Donald Trump on Wednesday urged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, setting off howls of outrage from across the political spectrum for actually soliciting foreign espionage on his opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said.
VIDEO: Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing…" https://t.co/NEGclzLXtP
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 27, 2016
But it’s not the first time he has endorsed hacking to uncover information that he wants. Trump previously asked for hackers’ help in his obsessive quest to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.:
Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check "place of birth"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2014
ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama's records,I might become a major fan
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2013
For the record, Obama released his birth certificate in 2011.
Meanwhile, Trump slammed Sony for getting hacked in 2014. “If North Korea has that sort of power that they can do things on the internet that we have no idea what’s happening, that is not a good thing,” Trump told Fox News.
As for the emails that Trump described as “missing,” there are 31,830 emails written or received by Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State that her staff determined to be “private, personal records” — not related to her work — and destroyed.
FBI Director James Comey said this month that investigators had “discovered several thousand work-related e-mails” sent or received by Clinton using her personal server that her staff had not turned over to the State Department.” While that encouraged Clinton’s critics to suggest she must be hiding something, Comey added that “we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”
Could someone check my logic on this one?
If A, then B. If not B, then not A.
If Trump encouraged espionage by his statements, then Clinton enabled* espionage by her actions.
If Clinton did not enable espionage by her actions, then Trump did not encourage espionage by his statements.
* Enable: To establish an unauthorized, unsecured, privately-owned computer server for the purpose of transmitting and receiving all work-related email communications regarding U.S. State Department business, including Confidential, Top Secret, and Special Access Program level classified information, and accessing such communications in an unsecured manner, particularly while overseas, after signing an NDA which laid out the responsibility to safeguard such classified information as well as criminal penalties for not doing so (sources: State Dept. Inspector General, Director of the FBI).
In my mind, these two stories are inextricably liked, though few media outlets seem to want to point that out. A and B must both be either true or false, there’s not room for equivocation here.
Full disclosure: I’m a “none of the above” voter living in a state where my vote is rendered moot by the Electoral College.
Cheers!
Nah, your logic stinks. You will have to try harder. The point you want to make is easier to make than your crummy logic though.
There’s no connection between your “A” and your “B” because they are totally different actions.
Basically, Clinton did enable espionage by her actions, while some statement by anybody at all – it only matters who it is from a partisan perspective – at a press conference does absolutely nothing to enable espionage.
I’ll prove it. Here goes. I’m really going out on a limb here, risking my limbs in fact!!!!
“Hey Russia! Steal the New York Times internal documents on the 2016 election and get somebody to publish them. Go on, do it!!!”
yeah. It made no difference, did it? I maintain it wouldn’t matter if I was famous either. There’s no battalion of hackers in waiting for American celebrities to make requests of them — oh yes sir, we’ll get on that right away — but even if there were, simply requesting it has ZERO impact on the chances of it getting done.
Poor server management on the other hand is not a “request” to steal — it just makes it much easier, doesn’t it.
For partisan reasons, some would like to focus on Trump rather than Clinton here, and no damn wonder.
“There’s no connection between your A and your B”
I’ll respectfully disagree with that assertion. The common denominator in both hypotheses is the private server. In fact, it’s the lifeblood of this story. If this election were a film, it would be the MacGuffin.
Suppositions: The server contained classified information while in use from 2009 to at least 2013. The server was hacked by some foreign power or freelance agent while it was in use. Some of the approximately 31,000 emails that were subsequently deleted by Clinton staff contained classified information when the server was hacked.
Espionage (noun): The act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation (source: DOD Dictionary of Military & Associated Terms).
