Enter your keyword

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Did the Russians Hack the DNC to Help the Left Take Over the Democrats?


Trying to elect Trump by releasing damaging insider information from the DNC never made any sense. The DNC was already a dysfunctional organization that was being run by the Clinton campaign. Undermining its leadership had little impact on the election, but a great deal on control of the DNC.

There has never been any evidence that the DNC hacks swung the election. The vast majority of people never even heard of them. Only a handful of political insiders and watchers, already deeply and unpersuadably committed to one side or another, could name the contents of a single email.

When you want to understand the motive of a crime, follow the money. See who benefited from it, not casually, but deeply and significantly enough to justify the effort and risk of undertaking it.

The hacks targeted Clinton allies and sought to undermine their influence within the Democrat Party.

Russiagate’s fervent conspiracy theorists spin an unlikely scenario in which Moscow had picked Trump early on, and then abandoned him in a crowded field against 16 candidates, while assuming that he would naturally triumph. Instead of leaking Jeb Bush’s campaign emails or Marco Rubio’s, they bided their time and waited to release Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s and John Podesta’s emails.

That’s not a plan to help Trump win. It is a plan to take over the DNC.

Let’s look at what the Russians were actually doing during the election. They had set up fake Facebook sites aimed at the left on issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to the pipeline protests. That is not the behavior of a foreign intelligence operation that wanted Trump to win and the left to lose. Instead the Russians appeared to have allied with the left to push the Democrats even further to the left.

Targeting the DNC’s infrastructure also pushed the Democrats further to the left. The email hacks and leaks didn’t elect Trump, but did shake up the DNC. Bernie Sanders reemerged as the figurehead of a leftist movement to take over the DNC. Bernie’s boy, Keith Ellison, claimed the No. 2 spot at the DNC. And Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, the left’s current crush, is the latest triumph for that machine.

The socialist left were the biggest beneficiaries of the DNC hacks. The stolen emails confirmed claims by the Bernie campaign that the process had been rigged against them. It justified their campaign to clean up the mess by taking over the DNC while wiping out key Democrats who had been opposed to them.

The left was also the political movement with the richest and deepest connections to Russian intelligence. The media claims that Putin and his old KGB comrades are the natural allies of the right, but the alliance between the far left and Russian intelligence agencies dates back almost a century.


Certainly Russian intelligence services would have been aware of Bernie Sanders as a political sympathizer and maintained a file on him. On a visit to the Soviet Union, he would have interacted with KGB personnel or those reporting to them: as was true of any important foreign visitor at the time.

Is it really farfetched to believe that a lefty politician, who had a history of visiting and supporting Communist and Marxist countries, and their agendas, didn’t receive some support from Moscow?

The political movement that Bernie Sanders emerged from was notorious for its Russian ties.

As Discover the Networks notes, Sanders had worked as an organizer for the United Packinghouse Workers Union (UPWU) which was under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities for its Communist ties. An article in Class Struggle magazine described UPWU as one of the "communist led or influenced unions". Sanders had also spent time at a pro-Soviet Kibbutz.




The media made a great deal out of a memo by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll factory, allegedly claiming, “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump--we support them.)” This memo likely had more to do with the Agency’s objective of blending in on the left and the right to embed pro-Russian content than with Moscow’s larger political objectives, but the media quickly skips over the Sanders part of that memo while treating the Trump part as damning.

But if the Russians were trying to back a politician, would Trump or Bernie have been their choice?

Trump favors a strong foreign policy based on our national interests. Bernie boasts of opposing our national interests. Trump wants a strong America; Bernie wants an international socialist alliance.

But the Russians didn’t believe they could rig an election. They wouldn’t have believed that they could make Bernie president or even a presidential nominee. However they may have rightly thought that they could push the Democrats further to the left and boost their political allies within the DNC.

The Democrat hacks did little for Trump, but they gave Bernie a shot at taking over the DNC.

If we assume that Russia’s project was well-planned, proportional and successful, which considering the track record of their operations in this country is a sensible assumption, then that is what happened.

The post-election Dems are obsessed with Russia, but they’ve also moved further to the left. And, regardless of the rhetoric, the Russians spent generations building up ties with the American left.

Whether it’s Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein or any of the other socialists, the DNC hacks weakened the Democrat establishment and strengthened a movement that Russia once used as its hand puppet.

The Democrats have made plenty of cracks about Trump as a “Manchurian Candidate”. But the movie’s Manchurian candidate was publicly opposed to Russia while secretly benefiting from Russian election interference. That doesn’t describe Trump. It could describe Bernie Sanders. Or many others on the left.

