Russian bots hijack gun debate; Russia looms large ahead of 2018 midterms; Russiagate true believers, and more

Election heads “straddle the line between sounding the alarm and being alarmist” (Miles Parks, NPR)
Top election officials from across the country grappled with a delicate question this weekend: How do you tackle the threat of election interference, and be transparent in doing so, without further eroding the public’s trust in the voting process?

Confessions of a Russiagate true believer (Matthew Yglesias, Vox)
Trump isn’t an idiot — the cover-up is likely covering up serious wrongdoing. Paul Manafort left his job working as the Kremlin’s favorite expat political consultant in Ukraine in the spring of 2016 to run his old acquaintance Donald Trump’s long-shot presidential campaign on a volunteer basis.

Soon after, Moscow-backed hackers transmitted thousands of stolen Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks, whose release was artfully timed to make trouble for Trump’s Democratic opponents. They became the basis of Trump campaign rhetoric in the months before Election Day.

Emerging conventional wisdom in Washington, however, remains that there’s little reason to believe that Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation will end up proving much of interest. Politico magazine editor-in-chief Blake Hounshell this weekend wrote one of the buzziest pieces advocating a skeptical approach to Mueller’s ongoing inquiry, titled “Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic,” throwing cold water on the notion of high-level cooperation between Trumpworld and the Russians.

But to believe this, frankly, requires a much greater suspension of disbelief than to posit that the president colluded with Russia. You have to believe that after a decade of paying Manafort millions for his expertise to help pro-Russian candidates win elections in Ukraine, no one from Moscow thought to consult with him about how to help a pro-Russia candidate win an election in the United States.

And we have to believe that even though we know Trump’s son was both in touch with WikiLeaks and openly enthusiastic about the idea of collaborating with Russia on obtaining and disseminating anti-Hillary Clinton dirt, when he met with Russians on this very topic, they didn’t talk about it. And, of course, we have to believe that Trump’s specific — and quite public — call for Putin to hack more Clinton emails was completely random.

Trump–Russia skeptics, legion in the political press, brush all this aside in a gesture of faux sophistication, positing a bizarre series of coincidences complete with a massive cover-up —  all for no particular reason.

Politics aside, the suspicion of illicit collaboration between the highest-ranking members of the Trump campaign and the Russian pro-Trump information operation is well-founded, and the ongoing criminal investigation into that possibility is steadily bearing fruit. There’s no earthly reason for journalists to adopt a stance of preemptively exonerating Trump when, so far, suspicion has been validated at nearly every turn.

Top state election official pushed DHS Secretary to explain why Trump contradicts intelligence officials on Russia (Sam Levine, Huffington Post)
Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos (D) questioned DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in light of the president’s reluctance to call out Russian interference.

State officials get classified briefings on election security (Mark Rockwell, FCW)
State election officials in the nation’s capital for a conference received classified briefings on the cybersecurity of election systems from officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community and law enforcement, according to official readouts of the meetings.

Indictments reveal how Russia’s 2016 election information warfare worked (Patrick Howell O’Neill, Cyberscoop)
Russian operatives were able to obfuscate their activities in 2016 by stealing the identities of U.S. citizens, renting servers based in the U.S. and using a VPN all while posting targeted propaganda on social media to disrupt American politics, according to a new and lengthy criminal case against multiple Russian nationals.

What is the Internet Research Agency? (Krishnadev Calamur, Defense One)
The origin of the Russian “troll farm” that allegedly targeted America’s 2016 presidential election.

Trump cites a misleading Obama quote to say Russia didn’t interfere in the election (Emily Stewart, Vox)
Obama was talking about voter fraud — not Russia.

Inside the Mueller indictment: A Russian novel of intrigue (Garrett M. Graff, Wired)
Yevgeny Prigozhin was once a small-time criminal in Russia. But he started a hot-dog stand, built a catering empire, and became an oligarch trusted by Vladimir Putin and known as “Putin’s Cook.” On Friday, he was one of 13 Russians indicted by the special counsel and charged with interfering with the 2016 US presidential election.