Trump offered to pardon Assange if he provided source for DNC emails – lawyer | Hacker News Reader

Trump offered to pardon Assange if he provided source for DNC emails – lawyer

reuters.com

383 pointspseudolus404 comments

For those making quips about Russia: Assange has already claimed the source was _not_ Russia.

https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/julian-assange-our-source...

Edit: oh wow, to -2 in less than 2 minutes.

It's a point of information, not an endorsement.

Double-edit: Ha, ok, colour me shocked. The discussion thread is excellent and I thank everyone involved for remaining civil.

Both Muller report as well as the House and Senate investigations all concluded that Russia was the source. Assange's denials are about as credible as Roger Stone's denials.

This is what blows my mind. For a group of people who supposedly rely on institutional knowledge about topics like science and tech, suddenly on this topic its one guys claim against literally dozens of institutions counter claims.

One could argue these institutions aren't "trustworthy". Myself, I really don't know where the truth lies. For example, WMDs in Iraq were also by institutions. They may have their own agenda (weather justified or not).

Bush was unwilling to trust the U.N. inspectors. The CIA had also thought that there were no weapons. Bush took this as evidence that Saddam was hiding weapons. Literally, on 9/12, Paul Wolfowitz asked for intelligence that Saddam had WMD and there wasn't any. With so much pressure from the top to find evidence for WMD, the CIA started to cave.

(Saddam had incentive to pretend he had WMD. He certainly didn't want Iran to know he didn't. He obviously didn't want inspectors inside his government buildings. But Bush and his team used Saddam's behavior as evidence he was hiding WMD, rather than the fact that he was hiding the lack of WMD.)

Once the CIA realized that war was inevitable, it went into cover-your-ass-mode and said Saddam might have chemical weapons so that US soldiers wouldn't go into Iraq with insufficient protection in-case there were chemical weapons after all.

Bush was unwilling to listen to counter-naratives. If Condi Rice or, more likely, Colin Powell had been willing to say "I don't think war is such a good idea" maybe it wouldn't have happened. But Bush surrounded himself with yes men. If Powell hadn't supported the war, likely he and his entire staff would have had to resign. If that had happened, Bush would have lost Tony Blair's support and with that, any international support. Bush probably would have at least thought twice about going to Iraq alone.

So in this case, it wasn't so much that the institutions weren't trustworthy, it's that they fell in line with pressure that started from Bush. It doesn't do any good to have experts at your disposal if you're not going to listen to any of them.

Source: Robert Draper's exhaustively researched book on how Iraq happened:

https://www.amazon.com/Start-War-Bush-Administration-America...

Interview with the author:

https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21417224/why-did-america-invade...

(Also, the U.S. media didn't do its job. The cynical side of me says there's money to be made in covering war. But probably, it was just incompetence. I still haven't forgiven the NYT though.)

It's real hard to argue that the bulk of US Intelligence services got this wrong especially as more time passes. For example, compare it to the Iraq WMD claims that were critical in swaying opinion (or validating a vote) but were shown to be misleading at best as reports surfaced. We have had a ton of whistleblowers and reports within the current administration that suggest that the intelligence services are solid, especially at the start of the current presidential term, wile it is the leadership itself with a long list of lies and false claims meant to sow discord and division. The FBI has been calling out white nationalism for decades but only recently are we seeing militias march into state capitols or take over government buildings by force, or police unions defend cops with words like "Get F*," on their rifle.

I'm sticking with the 007 analysis that UK intel is golden and the US contact is about as cowboy as a spy can get but won't stand injustice.

Assange's denials about Russia's involvement aren't credible on its face. The question is whether Russia hacked the DNC emails that Assange published. Assange fundamentally has no knowledge of the origin of the emails as the final stop in potentially multi-person hand off. The only way he could know Russia didn't hack the emails was if he was standing over the shoulder of the person who did. It is like a Tor exit node claiming to know the origin of a communication. It fundamentally is unable to determine that information without a side channel, which in this case would indicate collusion with the hackers.

Please re-read the historical record, key-words: "Stove pipe." The institutional read (NEI) was no WMD. International inspectors said no WMD. Cheney wanted another answer and got what he wanted by subverting the institutions.

I just skimmed a mueller report. All instances where mentions of the hacking group names/numbers were, contained just assertions of what the group did. There was no to very little mention of how this information was determined in the surrounding text.

Yes, I guess it's a report. But it contains just assertions, so it's only meaningful if you trust the institution making it. I've read reports that actually contained the process the core conclusion were arrived at, like various opensource investigations from Bellingcat, etc. And these were indeed more convincing.

Not sure why hacker should just go by blind trust to institutions, lol.

You may want to give the report a full, focused read. While the redactions are annoying, Mueller makes one heck of a case over the full 400+ pages. His writing style is highly measured but frankly, it sounds like it had to be or it never would have made it into the public view. It’s interesting reading how slowly Mueller builds his points!

Vague on purpose. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING claiming the DNC email (and more importantly the PODESTA emails) were "hacked" can be summed up in three words.

"According to Crowdstrike..."

That's it. No one else did any investigation, just Crowdstrike. The same underhanded, dishonest company that LulzSec and Anonymous felt the needs to expose time and time again for their fraudulent ways. People who have no problem lying or framing people.

For anything non-tech related, tech people are just like everyone else. Our supposed higher IQ's don't mean much when forming opinions.

> For anything non-tech related, tech people are just like everyone else. Our supposed higher IQ's don't mean much when forming opinions.

Honestly, I think "our supposed higher IQ's" (or more precisely: a self-image as being much smarter than average) can actually be a handicap when dealing with areas outside of one's specialty. It can very easily lead to overconfidence.

I think you’re mistaken: This is hacker news, not institution-trained software engineer news.

What makes you think HN users “rely on institutional knowledge” more than anyone else? My experience is exactly the opposite.

> What makes you think HN users “rely on institutional knowledge” more than anyone else? My experience is exactly the opposite.

I'm guessing it's a generalization from a relatively common great respect for academic science as an institution. However, even that's far from universal, which the pandemic has shown.

I do agree with you. I think there's at least as much overconfident mistrust of institutions than respect for them there.

Doesn’t really matter which facts are stored in a cortex.

Same old biological biases embedded within.

For example, how this forum often lauds certain non-gods and ignores the math that luck of time and place, not inherent abilities, are what bring people wealth.

Ignoring all the alternatives and historical evidence of high taxation’s value to a society, this forum likes to cling to celebrity worship of economists and tech elites who can only be elite given a tilted economic reward system tilted by biological indoctrination that’s proven in experiment....

Or how in a democracy we seem to end up in a pretty tilted political power structure.

But here they are anyway ignoring science because of biological contentment.

Western culture is as irredeemable as any other. Logistical capabilities are what matters, not ideology. Humans can’t escape their own ego though.

I've noticed a rapidly amplifying trend for right-wing opinions and even conspiracies to get a load of comments on this site. It's weird because in the past political conversations have been either avoided or limited to very factual discussions. I can't imagine any troll farms consider HN to be a high-value target, so I can only assume they are sincere.

HN should probably be considered mainstream at this point. It's better than Reddit of course by nature of the primary demographic it caters to, but it's definitely not underground anymore.

The more popular a site is, the more enticing it becomes to those who are interested in marketing/manipulation/etc. To give credit where it's due, I think HN is far more resilient to these kinds of attacks than most other sites. But it's still important to keep in mind that these malicious actors do exist, and are attempting to influence your opinions.

>I've noticed a rapidly amplifying trend for right-wing opinions

It's correlated with the recent rise in Trump's polling. Left wingers who oppose lockdowns, cancel culture and the riots are being pushed towards the right.

Truth is not the majority opinion.

Same institutions who said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Not quite. Outside the US intelligence community, very few institutions were convinced that Iraq had WMDs.

Those inside the intelligence community knew we had no evidence for WMD and that the evidence being put forward as "maybe" was based on bad information from bad sources. Remember when Scoot Libby went to jail for outing Valerie Plame because the administration didn't like the critical op-ed her husband wrote about the whole yellow-cake uranium thing? Or were you like 4 years old back then?

And the Dutch, who are a primary source for evidence used by all 3 investigations.

https://apnews.com/ef3b036949174a9b98d785129a93428b/Report:-...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...

Like the weapons on mass destruction in Iraq...

I don't believe anything the state says and so far every leak Asange has provided has been proven to be true. At this time he has more credibility than the government.

The WMD story was clearly emanating from self-interested parties and was never supported by intelligence officials. The MSM uncovered plenty of evidence that their stories were untrue.

