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Salon
Salon
Politics
Heather Digby Parton

The price of palling around with Putin

Exactly eight years ago this week, the Obama administration formally accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and many others for the intended purpose of interfering with the US elections. The government said, “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities." The assumption was that the administration was pointing the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. And because it was only the Democrats who were hacked it was obvious that the intended beneficiary of this interference was Donald Trump.

The suspicion had been out there for a while. Hillary Clinton even brought it up in the presidential debate and Trump denied it saying it could just as easily be “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.” But this was an official acknowledgment that the Russian government was behind all the hacking and if it hadn't been for the fact that the press was hysterical that FBI Director James Comey had inexplicably announced that the agency was re-opening the inane email investigation, it would have been another scandal potentially derailing the Trump campaign.

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