Latest in Campaign 2016
Roger Stone is pleased to be known as a campaign “dirty trickster.” A former Trump campaign aide and Republican operative, he has embraced his past as practitioner of the political dark arts. “One man’s dirty tricks,” he has said, are “another man’s political, civic action.
As Lawfare readers surely know by now, during Wednesday's third presidential debate there was this exchange (Transcript via New York Times):
As Thomas Rid explains in this terrific piece in Esquire, the Russian government has developed a remarkable capacity for blending the fruits of espionage with information operations designed to manipulate public opinion abroad. It has deployed this capacity in the past in various contexts without generating much discussion in U.S. circles, but recent activities apparently designed to impact the U.S. presidential election (in favor of Donald Trump) have sparked a sudden surge of attention.
Normally, when a terrorist attack happens, the shakeup in public opinion is thought to help Republicans. And many commentators today are wondering whether the attacks in New York and New Jersey might thus help Donald Trump, as the San Bernadino attacks are believed to have done during the GOP primaries.
It's been an unusual election season so far to put it mildly. Among the many other unexpected or unprecedented occurrences that have taken place over the course of the 2016 campaign season, we've seen many people working in the usually quiet and apolitical national security space take a step into the political limelight.
Over at the Richmond Times-Dispatch I have an op-ed entitled Act Now To Prevent Election Cyberattack. In it, I argue that - in 9/11 parlance - "the system is blinking red" and we should listen to the technical security experts who are warning that more aggressive action and coordination is needed to secure the election and maintain confidence in its integrity.
Yesterday, a civil action was filed in the D.C. federal district court by Larry Klayman, of Freedom Watch, against Democratic Party presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Klayman represents: Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith, an American U.S. Foreign Service member and Information Programs Officer, U.S. Consulate General, U.S.
As a tumultuous week for the Trump campaign draws to a close, a new Fox News poll released Wednesday evening shows Hillary Clinton with a ten-point lead over her Republican rival.
National security was a key tenet of Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday evening.
Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff—Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, respectively—called on the Obama administration to consider declassifying and releasing any intelligence community assessments on the attribution and motives of the DNC hackers.
I wholeheartedly agree.