Here is what happened.  Putin wanted to tamper with the 2016 presidential election. In Donald Trump they found the perfect 'accomplice'.  Russia has compromising information on Trump, dating back many years , that shows financial crimes by Trump and the Trump organization in association with Russian oligarchs and the Russian mob. They not only would find Trump agreeable to Russian tampering with the election, but also, if they were able to get him elected he would be a willing partner to help Russia assert it's world view. They still have the financial blackmail material to hold over his head. 

The videos are 15 minutes long all together, but I highly recommend people interested in this subject watch them. 

Sorry you're not interested in to truth John - this has been going on for many years.

Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 presidential election

vox

"America’s elections system is vulnerable to attacks

The intrusions scared these states so much that they ended up asking the Department of Homeland Security for special teams to help keep hackers out. Others hired private companies for the same mission.

The Obama administration was worried about these developments, too. Using the secure “red phone” backchannel, it showed the extent of the hacking campaign to its Russian counterparts.

If Kremlin officials were upset about it, they didn’t seem to show it. Russian leaders kept requesting more information. And throughout that whole process, the hackers proceeded with their work.

Some inside the Obama administration wanted to go public with the information. But the White House decided against it, claiming it wasn’t worth risking people’s faith in the election’s integrity.

So, it seems despite efforts to stop Russia’s actions and  sanctions  related to Moscow’s meddling, it effectively got away with it. But because vital elections information is online for the taking, the Russians didn’t need to try too hard.

In effect, Russia didn’t need an “inside man” for this — Americans make this information obtainable for elite hackers by putting all of this critical information on the internet. That leaves the US very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

So while it’s unclear still if Russia’s hacking efforts actually influenced the outcome of the election, the fact that it is able to access such important information is already troublesome in itself."

Talking to some people on this forum is like talking to the wall. 

When Mueller comes back and say there was collusion, don't act too surprised. 

Obama was going to go public with information about the Russian meddling, but he wanted it to be presented bi-partisan. Mitch McConnell would not agree to put the GOP congressional leaderships names on an announcement from the White House. Obama did not want it took look partisan, so he did nothing.  I would say they were both at fault. 

What else would you expect?

Obama was going to go public with information about the Russian meddling, but he wanted it to be presented bi-partisan. Mitch McConnell would not agree to put the GOP congressional leaderships names on an announcement from the White House.

Oh come on, that's total BS.

Obama was going to go public with information about the Russian meddling, but he thought Hillary was going win so he kept his mouth shut.

.

Not Bull, historical fact.

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Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

Washington Post - December 9, 2016

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

...............

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

.................

The Obama administration has been debating for months how to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions, with White House officials concerned about escalating tensions with Moscow and being accused of trying to boost Clinton’s campaign.

I n September, during a secret briefing for congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present.

....................

The Trump transition team dismissed the findings in a short statement issued Friday evening. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” the statement read.

Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence community’s findings about Russian hacking.

“I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

...................

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

The Day Donald Trump Told Us There Was Attempted Collusion with Russia

August 5, 1974, was the day the Nixon Presidency ended.

.....On August 5, 2018, precisely forty-four years after the collapse of the Nixon Presidency, another President, Donald Trump, made his own public admission.

In one of a series of early-morning tweets, Trump addressed a meeting that his son Donald, Jr., held with a Russian lawyer affiliated with the Russian government.

“This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere,” he wrote.

“I did not know about it!”

The tweet contains several crucial pieces of information.

First, it is a clear admission that Donald Trump, Jr.,’s original statement about the case was inaccurate enough to be considered a lie.

He had said the meeting was with an unknown person who “might have information helpful to the campaign, ” and that this person “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” This false statement was, according to his legal team, dictated by the President himself.

There was good reason to mislead the American people about that meeting.

Based on reporting—at the time and now—of the President’s admission, it was a conscious effort by the President’s son and two of his closest advisers to work with affiliates of the Russian government to obtain information that might sway the U.S. election in Trump’s favor.

In short, it was, at minimum, a case of attempted collusion.

The tweet indicates that Trump’s defense will continue to be that this attempt at collusion failed—“it went nowhere”—and that, even if it had succeeded, it would have been “totally legal and done all the time.” It is unclear why, if the meeting was entirely proper, it was important for the President to declare “I did not know about it!” or to tell the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”

The President’s Sunday-morning tweet should be seen as a turning point.

It doesn’t teach us anything new—most students of the case already understand what Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner knew about that Trump Tower meeting.

But it ends any possibility of an alternative explanation.

We can all move forward understanding that there is a clear fact pattern about which there is no dispute:

• The President’s son and top advisers knowingly met with individuals connected to the Russian government, hoping to obtain dirt on their political opponent.

• Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Clinton campaign were later used in an overt effort to sway the election.

• When the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered, the President instructed his son and staff to lie about the meeting, and told them precisely which lies to use.

• The President is attempting to end the investigation into this meeting and other instances of attempted collusion between his campaign staff and representatives of the Russian government.

It was possible, just days ago, to believe—with an abundance of generosity toward the President and his team—that the meeting was about adoption, went nowhere, and was overblown by the Administration’s enemies.

No longer.

The open questions are now far more narrow: Was this a case of successful or only attempted collusion?

Is attempted collusion a crime?

What legal and moral responsibilities did the President and his team have when they realized that the proposed collusion was under way when the D.N.C. e-mails were leaked and published?

And, crucially, what did the President know before the election, after it, and when he instructed his son to lie?

Earlier on Sunday, Trump wrote another tweet, one that repeated a common refrain: journalists are the enemy of the people.

“I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People,” it read.

In a way, he did provide a great service.

He allowed us to move away from a no-longer-relevant debate about whether or not he and his campaign had done anything wrong.

Our nation can now focus on another question: What do we do when a President has openly admitted to attempted collusion, lying, and a coverup?

Yyyyyaaaaawwwwwnnnnnnn

I seriously doubt that you know enough about this story to offer any intelligent commentary on it,  simply because you have not been interested in it. 

click - click - click - click - damn John, the broken record is really getting monotonous.

Donald Trump is a known and proven pathological liar. He lies to the public numerous times every day , 365 days a year. 

Leaving aside all his many other flaws, why do you think it is ok to have a serial, constant liar be president of the United States? 

And don't say they all lie. No one in history has lied like this guy. 

That says it all right there.  It isn't that the right thinks Trump is not in cahoots with Russia, it's that they simply don't care.  If Russia meddled to help their side, Russia is their friend.  They literally hate their fellow Americans who are Democrats, more than any other people in the world, including brutal dictators.

They literally hate their fellow Americans who are Democrats,

Yeah they call them irredeemable and deplorable and despicable and un-American for not accepting election results. They.....

Oh wait!  That wasn't anyone on the right that did that! 

It isn't that the right thinks Trump is not in cahoots with Russia, it's that they simply don't care.  If Russia meddled to help their side, Russia is their friend. 

This is why they are traitors. Let's not mince words. 

Seems like all the right wing loons are still denying that the sociopathic moron they support is a traitor.