A commenter who uses the nom de plume “Democracy” responded to a discussion on the blog. Someone said that Putin publicly endorsed Biden. Others said that former KGB agent Putin was lying to mislead gullible American voters. Trump’s deference to Putin before and after he was elected was often noted. Trump denied that Putin interfered in the 2016 election, overruling American intelligence agencies. Putin denied it, and that was good enough for Trump.

Democracy wrote:

To clarify this issue — Biden v Trump — a bit, it’s absolutely CRAZY to think that Vladimir Putin would prefer another Biden term to Trump. Given what we know to be true, it’s really just plain stupid.

There’s just TONS of documented evidence that Putin WANTED Trump to be president and he directed Russian intelligence agencies HELP him.

The Senate Intelligence Committee spent a lot of time investigating the 2016 election and produced a set of reports on its findings.

Volume 1 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s efforts notes this:

“The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure’ at the state and local level…Russian activities demand renewed attention to vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure. In 2016, cybersecurity for electoral infrastructure at the state and local level was sorely lacking; for example, voter registration databases were not as secure as they could have been. Aging voting equipment, particularly voting machines that had no paper record of votes, were vulnerable to exploitation by a committed adversary…Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. elections…the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.”

Volume 2 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s gets more specific:

“In 2016, Russian operatives associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the United States…The Committee found, that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin…The Committee found that the IRA’ s information warfare campaign was broad in scope and entailed objectives beyond the result of the 2016 presidential election…IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump, and to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”

Volume V lays out the “collusion” clearly:

“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort. 

Click to access report_volume5.pdf

The New York Times reported on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Volume V conclusions like this:

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pagesprovided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government disrupted an American election to help Mr. Trump become president, Russian intelligence services viewed members of the Trump campaign as easily manipulated, and some of Trump’s advisers were eager for the help from an American adversary…the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identified as a ‘Russian intelligence officer.’…Mr. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Mr. Kilimnik and others affiliated with the Russian intelligence services ‘represented a grave counterintelligence threat,’ the report said…The Senate investigation found that two other Russians who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior members of the Trump campaign — including Mr. Manafort; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son — had ‘significant connections to Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.’…

There is MUCH more to this than what’s here. As Robert Mueller noted, his investigation “established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the campaign. “

Mueller also reported that multiple Trump campaign officials, “deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long term retention of data or communication records. In such cases the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with the other known facts.”

And, as we know, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three Russian “companies,” and Paul Manafort was convicted for financial crimes and Manafort was pardoned by Trump.

To the issue of third-party voting, it makes no good sense. It makes no moral or “principled” sense. It makes no patriotic sense. In this election, a vote given to a third party candidate is – essentially – a vote FOR this:

https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/nation/2021/01/07/front-pages-capture-chaos-riots-us-capitol/6577931002/

There’s just no way around it.