And the question here isn't if his leaks were true, it's if they were coordinated with Russia to disseminate information stolen in an attack targeted to influence one side of America's election. It has been proven in court that Assange was working the Trump campaign via Roger Stone. There is an abundance of evidence the hacker alias who procured the emails was a front for GRU. There is an abundance of evidence that GRU was actively working to support Donald Trump. Trump openly supported their help. The email leak came out immediately after the Access Hollywood tape revealed Trump's penchant for sexual assault.

As if the establishment and/or deep-state reports are credible?

What happened to the time that the people actually were wise enough to see those with suspicion?

There have been legal cases where convincing evidence has been presented, it’s well-documented. Your presumption that people aren’t looking at these things with suspicion is obnoxious and indicates that you are forming your opinion based on poor information and just not considering one side’s arguments at all because they’re “establishment or deep state.”

The "one side arguments" are a dime a dozen, and they have a historical track record of lying, and a mission statement that is all about lying, misinformation, covert operations, and so on in the first place.

The "convincing evidence" has been of the kind "let's prosecute this guy involved in big politics selectively for stuff that everybody else has been doing on the side for decades, and pretend like he is some rare exception, and hope that people wont see that it doesn't really prove anything about our greater point". Or the kind "yeah, our guys totally have seen these people attacking that system, and they can't be anything but X, would we ever lie? Here's a report".

Yeah but we can look at the evidence and evaluate it for ourselves using our critical thinking. We can look at the evidence and evaluate for ourselves whether people are lying to us. I have done that, and you OBVIOUSLY have not. Do you get it? You are just expressing bias again and again.

if he’s non credible then we also can’t trust the linked article saying he was offered a pardon

What really bothers me is they spent two years investigating it and never once went to Assange and asked him? Why not interview the source? He’s not been hard to find.

It’s like a detective saying “I think he’s guilty, so there’s no need to get a statement.”

The lack of thoroughness here has always bothered me.

Assange repeatedly said he didn't know who the source was. Contrariwise, he has also repeatedly said that he knows it's not Russia.

Could you please provide sources for both?

> For those making quips about Russia: Assange has already claimed the source was _not_ Russia.

Assuming Assange is telling the truth, how would he even know who the ultimate source was?

I mean, Russia might be sophisticated enough to not pass on information like this using someone with an obvious connection to them. It's not like their agents are required to have an accent out of a Bond movie and wear a KGB/FSB uniform all the time.

Unless they wanted it known, that is most likely the case. The non/-statements by Assange around Seth Rich are worth considering too, the Mueller report apparently establishes a chronology whereby he would've known these documents weren't coming from a single person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...

> Assuming Assange is telling the truth, how would he even know who the ultimate source was?

If he received the emails from someone with direct access to them - e.g. someone who worked for the DNC - Occam's Razor would suggest a lack of Russian involvement.

(Not saying this is the case, just pointing out one possibility.)

It's the most obvious possibility.

Assange stating it didn't come from Russia is meaningless.

He has no way of knowing if where he got them from was hired by Russia.

Ye that is correct.

So Russia, aswell as any of every other organization, state or individual on the planet, might indirectly have handed the info over.

if only there were some investigations into the source of the hack. i guess we'll never know

That's wrong and misleading. He might, for instance, have scooped them right off of Hillary's server.

Or he might have gotten them directly from someone working at the DNC

How confidant can we be that:

1. Assange really will choose to say who is or isn't a source (that carries its own risks in so many directions...).

2. Assange actually wants to tell the truth about the source...

3. Assange actually KNOWS the nature of the source? If Bob comes to him and says he's from Brazil (random country selected) and he got the info from Australia (another rando country) ... how sure can Assange be?

I'm not sure I find Assange to be a reliable narrator. The nature of wikileaks has for a while felt like it wants to craft its own narrative rather than just release information. Even as far back as when they were on Facebook (not sure if they still are) any question that seemed to even be distantly critical was deleted. They'd announce a big upcoming leak and nothing would happen ... if you asked anything about it your post was deleted.

I felt like they were playing their own game(s).

But even if that isn't the case, I don't trust that Assange can be as sure as he sounds about where information comes from. If he just up and trusts what his source tells him or just assumes he has the resources to be sure, that's kinda naive...

My impression is that Assange has become the bad guy because he potentially torpedoed the presidential aspirations of HRC. Prior to that publication, unless you were the target of a leak, what Wikileaks was doing was in the obvious benefit of the people. As the bad guy, it becomes much easier to infer malicious motives.

That said, Wikileaks was very proud of its "reporting" track record, methods, and sources. Their minimal exposition was journalistic cover for their original sources that was typically so thin that it would be difficult to contain errors.

Based on that track record and lengths Assange has gone through to maintain that integrity, I tend to believe who he says his source wasn't, that he would not intentionally reveal a source - living or dead, and that their are likely intermediaries or collaborators that would be compromised even if the original source would no longer be affected. That chain of trust is how they help ensure other leakers come to them first, and it seems their opsec is good enough to keep those sources secret even when the organization is significantly compromised.

I completely agree that they often oversold their releases. There were often claims of a deadman switch as well. If that hasn't triggered after all that's happened, was it a bluff? did it fail? was it compromised? did it contain information about the wrong target?

Their track record isn't about their expositions. It's about the integrity of the data they're leaking. They've never been fooled into leaking fake data, or data that had been tampered with.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24503529

FWIW, sometimes my posts get significantly downvoted at first, and within a few hours end up with a lot more upvotes. I try to not care in the first place, but sometimes this makes me feel better.

I have the opinion that undeserved initial downvotes usually end up with more upvotes than the post would originally get. If I see a grey comment that I think shouldn't be grey, I'll upvote. But HN isn't fully dynamic, so that upvote won't be visible to people who already have the page open, so they'll see it as grey too and may also be likely to upvote.

So maybe undeserved early downvotes act like a trampoline. Nice insight.

I've noticed this very consistently. It seems the users who jump on posts early are an entirely different sort from the users who wait for posts to gain some popularity. I could imagine various reasons why that may be the case, but they are just speculation.

This indeed seems to happen a lot in my experience. I mean I see it in almost all my posts, and then they usually go up (or not :))

>HANNITY: Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta's emails -- can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia...

>ASSANGE: Yes.

>HANNITY: ... or anybody associated with Russia?

>ASSANGE: We -- we can say and we have said repeatedly...

>HANNITY: Right.

>ASSANGE: ... over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.

He's basically saying that Vlad didn't call him up one day and say "Russia wants to give you some files." No shit.

-----

> Researchers from the Atlanta-based cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks reported that the emails had been obtained through a data theft carried out by the hacker group Fancy Bear, a group of Russian intelligence-linked hackers that were also responsible for cyberattacks that targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), resulting in WikiLeaks publishing emails from those hacks.

> On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded that the Russian government was behind the hack and gave to WikiLeaks a collection of hacked emails from John Podesta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails#Data_theft

> "The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions," Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the panel, said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-affirms-u-s-intel...

> Following a comprehensive investigation that CrowdStrike detailed publicly, the company concluded in May 2016 that two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries breached the DNC network.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

> 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.

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

etc, etc, etc.

I thought this was pretty well accepted at this point.

That's a serious non-denial denial. "Not a state party" covers a multitude of sins, especially when you're talking about a country where, _in practice but not officially_ the state exerts vast control over all manner of enterprises.

Given the state of surveillance technology today, it's pretty hard for me to believe that any large hacking organization manages to fly under the radar of their governments for very long. You need infrastructure, equipment, and financial capabilities to pull off what these groups manage.

These groups are either working explicitly with governments, or their leadership has been approached by domestic police forces and are strong-armed into focusing their attention on specific organizations.

I wouldn't describe the landscape of extractive-government in Russia as "state control" over enterprise: it's not that the public offices themselves are overstepping their bounds, it's that the holders of those public offices are corrupt and/or compromised.

Yes, this is splitting-hairs, but the Russian Federation isn't anything like North Korea - nor remotely Communist.

Oh, yeah, I should probably have been clearer; I don't mean to imply that it's similar to the situation in the USSR.

Oh, the CIA, you say? Yeah, let's believe what the CIA says. They can definitely be trusted at their word and they never have done anything questionable. /s

As always with cases like this we need to review the actual situation, not just distil it down to a hyper-simplistic minimal summary and then base a conclusion on that.

