Investigating Russia’s Interference in Our Democracy

On Thursday Ray witnessed some imaginative bear hunting by Hillary-Should-Have-Won (HSHW) Democrats at the “progressive” Clinton/Podesta Center for American Progress Fund.  A panel discussed the “serious challenge to U.S. national security by Russia’s interference in our democracy.”  The event began with introductory remarks by House Intelligence Committee member Jim Himes (D-CT) and ended with a question from a skunk at the picnic. (The dramatis personae are listed below.)

https://www.americanprogressaction.org/events/2017/03/31/166902/investigating-russias-interference-democracy/

April 6, 2017 (1 hour 13:45 minutes)

 

All in all, it was a telling performance; watching at least some of it is highly recommended.  Ray got recognized for a question at 1:05:40; survived an attempt by the HSHW moderator to cut off his mic; and then sat through a three-minute rebuttal by former special envoy to Libya Jonathan Winer, who availed himself of the few non-sequiturs left unused by Congressman Himes and the panelists.

Ray began his question by complimenting Jennifer Palmieri (Hillary Clinton’s campaign communications director) for her very candid Washington Post revelations about how hard – and how successfully — she worked at the Democratic National Convention to get the media to focus on Russian “hacking” of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, and to ignore what they revealed – to wit, how Clinton and the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders.

 

Palmieri proudly explained how she managed to accomplish that in a recent feature article in the Washington Post titled The Clinton campaign warned you about Russia. But nobody listened to us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/24/the-clinton-campaign-warned-you-about-russia-but-nobody-listened-to-us/?utm_term=.6c79f9d218a8

Palmieri continued in the same vain vein during the panel discussion, and unwittingly let drop tidbits of evidence that could get some former officials in deep kimchi – if a serious investigation of leaking, for example, were to be conducted .  But on Thursday no one seemed to notice.  It was all Hats Off! to Palmieri for putting the media on the trail of the Russian bear.  The event itself reflected the reality that that her success persists to this day.

Transcribed below (verbatim) are some of Palmieri’s more telling remarks after the moderator asked her to comment, from her insider perspective, on “what was actually going on in late summer/early fall.”

It was a surreal experience for us and our campaign so I did appreciate that for the press to absorb, in addition to how/what an unconventional – to put it mildly — candidate Trump was and all of the crazy theater that was happening on stage, the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb…. and for us it did feel that the whole campaign experience was pretty surreal without Russia.  (Emphasis added)

 

But then we go back to Brooklyn and heard from the — mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press who work in the intelligence sphere, and that’s where we heard things and that’s where we learned about the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about; and how to process, how do we … And along the way the administration started confirming various pieces of what they were concerned about what Russia was doing.  And how do you weave that story line into the fight we were having with Donald Trump on the campaign trail?  And that was a really hard thing. …  People did not care about Russia … because they didn’t hear about it. …. (Emphasis added)

 

And we did finally get to the point on October 7, when the administration came out with a very stunning [memorandum].  How stunning it was for both the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security to put out a statement – a long statement – that said with high confidence that Russia was interfering in the election and they were also directing the timing of the leaks.  And it named the institutions – WikiLeaks, dcleaks, and Guccifer – as being Russian-led, and how stunning that was to be that certain and that public. …

 

So I do think that the answer for the Democrats now … in both the House and the Senate is to talk about it more and make it more real ….

(End of excerpt from Palmieri’s remarks)

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Dramatis Personae

Featured Panelists:
Jennifer Palmieri, former Communications Director to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and former Communications Director to President Barack Obama
Jonathan Winer, former U.S. Special Envoy to Libya and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement from 1994-99
Max Bergmann, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund and Director of the Moscow Project

Moderated by:
Vikram Singh, Vice President, National Security and International Policy, Center for American Progress Action Fund