Maybe it’s better if we forget about Russia’s email hack
Dec 12, 2016, 6:44 AM | Updated: Dec 13, 2016, 9:08 am
It’s been reported that U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia hacked emails from both the Democratic and Republican parties, but selectively released only the Democratic emails in hope of electing Donald Trump.
There’s no proof, no sources were named, and Mr. Trump told Fox, “No, I don’t believe that at all.”
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Senator John McCain, who’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined with other senators to demand an investigation.
“Facts are stubborn things,” McCain said. “They did hack into this campaign and they did it I think with … it requires an investigation.”
But for now, there’s no proof that Russia hacked both parties, or that it deliberately released only Democratic emails, or that those emails affected the election.
And I’m not sure how you’d ever prove such a thing. Because we’re not talking about hacking the ballots and changing the numbers –– we’re talking about releasing emails in such a way as to influence voters. Which presumes people actually based their vote on those emails.
A finding that Russia was successful in changing peoples’ votes would basically be saying American voters are gullible, which is not a nice thing to say. Plus, if Russia were found culpable, Vladimir Putin would simply call a conference, turn on a TV monitor, and press “play.”
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said.
So maybe it would be better for everybody if we just drop it.
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