It's not just a case of believing what the CIA say, they and other independent cyber security teams who have also investigated this, have also presented evidence to back up their investigations to show why they think this. There are also other cases of known proven Russian hacking. Assange has provided nothing. So let's not pretend this is a symmetric case of word versus word.

How about an investigation into CIA hacking?

I gave a cigarette to the kid from CrowdStrike outside an airport on the way to a Con. He worked directly on the breached computers at the DNC.

I would not consider him CIA material, let's say. :)

Was he FBI material? Private investigator material? Don't be coy about his level!

They (CIA, NSA, US deep state in general) are in the business of lying. The WMDs that Saddam had? The Gulf of Tonkin incident?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

> They (CIA, NSA, US deep state in general) are in the business of lying. The WMDs that Saddam had?

Yeah, I remember that: even with the bold and explicit lies put forward by the White House and political leadership at DoD, particularly, and some other agencies, the actual releases from the intelligence agencies were quite guarded and reserved.

The intelligence community is in the business of lying to it's targets, sure, but also of protecting it's credibility to decision makers, both within the executive branch and outside of it, including even the American public. The political leadership, OTOH, is often more shortsighted.

There's nothing in the Pentagon Papers to suggest that the CIA lied to the government (or to the American people). The liars were various presidents, their various cabinets filled with brain-trusters, and other politicians who either ignored factual information from the CIA or twisted it to fit their ideas of "containment" and "domino theory" and all that nonsense.

The CIA would be no good to anyone if they were in the business of lying.

No, sir. They don't lie. At least not wittingly.. There are cases where they may inadvertently.. perhaps lie, but not wittingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs&t=402

Lying is just one of many of the things they do.

The CIA is entrusted with protecting US interests, much like every other intelligence service in the world. They do a range of things, much of them boring. It's government.

They have outlets to disseminate disinformation just like Russia does. We're just arguing about where and how it's happening.

Right and Assange went on TV and lied about Wikileaks publishing credit cards, which they had done. So....

> US deep state

I agree with you but I think using terms like this can hurt credibility.

What about the Republican majority Senate Select Committee on Intelligence?

> "The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions," Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the panel, said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-affirms-u-s-intel...

What about them? Of course they're going to back their spooks.

Is CIA in the business of lying and propaganda? Yes. But things need to be taken in context. The CIA is under the executive branch, and therefore at the mercy of the political whims of the president.

Saddam's non-existent WMDs? Reported by the CIA under an presidential administration that was clutching for any reason to go to war with Iraq.

Gulf of Tonkin? Again, the CIA reporting on something that buttressed the case for war. Again, aligned with the then-presdential administration's desire to escalate things in Vietnam.

The DNC hack is reported by the CIA to be Russia. The current presidential administration has full-throated in their bias toward Russia and against any supposed pro-Trump Russian interference in the 2016 election. And the CIA still says a highly-damaging (to the Democrats' electoral chances) email dump was orchestrated by Russia.

One of these things isn't like the other.

However CIA also pushes their own agenda like Timber Sycamore, a secret operation lobbied by CIA director David Petraeus, to overthrow President Assad of Syria, that led to a war that created a humanitarian disaster.

President Obama signed off the operation, however it was a CIA creation & execution, with the help of Arab intelligence.

CIA does way more than lying and propaganda. They create wars too.

The CIA cannot lie to US legislators without committing a federal crime. They can choose not to disclose information to the public and “neither confirm nor deny” but they can’t knowingly tell a lie.

They can and they have. Let's not pretend we live in fantasy land.

They can "not understand the question." https://apnews.com/33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

So we just need to find one case they did to falsify this claim. And to do so we need whistle blowers. There are serious problems with intelligence agencies in democracies.

I’ve scoured the internet for the crowdstrike documents that offer any kind of proof to their claim. Can you point me to it? The HN crowd I’m sure is capable and qualified of looking at the technical merits of it.

On the off chance that this isn't concern trolling: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

p. 38 and beyond. Also check out the table of contents; it will point you to other technical specifics.

Yeah because the FSB can't use a cutout to send data to Wikileaks /s

accepted by who, the same media pundits who were discrediting intelligence agency press releases 10 years ago?

Senate Republicans? Trump's own intel chiefs?

I guess they're all part of the deep state cabal too?

I think we’re in a situation where we have to choose whether to trust the CIA or Snowden. Whose account do you believe?

Sounds like "plausible deniability" where you can not guarantee that the email you just got from vladmir at gmail is not from the Russian government.

What I like from that exchange is that the question is framed "can you say" and answered, "we can say." Technically it's affirming the capacity to perform an action (of "saying") rather than affirming a statement of truth.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/the-download-on-the-dnc-...

He won't elaborate on the DNC hack because he says he has no original reporting. Does that mean no one on the forums or in the subculture talks about it?

He said:

"Based on what I’ve learned over the past decade studying Russian language, culture and hacking communities, my sense is that if the Russians were responsible and wanted to hide that fact — they’d have left a trail leading back to some other country’s door."

And note, the founders of phishing in the early 90s were mostly teenage kids, maybe 14-16. It doesn't take a state actor to 'spear phish'.

This seems reasonable to me. The hack could have been done by “Russians” but not state sponsored. Or at least the Russian state wasn’t involved from the start.

Crowdstrike admitted there was no actual evidence. Unfortunatley, if all you watch is mainstream corporate-backed news, you're getting a lot of propaganda without realizing it.

It's like religion, you think your news source is right while all the other ones are wrong (Fox news watchers don't think theirs is propaganda, while MSNBC/CNN viewers clearly see Fox News as propaganda. But MSNBC/CNN does as much propaganda as Fox News).

Anyways, if you're interested in non-corporate news, where if you watch it over many months, thing start to become obvious to the point where you can't unsee it anymore, I recommend Jimmy Dore. He's a comedien. Kind of like a modern day court jester who can tell the truth. Of course, make your own decisions, he may be totally wrong as well, but I've found it to be an insightful source.

Here is one on Crowdstrike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA

So your strategy is to dismiss "mainstream corporate-backed news" and instead watch comedians on Youtube? Hard to take that seriously.

My comment links to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NBC News, the WSJ quoting Republican leadership, and CrowdStrike's own account. They're all collaborating on some elaborate lie and Jimmy Dore has dug up the truth? Give me a break.

I don't know if you're mostly joking; if so, I'll admit it's over my head.

I'm not joking at all. I realize it sounds crazy and conspiratorial, but like I said, if you watch sources like Jimmy Dore over a period of months, it starts to become obvious.

Jimmy Dore isn't the only one, there are lots of other great commentators such as Kyle Kulinski, Rising With The Hill's Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti (this one may be more your style, Krystal is left-leaning and comes from MSNBC and Saagar is right-leaning. They don't agree with everything but they cut through the BS pretty well).

I would just say be open-minded and simply start watching one of these sources, it's good to be skeptical. You probably won't agree with them much in the beginning, but when you start seeing how things play out over months, it starts to make a lot more sense, then eventually it becomes obvious.

Note: I am not a conspiracy person AT ALL! Having been captivated by Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World over 20 years ago, I'm actually a big skeptic. Huge James Randi fan, etc. So, don't think that I'm some conspiracy hack, quite the opposite.

> So your strategy is to dismiss "mainstream corporate-backed news" and instead watch comedians on Youtube? Hard to take that seriously.

Another symptom of the illness that ails us. It's the job of comedians to make us laugh, not to tell the truth. If a lie is funny enough, some comedians will tell it for that reason alone.

>> Kind of like a modern day court jester who can tell the truth

Responding to the GP: I think that's a misunderstanding of the myth of court jesters. It wasn't that they were the only ones that could tell the truth, it was that they were the only ones that could hint at uncomfortable truths to the king if they wrapped it up in enough humor. Other people could tell the truth amongst themselves, but they had to flatter the king because of his power.

His argument here seems to be that "if Russia hacked the DNC the NSA would have captured and stored all the packets and that would be evidence"? With all respect to the guy, he seems out of his technical depth here.

You're saying that William Binney is out of his technical depth here? The former NSA intelligence official who is the expert in intelligence analysis, and traffic analysis? Did you even watch the video?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...

>Anyways, if you're interested in non-corporate news, where if you watch it over many months, thing start to become obvious to the point where you can't unsee it anymore, I recommend Jimmy Dore.

Why take it from a comedian? There is a much more reliable source that knows all[0], sees all and reads a lot.

More details[1].

#WWG1WGA

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904237192/journalist-enters-t...

QAnon and these right-wing conspiracy stuff is the opposite of what I'm recommending. Any reasonable and logical person can quickly determine the fallacy of QAnon if you start looking into it.

