Why did Putin hack against Hillary Clinton supporting Donald Trump in the US presidential elections in November 2016?
The new de-classified version of the report by the Office of the Director National Intelligence “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: from January 6, 2017 made clear:
All three intelligence agencies with one clear opinion
The report includes „an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. It covers the motivation and scope of Moscow’s intentions regarding US elections and Moscow’s use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion.“
GRU started in March 2016
“The General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) probably began cyber operations aimed at the US election by March 2016. We assess that the GRU operations resulted in the compromise of the personal e-mail accounts of Democratic Party officials and political figures. By May, the GRU had exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC.”
Republicans hacked as well
“Russia collected on some Republican-affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign.”
Putin involved
„We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.”
Russia’s goals
- „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.
- We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.
All three agencies agree with this judgment.
CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.”
How?
„Moscow’s influence campaign followed a 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.”
Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.”
Why?
GLOBALO lists the 8 real reasons why Putin hacked Clinton in favor of Trump:
- Revenge for making public the huge Russian Olympic state doping scandal, managed by its secret services and a shame for Putin
More than 1000 Russian Athletes are involved in largest doping scandal ever, including the Russian intelligence services and ministry. The second McLaren report stated “state-controlled and systematic doping suppression” and “institutional conspiracy”, initiated by the Russian Ministry of Sport.
President Putin thinks the US made this information public which harmed his image and defamed Russia.
The report: “A prominent target since the 2016 Summer Olympics has been the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), with leaks that we assess to have originated with the GRU and that have involved data on US athletes.”
2. Revenge for the “Panama Papers” exposing $ 2 billion wealth of his best loyal friend cellist Sergey Roldugin
The reports states: „Putin publicly pointed to the Panama Papers disclosure and the Olympic doping scandal as US-directed efforts to defame Russia, suggesting he sought to use disclosures to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical.”
GLOBALO reported April 5, 2016: ” One of the biggest fishes in this barrel of shell corporations and back channel money deals, Putin’s best friend and famous cellist Sergey Roldugin is the face of a large secret network of Putin loyalists who have shuffled at least $2 billion. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “In almost every instance, the result is the same: money and power moves in the direction of the network, to companies and people allied to Putin. The network’s covert deals allowed it to receive money in a variety of ways including hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart loans from a bank controlled by the Russian government.” Of course, there is only circumstantial evidence implicating Putin himself.”
3. One of the main reasons was revenge for the support by Secretary of State Clinton for inner-Russian demonstrations 2011 and 2012 (the so called “Snow Revolution”) against Putin and his United Russia party. Putin saw this as active work of the State Department against himself and the start and try of a coup in Russia like in Ukraine before. This support by Clinton crossed the Red Line in his eyes.
The report noted: „Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.“
What has happened?
December 8, 2011 The Guardian reported:
“Putin accused Clinton of giving “the signal” to opposition leaders, who are expected to gather with tens of thousands of supporters for a protest. He rejected Clinton’s repeated criticism of a parliamentary vote last weekend that gave Putin’s United Russia party nearly 50% of the vote amid widespread reports of fraud.
“[Opposition leaders] heard the signal and with the support of the US state department began active work,” Putin said during a meeting of the All-Russia People’s Front, a new political movement set up to support his presidential candidacy in a 4 March election.
“We are all grownups here. We all understand the organizers are acting according to a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests,” he said.
Clinton raised the issue of Russia’s elections again during a visit to Brussels. “Human rights is part of who we are,” she said, after Putin’s comments emerged. “And we expressed concerns that we thought were well founded about the conduct of the elections. “We are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and realise a better future for themselves.”
Nearly 30,000 people have indicated their intention to join the protest on Moscow’s Revolutionary Square via Facebook. Protests have been organised in more than 80 cities around the country.
“No one wants chaos,” Putin said, adding that most Russians did not want a repeat of the overthrowing of governments in nearby Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.
Putin has often accused the west of meddling in Russian affairs, a tested tactic to deflect attention away from the country’s problems. “We are required to protect our sovereignty,” he said. “We will have to think about strengthening the law and holding more responsible those who carry out the task of a foreign government to influence internal political processes.”
Wikipedia reports:
“The so called “Snow Revolution” started in 2011 as protests against the 2011 Russian legislative election results and continued into 2012 and 2013. The protests were motivated by claims by Russian and foreign journalists, political activists and members of the public that the election process was flawed. The Central Election Commission of Russia stated that 11.5% of official reports of fraud could be confirmed as true.
On 10 December 2011, after a week of small-scale demonstrations, Russia saw some of the biggest protests in Moscow since the 1990s. The focus of the protests have been the ruling party, United Russia, and its leader Vladimir Putin, the current president, previous prime minister, and previous two-term president, who announced his intention to run again for President in 2012. Another round of large protests took place on 24 December 2011. These protests were named “For Fair Elections” ( За честные выборы) and their organizers set up the movement of the same name demanding: freedom for political prisoners; annulment of the election results; the resignation of Vladimir Churov (head of the election commission) and the opening of an official investigation into vote fraud; registration of opposition parties and new democratic legislation on parties and elections, as well as new democratic and open elections.
On 6 May 2012, protests took place in Moscow the day before Putin’s inauguration as President for his third term. Some called for the inauguration to be scrapped. The protests were marred by violence between the protesters and the police. About 400 protesters were arrested, including Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov[23][24] and 80 were injured. On the day of the inauguration, 7 May, at least 120 protesters were arrested in Moscow
In June 2012, laws were enacted which set strict boundaries on protests and imposed heavy penalties for unauthorized actions.”
This was a real threat for the power of Mr Putin, who thought the United States were behind the protests and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
4. Weaken Hillary Clinton as possible next US president
An attack on her credibility and reputation, so any attack on Russia would be less dangerous.
5. Promoting the naive and unexperienced populist Donald Trump as a better and softer option for Moscow as part of the new global populist movement which showed more pro-Russia politics than the mainstream liberal politicians.
„Russian media hailed President-elect Trump’s victory as a vindication of Putin’s advocacy of global populist movements—the theme of Putin’s annual conference for Western academics in October 2016—and the latest example of Western liberalism’s collapse.”
6. Better options for Syria with a pragmatic Trump not so much interested in human rights and support for “freedom fighters”
“Moscow saw the election of President- elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”
7. Better options for important Ukraine with a less aggressive pragmatic deal-maker Trump
As a deal-maker Trump is a better partner than Clinton who supported Kiev almost under all conditions, in the perception of the Kremlin.
“Putin publicly indicated a preference for President-elect Trump’s stated policy to work with Russia, and pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly about what they saw as his Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine. Putin publicly contrasted the President-elect’s approach to Russia with Secretary Clinton’s “aggressive rhetoric.”
8. Trump’s business interests in Russia as a bait- the Gerhard Schröder effect
“Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”
This is the Achilles Heel of a president Donald Trump as seen by Putin and his Russian spies:
An entangling web of business interests of the billionaire all over the world.
This is easy to infiltrate with cyber and telephone attacks by GRU, personal contacts and contracts finding weak points and money interests of the Trump family in global real estate all over the world.
Like a spider Putin starts to build a hidden soft info-net around the Trump family, his friends and friends of friends.
This at the end could costs him he presidency and lead to impeachment because of some illegal tax issues, bribes and other strange actions, including sex affairs, within his business empire of too many different people, companies, contracts, taxes and interests.
The (only) good news in the CIA-FBI-NSA report:
There was much indirect, but no direct influence on the voting system and computers in the 50 states, the report concluded.
“Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”
