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Bill USA

(6,436 posts)
Sat Dec 10, 2016, 06:03 PM Dec 2016

Russian Hacks Just Gave Courts Legal Precedent To Replace Trump With Hillary - Occupy Democrats [View all]

http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/12/10/russian-hacks-just-gave-courts-legal-precedent-replace-trump-hillary/

In light of revelations on Friday that Russian hackers interfered with the presidential election specifically to elect Donald Trump, Clinton supporters and advocates of free democracy are eagerly searching for potential measures to prevent Trump from assuming the presidency at the hands of the Kremlin. One important legal precedent for such an impeachment is Marks v. Stinson, a 1994 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a state senate election and ordered the vacancy to be filled by the losing opponent after massive fraud was uncovered.

The Pennsylvania state senate held a special election in 1993 to fill a seat left vacant by the death of the previous senator. The contest pitted Republican Bruce Marks against Democrat William Stinson, who was ultimately successful in winning the seat. After Stinson was elected, however, evidence of widespread fraud in the election came to light.

Moreover, two elected officials testified under oath that they had been aware of the fraud and did nothing. Thus after Stinson had already taken office a federal judge ordered that he vacate his seat within 72 hours and hand it over to Marks, a ruling that was maintained upon appeal by the Supreme Court.

While the circumstances of the 1994 case are obviously significantly different from the controversy surrounding last month’s election, the ruling does establish some degree of a precedent for a high court overturning the results of an election based on evidence of malfeasance.
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The CIA Just Confirmed Russia Hacked DNC To Help Trump Win

America’s top lawmakers were given a secret CIA briefing that declares that Russia interfered in this year’s presidential elections on behalf of Republican nominee Donald Trump against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Tonight’s revelatory news comes hot on the heels of President Obama’s announcement that he will assemble a complete intelligence report about Russian hacking and propaganda activities today. The Washington Post reports:

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.


Only a week after the election, the head of the secretive NSA gave a very public interview to the Wall Street Journal where he tacitly indicated that Russia helped Donald Trump. Tonight’s revelation that the CIA believes Donald Trump was a direct recipient of aid intended to assist his Republican campaign for the presidency goes beyond the NSA’s coy admission and well beyond pre-election intelligence reports in identifying the reason for the blizzard of hacked emails.

In October, seventeen federal intelligence agencies released a brief saying that Russia was openly interfering in this year’s elections and that the orders came from the highest levels of their government, i.e. from dictator Vladimir Putin. Tonight’s report that Putin favored Trump isn’t surprising to anyone following the story of this year’s elections, where the Republican denied having a relationship with the Russian dictator even though he told MSNBC the opposite in 2013.

On the eve of the election, three bombshell reports emerged – that Trump had a secret server to communicate with Russia, that a Western intelligence official provided a major dossier to the FBI which was being investigated, and the FBI leaked that it had been investigating Trump. At the end of last month, Vice News reported an unusual receipt of “the Glomar Response” when asking the FBI if it was investigating Donald Trump. It’s extremely rare for the FBI to use that kind of response.
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