All I'm saying is, start watching the commentators I'm suggesting over a period of time, and you will see they are not conspiracy theorists.

> It's a point of information, not an endorsement.

This is the world we live in now. And tbh, this is the problem.

That is very true, but consider that we are speaking via the medium of text and text alone. You should make it clear whether you are citing something to support your claim and merely say the claim exists, because there is no tone of voice to convey.

An interview with Hannity? I can think of nothing more concrete.

An interview with Assange. The interviewer doesn't change what Assange says, does it?

It does when the interviewer is more interested in putting on a show than hearing from a source. Read the transcript (or see my post above). Constant interruptions, reinterpretations, jumping around in timelines, etc. It's a horrible interview meant to extract one or two talking points.

That's the primary source, whether or not you like the interviewer, company he works for, what his ulterior motives are, etc. This is the interview where the question was asked and answered.

You can disbelieve what Assange says if you don't believe him. Discounting what Assange says, explicitly, clearly and deliberately because Hannity is interviewing him is foolish. It was a friendly interview. So what.

Well, if the interviewer was CIA interrogator...

The transcript is a textbook example of begging the question. And the first paragraph fully spells out why Hannity was there, which was to try and dispel the idea that Russia helped Trump. Hannity doesn't even pretend.

Not to mention the way the questions were worded allowed Assange to answer without answering. Did the Russian government directly give Assange that data? No, and that would be hilariously inept for Russia. The way Hannity phrases all his questions allows Assange to easily answer "no." Just a terrible interview.

This "interview" is why Hannity is not, and should not be considered, a journalist.

Ad hominem.

I think part of it is the source. Fox News, or Huffington Post as another example, are arguably pretty biased in their coverage.

It is the primary source; he made the claim while interviewed by Hannity.

Fox News actually reports news from the news wires and the local Fox new station affiliates. I think that gives Fox News a bit more credibility than HuffPo, which sometimes reads like Gawker.

Though they are still both very partisan.

Then why not link to the news wires directly?

Jeez! Click the link before criticizing it. It's a primary source, an interview with Assange. It's not a wire reprint.

Because Assange made the claims on Fox News. This is the source.

Because the interview in question was conducted by Fox News.

You always have to take bias in context. If the source is claiming that someone said something to them in an interview and the person agrees, then bias is irrelevant.

> Edit: oh wow, to -2 in less than 2 minutes.

> It's a point of information, not an endorsement.

Please follow the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), specifically: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "

I sometimes wonder whether a better solution would be to require a comment with a downvote i.e. there was a heated thread about Assange yesterday, in which my karma was oscillating from -25 to +5 around the amount prior to making the comments, but only one proper counterargument.

If Assange was a Russian asset who helped Trump win the election, then when Trump offered him a pardon to announce someone non-Russian as the source, he would accept the offer immediately. Assange's options in that case would be: rot miserably in jail, risk dying, hurt mother Russia and Trump - or - say a couple of words, save himself, Russia and increase Trumps re-election chances, and go back out into the world doing more amazing conspiracy-spy-stuff for Russia with a big fat paycheck.

Conclusion: Assange is not a Russian asset.

One thing I've come to learn about humans, and while I'm tempted to say seems like an artifact of modern times, I know is something that's been with us for as long as we've been human beings:

Narratives matter to most people far, far, far more than facts.

Ah yes of course, it would be really inconvenient if Assange was publishing information given to him by Russian intelligence to interfere in the 2016 US elections. Wow what a bummer that would be.

It’s not a point of information, though. It is one man’s claim from a very biased site on this topic. That’s why you are getting downvoted.

Tech bubbles are a cancer and a drain on the progression of ideas. Most people on HN don't care though.

People keep saying I live "in a bubble" yet I find myself having debates and arguments with people at all levels of my social circle that span vastly different ideas. The only time I encounter homogeneous ideology is when I'm in a conversation with an old friend from south Carolina or texas that identifies as conservative. It seems that people that used to have a cornucopia of various ideas have kinda melded into a singular ideology.

15 years ago I might have agreed with you... Not so much anymore.

Everyone in a bubble thinks that they're being exposed to new contrarian ideas. You absolutely are, but not contrarian ideas being seriously discussed outside your bubble. The valley is the obvious example, contrarian ideas are tossed around like hotcakes, and yet it's so contrarian to support trump nobody does it.

How many open Trump supporters do you interact with a week? Or would you feel comfortable telling your coworkers you plan to vote for Trump? He very well may win this election.

Assange also made a big show of trying to claim it was Seth Rich without actually claiming it was Seth Rich. I'm not sure I trust Assange's claims on this one, chief.

>It's a point of information, not an endorsement

Well, you have to realize when you link Fox News, most people wouldn't call that a "point of information".. If one links any obviously biased news site, then it is perceived more of an endorsement than just putting a 'fact' out there.

It's the primary source. The point of information is what Assange said while being interviewed by Hannity on Fox News.

>while being interviewed by Hannity on Fox News

Two things: First, he can't say it wasn't Russia. What he can say is who it was. The difference is who that person was influence by. For example, I can say it wasn't Russia, but the person could actually be an agent of Russia without me knowing. I wouldn't be lying, but my statement wouldn't be true. So, that's why people don't consider the denial to be concrete.

Secondly, about your second point, many people will downvote you simply for complaining about downvotes. Next time, just wait. Votes eventually land where they should be, and complaining about votes adds nothing to the conversation.

This is one of these cases where the US appears to have borrowed concepts that existed in the British governmental system at the time of their independence (when this power still vested with the monarch in what was then England, AIUI), and then never got round to reforming them. Today, an individual having an unchecked pardon power is a bit of an anachronism, and very dangerous.

(If you want to be ultra-pedantic this power is still vested in the monarch, but they can't use it without the direction of the Home Secretary, who in turn is bound by convention to generally almost never use it, and certainly not purely of their own initiative.)

Most republics borrow most of their core concepts from monarchies that preceded them. In the early (modern) republics like the US & France, Presidents have a lot of power, especially military power.

Many later Republics (eg Ireland) inherited from monarchist systems with more of a ceremonial role for the king, and presidents tend to have more of a ceremonial role too.

Anyway, to various extents and with lots of caveats... Presidents have the power to pardon in a lot of democratic countries. In Ireland, for example, the power is constitutionally with the President, but in practice the power is with the government/parliament.

Whatever the details, pardons (and clemencies) are a necessary device. Even courts need check valves and this is a way of checking courts without harming the court as an institution. Yes, it is open to abuse, but on balance I do think it's necessary.

I agree that this sounds like an ugly politicisation... but everything about the Assange case is highly politicised. The content of the offense publishing politically damaging information about parties, politicians, defense and intelligence bodies. There have been tactical indictments in multiple countries. Secretive proceedings. Etc.

This was never a case where blind justice reigns pristine. It's an inevitably political shitshow.

For analogy, think of US impeachment. It's an obviously political, and whether or not the President has enough friends in Congress matters more than evidence. It's a whole lot better than nothing though. If you want to see what not having anything looks like, you can look at the shitshow going on in Israel currently.

Sometimes you need a way around standard rules. Standard rules exist for a reason, and bypasses aren't without a cost... but I do think they're necessary.

> Most republics borrow most of their core concepts from monarchies that preceded them. In the early (modern) republics like the US & France, Presidents have a lot of power, especially military power.

While this is generally true, France is a weird case; it was a parliamentary democracy for a bit! The current semi-presidential setup is pretty new.

> Whatever the details, pardons (and clemencies) are a necessary device. Even courts need check valves and this is a way of checking courts without harming the court as an institution. Yes, it is open to abuse, but on balance I do think it's necessary.

Sure, but it shouldn't be at the behest of one person. It's fine if it is ceremonially, as in the UK and Ireland cases, but not if it is _in fact_.

IMO, it needs to be outside of a court or court-like system. Generally, it's in the hands of a high ranking official. A president is high enough in the food chain to avoid motivations going unnoticed.

In any case, aside from motivations, I think this is the sort of case where pardons should be considered. There were a lot of shenanigans. Motivations, political involvement, tactical levers (legal, espionage-ish, diplomatic..) that can't (won't, at least) be revealed. These are the kinds of situations for which pardons exist.

We in the US also thought the president was bound by convention to use it rarely. Trump has ignored the convention without any consequences.

Literally no one who voted for Trump wanted or expected him to be bound by the conventions of the office, rather the opposite.

Some people definitely voted for him on the basis that he would become "presidential" (imagine that) and be neutered by Pence etc.

