Russia attempted to sway the 2016 US presidential election

Hello. I will provide three lines of evidence that Russia attempted to sway the 2016 US presidential election.CONTENTION ONE: THE SPOOKSTLDR: Russia hacked DNC.The US intelligence and cybersecurity community is almost unanimous in the conclusion that Russian agents planned and executed the DNC hacks.For example, on 29 December 2016, a joint report was issued by the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The report asserts that two Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) agents or organizations -- denoted Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 28 -- or APT28 -- and 29 -- or APT29 -- executed a plan denoted "Grizzly Steppe". Grizzly Steppe hoped to compromise data from government officials and the Democratic Party. This plan succeeded and led to Wikileaks' release of emails gathered from Democratic National Committee (DNC).Or: The DHS and the FBI both assert that Russian intelligence service hackers were directly behind the DNC leaks:"In summer 2015, an APT29 spearphishing campaign directed emails containing a malicious link to over 1,000 recipients, including multiple U.S. Government victims. APT29 used legitimate domains, to include domains associated with U.S. organizations and educational institutions, to host malware and send spearphishing emails. In the course of that campaign, APT29 successfully compromised a U.S. political party. At least one targeted individual activated links to malware hosted on operational infrastructure of opened attachments containing malware. APT29 delivered malware to the political party"s systems, established persistence, escalated privileges, enumerated active directory accounts, and exfiltrated email from several accounts through encrypted connections back through operational infrastructure. In spring 2016, APT28 compromised the same political party, again via targeted spearphishing. This time, the spearphishing email tricked recipients into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain hosted on APT28 operational infrastructure. Using the harvested credentials, APT28 was able to gain access and steal content, likely leading to the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members. The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed."This report's findings parallel those of private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, titled "Bears in the Midst": [2]"COZY BEAR (also referred to in some industry reports as CozyDuke or APT 29) is the adversary group that last year successfully infiltrated the unclassified networks of the White House, State Department, and US Joint Chiefs of Staff. [...] COZY BEAR"s preferred intrusion method is a broadly targeted spearphish campaign that typically includes web links to a malicious dropper.[...]FANCY BEAR (also known as Sofacy or APT 28) is a separate Russian-based threat actor, which has been active since mid 2000s, and has been responsible for targeted intrusion campaigns against the Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Government and Media sectors. [...] Extensive targeting of defense ministries and other military victims has been observed, the profile of which closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government, and may indicate affiliation with [Cyrrilic] (Main Intelligence Department) or GRU, Russia"s premier military intelligence service.[...]At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016. We have identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other. Instead, we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials.[]While you would virtually never see Western intelligence agencies going after the same target without de-confliction for fear of compromising each other"s operations, in Russia this is not an uncommon scenario. "Putin"s Hydra: Inside Russia"s Intelligence Services", a recent paper from European Council on Foreign Relations, does an excellent job outlining the highly adversarial relationship between Russia's main intelligence services "[Cyrrilic] (FSB), the primary domestic intelligence agency but one with also significant external collection and "active measures" remit, [Cyrrilic] (SVR), the primary foreign intelligence agency, and the aforementioned GRU. Not only do they have overlapping areas of responsibility, but also rarely share intelligence and even occasionally steal sources from each other and compromise operations. Thus, it is not surprising to see them engage in intrusions against the same victim, even when it may be a waste of resources and lead to the discovery and potential compromise of mutual operations."And indeed, the intelligence community is so sure of these conclusions that Trump was briefed on this issue: [3]"The report comes a day after top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the issue. During the hearing, Clapper said the intelligence community has grown more "resolute" in its assessment that Russian intelligence was involved in the hacks aimed at the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. On Friday, Clapper, Rogers, FBI Director Jim Comey, and CIA Director John Brennan briefed President-elect Donald Trump on the classified evidence linking Russia to the hacks and the leaking of the swiped emails."This evidence VERY strongly suggests that Russian agents or organizations were behind the DNC hacks. This, in turn, VERY strongly suggests that they hoped to sway the election through release of the DNC emails.TLDR: Russia hacked DNC.CONTENTION TWO: WATERGATE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOOTLDR: Russian connections.Here is a brief list of Trump campaign or administration figures who have unseemly ties to Russian intelligence agents: [4][5][6][7][8][9][12]* Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor: [4][5][6][9][12]* Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager [4][6][9][12]* Carter Page, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign [4][9][12]* Roger Stone, Republican surrogate [4][12]* Jeff Sessions, US Attorney General [7][9][12]* Jared Kushner, son-in-law, Senior Advisor to the President, White House Innovations Director [8][12]* J.D. Gordon, national security advisor to the Trump campaign [10][12]The number of men with both close connections to Trump and to Russia AND substantial political power suggests that there may be some relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign.Although this evidence may currently be circumstantial, it's noteworthy enough that FBI director James Comey is investigating BOTH Russian hacking AND "whether there was any coordination between Trump figures and Moscow as part of its intrusions" [10].The Trump campaign has repeatedly denied these connections. The connections have also been repeatedly proven to be true. For example, Sessions (under oath) denied any contact with "the Russians". It's been since revealed that he made two calls to Russian ambassador/spy Sergei Kislayak [11].TLDR: Russian connections.CONTENTION THREE: 🐸🐸🐸TROLLS🐸🐸🐸Perhaps my strongest evidence: Two pro-Trump trolls are paid by the Russian government, and they have a sense of humor: TLDR: Samantha Bee is neat.REFERENCES:[1] https://www.us-cert.gov...[2] https://www.crowdstrike.com...[3] http://www.motherjones.com...[4] https://www.nytimes.com...[5] https://www.nytimes.com...[6] http://www.cnn.com...[7] https://qz.com...[8] http://www.reuters.com...[9] http://www.telegraph.co.uk...[10] http://www.cnn.com...[11] http://www.usatoday.com...[12] http://www.motherjones.com...