Russia to US over alleged election hacking: ‘Put up or shut up’

The United States must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “indecent” of the United States to “groundlessly” accuse Russia of intervention in the US election campaign, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

“They should either stop talking about that or produce some proof at last. Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly,” Peskov reportedly said about the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.

Just about the only ones who think that Russia was responsible for the hacks and subsequent turning over of embarrassing and damaging information about the DNC and Clinton’s inner circle to Wikileaks is the White House, Hillary Clinton and some politically motivated elements within the U.S. intelligence community:

— Julian Assange, a founder of Wikileaks, has stated publicly that Russia is not the source of the materials the web site has released on Clinton and the DNC.

— In fact, the data was not ‘hacked’ at all, according to Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange. He tells the UK’s Daily Mail that a disgruntled insider at the DNC who had legal access to the data and who was upset about the party’s obvious efforts to shun Sen. Bernie Sanders in favor of Clinton is the source of the leaked materials.

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.

The paper reported further:

He said the leakers were motivated by ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.’

Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary. 

— The U.S. intelligence community’s top leaders do not concur with the assessment of a group of CIA analysts that Russia hacked anything during the U.S. election. Reuters reported:

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

So why is Clinton sounding off about this? She claims Putin did it to her and not Trump because he has some sort of “grudge” against her, per CNN. That is completely baseless and sounds more like an excuse from someone who lost the election fair and square. Besides, Clinton is compromised in just about every way anyone could be in terms of national security; the FBI has said her private email server was hacked by at least five foreign governments, so you have to assume one of them was Russia. Also, Clinton was secretary of state when Russia was able to obtain one-fifth of all U.S. strategic uranium reserves, an approval process that a) had to flow through her office; and b) was given at a time when Russian interests were paying her husband, Bill Clinton, megabucks for “speeches” in Moscow, and millions were flowing into the Clinton Foundation from parties interested in making the deal. Does this sound like someone Putin would have a “grudge” against, or someone he could exploit had she become president?

So why has President Obama threatened to retaliate against Moscow now that he’s set to leave office, when he has done nothing about suspected Russian (and Chinese) hacking of U.S. government and private sector systems throughout his presidency? This is political now: His third term, via Clinton, now will not happen, so Obama seems content to leave Trump with a foreign policy mess on his hands by sabotaging the incoming administration’s ‘reconcile with Russia’ strategy.

That is petty as hell but it is something else as well: Very dangerous. Putin is not the head of some banana republic; Russia has distinct offensive military capabilities and while Putin may not be ready to engage in a real conflict with the U.S. on the cusp of a Trump administration that he obviously thinks he can work with, it’s not smart to flick the nose of the bear.

Putin is stepping up the game here by publicly challenging the Obama and Clinton (and mainstream media) narrative he is responsible for “hacking the U.S. election.” It’s a shrewd but smart move.

More:

• Hold On: Top U.S. Spy Officials Have NOT Embraced The CIA’s Assessment That Russia Aimed To Help Trump Win Election
• Iran Foolishly Threatens The Incoming Trump Administration Over Bad Nuclear Deal Made By Obama
• US Intelligence: Al Qaeda Attacks Could Come On Monday; Will Obama Suspend The Election?

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