You're right, I literally forgot that was even a thing.

I would have replied sooner but i'm being slowbanned. Mea culpa.

Have you ever met anyone who supports Pence? I haven't, and I live in southern Missouri.

The people I'm referring to are the "I'm alright jack" Trump supporters who basically will do anything if it means owning the libs. Also people who thought he would be non-interventionist (I have seen this on HN this year i.e. after Soleimani) despite "I'd bomb the shit out of ISIS"

While I'm not sure about specific Pence fans, there was definitely a narrative that "Trump is just acting like a crazy person to get elected, and will be a conventional Republican president controlled by advisors when elected".

“ Mike Pence Asks Waiter To Remove Mrs. Butterworth From Table Until Wife Arrives “

Wikipedia says that Obama pardoned 1927 individuals [0], while Trump pardoned 25 [1]. Am I reading it wrong somehow?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...

Yeah, Obama had 8 years of criminal justice reform and fighting injustice. Trump pardoned his close friend who was convicted of lying to protect the president and threatened the judge hearing his case.

Obama pardoned 1 person for perjury and they weren't even connected to him.

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons

If you look at those, there's a significant difference in the _sort_ of pardons given, though. Most of the Obama ones seem to be retroactive pardons of mostly rather severe sentences, for random people (note how none of the names are links). This is essentially the traditional use of the power; random person appeals, says their sentence was unjust, his majesty/mr president/the committee agrees and issues a retroactive pardon.

Most of Trump's appear to be pardons of notable people, often aligned with Trump, currently serving their sentence, and in the case of Stone actually convicted for activity relating to Trump. There are a few more traditional cases (eg Jack Johnson), but all in all they're two very different lists, showing a very different use of the power.

To be clear, I'm of the opinion that both are bad and that the power should be restricted to a judicial committee or similar, as elsewhere, but I do think these two cases are _different_.

Even if "most" of Obama's pardons were "good ones", the fact that he pardoned 77x more people than trump leaves a lot of room for more than 25 "bad ones".

I'm not saying this is for sure the case.. just that your comment smells of bias to me.

Not all pardons are the same. Obama mostly pardoned drug offenders who were often too harshly punished during the war on drugs. Trump is pardoning lackeys and friends.

As I understand it, the issue is less the number of times Trump has used it and more the use of a pardon as a political tool or to setup quid pro quo.

The parent to my comment says about some "convention to use it rarely" though. Trump so far has used the right 77 times more rarely, and I suspect that the person to whom I replied speaks more about their feelings rather than facts.

I mean, even presidents before Trump often used it rather arbitrarily, but Trump is definitely a new low in recent history.

I think you could divide uses of this power into a few categories:

- Righting past wrongs; pardoning people convicted under old laws now repealed and considered immoral - this is the primary use in most countries that retain a pardon.

- Influencing policy; pardoning people convicted under existing laws that the pardoner is personally opposed to - this happens in the US a bit.

- Electoral franchise; pardoning people to restore their right to vote - this one is mostly only US relevant, as most developed democracies (including large parts of the US) don't remove the franchise for this reason.

- Patronage - Pardoning personal friends/contributors/etc. This historically happened quite a lot in the US.

- Quid pro quo - Trump seems to be the main offender here.

Is Wikipedia wrong about Obama's 1200+ pardons vs Trump's 25? If you have a source, please correct it.

(This isn't a political statement. I liked Obama, and I don't like Trump.)

Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24517807

>Today, an individual having an unchecked pardon power is a bit of an anachronism, and very dangerous.

Of all the things a ruler with unchecked power could do, I'd argue pardoning people is possibly the least dangerous. "Oh no, please help me, the evil dictator is going around flagrantly pardoning people, hope he doesn't pardon me!"

"Whoever assassinates my political opponent gets a pardon. I also pardon myself for saying that."

when the ruler can pardon wealthy, powerful people who are evil, it is a serious problem.

It's telling that in a nation with 4% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners, one still finds complaints about "unchecked pardons". That's before one even considers the odious racial history.

My concern about unchecked pardons is, well, the subject of the article; the use of the pardon power to arrange a quid pro quo. Obviously, separately, the US has major criminal justice problems, but you won't solve those by letting an individual pardon anyone they feel like.

Assange's case is a perfect example of USA's (and, by extension, USA lackey UK's) "major criminal justice problems". This is a man whose only crime was exposing war crimes to the consideration of the general public. His persecutors have argued in court that he doesn't have 1A rights because he's not a USA citizen, but he is still bound by the most maximalist interpretation of an obscure USA law because "fuck him".

I wish I still wondered where this vehement hatred for innocent victims of the state comes from...

Assange's prosecution can be bad, and yet attempting to gain favours from him with the offer of a pardon can also be bad...

In fact, in _very_ corrupt systems, it is common to put people you need something from in legal jeopardy _for the purpose_ of dangling a pardon to get the thing you wanted in the first place. To be clear, I don't think that's the case here; Trump was attempting to get a quid pro quo but probably didn't set up the initial situation.

As long as the named source is “Seth Rich” and not “The Russians,” presumably.

Old news from February: https://www.businessinsider.com/dana-rohrbacher-confirms-he-...

Thanks. Any idea why the wire services are re-reporting it?

There seems to be a lot of strange comments here. As if to create a cacophony quickly and limit the chance of quality discussions forming.

Whenever news about Chelsea Manning was posted on reddit, few comments (falsely) posted how Manning leaks were of no use, etc.

"Internet armies" is very real, not some conspiracy.

Yeah, I remember that. Just massive floods of comments saying she's clearly a traitor and no punishment is severe enough.

It was weird, because news started out as a blend of neutral/positive/negative when the issue was first known. Then suddenly--and not only on reddit--within 30 minutes of a Chelsea Manning topic being posted anywhere, it would have an absurd number of outrageous, angry responses.

The same happened with Assange news. Sometimes even Snowden.

No use to whom?

Basically they were pushing the narrative that Manning only leaked info which put US personal in danger. That his leaks didn't really reveal any human rights violations.

Ill put my tin foil hat on and say the internet is completely manipulated with fake commenters for a host of reasons...because it is. Probably something like 70/30 fake to real proportion.

So, he's selling pardons for political gain now?

yes, he pardoned Roger Stone for obstructing the investigation into him

And after he threatened the judge hearing his case with a blatant image with added crosshairs.

So the offer was made in 2017, meaning after the election, I guess under the probe in to Russian meddling.

It's really confusing then: If he know that he did not use Russia, acquiring that knowledge wouldn't help much since the next election is in 3 years, so it can't be used as a leverage, unless he wanted the information as an insurance to the probe being biased by DNC influence. If he did, why would he want to know the source? The only thing he would want to know if Assange have been contacted by democrat, or if that information were available to begin with.

Sure is a news that asks more question than it answers, and why was it even mentioned in a court in London?

Assange is currently under extradition trial in London, so this is probably being mentioned to make the case that the extradition request is political in nature as opposed to actual legal interest (no personal take on validity/chances of success, that just seems like the play).

I'm not sure about the reasoning for why one would do this, but it's the same person that took a gamble to get dirt on Biden and got impeached over it, so probably shouldn't approach it from a place of pure rationality. It's terrifying that Rohrabacher was a part of this though, and really skews my personal take that nothing about this was above board.

I think it’s the opposite: what they wanted was for Assange to claim that Seth Rich had stolen the data, not so much to confirm DNC influence on the probe but because it’d fuel a whole nightmare scenario of conspiracy theorizing.

If I’m reading this correctly, they were literally trying to create a disinformation campaign to demonize their opponents, which is very much in line with all these Republican operatives flying to Ukraine trying to get some dirt on Biden.

For context, the guy offering this deal (US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher) was the most Russia-friendly member of congress: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/politics/dana-rohrabac...

It can be assumed that he wasn't making this deal in order to implicate Russian hackers (and Assange would likely have known that).

> “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house...

Wow, downvotes for quoting a statement which is not only relevant, but also recorded.

It doesn’t say if he knows the source, and if he declined?

After reading this: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost... (obviously Assange defenders will call this a biased hit piece), Assange lost my admiration, he seems to be yet another self-obsessed prick. But the way he's been treated and is being treated by the UK courts is also fucking undemocratic and inhumane.

But in my view, Assange is unprincipled enough that he'll say whatever Trump/the thugs running the West wants, so he can be freed. Or to paint it in a different light, they're torturing him so he'll say whatever they want him to say.

