Link to all the hearings of the Senate Intelligence Committee

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings

On the hearing with Victoria Nuland and Michael Daniel

Jun 20, 2018

They give testimony that clarifies – cyber activity only occurred during the primaries.

There was a period of inactivity, and then an uptick in INFORMATION propaganda.

my note:

It seems that the major worry of the Obama WH was — not to lose the confidence of the public in the electoral system. They knew in the Spring of 2016 that there was cyber interference in the electoral systems of the States. (using the fiddling finger, shall we say) After the conventions there was a lull of activity until October, when an INFORMATION campaign began – both of these activities being attributed – to the RUSSIANS.

Those who followed the primary race between Bernie Sanders and HRC – had immediately noticed irregularities in the caucuses (how they were being conducted and controlled) as well as reports of voters' names missing or party affiliation being changed. Some noticed that it was college students or other LIKELY BERNIE VOTERS who were noticing this disenfranchisement.

And the Bernie followers were making noise about it. It was not being glossed over. Evidence was being gathered for a fact-based complaint through legal channels. The Bernie campaign ignored these independent journalists – wouldn't answer the phone calls – did not address it at all. He himself was not going to fight for the nomination. Conclusion? It was a farce. He was being the proverbial "Pied Piper" gathering money and followers to hand over to HRC.

How many of these former Bernie followers do you think voted for Clinton in the General election? ask yourself.

There is no proof that the dilly-dallying with voter rolls was done by Russians. But there is proof that polling places were reduced to half the normal number - in a very active and enthusiastic primary race. This has all been well-documented. One might conclude that it was the Secretaries of States - in charge of all this – that deliberately set the stage for HRC to prevail.

Why would Russia take the risk of an international incident to change data in the voter rolls only during the primary?

Trump was crushing the Republicans.

But – ya, looky there – Hillary couldn't draw a crowd. She needed big time help.

Who was the one who needed help?

Who needed help to win?? in the primaries?

Wasn't Donald Trump. It was HRC.

When you look at a crime - you look at WHO WOULD BENEFIT.

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michael daniels submitted opening statement

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-mdaniel-062018.pdf

(excerpted)

During President Obama’s administration, I served from June 2012 to January 2017 as the Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator on the National Security Council staff. In that capacity, among other things, I oversaw the development of cybersecurity-related policy, coordinated our responses to significant cyber threats and incidents, and facilitated the development of inter-agency plans to disrupt our adversaries’ cyber activities.

Going into late spring of 2016, as the Presidential election got into full swing, we fully expected Russian cyber-based espionage activities against the major political campaigns – it had happened in previous election cycles and our operating assumption was that the Russians would target the campaigns for intelligence collection. However, by late June / early July 2016, as information from the Democratic National Committee began to be released, and as a few States began to report intrusions into certain parts of their electoral infrastructure, we realized that the Russians were doing something more than merely collecting intelligence. They were carrying out operations aimed at least at influencing the election and potentially even disrupting it.

The goal for this line of effort was to make it more difficult for the Russians to disrupt or interfere with the actual voting process, while maintaining Americans’ confidence in the electoral system. Although many cybersecurity experts have focused on cybersecurity issues surrounding electronic voting machines, we quickly determined that the voting machines, while vulnerable, were not the most vulnerable part of the infrastructure. We also quickly determined that Russia’s goal was probably not to use cyber means to surreptitiously change the outcome of the election by changing votes.

In order to achieve that goal, the Russians would have had to have selected the precincts that were going to be close several months in advance, gained undetected access to the voting machines, installed malware that flipped just enough votes to change the outcome but not so many as to be detected, and then remain undetected through any post-election auditing. We did not believe carrying out such an operation was feasible.

(continued)

>>1892657

continued

——

Instead, we realized that a far more practical goal would be to use cyber means to undermine confidence in the election; once the potential scenarios included more than vote flipping, the potential for malicious activity expanded considerably. Widening the aperture to include the entire electoral process from beginning to end revealed segments that would be much more vulnerable to remote cyber operations. That turned out to be the points at which the electoral infrastructure touches the public internet: voter registration databases; vote tabulation reporting; and media reporting on election day.

Since States and local governments run the election process in the U.S., by necessity our efforts became focused on providing assistance to States and localities. The Department of Homeland Security spearheaded those efforts for the Administration. These actions focused on determining what assistance we could provide States and local governments in the near term and alerting States and local governments to the potential threat.

