Jonathan Turley Sums Up January 6 Hearings: Did He Watch Them?

January 6, 2016, was the first day that the House Oversight Committee held hearings on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. Law professor Jonathan Turley was on hand to cover the proceedings, and his analysis made him sound like he hadn’t even watched them – at least, not in their entirety. He also made it seem as though those who are trying to dig into Clinton’s criminal behavior have an agenda that has nothing to do with uncovering the truth or getting justice served.

The FBI Got Its Warrant

On December 16, 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA order to conduct surveillance on Carter Page. The FBI had reason to believe that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. On October 21, 2016, after hearing testimony from the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security and reviewing classified documents detailing Russia’s alleged hacking activities in 2016,

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Russia conducted cyberattacks on American institutions during the Presidential election in 2016. The Committee found that these attacks were intended to interfere with the election process and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Trump’s victory. The Committee also learned that Russians attempted to hack into voting systems in at least twenty states.

Russia Used Facebook And Twitter Ads

According to Jonathan Turley, the ads are not smoking guns. Scholars have warned about the danger of overstating conclusions based on a limited number of Facebook and Twitter ads. It is clear that Russia used social media for disinformation and propaganda campaigns, but we don’t know to what extent these efforts were successful.

Facebook and Twitter ads have been at the center of our media, but they are small pieces in a much larger puzzle. Facebook has an estimated 10 million people who saw Russian-linked content. Some of these ads were available to over 100 million people. The numbers are high for ads on both platforms, but not by comparison to the organic content, meaning posts from real users.

Furthermore, social media is only one piece of a disinformation Jonathan campaign that also relies on state-run outlets like RT (Russia Today). When we consider that Putin’s trolls used social media in conjunction with other efforts such as RT and conventional information warfare tools like leaked emails and documents, it is unclear how influential social media was in shaping public opinion during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Trump Dossier Is Full Of Holes

Jonathan Turley also noted that Jonathan Rogers said he hadn’t seen evidence of collaboration between Trump and Moscow either. The only thing they saw was Russian cyber-espionage operations against the U.S.

President Donald Trump was supposed to be in big trouble. As former acting CIA director Michael Morell said on Face The Nation, we are looking at the political equivalent of 9/11. It didn’t happen. There is no there there, as they say. Even if we stipulate that some portion of what Steele alleges is true, he fails to connect his conspiracy dots before throwing out a bunch of red herrings about

Russians hacking Democrats’ emails and money-laundering conspiracies between Russian officials and Trump associates. Indeed, when James Comey testified under oath last week, he indicated that he has seen no evidence for those conspiracy theories — which is kind of his job.

A Democratic Senator Supported Putin’s Move

On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seemed to have been the only person in Congress Jonathan interested in holding Russia accountable for interfering with the 2016 election. I’m not so sure what Russia did was wrong, he said in a hearing on cyber threats and national security,

sponsored by the Senate Armed Services Committee and featuring testimony from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Michael Rogers, FBI Director James Comey and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. He’s an old KGB officer who wants to mess around with our elections.

The Russians Got In Through Phishing

It was revealed by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee that the Russian hacking campaign got in through phishing. This means that they created fake emails that looked like they were from an individual or company you would trust, and then they sent them out Jonathan to people on your contact list, who then shared them with others. The goal is to create a domino effect of people unwittingly sharing links and files.

Turley is not wrong about what happened during the hearing, but he seems to be missing the point.

The Russians Tried To Hack 20 States

At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Jonathan Wednesday, Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, respectively, confirmed that Russians attempted to hack into election systems in at least 20 states Jonathan. They also revealed that Russia didn’t just target voter registration databases but attempted to interfere with vote tabulations as well. The two men fielded questions about how much information was shared with state officials and if there was any evidence that hackers had changed votes. The answer to both questions was no.

Keep browsing Law Scribd for more updates.