Jill Stein, who initially cashed in by raising money for an election recount, fell afoul of Russiagate and is using recount cash to pay for the legal expenses of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian election interference. The money is going to the Partnership for Civil Justice, part of the International Action Center, and allegedly a front for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.

The left has been crying, “Russia” and “Treason” on every network and in every newspaper. It might want to consider what a real investigation of its ties to Russian intelligence agencies will turn up.



Thank you for reading.


  1. As Putin said, only court can decide if the accusations against Russians are true. Most likely, there will never be ac court. So, I would be very skeptical about this indictment. There were clues, that Russians did it. But these clues could be placed there on purpose, and anybody could do it. Most likely, Russians would not be so bold to hack DNC. This is not like what they do, usually.

  2. Take it one step further. The Hillary/DNC cheating to stop Bernie enraged the Leftists, which spawned Jill Stein's protest campaign. If you closely examine the election returns, the votes Stein siphoned off from Clinton tipped the balance in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. If your premise is right, the Russians destroyed "mainstream" Clinton, hyper-energized the Leftists and made Socialist Bernie into a martyr. Brilliant play

  3. There is no evidence the DNC server was hacked. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows the data was stolen from the DNC server via a flash drive or portable hard drive.

  4. txfella19/7/18

    Most plausible theory I've read.....thus far.

  5. Great work, Daniel.
    One thought:
    A real investigation would require honest and forthcoming leaders of our Intelligence Community and the Democratic party. Unfortunately, I don't see that as a realistic possibility.

  6. Anonymous19/7/18

    Also rather amusing and under-reported - Judicial Watch noted that basically every member of Valerie Jarrett's family had been 'investigated by the FBI for ties to the Communist Party'.

    Oddly, the NY Times seems to have missed that one...

  7. Anonymous19/7/18

    William of Occam must be pleased that that his principle keeps proving so relevant.

    Wonderful piece, really Deadens the MSM’s white noise.

  8. "[The Russians] had set up fake Facebook sites aimed at the left on issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to the pipeline protests. That is not the behavior of a foreign intelligence operation that wanted Trump to win and the left to lose."

    I don't understand "aimed at the Left." Do you mean the Russians were trying to shoot down the Left, or that the propaganda was for the purpose of helping the Left?

  9. asherpat21/7/18

    Oil and Gas.

    Dems (HRC, the fake Jew, the Islamian Candidate) are dead against fossil fuels and would have done (in case of Obama, actually did) all in their power to thwart development and stifle the production of oil and gas in the US.

    Trump the candidate proclaimed that he will do precisely the opposite - read - increase the production of fossil fuels in the US.

    Russian thugocracy lives to enrich itself and practically all of their wealth comes from hydrocarbons. their power and fortunes fluctuate with the price of the WTI nearest contract. Which side should they support?

    For some reason, this argument isn't mentioned in any analysis, only Trump, Trump, Trump.

  10. Anonymous22/7/18

    Do you approve comments from people with opposing views? Or is this site just another catalyst in driving a wedge in America? Did anyone watch the press conference with Trump and Putin? You guys only getting news from the Fox, state media channel too? And you guys call us commies! XD

  11. RE: "The Democrat hacks did little for Trump, but they gave Bernie a shot at taking over the DNC."
    I disagree. If the goal was to help Sen. Bernie Sanders, then:
    (1) The Russians would have released the information much earlier, while Sanders and Clinton were still locked in a fight for the nomination. Without the super delegates, Clinton could not have won, and the scandals could have swung the nomination.
    (2) The Russians would have released damaging information about the Uranium One deal.
    (3) They would have released information about other dirty deals. If there weren't any, they would have made up some to smear Clinton in the hope of Sanders winning the nomination.
    (4) They would not have tried to break into the RNC.

    There is one theory that fits the known facts:
    (1) Russians broke into Clinton's private email server much earlier and stole 30,000+ emails, many of which contained classified and embarrassing information.
    (2) The Russians succeeded in demonstrating their hacking competence.
    (3) The Russians succeeded in establishing Wikileaks as a credible source of information, especially emails with valid DKIM markings.
    (4) The Russians didn't think that President trump could win, so they had no motive to help him.
    (5) The ultimate Russian goal was for Hillary Clinton to become President so that they could blackmail her.

  12. The goal wasn't to make Bernie president. That was impossible anyway.

    It would have been to help Bernie's leftist allies gain influence in the DNC.

  13. One thing I wish Daniel would explain is his theory why the Russians would not want Trump attacked. It's a nagging detail.

    "The media made a great deal out of a memo by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll factory, allegedly claiming, 'use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump--we support them.)' ”




Follow by Email