Trump: “Yeah. It [a temporary travel ban on Muslims] was a suggestion. Look, anything I say right now, I’m not the President. Everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say, it’s a suggestion.” (Fox & Friends phone interview, 05/13/16)
Trump “I will tell you this, Russia, if you’re listening I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” (Doral, Florida press conference, 07/26/16)
Let’s assume those suppositions are correct and the very existence and nature of the server enabled espionage to occur. Given all that, I fail to see how Mr. Trump *didn’t* encourage espionage, or suggest it, or just ruminate about it out loud if you like. Admittedly, the logic isn’t perfect and some of the assumptions are speculative, but does it really stink? I avoided semantic games, dubious conclusions, and willful ignorance, which are what really stink in my book. But I won’t make the mistake of barking up the wrong tree again.
If a major party nominee for President flirts publically with the notion of foreign espionage, retroactively or not, sarcastically or not, a reasonably open-minded person might conclude that such statements will be consequential for the next U.S. administration. At the same time, if a major party nominee for President actually enables espionage, accidentally or intentionally, in contravention of all red flags and warnings, that same person might very well conclude that a crime has been committed.
I’m scratching my head. Is this The Intercept? Next thing you know, Naomi and the other millenial twits hired by The Intercept will be bashing Snowden as well as WikiLeaks.
Glenn, where are you? Do you still work for this outfit?
And what’s so wrong about asking Russia to unearth Hillary’s 30, 000 emails? It’s painfully obvious our U.S. Attorney General isn’t looking for them!
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This is truly disgusting. What kind of journalism is this? Why aren’t you talking about what was being RECEIVED then FORWARDED by Hillary. Instead you are bashing Trump making fun of the media with their outright lies of Russia hacking these emails. Where are the trace routes that show me that Russia hacked these emails? What was used in this HACK. Furthermore, if they actually DID Hack the server, then this is the exact reason that the laws, laws she broke mind you, were put into place to begin with. I have zero trust in MSNBC, Faux, CNN, and any other main stream media outlets, and you continuing to use the same rhetoric they do, without zero proof mind you, is making me second guess what articles I read here.
In case you are wondering, Naomi, neither party gives a rip about you, I, or anyone else who are beneath them. And trust me, you are just as low as I am on their totem pole, they let us know all the time. Need I remind you that Charlie Rangel just slipped a few weeks ago when talking about gun control. It’s OK for THEM to be protected, but not for you or I.
To think that there are so many policies that are bad enough with Trump, and you are talking about stupid stuff like this. Talk about the fact that a wall won’t work because of tunnels that cartels and human traffickers have dug beneath the ground. Talk about how ripping up trade agreements before there are any negotiations with the current trade agreements is terrible. Talk about how lowering taxes, while not reducing spending on military AND social matters will only dig us further into debt. Talk about the fact that his policies change from day to day, region to region, much like Hillary and her speaking dialect changes depending on what part of the country she is in. Don’t succumb to this tripe that is killing main stream media.
And as far as Hillary goes? You should be talking about the fact that she’s a liar from top to bottom. Of course she didn’t SEND any emails herself that were classified, they don’t become classified until after they are sent and vetted by someone who classifies this stuff. Talk about how she FORWARDED classified items and RECIEVED classified items, talk about how she was breaking the law, a law she voted in favor of mind you, of using email servers built by the government, instead of a private email server. Talk about how her and Bill have become incredibly rich, while circumventing tax laws with their “foundation”. She is literally lying, and breaking laws, and you are bitching about Trump making fun of the media, a media that’s dying.
Glenn, you need to talk with these people you hire, and make sure you vet your “journalists” here better, because this isn’t journalism in the slightest. This is a hit piece by someone who obviously doesn’t want to be a journalist, but a water bucket carrier for the Demoncrats, just like O’Reilly, and Limbaugh are for their neocon brethren in the Rethuglican party.
You, Naomi, are supposed to be a truth teller, not a water carrier for the party you believe is the right one. I can’t believe you are making me defend that piece of shit Trump like this due to your shoddy “journalism.” Have more respect for the career you chose.
Naomi, is parroting the rest of the leftist mainstream news. And Virginia Ham asks a very good question — where IS Glenn Greenwald? He needs to reign these idiots in.