>Assange is unprincipled enough that he'll say whatever Trump/the thugs running the West wants, so he can be freed.

The fact that he didn't go with the pardon offer this very page is discussing suggests that this is wrong. You don't think Assange had options to be freed in the past however many years?

"biased hit piece" indeed

> The proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrabacher was that Mr. Assange identify the source for the 2016 election publications in return for some form of pardon, assurance or agreement, which would both benefit President Trump politically and prevent U.S. indictment and extradition

How would this benefit Trump politically?

Article title: Trump offered to pardon Assange if he provided source for Democratic emails, lawyer says

I reverted the post (less some minor editing to keep under the 80 character limit) to the original Reuters title.

Please restore original title. Its important to know who offers pardon.

Per the bottom of the article, Democrat was changed to democratic. The former frankly seems more accurate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

> Democrat Party is an epithet for the Democratic Party of the United States, used in a disparaging fashion by the party's opponents. While the term has been used in a non-hostile way, it has grown in its negative use since the 1940s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)#:~:te...

It seems more accurate to use a name for the party that isn't the actual name of the party?

The DNC is the “Democratic National Committee”

The important editorializing the poster did was to leave "Trump" out of the title. The implication that the negotiations were done with the knowledge of the president is meaningful.

Accurate in that the original title feels authentically like it came as a quote from Trump, who consistently says “Democrat Party”, etc. Removing Trump and correcting the word to “Democratic” depersonalizes it a bit, and feels like editorializing.

Forgive my ignorance, but how does this favour Trump politically?

If it's not "Russia" it's going to be a big embarrassment to many of his opponents. And worst case, even if it was Russia, it would still make him look good to be the one who got this confession from Assange.

> If it's not "Russia" it's going to be a big embarrassment to many of his opponents.

No, Assange being paid off by Trump for saying that it's someone other than Russia (which Assange has said, in less specific terms, before, repeatedly, as part of denying that he himself was acting as a witting or unwitting Russian agent and not an independent actor won't embarrass anyone) won't embarrass anyone.

OTOH, the offer (if there's was concrete evidence of it) itself would bolster Assange's claim that this is a political prosecution by the US Administration.

He would be able to say that his opponents spent 2 years on a wild goose chase and were harassing someone (himself) who was telling the truth the whole time.

I'm curious about the same thing, unless maybe he's gambling that it won't be completely tied to Russia. I suppose it could be that if it is something damaging, he can release the information and use it politically, and if not he'll try and keep it secret. This is a total guess though.

> I'm curious about the same thing, unless maybe he's gambling that it won't be completely tied to Russia.

Pardon offers are in no way binding or enforceable, so no actual gambling is involved. You just don't follow through unless you get the answer you want, as well as making very clear (such as by spending multiple years building a particular public narrative which the defendant actively participated in around your preferred answer) what the expected answer is so that, regardless of what the true answer is, the defendant knows what answer gets them free of the charges.

> I suppose it could be that if it is something damaging, he can release the information and use it politically, and if not he'll try and keep it secret.

This is in a British court, and the President is not empowered to gag the courts anyway (except sort of I guess, at the highly-constitutionally-questionable national security trials)

He wants Assange to say that it wasn’t the Russians. Therefore there would have been “no collusion!!”

I assume the hope was that Assange would simply give the answer that was desired, ie "not Russia", regardless of whether that was true or not.

It's a no lose situation. There are two possible outcomes: Russia did it, or someone else did it. The FBI, CIA, and NSA published a report saying that the hack was carried out by Russia to support the Trump campaign, that is the accepted truth on the matter. Worst case scenario for Trump is that this holds up, in which case nothing changes.

In the event that Assange could prove some other actor sourced the emails, that would mean that the FBI, NSA, and CIA were wrong, and the single biggest argument in support of the 'Russia Collision' narrative would go away. Trump would fold this into his narrative that the investigation into Russian collusion was a witch hunt.

> In the event that Assange could prove some other actor sourced the emails, that would mean that the FBI, NSA, and CIA were wrong, ...

Which is just about impossible for him to prove. Does Assange have access to the kind of IT forensics experts, access to the hacked systems and other resources to prove someone else did it? No, he does not. He didn't do the hacking himself. Whoever he did get the leaked info from could of course claim not to be working for the Russians as an intermediary. But that is just a claim, and not proof.

Assange doesn't have to prove anything. He just has to say what Trump wants to get the pardon, and Trump will blast that all over Twitter and on every news outlet in the country.

If that sounds like an official act in return for a personal political favor to the president to help his reelection chances and therefore is illegal, you would be correct!

If you believe that Trump works under mafia rules of intimidation and plausible deniability, then you can read this as Assange can support Trump's theory that the emails came from the Ukraine, or he can face prosecution.

It's unlikely that someone with such an understanding (whether or not it's a correct assumption) would believe that Assange coming forward and saying he was given the emails by Russian assets coordinating with Roger Stone under the direction of Trump would then result in the promised pardon.

Note that, since then, Assange has not come forward with exculpatory evidence for Trump and the administration has begun prosecuting Assange.

Trump is a chaos monkey; it doesn't have to. This is why I found it hilarious when people believed in 2016 that a vote for Trump was a vote to free Julian Assange; the man doesn't adhere to traditional political strategy.

It could be to show information security in government is worth more than either party.

Also, being able to pardon Assange would also be his version of the Obama->Manning moment: viciously prosecutor a whistle blower and then symbolically free said whistle blower to make yourself look like the hero.

Even though the Russia narrative has pretty much been shown to be a pile of rubbish, a lot of Americans still don't believe it. Having Assange say it would reinforce that reality.

I don't get the sense the "Russia narrative" was ever disproven?

https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/mar/18/wikileaks-rus...

The "Russia narrative" was always extremely vague, so I doubt it can be disproven as such. There were a lot of insinuations that there was something big going on, but the facts that were substantiated were pretty minor. I haven't heard anyone alleging the emails that were leaked were anything but true, either - it is pretty grim when the most devastating tactic a foreign adversary can deploy is the truth.

A valid point. There's a huge disconnect in the American public's understanding of how politics works and how politics actually works. That can be exploited by revealing how the sausage is made on only one side of the aisle to paint the other side in proportionately better light (because people like to assume that the sausage machines work differently on the two sides, without asking why that assumption should be true or why that assumption should imply that the sausage-maker on the other side is better, not worse).

There was a 1,000 page bipartisan Senate report about Russian meddling in the 2016 election just released a few weeks ago [1]. The Senate intelligence committee is controlled by the GOP, so it's unlikely that this is some sort of partisan effort, and it's pretty damning.

Here's a summary of some of the key findings [2]. Among other things, the head of the Trump campaign was sharing confidential campaign information with an individual that the new GOP report identifies as a "Russian intelligence officer". It's all around pretty shocking stuff, if we lived in a world where people could be shocked anymore.

> Kilimnik was also the “primary liaison” between Manafort and one of his clients, sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, according to the Senate report, which also alleges that Manafort “worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.”

> The GOP-led committee said it “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” a reference to the Russian cyberattacks that targeted the DNC in the run-up to the election.

> Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, hinted that senators have additional information, including “evidence connecting Kilimnik to the GRU's hack-and-leak operations,” but those elements are redacted.

[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/rubio-statement-se... [2] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512613-five-tak...

There is only a single source that can determine if it was the Russians that hackced the DNC: CrowdStrike. The servers were never made available to any government body or intelligence agency. The entirety of this narrative falls under the opinion of potentially a single unnamed, unaccountable person at some security consultancy. A single person who is working for a consultancy getting paid millions of dollars to serve a customer, and to make that customer happy, and to potentially deliver results that the customer wants.

Additionally, CrowdStrike admitted in sworn testimony that it didn't have any concrete proof. That their findings were based on appearances and estimations and assumptions.

I wouldn't call it a "pile of rubbish" - far from it:

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

It actually seems like the most politically-neutral offer he can reasonably make. Many principled people want to see Assange released from his political prosecution, but the Russia narrative, though basically dead at this point, can still be an effective bludgeon or pretense for action: if the pardon is executed haphazardly, and without deference to the aggrieved party (the Democrats), it could be undermined and become worse than nothing.

A lot of people are still salty that Assange did journalism that exposed Hillary Clinton's wrongdoing, even people who idolized him until 2016 for his excellent work on America's foreign conflicts, so it's really hard to navigate this labyrinth and get away with doing the right thing.

I see that the discussion centers around Trump, but what would you do if you were Assange?

Divulge the information and take the pardon??

Obviously anything to get a pardon.

