Russia and the DNC Emails

by Wayne Flaherty

Why would Russia want to leak the DNC emails? There are several possibilities.

1.     They want to embarrass the Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. If the Russians want to influence our presidential election, one would think they would seek to help the weakest candidate for president. That candidate is, of course, Hillary Clinton. She has already shown herself to be weak on terrorists. She has shown her willingness to be bought as witnessed by the money she has received from both Wall Street bankers and foreign countries. If Russia wants a president they can influence, then Hillary Clinton is the perfect corrupt politician that can be bought and blackmailed.  (Hillary Clinton is involved in the sale of Uranium to Russia. This is nothing new as we have pointed out that the Russians paid the Clintons millions of dollars to obtain Uranium, which they then supplied to Iran. We also noted that some of that money has been used to fund the Clinton presidential campaign., see

2.     They want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. On the surface it sounds ludicrous since Donald Trump will most certainly be a stronger president than Hillary Clinton. There is another possibility. A weak president might be prone to waver and shift their position on issues. Being a Russian, Putin is used to dealing with strong leaders. He probably thinks they are more predictable and therefore, it is easier to formulate an opposition strategy to deal with them. Wanting Donald Trump as president might just be a realistic goal for Russia. When Nikita Khrushchev met Jack Kennedy for the first time, he evaluated him as a weak leader. Later actions in Cuba tested Kennedy's resolve and brought us very near to a war with Russia. Finally the Russians backed down when they realized that Jack Kennedy was not going to be bullied. Putin may prefer to see a strong U.S. president.

3.     They just want to stir up trouble and see how we react. If you are in a group of people seated around a campfire and you want to see how they would react in a crisis, just throw a rattlesnake into the middle of the group and watch to see who does what. Aside from the certainty that the entire group will be ready to hunt you down and beat the living hell out of you, you will have a pretty good idea of what to expect from every person in that group. If you plan to have dealings with any of them in the future, you have a much better chance of creating a winning strategy if you see how they react.

4.     The Russians actually had nothing to do with the hacked DNC emails. While the technology exists to do some marvelous things with a hacking scenario, the process is less of a science and more of an art. It relies heavily on the instincts of the anti-hacking personnel and less on impartial facts. On the surface, the techniques look very similar to previous techniques used by the Russians. It is this similarity that has led authorities to suspect Russia's involvement. Suspicions are not facts. We really don't know for certain that Russia had a direct hand in hacking the emails of the DNC.

5.     There may be a political element in this scandal. Here we have another email scandal the Democrats have to deal with. Having been caught red-handed scheming against Bernie Sanders through the use of DNC emails, the Democrats will move heaven and earth to prevent a repeat embarrassment.  One way to do that is divert attention away from the content in the emails and claim that the hacking was the work of the villainous Russians. For good measure any lying Democrat would throw in a claim that the Russians are trying to help Donald Trump.

6.     The folks from Wikileaks are just patriotic Americans. They are simply trying to make sure the American people are well informed voters. This one is a stretch so you will have to make up your own mind.

  Maybe none of the six possibilities seem plausible to you. If not, formulate your own idea. Good luck.