Why did the head of the FBI give Shillary the all-clear instead of DOJ?
Because Lynch has a conscience, apparently, and she was not going to give the pass.
Roughly 8% of the money “donated” to the Clinton Foundation actually gets spent on charity. Where’s the rest going? Proof of personal crimes are what staff destroyed.
Perhaps the “personal” emails were to Haim Saban and discuss how Israel will benefit at American’s expense.
NEVER Hillary
His enemies?Or his political enemies?And remember Naomi,they were guests at each others weddings,so this hyperbole is just more zionist pot stirring by a witch from the Hebrew international lie factory.
First I will say that I DO NOT support Trump in any way shape or form, but this attempt at creating the news by CNN, MSNBC, and every other so-called news outlet out there is so freaking sad.
He wasn’t literally asking Russia to hack anyone. He was trying to ‘zing’ Hillary and the DNC!
It doesn’t matter who acquired those DNC emails. The real story is what those emails contained. You have Chuck Todd and all of the other talking heads trying to pass this narrative of Russia tampering with our election process. It’s bullshit! Russia didn’t write those emails; Russia didn’t collude and undermine Bernie Sanders. It was the DNC itself that tampered with our election process! And when they are caught red-handed, their response is ‘hey, look over there! Russia!’
It’s absurd to point fingers at Russia for wrongdoings you committed yourself! And so there you have the ‘zing’ leveled by Trump. Hillary deleted 30,000 emails from her private server; the DNC colludes and favors one candidate over another, and there is an email trail as proof. In order to deflect attention away from themselves the DNC floats a theory of big bad Russia hacking poor little us.
Trump, seeing the absurdity of it all, ties it all together and says, jokingly, ‘hey Russia, maybe you can run a hack and find those 30,00 emails Hillary deleted.’ And Chuck Todd rolls himself, sobbing, into a fetal position and slowly rocks back and forth.
You people must think we are really stupid.
Hummm…yes, you are correct about one thing….you are really stupid…
Mr. Trump’s statement was an invitation, a solicitation at perhaps an illegal level, to have a foreign government participate in our election process…..it was not just a “comment”…..it shows a pattern of behavior , a history of thinking, to encourage illegal activity for his personal benefit…..
RC was right… “He wasn’t literally asking Russia to hack anyone. He was trying to ‘zing’ Hillary and the DNC!”
“Encourage Illegal activity for his personal benefit”?
Does this email hack not benefit everyone in America? I’m guessing that you also think Edward Snowden is a bad because he broke the law and only did it for his personal gain as well? And the difference here is Trump didn’t actually do the hacking. Snowden released the info on how the Government was breaking the law, the Constitution, and the Government goes after him, wants to kill him and/or lock him in a cage for life for simply telling the American people that the government was forcing him to break the law (4th and 5th Amendment).
Now….we have Guccifer (Romanian hacker) who hacked Hilary’s illegal servers and emails. The US extradited this man from Romania and have him in a US prison, while Hilary (the real criminal in the case) blatantly breaks the law, FBI director admits it, and she walks free.
What kind of f*cking country do we live in where……if you know a civilian that has committed a crime and you know about it or was near them in the act, you can be held responsible or as an accomplice. But……if you work for Government and expose (mass criminal activity) this, they will try to KILL YOU!!!!
ANYONE WHO BELIEVES IN GOVERNMENT AT ALL IS A JOKE !!!
Need someone to tell you what to do or to take care of you?
The only law would be
1) Don’t aggress against others or their property.
This law alone would abolish the Police State and actually turn policing into a service rather than criminal extortion gangs (which it currently operates as).
When the Government breaks the law, who is held accountable?
Bullshite,all from the zio lie factory which keeps America mushrooms,like you obviously are,or a player in that game.
