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A federal grand jury in Washington, DC has indicted 13 Russian nationals and a Kremlin-linked internet firm on charges that they had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
The US government said Russian entities began interfering in US political processes, including the 2016 presidential election, as early as 2014, according to a court document.
[...] The charges – which include conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud and aggravated identity theft – are the most direct allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling in the election.
Link to the Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download
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Mueller Investigation: Thirteen Russians Charged With Interfering in US Election
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday February 19 2018, @08:58PM (6 children)
"Given the rest of your comment, I have no idea what "rigged" means here. Are you suggesting ballot tampering? Voter intimidation? Were votes for Cruz or Jeb! counted for Trump erroneously?"
In the context of the charges being laid, the term 'rigged' simply means voters were influenced by a foreign government via social media; by amplifying attacks on Trump opposition. In a lot of respects the Russian strategy wasn't to elect Trump so much as damage american faith in the election system and democracy itself, by creating chaos and noise and turning off 'reasonable people' so that only the far right and far left was left lobbing crazy back and forth. Trump getting elected is almost a side effect of that; since he openly pandered and fed off the crazy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @09:14PM
God forbid I should listen to what a FURRINER has to say. I should cut out all potential sources of influence out of my life, except the correctly blessed American corporate media.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 19 2018, @09:31PM (3 children)
Do we know anyone was actually influenced in their vote? The people who think the Clintons ran a pedophile ring out of some DC pizza joint, probably weren't going to vote for Clinton anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday February 19 2018, @09:56PM (2 children)
"Do we know anyone was actually influenced in their vote?"
Does a sincere attempt to interfere in an election cease to be a crime if you can't prove it succeeded?
And how would you ever prove it anyway? Do you think people who were undecided can name the specific facebook post, campaign ad, or yard sign that tipped them over the edge to one side or the other? Or can list every ad, post, sign, commercial, news coverage, and tweet they saw over a multi-year period and rate each one exactly by how much it 'influenced' their final position.
"The people who think the Clintons ran a pedophile ring out of some DC pizza joint, probably weren't going to vote for Clinton anyway."
True, but it might have resulted in people just staying home on election day, or voting 3rd party just because both candidates stunk worse then usual.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 19 2018, @11:33PM
You should at least have an understanding of what is success for such an enterprise. My take is that the current brouhaha exceeds Putin's expectations for the interference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:51AM
If it didn't work, can you prove it was a sincere attempt?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:45AM
And the environment in which this was done was already pretty well poisoned by hyper-partisanship and polarization by those who want you to think of your fellow Americans are enemies and traitors if they don't toe a particular ideological line.
That pre-existing environment gave the Russians a boost in creating more chaos and distrust of our countrymen and our social institutions.
This has been discussed, in detail, by R-style and D-style folks.
R-Style analysis: https://www.c-span.org/video/?439822-1/after-words-david-frum [c-span.org]
D-Style analysis: https://www.c-span.org/video/?440037-1/how-democracies-die [c-span.org]
While you D-style folks may cringe at R-style folks who wish to control women's bodies against their will, or impose their ideas about who and how you can love, they are *not* your enemies. They are your fellow countrymen whose views differ from yours.
And you R-style may bristle at the ideas of having a living wage, quality public education for all and other things, those folks who support such ideas are also your countrymen, not your enemies, not commie pigs and they don't hate America. They just disagree with you.
Politics has been described as "the art of the possible" where people who disagree can set those things aside to accomplish *other* things that help us all.
Calling your fellow citizens who disagree with you "enemies" who "want to destroy the country" is both untrue and quite unhelpful.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr