Trump-Putin email hacking issue an attempt to cover up rigged Democratic primary

The newest and certainly the loudest scandal to have emerged in American politics is the alleged hand of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the leak of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails — to the point of overshadowing the proceedings of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. What really blew this out of proportion was Donald Trump joining the fray to make an appeal to Putin to release 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails that were deleted by her staff to prevent FBI investigation.

This has led to a large section of the “liberal” media following the lead of the Democratic Party establishment in branding the Republican nominee a threat to national security and accusing him of colluding with the Russians. The matter has also been turned into one of Russian interference in American politics.

Revoking security briefing clearances, bringing up treason charges, and making it a matter of national security is on the lips of every Democratic senator in front of the TV pundits.

This narrative flies in the face of facts

The DNC is first said to have been hacked by a user named Guccifer 2.0, who has been posting the DNC documents onto his/her WordPress page for over a month now. The hacker also declared that he/she had forwarded the files to Wikileaks. Some of the Excel and PDF files, including talking points sent to media, donor information, opposition research against Republican candidates, and defences for Hillary Clinton (but not the email conversations) were in the public domain for weeks, before Wikileaks released anything from the DNC. The Guccifer 2.0 leaks established collusion between the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

Nowhere has Julian Assange or Wikileaks suggested that the Russians are the source of the DNC emails, nor has any firm investigating the hack declared so. The emails released last Friday established the other side of the Democratic primary process: DNC officials actively colluding against the Bernie Sanders campaign.

That brings us to the most important part: only the DNC says it was hacked by Putin, and is the sole source of that allegation. That is the pinch of salt that most readers need.

The DNC doesn’t want outrage while the Democratic National Convention is ongoing, especially in light of the leaked emails showing how they rigged the primary process to ensure a victory for Hillary Clinton. Hence, a matter of compromised democracy was turned into a national security conspiracy theory, hugely amplified by the mainstream media.

For once, a made-up Trump scandal

Donald Trump did not call for Putin to hack Hillary’s email account (or US Government email) now, or later in the future. He had called for Putin to release the emails, if he happened to be in possession of them. Which the “liberal” media, it is sad to say, spun.

Freelance hacking is as prevalent in the rest of the world as it is in the US, and sensitive material has a market of its own — without the ultimate beneficiaries doing the hacking themselves.

Putin actually having the emails would give FBI Director James Comey enough to charge/indict Hillary Clinton.

Trump essentially wants Putin to whistleblow, not to go ahead and hack US Government servers. In any case, neither Hillary Clinton’s private server nor those emails are any longer online, for Putin to hack into in the first place.

Hillary retained State Department emails that she didn’t even plan to hand over to her successor till the private server itself was discovered. When another headline stares at you saying “Trump Wants Putin To Steal US Govt Classified Info”, pause for a moment and ask yourselves, “You mean the same emails she didn’t want to hand over to her own State Department?”

The Trump-Putin email hack story is an attempt to play on the Cold War sensibilities of older voters, and the naiveté of the younger ones.

Hillary is still faring no better in the polls even now, after Sanders having dropped out and after being anointed the nominee. Trump, on the other hand, can’t seem go any lower in the polling despite a gaffe a day.

All that glitters, is sold

What precisely is the point of being afraid of Putin (who has yet to respond to these wild allegations and Trump’s appeal, save for a refutation by a Kremlin official) interfering in American politics by revealing the truth? America sold out its interests long ago. The American state conspired with big business to shift manufacturing jobs to Mexico and China, white collar IT jobs to India, and garment manufacture to Bangladesh. The American state offers corporations huge tax breaks and allows them to stash their money abroad to evade the remainder. Regularly, the US Congress sanctions the sending of US taxpayer money to countries that don’t need it. The best example is Israel, which sells half to weapons it receives in “military aid” from the US, to India at a profit. Both the political parties are beholden to American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Hillary Clinton’s speech at AIPAC was in fact to the right of Trump’s. The Saudi princes bankroll the Clinton Foundation. Raj Fernando, a hedge fund manager and Clinton donor, had been put on a sensitive nuclear security advisory board, until other members objected to his membership as he had no expertise in the field and ABC News began to inquire into his credentials, after which he abruptly resigned.

A New York Times report from April 2015 titled “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Uranium Deal” shows that Donald Trump is not the only one with shady motives with regard to Russia.

The charge that Putin is stealing the general election by stealing emails, showing that the DNC stole the primary election from Sanders, brushes under the rug the fact that American democracy was severely compromised in the first place — and informing voters of fraud is better than covering it up to sustain a mockery of democracy. The US is rather familiar with toppling governments all over the globe by all means, and it would be worth speculating if Americans have preferred to retain Nixon as president had Watergate been leaked by a foreign government.

Compared to the oligarch donors and their comprador politicians, who have many times undermined American sovereignty and the interests of the American people multiple times over, is Putin a potential threat to anything other than US influence in Eastern Europe and possibly the Middle East? And in terms of tax revenue, even betrayed the interests of US state coffers. The leaked DNC emails themselves show us how American democracy for so many millenials, Democrats and Independents have been undermined. The king of the beggars is not the main threat to the USA.

A Washington Post essay titled “By November, Russian Hackers Could Target US Voting Machines” is full-scale fear-mongering beyond reasonable doubt. Donald Trump doesn’t need Putin to hack decades old Diebold voting machines that run on Windows 95-grade software. Greg Palast’s Billionaires and Ballot Bandits shows that the DNC and RNC, along with their affiliated state governors, could get that done too. Trump already has the notorious Karl Rove on his side.

After killing investigative journalism (with the exception of Greg Palast and The Intercept), the American state can only be exposed by hackers and comedians. That such leaks are immediately sought to be discredited as foreign sabotage exposes the shaky legal grounds on which every American statecraft works.

This is a case of Trump falling for the DNC spin about Putin’s role and then playing into the hands of the Democrats out of sheer stupidity, providing the establishment corporate media and top leaders the cover they need to avoid addressing the fact that Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary, even as Sanders conceded the Democratic nomination.