Russians

As a special favor to an 'acquaintance' of mine on Facebook (not a 'friend'.  We're not Facebook friends, and I know nothing about this person other than she has challenged me to 'research the true facts'.  Hi Patti!), I'm going to take a close look at the report on Russian hacking into the U.S. election, released jointly by the CIA, FBI and NSA.  Their conclusion:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.  Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.  We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.  We have high confidence in these judgments.

So there you go, Patti.  I have researched the 'true facts' that the U.S. intelligence agencies reported, and just like I thought, they reported that the Russians helped elect The Stain.

But that's not all they said!

Moscow's use of disclosures during the US election was unprecedented, but its influence campaign otherwise followed a longstanding Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations --- such as cyber activity --- with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls".

The Russians paid people to repeat pro-Trump or anti-Hillary propaganda on social media.  So Patti is right to make sure I have my facts straight!  Fortunately, I do, and I can assure you that no one is paying me to write this (I wish).  And I'm so old, I can remember when Russians undermining a U.S. election was considered a BAD thing.

The report actually goes into quite a bit of depth regarding the "state-funded media" aspect of Russian involvement in the election.  Fully half of the report is devoted to a discussion of RT America TV, which the report describes as "a Kremlin-financed channel operated from within the United States".  It also contains a section titled "RT Leadership Closely Tied to, Controlled by Kremlin", in which they conclude:

The Kremlin staffs RT and closely supervises RT's coverage, recruiting people who can convey Russian strategic messaging because of their ideological beliefs.

There seem to be a lot of Americans --- on the left AND the right --- who are unaware that when they're getting information from RT America, they're drinking in Russian propaganda.

The declassified report from the intelligence community contains no discussion of the degree to which The Stain may have been complicit in the Russian subterfuge.  It seems that a responsible Congress would want to conduct an investigation to find this out.  After all, this Congress spent literally YEARS investigating the Benghazi attack which left four Americans dead.  As tragic as that was, it was nowhere near the threat to democracy that a hacked election is.

Yes, a responsible Congress would definitely initiate a no-holds-barred investigation.  I wonder what this Congress will do?