The corruption of the current American administration is staggering.

Why is this on hacker news?

Assange is a cypherpunk and hacker, and is currently undergoing a massive violation of his rights by several leading world powers (who claim legal jurisdiction over many of the world's most prominent hackers) for liberating information to the public (in the spirit of many original hackers).

I'm not sure why it wouldn't.

Not everything that the mainstream culture war has picked up as its touchstones is actually about the mainstream culture war.

Shoehorning leaking of data, by a hacker, about corrupt governments into the standard (and frankly boring) left/right US culture war is one of the most obvious examples of this ridiculous phenomenon.

Regardless of your political affiliation, the world is a better place that this information is public.

> Regardless of your political affiliation, the world is a better place that this information is public.

In its purest form, I'm inclined to agree with you.

But I think Assange is more of a tool than a tool-user. He's a launderer of information provided by parties with an agenda.

This might be inevitable, given the players, but it doesn't make it pure or honest.

Also I think he injects a lot of personal agenda into his curation of released information. This opens him up for legitimate criticism, just like any other activist or politician.

Free Kevin Mitnick

https://www.2600.com/hackedphiles/current/idsoft/

I guess it would serve them both well to put out a story that it wasn't Russia.

Just as much as Trump doesn't want Russia to have helped him become president, Assange doesn't want to be seen as an unwitting pawn of Russia.

And Russia would like to be seen as completely uninvolved in the whole matter.

Eh. Not so sure about that. The Russian government has long had a tendency of doing things in a manner that is officially deniable but where it is made deliberately obvious that they are responsible. See the novichok and polonium poisonings; they _could_ have used far more plausibly deniable agents there if they had wanted to.

Notably, "Guccifer 2.0"'s IP address was part of a block allocated to the GRU headquarters in Moscow. I seriously doubt that was an _accidental_ disclosure; it was an advertisement. It's an implicit threat to others.

In my experience of reading material on spies, and watching panels with ex-spooks and analysts etc. one thing I have learnt is that you shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt but you shouldn't refuse to assume incompetence either. You only have to get your tradecraft wrong once to get caught - in this case I don't think they were at all bothered if they got caught early but it's not impossible that someone got lazy

Maybe, but the Guccifer example seems like very basic stuff, and there's an established pattern of deniably advertising the they did the things.

That's fair. Russia does seem to enjoy the grey area of borderline ridiculous plausible deniability. Perhaps I overstated.

Interested why I’m being downvoted. Seems like solid logic to me.

One thing I always fail to grasp is -- if Russia successfully carried out influence campaign to get Trump elected how does it exactly paint Obama and Biden in good light ?

What I don't grasp is - how are you not bothered by an adversary picking our president? It's not about Obama anymore.

How do make this leap ? I consider Trump to be a horrible president and human being in general. But I don't hold people who dropped the ball on national security in such a major way in high regard either.

Most comments seem to revolve around if the source of the leaked emails was Russia but does it really matter? Wether or not it emanated from Russia does not change that the emails were genuine. It is maybe a catastrophy if Trump got elected because of it but it is nevertheless great that those became public. We can only hope that Trump being the steaming pile of sh* he is, we will learn about it in the same manner. Such as that Reuters piece of news for example. I can only understand how sorry many of you gringos must be for having Trump as president but blaming Russia won't solve any of your problems. A more democratic voting system and more transparency maybe will. Democrats are not crazy as Trump but they don't seem like a solution, sorry.

The real lesson of this presidency (Which I sincerely hope will end soon), is really how fragile democracy as a concept rather than a moral for the political parties. Although I assumed they've discussed it, it is at least unlikely that he can fiddle with the election and refuse to leave (Roger Stone suggests declaring martial law) - the checks and balances in place are far too dependent on good faith from those they are overseeing. Flynn was charged with perjury and now what?

We saw it with the Brexit campaign and now with Boris Johnson over here, it turns out that if you spew as much dishonesty, jingoistic bile, and corruption as possible you can win an election. Think about the debates in 2016, where do you even start when arguing against "No puppet, No puppet, you're the puppet, no puppet" constitutes a debate.

One sided "transparency" for the purpose of manipulating an election is an affront to democracy.

And democracy is generally a buzzword if one does not explain what in his/her opinion it covers. Are Democrats democratic ? Is the Us voting system democratic ? You can sense that if you frame the question like that you will have an endless debate that won't get you anywhere. What voting system is in place ? Are parties limited in the money they can get for their campaign ? Is there a independent institution that controls the voting process ? Etc. Maybe the problem with Trump is not that he is a agent of Russia but the fact that he is an infantile billionaire with the worst industries such as oil and coal behind him. But I don't expect democrats to utter that critique since they are probably not clean either. Here is an idea instead, companies or rich individuals should not be allowed to contribute to a campaign more than a certain amount.

For 3rd people like me Trump is very entertaining precisely because he acts with exactly this same disregard for institutions and decorum that our 3rd world populist politicians do, just like Bolsonaro (Brazil), Berlusconi (Italy), Erdogan (Turkey), Kirchner (Argentina), Putin, Duterte, ...

Sure, there was a time on the 19th century when all American presidents were all like that. But the U.S. were a very different country back then, the Federal government was a lot less powerful.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

Italy, Turkey and Russia were pretty much not third world countries when that word had a political meaning.

Later on it became a synonym for developing world, which basically rules out most of the rest of your list, since Brazil, Argentina and Philippines aren't on that list either.

So I assume you just use it a slur, meaning that those countries have a dysfunctional political systems, with corrupted strongmen; ok, I guess; just say "corrupt, failed, authoritarian political systems"; third world brings too much baggage, needlessly insulting people who live in those countries and who produce vibrant economies that have nothing to do the perception of starving masses associated with the "third world" slur.

The meaning of the term Third World is different depending on the context. In a bureaucratic sense it has a very strict meaning, but more colloquially it's used as a derogatory to imply that a country is backward or almost savage in comparison to First World countries.

yeah, mine was a long way to say that I felt insulted by using such a derogatory term for the country where live; insult our politician, fine; insult your own politicians, fine; don't drag the rest of the populace into that. All of the places listed are full of industrious people who live and work and enjoy their long healthy lives; I wish people would occasionally stop and think about what the words that get out of the mouths actually mean.

I mean, he’s inhabiting the powerful position that the two parties built!

Doesn’t help that we’ve had God Emperors like FDR.

The American president has also been mythologized. They’re calling all the shots and doing whatever. Unfortunately that means they can trample over the Constitution and only the opposing party usually cares.

> only the opposing party usually cares.

The republicans didn't even ratify any policies at the RNC this year.

Obviously you have to support your guy, but if I said to you a majority / near-majority of the speakers at the convention were family and friends of the President would you think of a some backward state or the most powerful democracy in the world.

I actually don't care that much about the parties acting like they're not just clubs with arbitrary rules - they are and always have been.

But yea the major party duopoly is gross and has been for a while now. The dynastic families are insufferable.

This will always be a mystery to me -- why oh why did we turn to politics into 'entertainment'. I heard it was why Bush was voted in, Gore was 'boring'. It is basic theater- circus for the masses. Decisions makers/show writers don't act in their plays.

Call me weird, but I don't find foreign politicians acting improperly _entertaining_, at all. This sort of thing is a threat to everyone.

I can't deny it - I'm enjoying it a bit too. Trump's disregard for legal process or even common decency is exactly how I've seen leaders in my country act.

BUT I have to say that even in my 3rd world country, President/Prime Minister tier leaders rarely, if ever, succumb to the kind of rhetoric Trump uses. Usually, that's reserved for tier-2 leaders.

This is very underrated. Quite often, I see people from developed countries look at poorer countries with pity, despair and wishing the best. We, in developed countries, take our development and good way of life for granted.

The tables are completely turned. America has become the country to show pity towards.

Unless America changes its way of governance this Fall, 4 more years and what exactly is the difference between America and Brazil?

Well, in quite a lot of developed countries, the attitude to the US government has been deeply negative in parts of the population for a very long time.

I recall, probably in the 80's, an incident where the US government objected to a foreign aid organisation distributing food aid in the US on equal basis to the kind of food aid programs operated in third world countries.

Several European countries also refers to "American conditions" as a threat of chaos during political debates. E.g. I grew up in Norway, where the threat of "American conditions" was a common scare-tactic by the left to get people to oppose right wing policies. This was decades ago - the first threats of "American conditions dates back more than half a century.

Well, the difference is that today, even developing, poor countries are talking about "American conditions". Sometimes to justify their own incompetence. Other times to refuse American bullying. More often than not, just out of pity.