Fortunately, we did not detect or discover any significant malicious cyber activity on election day.

Now that the Russians have proven that cyber means can be used to engage in election interference in the United States, we should expect that they will continue to engage in such activities and that other actors will follow their lead, including non-nation state actors.

Therefore, I recommend that:

– We continue to invest in improving the cybersecurity of our electoral infrastructure in its entirety, including, but not limited to, voter registration databases, pollbooks, voting machines, vote tabulation, and vote reporting.

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Nuland's opening statement: just a few points

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-vnuland-062018.pdf

she is the — the Center for a New American Security, which I lead, plans to join the

community of think tanks working on these issues

—- I urged stronger counter-measures earlier in 2016 to raise the costs on Russia for its action and thereby try to deter greater harm. For a variety of reasons, President Obama chose to wait until after the 2016 presidential election to launch a full interagency investigation into Russian actions and to respond.

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>>1892686

continued

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Senate Intelligence committee on russian interference in 2016 elections

starring Victoria Nuland and Michael Daniel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Nef2gDeoA

Chairman Burr: What could we have done that would have changed where we are here today?

31:40 – Nuland – "Thanks, Chairman. In this open session, let me say, I assume you're talking about what was done with regard to the adversary, with regard to Russia, rather than the things that Mr. Daniel has talked about with States, etcetera. Uh, so, um, it's accurate to say that, uh, in September the President made a stern and personal warning to President P..Putin, that there were follow-up conversations in other government channels with appropriate counterparts including, uh, uh, use of some pre-existing channels that we had with the Russians. Um, but we did not take deterent measures in this electoral period. Um, there was a lot of work going on (she smiles directly at Chairman) I would say from June onward, as to what kinds of deterent measures we could take, either in the electoral period or afterwards. A lot of work informed what was done later in December. Um, but for a variety of reasons, uh, some of them you highlighted yourself, uh, some of them have come out and Mr. Daniels mentioned, there are others that are more classified, uh, the President chose to launch the full investigation and response after the election. I think, uh, you know, it's fair to say, that all of us in the process assumed that what was done in December-January of 2016-2017 would be a starting point for what the incoming administration would then build on. Uh, so, I think there's still plenty of work to be done."

36:00 – Chairman Burr – At what point did you become aware of Mr. Steele's efforts?

Nuland – Mr. Steele's efforts with regard to the…?

Burr – "the dossier"

Nuland – "to the dossier. Um, I was, uh, first shown excerpts from the dossier, I believe in mid July of 2016. Uh, it wasn't the complete thing, which I didn't see until it was published in the U.S. press."

Burr – "Sure. I know you've talked extensively with our staff relative to Mr. Steele. Uh, based upon our review of the visitor logs at the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department, briefing officials on the dossier in October of 2016. Did you have any role in the briefing."

Nuland – "I did not. I actively chose not to be part of that briefing."

Burr – "But, you were aware of the briefing?"

Nuland – "I was not aware of it until afterwards."

38:06 – Nuland – "I think it's certainly the case that it was very important to tell the Russians at every level including the top level that we were watching what they were doing. Whether they slowed the Russians role, whether they did less particularly after the President spoke directly to Putin in early September, I don't know. There was-uh is, if you look at the record of their activity they were generally a little less active in September than they later were in October, and that they particularly were at the end of October where they were quite active, uh, when they thought that the election might turn out differently than what they previously thought."

38:50 – Daniel – "And I would generally agree with, uh, Ambassador Nuland's, uh, uh, remarks on that, I would say that I would draw a distinction between we saw a diminuition of their cyber activity aimed at the electoral infrastucture? and actual, and now looking back we see very much an increase in what they were doing on social media and the influence operation.

So, I think my conclusion would be that they shifted their focus away from pure cyber operations and more into the information operations area as a result of what we were communicating."

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To add:

Bernie actually paved the way for Trump.

He tapped into discontent, which could not be transferable to Hillary.

If Hillary had run uncontested, there wouldn't have been a doubt from the beginning that Trump would win.

JMHO

SORRY TO TAKE UP THE BOARD

this is important

this is their big claim to fame that Trump interfered with the election

now there is proof otherwise