Trump's silence is deafening:
"Trump’s silence on Russian hacking hands Democrats new weapon"
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/17/trump-russia-hacking-silence-democrats-239656
Extract: "Democrats say Trump has yet to express public concern about the underlying issue with striking implications for America's democracy."
He might be silent about this, as there are no real proofs of any hacking by Russia as a country. I think we should be very careful to point fingers anywhere here.
The Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska is an interesting name in this context. Clearly, he knows something about this matter. A couple of weeks ago, NYT wrote that he wants to give testimony to the congressional committee, to which he replies:
"The story set out by the NYT is that I allegedly have information about Russia's interference in the US elections, but that I'm not ready to provide it before I am guaranteed immunity. Both of these statements are untrue and are an absolute lie," Deripaska said in a statement.
Deripaska, an aluminum magnate, stressed that "
I really do have evidence - which of course is unpleasant for some - that testifies directly to the opposite of the story of Russian intervention."
He called the article as "true only in certain moments, but in essence false and misleading."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/politics/oleg-deripaska-paul-manafort.html?_r=0https://sputniknews.com/world/201705291054082986-deripaska-nyt-full-immunity-russia/We can probably assume he knows something about the matter if he makes such a statement, and it deserves to be listened to, because Deripaska is a friend of Putin, a friend and former colleague of Manafort, he befriends various Ukrainian oligarchs, etc. What he says is plainly that it was not "Russia" that did the hacking. If we assume that the NSA is correct that it was "russians" who did the hacking, the question still remains: Who assigned them?
These hacks could well have been organized by someone in the alt-right camp. They would then have used the virus arsenal from CIA with built in false traces pointing to russian origins (as revealed and released by wikileaks), they would have engaged Russian-speaking hackers to generate hackers' 'signatures' that falsely implied Russia.
There is a principal difference between "russians" and "Russia". Lot's of russians live in other countries, more than 3 millions live in the US, very many live in former Soviet republics like Ukraine, e.g. many Ukrainians also have russian as their native language.
I think it's quite unlikely that, for example, GRU would commit to hacking companies in the United States that work with the voting system. Which is what NSA claims in the report recently leaked to the "Intercept". Russia's security service (GRU) has to be considered serious in its activities and always to make a calculation of reward / risk in any activities regarding foreign entities. That GRU officials would busy themselves by hacking actors in the US voting system (which is what the NSA claims, saying it was "Russian government hackers") must reasonably involve a very high risk of detection, with negative, and potentially catastrophic consequences, such as extended sanctions against Russia. I believe that the Russian signatures detected by US intelligence are just false traces laid out by the actual perpetrators. Eventually, Deripaska or someone else with inside knowledge will come forward and tell us who the real organizer is. My hunch: Go for Manafort and his buddies, look into the alt-right undervegetation of the Trump movement.