This is a small piece of the whole. And while I doubt it's some kind of big time key, it's an additional thread that runs through the whole sorry fucked up mess that is the Trump cabal's effort to break us down and take us over.
In a piece laying out how Trump tried to undermine rule of law with a press release stating that the former President wanted the State of Florida, not the FBI, to investigate the suspected Ryan Routh assassination, WaPo provides more explanation for why Trump’s campaign didn’t call the FBI after Microsoft or Google told them they had been hacked: Because they feared sharing their email server with the FBI.
Trump’s mistrust of federal agencies has complicated the investigation into Iran’s cyberattack on his campaign. When a technology firm first discovered the breach, campaign aides huddled to discuss what they should do. After hours of discussions in July, they decided they trusted the software experts to handle the matter and did not call the FBI. Co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, whose email account was targeted, was among those who questioned whether they could trust the Justice Department. The fears centered on giving federal officials access to campaign email servers and whether they would leak information out publicly.
Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent years spinning conspiracies off of misleading Jim Comey testimony about how the FBI conducted the investigation into the Russian hack of Hillary’s campaign, claiming that because (they claimed) FBI had not obtained Hillary’s server, any attribution to Russia must be suspect. This was a key prong of Roger Stone’s criminal defense. Republicans spent years suggesting that Hillary, a victim of a nation-state attack, somehow failed to meet the standards of responsible victim.
Yet Hillary, in 2016, was in fact situated in the place Trump claims to currently be: facing a counterintelligence investigation stemming out of a partisan witch hunt in Congress.
Hillary was, in fact, faced with the prospect of having to ask for help from the very same people who had been criminally investigating her for years.
And any precedent that information shared with the FBI would “leak” (as opposed to get shared in court filings)? Trump’s the guy who did that, leaking materials from the investigation that resulted, going so far as to prepare his entire Crossfire Hurricane binder to release to the press.
Trump did that, not the FBI.
I am genuinely sympathetic about the plight Trump faces, trying to run an election campaign while facing real threats, including assassination attempts, from a hostile foreign actor.
The ongoing burden of trying to reclaim digital security and stave off physical threats takes a lot of energy that would otherwise be focused on running a campaign.
I know that, because I’ve heard a bit about how much time Hillary’s team had to spend fighting serial hacks, all the way through election day.
But understand: This decision not to call the FBI because Susie Wiles was afraid the FBI might ask to access the compromised server, what amounts to a decision to delay taking necessary steps to try to fight back?
That decision stems from a refusal to abide by the standards Republicans have demanded of Hillary for eight years.
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