This is because poorer countries have seen this story before. They didn't need a war to make them poor. Their incompetent leadership over years was enough.

My parents are immigrants from a dysfunctional democracy and they can't agree more. Not nearly as bad as there, but the tenor is strikingly similar for a sole superpower. [0]

My greatest fear is Trumpism is a harbinger for a half century or more of American instability and decline, the same way Peronism was.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/opinion/can-bal-keshav-th...

Speaking as an American, Brazil is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

Uneven distribution is kind of the point?

Based on my evaluation that Trump only does things to further his agenda of sowing distrust in institutions and not out of any sense of justice or progress, here is my take:

He is forcing Assange to say "I will not reveal my sources as I am a journalist". Trump then gets to say he tried. The "media", especially any real journalists that take their profession seriously, will provide analysis that Assange is right for refusing. This gives Trump another opening to smear the media by portraying them as pro Assange, pro hacking and anti DNC.

I highly doubt Trump has enough 5D chess experience to make that level of analysis.

Thankfully people (other than those very into QAnon) have given up on the n-dimensional chess theories for the most part, but if we needed any more proof nearly incriminating himself in a phone call with Bob Woodward (who keep in mind has already written an extremely critical book about Trump) while trying to woo him (in effect) is the most recent disaster.

That seems like a reasonable request, possibly clear up some of the hysterical conspiracy theories. It "is" clear that the Russians/Chinese/Iranians/Naughty Koreans are keen to disrupt the US elections and did so in 2016 as well. All very entertaining, thanks for the show!

This headline really is a way to create a poisonous and intentionally toxic and politicized reaction to Assange. He exposed some of the biggest corruption and evil in our lifetimes, including torture programs.

We must stay TOGETHER in demanding a pardon, rather than indefinite detention meant to keep him quiet. We must not allow this to get dragged into the political culture wars.

Edit: thankfully the headline has been changed.

Yes, and any pardon must be 100% complete and unconditional.

Here is the source of the emails: i@am.com

If it wasnt the Russians, it's almost certainly Seth Rich. CrowdStrike has already said the hack seems it came internally, and there's no evidence it came from Russia, but somehow the FBI came to a different conclusion. One is either completely incompetent or lying.

Edit: It appears CrowdStrike has officially changed their conclusion in their investigation after the FBI concluded theirs. I hope you people know this is all complete nonsense. The CEO himself said they ONLY had 'circumstantial evidence', and nothing at all concrete. Not a single thing.

Edit2: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/...

When did CrowdStrike say that? Because this claims otherwise, and, I would have expected them to update this post if what you are saying is correct.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

Anecdotally I remember reading an intel report from Crowdstrike about Fancy Bear...

That is shocking. They changed their stance in the past few weeks. All of this is complete nonsense, Jesus Christ.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/...

This is a 404, you might want to fix the link

Fixed, thank you.

Is there any serious reason to tie Seth Rich into this mess besides "he died roughly within that time frame and he worked for the DNC"? It really seems like one of these fringe conspiracy theories that doesn't really make sense as soon as you start digging a bit.

What's more likely, that Seth Rich really was murdered for leaking some (overall fairly tame) emails or that his death is completely unrelated and it was just opportunistically reused by far-right groups to make up one of the conspiracy theories they like so much?

> It really seems like one of these fringe conspiracy theories that doesn't really make sense as soon as you start digging a bit.

Because it is. Don't waste your attention on this.

It's been a conspiracy among the right wing that the Clintons have been involved in various criminal activities, including murdering over fifty people, ever since Bill was in office[0,1].

Jeffrey Epstein's body wasn't even cold before people were tying his death to the Clintons, claiming they had him killed to hide their involvement in his sex trafficking ring. It's just one of their go-to memes.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Body_Count

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clinton_Chronicles

Thank for your very helpful contribution, but you're in the wrong thread. We aren't discussing the Clinton's or any sex trafficking ring, but I'm sure you knew that.

I'm not in the wrong thread. Please read all of the words in my comment before replying, as you seem unable to detect its actual subject or context. Thank you.

It's more likely he was murdered for doing something he shouldn't have been doing rather than anything else. The area where he lived had no shooting in the past 16 years or so, and this young guy gets clearly murdered for no reason and not even robbed?

Rich was pissed at what the DNC did to Bernie (look at his past), and I think it's a fair guess to say he wanted to screw them over. He was in the perfect position to do so. If that's the truth, why Assange won't leak that, I'm not sure.

On top of all this, CrowdStrike themselves said under oath that it's likely it was hacked internally, although they have now conveniently changed their stance. See my original comment.

Hey, I wanted to tell you I worked deep in the Democratic Party's technology operations for several years. I didn't know Seth but I know plenty of people who did. What you are saying is nonsense.

I can't prove a negative, but I am not sure where you got the idea that Seth was in a "perfect position to screw" the DNC over, nor the idea he was motivated to do so. His family has begged for years for conspiracy theorists like you to let this rest.

Great, then I would love to hear the more likely explaination for his murder.

> It's more likely he was murdered for doing something he shouldn't have been doing rather than anything else. The area where he lived had no shooting in the past 16 years or so, and this young guy gets clearly murdered for no reason and not even robbed?

There had been a string of armed robberies in the area, which residents had been complaining about.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/bloomingd... https://www.popville.com/2016/07/two-more-armed-robberies-in...

It also simply doesn't fit the mold of an assassination attempt. Seth Rich was shot (twice) in the back, not the head, without a silencer. In fact, he was conscious when police got there, and didn't succumb to his injuries until he was in the hospital 1.5 hours later.

Conspiracyland (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYWNhc3QuY29...) did its season 1 on Seth Rich murder. I highly recommend it.

> and this young guy gets murdered for no reason and not even robbed?

im sure you're an expert on crime but it is not in fact ridiculous that when a robbery is botched and someone gets shot they won't steal anything because you want to run immediately. you're sheltered.

It will soon be 4 years that a petty and vengeful executive is in power that would do anything to spite his opponents, real or imagined. Would he not use every possible avenue to investigate this, and, had they found something, use all his considerable media influence to trumpet it everywhere he can?

Assange's entire being has been dedicated to protecting the identity of whistleblowers since before he started WikiLeaks. He's not going to name a source. Look at what he's been through. He's not going to crack now.

That's true, but in this case the sole source would be dead. What would he have to lose?

It was the Russians.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

Or that’s a Complete fabrication at the request of a political party that has the ear of most major news outlets?

During the 2016 election these news outlets breathlessly repeated the misleading statement that 17 intelligence agencies agreed Russia was responsible for the stolen emails based on a statement from USIC, which represented 16, and Crowdstrike, which was the 17th. The USIC statement says nothing about how many subsidiary agencies were actually suggesting this (later we learned it was 3 or 4).[1] A year later when Trump’s USIC issued a statement, NPR was quick to point out that the USIC comprises 17 organizations, but only a few of them reached conclusions in the report.[0] We’ve also since learned that Crowdstrike, while publicly saying Russia was responsible for exfiltrating data from the DNC, was telling Congress under oath that it had no evidence to such claims. no other agency had access to the servers in question, including US federal intelligence agencies, which could have performed forensics while a sympathetic party was still in control of the executive branch.

0 - https://www.npr.org/sections/memmos/2018/07/18/630057400/gui... 1 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016...

(edit: s/ ased/ based/)

Excellent comment. This level of deception is disgusting. I can't believe I have to scroll to the bottom of a HN political post to find out what's really going on.

Trump isn't the FBI.

Does it not bother you that the RealClear Investigations article provides zero external links or evidence itself? It reads to me like a long obfuscation of the difference between "circumstantial" and "concrete" evidence. Much of it built on the fact that lots of information is still redacted. Once the writer eliminates those two nuances, he can create his own accusation (without evidence, mind you):

"The fact that the Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the heart of Russiagate -- Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion – suggests that the federal investigation was compromised from the start."

How does it "suggest" the investigation was compromised? I don't see the evidence.

No. There is no proof that 'the Russians' had anything to do with it. There is not even proof that the data was exfiltrated at all.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/...

That piece is the equivalent of finding video surveillance of the accused inside a place that was physically burgled, showing them bagging up the actual items that were stolen and heading toward a room with an exit, not being able to recover video from the camera that's supposed to cover the exit, and saying “well, there's no video of them carrying the goods out, so there's no evidence that they actually stole them.”

That's a fantastic analogy that adds nothing meaningful to the discussion whatsoever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com