The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[Paul Rigby]

An Electoral College Coup

The Clinton campaign now suggests the election was rigged.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-electoral...1481590179

Dec. 12, 2016 7:49 p.m. ET

Only a few weeks ago Hillary Clinton's campaign was denouncing Donald Trump as un-American for saying the election might be "rigged." We criticized Mr. Trump at the time. But now that Mrs. Clinton has lost, her campaign is claiming the election really was rigged, albeit for Mr. Trump by Russian meddling, and it wants the Electoral College to stage what amounts to a coup.

That's the only way to interpret the extraordinary statement Monday by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta endorsing a special intelligence briefing for electors a week before they cast their ballots for President on Dec. 19. He released the statement hours after 10 members of the Electoral College sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeking information on foreign interference in the election to judge if Mr. Trump "is fit to serve." One of those electors is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's daughter.

"The bipartisan electors' letter raises very grave issues involving our national security. Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed," Mr. Podesta said. "We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American."

What should really distress Americans is that the losers are trying to overturn the election results based on little more than anonymous leaks and innuendo. Whatever Russia's hacking motives, there is no evidence that the emails it turned up were decisive to the election result. Mr. Podesta is citing a CIA judgment that Americans have never seen and whose findings are vaguely public only because one or more unidentified officials chose to relate them to a few reporters last week.

Much of the press is reporting these as the gospel truth, though it isn't clear that the CIA's judgment is even shared across the intelligence community. The FBI doesn't share the CIA's confidence about Russia's hacking motive, and our sources say the evidence is thin for the CIA's conclusion.

Yet Mr. Podesta's demand is that those same unidentified leakers now give a secret briefing to the 538 electors, most of whom lack any experience in judging the nuances of intelligence. Those electors are then supposed to decide based on information Americans won't have seen whether they should invalidate the results of an election in which more than 128 million voted. Even Vladimir Putin at his most devious couldn't have imagined his cyber-spooks would provoke this much anti-democratic nonsense.

This effort is all the more pernicious because it poisons with partisanship the serious issue of foreign intelligence hacking, not least by the Russians. Foreign cyber-attacks have proliferated during the Obama years, but the President has never held any national government accountable. Even when officials fingered the Russians this summer for the hacks on the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Obama did nothing but wag a finger.

Yet now, at the end of his term, he has ordered a secret report on the election-related hacking to be on his desk before he leaves office on Jan. 20. Then the news of this report coincidentally leaks, along with the CIA's new conclusion about Russia's motive, a mere 11 days before the Electoral College votes. Did those leakersprobably including CIA Director and Obama confidant John Brennanact with White House assent?

This political farce is compounded by a press corps that spent Monday demanding that GOP leaders in Congress say if they too support investigations into the Russian hacking. Never mind that the Senate and House intelligence committees, both led by Republicans, have been looking into the election-related hacking for months, often with far too little cooperation from the Obama Administration.

Then the press reports as major news the non-story that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed an intelligence probe that has long been underway. Talk about fake news.

The entire spectacle looks more like a Democratic attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election than it does serious concern about cyber-spying. Democrats must figure they can't lose. They know the Electoral College isn't likely to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, but the headlines can help undermine public support for Mr. Trump's Presidency even before he takes office. And these folks blame Donald Trump for violating democratic "norms."