Just curious Naomi – How many ‘hit’ pieces have you written about Hideous Hillary’s fast and loose handling of classified state secrets by concocting an unapproved non-secure private computer server at her home, and putting it all out there for any nefarious actor to gain access and use those secrets against the best interest of our nation? Or, how many have you written about her obvious collusion with DWS and the DNC to deprive Bernie Sanders of a fair and honest primary run against her? Naomi, you and your Hillary-enabling tools just make me sick…
We’re exceedingly deep into conspiracy theory territory thanks to the DNC’s own official narrative that Trump is a Putin patsy, puppet, or, dare they say, ‘pute’? But, by the same conspiracy thought-legitimizing token, could not one equally plausibly say (since no actual evidence need be afforded in either case) that Trump is indeed a patsy, puppet, mercenary, etc., but for the incomparably more geographically, politically, and plutocratically proximate/connected Clinton-cum-neoconservative high capitalist hegemonist warmachine instead (since we’re now officially free, gratias the msm, to seriously and credulously talk about James Bondian world-domineering conspiracy theories and all that)?
TheIntercept’s journos don’t seem to be enthusiastic about “Making ‘America‘ great again!”
// __ Donald Trump to NBC reporter: ‘Be quiet’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-katy-tur-quiet-000000576.html
~
Oh, oh! U.S. presstitudes are asking for what exactly? respect?! ? Presstitudes asking for respect? Now?
They don’t seem to have ever learned that R-E-S-P-E-C-T is something you don’t ask for but earn!
RCL
And it’s not the first time the DNC as hacked, not the first time Hillary was associated with lying again, not the first time the MSM has attempted to sensationalize on accusation as fact..Remember, “To Hell with Spain, Remember the Maine”?
Trump starts out by asserting that Hillary hasn’t had a press conference in over 235 days. the bit about the emails was part hyperbole, part sarcasm, call it hyper-sarcasm or maybe tongue-in-cheek.
Al in all, it was a pretty good news conference. I disagree with Trump on enhanced-interrogation. In a military context it violates the Geneva Conventions. Outside the military context, it violates civil statutes and international treaties against torture. There is no place for torture in modern civilized society. If you can justify it, so can anyone else causing it to spread.
Playing right into Trump’s hands with phony outrage. Get a clue.
Our side’s humorlessness about all this is indicative that Trump has gotten under people’s skin. It is pure lying to say that Trump is calling for Russian hackers to get the 30000 emails Clinton destroyed because, obviously, they were destroyed quite some time ago and are no longer accessible to hackers (i.e. the servers they were on were wiped cleaned and probably physically destroyed).
What Trump is doing is, first, reminding us that Clinton destroyed that many supposedly personal emails — a lie laughable on its face — and, second, that Clinton’s private server compromised her correspondence as Secretary of State by opening it up to easy hacking — all so that we, the public, could not find out what she was up to as Secretary (no doubt she wanted to hide the fact she was shilling for her donors).
So, it is quite probable that some hacker(s) somewhere got the 30000 before Clinton could destroy them, and Trump is simply calling for them to be made public. I join his call.
What this proves (again) is that, unlike his social-justice-warrior enemies, Donald Trump has a sense of humor.
Exactly. There is so much unethical and devious behavior by Clinton and her cohort, yet Trump brings this to light and mocks the MSM’s outright disregard of her corruption by sarcastically suggesting the Russians might be able to do something our own FBI refuses to do…
Did anyone see Comey say defeating IsUS will bring more terror?Holy shite,is it getting thick.
And isn’t the MSM supposed to be the watchdogs of democracy?
Instead they are the HRC propaganda machine for Zion.
A joke.
today – half hour ago
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/289485-intel-dems-urge-obama-to-release-info-on-russian-involvement-in-dnc
“setting off howls of outrage from across the political spectrum”
The only outrage is from those who already hated the guy. Taking down our enemies by any means necessary is about as Murican as it gets. Trump is our dick, Naomi is our pussy and I’m the asshole.
