(Thread) Reading the Mueller Report, Part I

The scope and scale of the Russian cyber attack on the U.S. was breath-taking and horrifying.

From Special Counsel: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.
1/ Special Counsel (SC) established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through two operations.

💠A Russian entity, IRA, carried out a social media campaign that favored Trump and disparaged HRC

💠Russian intelligence service, GRU, conducted . . .
2/ . . . an operation to hack Democratic campaigns and weaponize the stolen material to undermine HRC's campaign and boost Trump.

Both of these operations violated US law.

Military Unit 74455 is a unit of the GRU.
3/ Military Unit 74455 hacked computers belonging to state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.
4/ The GRU targeted Florida County officials responsible for administering the 2016 US election. The FBI believes this operation enabled the GRU to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government.
5/ The GRU began planning the release of the stolen material at least as early as April 19, 2016. Guccifer (a name adopted by GRU officers) began publishing material on June 15, 2016.

By July, the intent was to prevent HRC from consolidating Bernie Sanders support behind her.
6/ Within 5 hours of Trump’s famous “are you listening” comment, GRU officers for the first time targeted Clinton’s personal office.

Flynn recalled that Trump repeatedly wanted to find HRC’s “missing” emails. (Recall that they weren't actually missing.)
7/ Gates recalled Trump being generally frustrated that the Clinton emails had not been found.

Late summer 2016, Trump Campaign planned a press strategy, a communication campaign and message based on the possible release of Clinton emails by Wikileaks.
8/ Trump campaign showed “interest in WikiLeaks releases of hacked materials throughout the summer and fall. [Redactions due to ongoing matter]

Trump Jr. had direct electronic communication with Wikileaks.
Heavy redactions suggest that ongoing investigations into the IRA.
9/ The IRA was astonishingly successful. By the time of the election, the IRA had reached amd communicated with more than 120 million Americans through social media.

IRA accounts interacted with American Twitter users, including through direct messages.
10/ The question to ask Trump supporters is this:

Are you OK with the fact that Russia infiltrated our election, including hacking state election officials?

Are you OK with the fact that Trump and his campaign knew Russia was doing much of this and they lied to protect Russia?
11/ Are you OK with the fact that the GOP is not taking adequate steps to secure our elections?

How is allowing this “securing” our borders?

I don’t think many people would really enjoy living in the United States of Russia.

End Part I/
All of my threads are blog posts. You can find this one here: terikanefield-blog.com/reading-the-mu…

Part II coming as quickly as I can manage it.

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More from @Teri_Kanefield

Feb 21
Putin knows how to wield disinformation and he knows that the United States is divided: A large portion of the population, including the most influential voices from a major political party, want the United States to emulate his Russia.

1/
Some background:

After Russia enacted anti-homosexual legislation, Pat Buchanan said Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly city of today" because he was stamping out western evils like easy divorce and homosexuality.
buchanan.org/blog/whose-sid…

2/
British right-winger Katie Hopkins, in an article in which she was interviewed with her friend Ann Coulter, said “Putin rocks.”

Katie Hopkins then went on to praise Russia as being “untouched by the myth of multiculturalism and deranged diversity."

rt.com/uk/429777-kati…

3/
Read 4 tweets
Feb 18
Trump lost in court THREE MORE TIMES today.

Trump tried to get all three of these cases⤵️ dismissed and lost. I analyzed one of the cases last April, Blassingame, here: (Transcript on my blog.)

He tends not to do well in court, where facts matter.

1/
The defendants made the following arguments (screenshot #1)

Trump also claims, among other things, that he has absolute immunity. (#2)

It turns out that the absolute immunity question isn't as easy as you might think (but Trump still lost).

2/
If you want to get caught up on one of the cases, my analysis from last April is here:terikanefield.com/blassingame-v-…

And here:

You can read the court's decision here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

3/
Read 8 tweets
Feb 16
Um . . . this isn't the defense Trump thinks it is.

Trump published a letter he received from Mazars dated (it looks like) 2014. He then summarized the letter.

#1: What Mazars said
#2: What Trump says Mazars said

Me = 🤦‍♀️

Does he think nobody can or will actually read it?
Mazars said, "Trump is responsible for preparing the financial statement."

Also Mazars does not "undertake to obtain or provide any assurance that there are no material modifications that should be made . . . "
Trump posts the letter and says Mazars "strongly states that all work was performed in accordance with professional standards and that there were "no material discrepancies in the financial statements."

There is no "I don't know how to read" defense.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 13
For this week’s blog post, I edited and combined a few of my recent threads.

I started with a reading of the newly unredacted sections of the Mueller report, then talked about some of the responses on Twitter . . .

terikanefield.com/is-social-medi…
. . . and concluded with thoughts about how social media brings out authoritarian instincts in large swaths of people who ordinarily would not be given to authoritarian impulses.



It's too easy for truth to lose, and when truth loses, democracy loses.
Right. And not all "manipulators" are bad actors, but all people need to learn to evaluate sources.

Reflectively saying, "Professor X should know" is not how to do it. It takes more work. Falling in line is always easier than doing the work.

Read 4 tweets
Feb 12
I'm tired of the word "accountable." It's a weasel word. Don't say "accountable." Say what you mean.

Does "accountable" mean
🔹Lose elections?
🔹Go to prison?
🔹Lose a lawsuit?
🔹Be hated?

It would be nice if all the good people were rewarded and the bad people punished.
So you want to start indicting people and gather the evidence after they're indicted?

Or not worry about evidence?

There are rules of evidence, which means that the stuff you've read in newspapers and Tweets probably isn't admissible in court . . .
Indicting people and having juries return "not guilty" verdicts because there isn't evidence to prove each element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt may not accomplish what people think it will accomplish.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 12
One reason I think social media is turning everyone into authoritarians: people don't read or think.

They see a headline and have a strong emotional reaction, which they Tweet and which then gets repeated by others, who are also not thinking . . .

1/
Political psychologists like @karen_stenner describe the authoritarian personality.

Those with an authoritarian disposition are averse to complexity. They reject nuance.

They prefer sameness and uniformity and have “cognitive limitations.”

(link in the next Tweet)

2/
See for example, "Authoritarianism is not a momentary madness,” which originally appeared in this book, an dwhich Stenner has now made available free on her website, here: ……e-4700-aaa9-743a55a9437a.filesusr.com/ugd/02ff25_370…

Timothy Snyder also talks about the danger of what he calls Internet Memes.

3/
Read 7 tweets

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