You know, for all of the bluster and bustle, I’ve yet to see what the specific accusations are or any evidence to support them.
(CNN)President Barack Obama took unprecedented steps Thursday in issuing an executive order against six Russian individuals and five Russian entities in relation to what the Treasury Department said was to address “Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities.”
This is the first time the names of Russian officials involved in the hacking have become public on the sanctions list.Obama also said in a separate statement that 35 Russian diplomats have been ordered to leave the country, and 2 Russian compounds are being closed under Thursday’s actions.A White House statement described the consensus from the Intelligence Community that Russia’s meddling in US elections via cyberhacking as “unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”“Russia’s cyberactivities were intended to influence the election, erode faith in US democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the US government,” the statement said. “These actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The only accusation that I’ve seen was that Russia may have been involved in hacking the DNC, but the government has not presented any evidence of that for public scrutiny. But let us assume that that is true and Russia was involved… the DNC is a private organization. It is not a public entity, nor does it administer our elections. So at the very most, you could say that Russia hacked a private entity and dumped that information in an effort to influence the election.
OK, so that wouldn’t be cool, if it were true, but does that warrant the knee-jerk diplomatic break that Obama launched? And if it were true, would it be any less effective for Obama to leave it to the incoming administration to handle since they are the ones who will be tasked with managing it?
No, this was a crass political move by Obama designed to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory. Obama is doing more to, “erode faith in US democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the US government” than Russia did.
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