every supposedly scandalous thing Donald Trump had ever said. At the same time, Guccifer released a list of donors to the DNC, a secret document detailing Hillary Clinton approach to National Security that must be complimentary to her abilities, and a document criticizing the position of every 2016 GOP presidential candidate. This was hardly a release that was pro-Trump.
When Guccifer 2.0 obtained all of the damaging emails that were later released, why didn’t he release them on June 15, instead of releasing anti-GOP and anti-Trump documents? It was only on July 22, 2016 that Wikileaks released almost 20,000 DNC emails as the first of a series of Clinton-related leaks. This was more than a month after the aforementioned anti-Trump, pro-Clinton release. Regardless, this July 22nd release was much more damaging than the June 15 release, as the media largely ignored the content of the Donald Trump Report in June while covering the Clinton email scandal in July. Yet the Donald Trump Report attacked Trump’s family, mischaracterizing his remarks regarding his daughter, and most notably outlined Alicia Machado’s case, the former Miss Universe who later “came out” against Donald Trump in the headlines quite conveniently and perhaps not coincidentally right after the Access Hollywood tape was release, along with those 10 other women.
How was the Access Hollywood tape obtained? Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold received a phone call on October 7th asking him if he wants to see the tape. Of course he said yes, and the rest was history. Fahrenthold has promised anonymity to his source, but was the source an agent of the Russian government who hacked NBC’s emails to obtain this tape? Leading up to October 7th, Fahrenthold contends that “it was not clear, however, when “Access Hollywood” and NBC News were planning to go ahead with their stories.” For whatever reason, NBC had been sitting on the tape. Yet the tape released on October 7th may have been an edited version of the tape NBC was going to release, because at the 12 second mark, you can see the bus driving, and then skipping ahead a few feet. This was when Donald Trump was explaining exactly when he went furniture shopping with a woman, and may have been deliberately snipped to make it appear that Trump was doing all of this during his marriage, when in fact, it occurred before his marriage. So whoever leaked the tape to the Washington Post didn’t simply send the Post a video file, but instead, must have edited the video file to make it even worse than it already is. This means that whoever leaked the tape must not have been an esteemed or ethical journalist, and therefore wasn’t necessarily working for NBC in that capacity, and increases the likelihood that the individual is a Russian agent.
Yet this was not the only time a “secret source” leaked something damaging on Donald Trump. Let’s not forget how the New York Times obtained tax records from 1995 where Trump declared a $916 million loss, and supposedly never had to pay tax again for 18 years. According to the Times, a manilla envelope postmarked New York, NY with a return address of The Trump Organization was placed in reporter Suzanne Craig’s mailbox with the tax records. Donald Trump has said these records were ‘illegally obtained‘, yet the Times published them anyway. Was it a Russian hacker who obtained these tax records and delivered them to the Times, or who?
Therefore, when the Intelligence Community’s report states that, “We assess Putin, his advisers, and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump over Secretary Clinton,” (p.1) they must have totally overlooked Guccifer 2.0’s release of the Donald Trump Report and the GOP presidential campaign document. This major flaw in the report makes it a political document, which ought to make all of the other claims in the report suspicious, not that the report outlined the details and specifics for how the Intelligence Community knows for sure it was Russia that hacked the DNC. Finally the report states that “Russia used trolls (.) as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton, yet this effort amplified stories on scandals about Secretary Clinton and the role of WikiLeaks in the election campaign” (p.4). The reference to anyone criticizing the corrupt practises of Secretary Clinton as a troll is only too similar to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” attack on Trump supporters.