Source: The Hill

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday released a joint report detailing how investigators linked the Russian government to hacks on various Democratic political organizations.

The document makes clear reference to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, although it does not mention either by name.


The 13-page report provides technical details regarding tools and infrastructure used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services to “compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities.” (See the entire report below.)

It comes as part of a slate of retaliatory measures against Russia issued Thursday by the Obama administration in response to the hacks.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking

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full report @https://www.scribd.com/book/335307386/JAR-16-20296

Source: CNN

West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN)President-elect Donald Trump is turning his attention Thursday to crafting a "short" but impactful inaugural address designed not to overly burden the thousands of supporters expected to attend next month's ceremony.

"He wants to write the inaugural himself," said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who met with Trump Wednesday to discuss, among other things, the upcoming speech on January 20th.

Trump was expected to spend at least part of his day Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, working on the speech, according to officials.
"He doesn't want it to be long," Brinkley said on CNN. "He would like it to be a shorter one. He doesn't want people standing out in the cold."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politics/trump-writing-short-inauguration-speech/index.html

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Source: The Hill

Six weeks since Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss in the presidential election, FBI Director James Comey is under pressure to justify the bombshell announcement that rocked the final days of the campaign.

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Several former FBI officials told The Hill they had heard Comey is now weighing a possible press appearance after Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20 to tell his side of the story.

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Eleven days before the election, Comey shocked the political world with a letter informing Congress that investigators had discovered new emails that could be relevant to its probe, then considered completed, of Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of State.

Comey for months passionately defended the integrity of the probe — first against Republicans when he declined to recommend charges against Clinton in the first place, and more recently against Democrats and internal critics who said that his eleventh-hour disclosure unfairly damaged Clinton.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/311272-comey-under-pressure-to-explain-letter-that-shook-clinton-campaign

Source: The Hill

On the October day that he sent a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers of new evidence connected to Hillary Clinton’s email investigation, FBI Director James Comey told his employees that there was “significant risk of being misunderstood” and warned about creating “a misleading impression” regarding the case, according to a newly released email.

In an email to FBI agents on Oct. 28, Comey acknowledged the intense political gravity of his letter, which some Democrats have claimed swung the election toward Donald Trump.

Yet he insisted that the move was motivated by his previous pledge to keep Congress informed of developments in the Clinton investigation, which had been wrapped up for months.

“Of course, we don't ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey wrote to the FBI in one of three emails obtained by Esquire and published on Tuesday. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.

“At the same time, however, given that we don't know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don't want to create a misleading impression,” he wrote. “In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/310137-comey-told-fbi-there-was-significant-risk-in-clinton-letter

Source: CNN

(CNN)The White House strongly suggested Monday that Donald Trump was the beneficiary of Russian meddling in the US election, saying it was the President-elect who praised Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail.

"The emails that had been hacked and leaked by the Russians, these were emails from the (Democratic National Committee) and John Podesta, not from the (Republican National Committee) and Stephen Bannon," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.

"It was the President-elect who over the course of the campaign indicated that he thought that President Putin was a strong leader," Earnest added.
He said members of Congress should "spare us the hand-wringing" and move forward with investigating Russian ties to the election.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/12/politics/white-house-suggests-trump-benefitted-from-russia-hacking/index.html?adkey=bn

Source: NY Post

A Democratic lawmaker is desperately lobbying the Electoral College to shun Donald Trump, and vote for Hillary Clinton — even though he conceded Monday that the Republican won the election “fair and square.”

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“We’re 5 wks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The electoral college must do what it was designed for,” Himes wrote Sunday night on Twitter in response to Trump’s gripe that NBC “Nightly News” is “biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point.”

In an interview Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” Himes said that Trump’s refusal to say that the Russians hacked Democrats during the election was what prompted his plea to the Electoral College.

“What finally pushed me over the edge was when the president-elect of the United States criticized the CIA and the intelligence community. Can you imagine what the leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran are thinking as they watch the next president of the United States delegitimize and criticize his own intelligence community and stand up for the defense of Russia, one of our prime adversaries,” said Himes.

Read more: http://nypost.com/2016/12/12/congressman-begs-electoral-college-voters-to-block-trump/

Source: NBC News

President-elect Donald Trump's dismissal of U.S. intelligence findings that Russia tried to sway the presidential election is a distressing slap in the face to the intelligence community, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Sunday.

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The comment, like others that Trump made during the campaign, "is contrary to all that is sacred to national security professionals who work day and night to protect this country," a U.S. intelligence official told NBC News.

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A congressional official with knowledge of the issue told NBC News on Saturday that the CIA has concluded that Russia mounted a covert intelligence operation to help Trump win the election.

Another source briefed on the intelligence told NBC News that the U.S. government has identified specific Russian actors it believes were involved in computer systems hacks — based on intercepted communications, human tips and computer forensics.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/intelligence-agencies-distressed-trump-s-rejection-findings-russia-n694686