Today's Must-Read: The Russian Connection

From Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice:

As more information is released about the hack on the DNC servers – and I don’t mean the dribbling out of emails with people’s personal identifying information (PII) at Wikileaks – it is becoming much, much clearer that the attacks were broader and deeper than originally estimated. As has been reported, the FBI is investigating the attack as an act of cyber espionage. Specifically, that the hack is a Russian Intelligence cyber operation and US government officials have begun to speculate that it was done to impact the upcoming Presidential election in a manner preferred by the Russian government and Vladimir Putin. This has also been suggested by Clinton campaign officials. CNN has reported this morning that the DNC was warned by US government officials of the weakness of their system during a time period when similar attacks were being made against the White House and other US government systems. Russia seems to be intensifying its attacks against US cyber systems similar to state sponsored active measures used to achieve political effects:

“The release of emails just as the Democratic National Convention is getting underway this week has the hallmarks of a Russian active measures campaign,” David Shedd, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Daily Beast. Shedd said that additional leaks were likely, echoing an opinion expressed by U.S. officials and experts who said that the release of emails on Friday may just be an opening salvo.

This could get nasty. In fact, it's already nasty. The DNC, the Clinton campaign, every down-ticket campaign, everyone needs to nail Trump to the wall with this, because sure as hell the media aren't going to do it.

And the House Witch-Hunt Committee? Crickets.

There's more:

Six weeks before the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks published an archive of hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of the Democratic convention, the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, foreshadowed the release — and made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency.

I'm pretty much averse to conspiracy thinking, since it usually turns out to be more fantasy than reality, but considering Assange's ties to the Russians, Trump's ties to the Russians, and the desire of Putin to cement his hold on Europe (and maybe start re-establishing the USSR), somebody needs to focus on this.

Via Joe.My.God.