Trump did not ask Russia to actually hack the emails. He said if Russia has them, it should release them and that the US Press would thank Russia mightily.
Even logically they cannot be hacked now from Hillary because she wiped her server clean, so clean that even the FBI could not recover them.
And if Russia did hack them and has these 30000 emails, it is Hillary’s fault, not Trump’s. And if Russia has in the process learnt some national security secrets of the US, that is also Hillary’s fault.
In fact, it would be better if the emails were released, so that no one can later blackmail Hillary as President.
Also according to Hillary these were all personal emails.
The reason the Democrats are jumping up and down about what Trump said, is because these emails will probably expose the Clinton corruption machine.
Trump said some other cool things. He wondered why Americans shouldn’t get along with others, even Russia.
And he said France is no longer France!
I find Trump the most honest and patriotic candidate since FDR.:)
Who can & should determine if said missing/destroyed e-mail were personal except for Hillary’s former employer? Hillary declaring out of hand that said e-mail are personal is a hilarious joke on our system of justice. Remember, “I’m not a crook”?
How does Trump manage to get his enemies to act even stupider than he does?
“soliciting foreign espionage” Seriously?
Maybe the Intercept should make it clear that they are only soliciting information from real US citizens. Non-citizens need not apply.
Of course that still leaves us with ‘soliciting espionage’. So does Naomi LaChance think that Glenn Greenwald ‘solicits espionage’ when he asks people to leak information to the Intercept about torture, spying etc?
This place has become a complete joke.
Cherry picker, The Intercept, is this all you’ve gotten out of this press conference? https://youtu.be/HGHWou0h1kk
Seems that they’ve now joined the MSM in their demonization of all things Trump…
All Hail, Queen Hillary!!!
Trump also expressed his admiration for Putin’s leadership and told a female questioner to “be quiet” (which would be on a constant 24/7 loop for the rest of the year if President Obama said something that fucked up).
Which part of Trump’s policy devoid-rant should have received more in-depth analysis, baring in mind that not even FOX questions why Trump never offers any policy specifics?
You should probably go to your safe place until the election is over – and afterwards.
You should probably be able to answer a question – like what, exactly, should be discussed from Trump’s bullshit-laden, policy-devoid, batfuck insanity rant – if you want to pretend your asshole has substantive positions. You can’t even pretend he understands any foreign or domestic issues.
Being against a corrupt, Wall Street servant, warmongering rightwing Democrat like Hillary – who would be called the 2nd coming of Reagan if she ran as a Republican – isn’t going to get a free pass from the American electorate just because it does from the press.
Then again, maybe you should keep your head buried in your ass until the election is over – and afterwards.
Despite the insulting rhetoric, Trump’s positions seem less batshit crazy than the rightwing war mongering war criminal’s do. Survival trumps political correctness.
Telling a rude person to shut up is a sign of intelligence and honor.
How about your hell bitch?Andy word on any critique by the serial lying MSM re her and her history?
Every policy she has promoted has killed America,either its soldiers,or its integrity.She is the worst candidate in american history,a bubbleheaded retard,but fellow tarts just can’t see it.
Do we not as citizens have the right to see the 30,000 “I wiped them clean emails?” Do we a citizens have a right to see that the DNC stole the election from Sanders? Only in the good old USA does the media carry all the water for these crooks. I spend 35 years in the newspaper business and today I don’t even want to tell anyone I did. The New York Times should the New Putin Times and I have had the greatest respect for the Intercept until today. you have joined the ever loving lying BS brigade. It goddamn sick that you can’t see what going on how anything Clinton’s pack says jump and you do as high as you can. I know we have to stop Trump but really with Clinton I don’t think so. We have been at war with someone for every day that Obama has been in the White House. Clinton screwed him on Libya and he as usually just went golfing. If we are going to use this youngsters to write please get some editors that know betters. LITTLE HOPE OF THAT.