US Slaps Sanctions on Russia, Expels 35 Diplomats

US Slaps Sanctions on Russia, Expels 35 Diplomats

• By TAMI ABDOLLAH AND JOSH LEDERMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Dec 29, 2016, 2:30 PM ET

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The Associated Press

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis, right, looks at US Sen. John McCain centre left, during a press conference, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016 in Riga, Latvia, while Lindsey Graham, R-SC., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., stand in the background. Russia can expect hard-hitting sanctions from United States lawmakers if an investigation proves that Moscow interfered in the presidential election, a U.S. senator said Wednesday during a visit to Latvia. (AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava)

President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

The State Department also has kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the U.S. The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status."

Obama said Russians will no longer have access to two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, in Maryland and in New York.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was trying to influence the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win — an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS...hacks-44447227

The Obamanauts are completely running amok on their way out of the White House.

What prank will they pull next? Will Obama take a dump under the Oval Office desk to leave for the next administration?

Last I knew they still had no proof and wikileaks insist that the leaks came from the DNC itself not Russia. Talk about pig headed just because they say it is so, does not make it so. This is the current administrations way from the start get a stupid idea stuck in their head and they actually convince themselve's it is good or the right thing to do. Then it is law and then it turns into a mess and we the citizens have to live with their half truths and idiotic ideas. The thing is Obama still can't omit it was a bad idea. He will keep pushing it like Obamacare. Myself I still would like to see the proof like any reasonable person instead of accusations. What happened to our dignity!

Trump to Meet With Intelligence Leaders About Claims of Russian Hacking

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by NEIL W. MCCABE 29 Dec 2016Washington 24

President-elect Donald Trump pledged Thursday to meet with members of the intelligence community in response to President Barack Obama’s new sanctions against the Russia, which Obama says are a punishment for Russian tampering with the American political process.

“It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” said the incoming president from his estate Mar-a-Largo, where he is on a working vacation with his family.

“Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation,” Trump said in a statement.

Obama said his actions were prompted by a Joint Analysis Report from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which said that Russian civilian and military intelligence services’ conducted malicious cyber activity, as well as harassment of American diplomats in Russia.

“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” the president said. “In October, my Administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.”

The president is also shuttering Russian facilities in New York and Maryland.

The entities below were identified as the source of Russian cyber attacks, including malware, and the names of four of the individuals expelled.

Entities

1. Main Intelligence Directorate (a.k.a. Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie) (a.k.a. GRU); Moscow, Russia
2. Federal Security Service (a.k.a. Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) (a.k.a FSB); Moscow, Russia
3. Special Technology Center (a.k.a. STLC, Ltd. Special Technology Center St. Petersburg); St. Petersburg, Russia
4. Zorsecurity (a.k.a. Esage Lab); Moscow, Russia
5. Autonomous Noncommercial Organization “Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems” (a.k.a. ANO PO KSI); Moscow, Russia

Individuals

1. Igor Valentinovich Korobov; DOB Aug 3, 1956; nationality, Russian
2. Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov; DOB Oct 18, 1956; nationality, Russian
3. Igor Olegovich Kostyukov; DOB Feb 21, 1961; nationality, Russian
4. Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev; DOB Apr 24, 1961; nationality, Russian

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...cking-meeting/

U.S. senator says Russia can expect sanctions after cyber attacks

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Reuters December 28, 2016
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U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham speaks during a news conference in Riga, Latvia, December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins More

RIGA/TALLINN (Reuters) - Russia and its president Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions after cyber attacks during the presidential election won by Donald Trump, U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, (R/S.C.) said on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Republican and Democratic senators including Graham called for a bipartisan panel to investigate cyber attacks against the United States by foreign countries, with a focus on Russia's alleged efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.

"There will be bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual," Graham said in the Latvian capital.

NATO members Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, all ruled by Moscow in communist times, have been alarmed by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014 and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

"It is now time for Russia to understand – enough is enough," Graham said.

He did not elaborate further on what the sanctions could entail.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia tried to influence the Nov. 8 election by hacking individuals and institutions, including Democratic Party bodies.

Russian officials have denied accusations of interference in the election.

"Here's what you can expect in 2017 in the United States – a bipartisan effort in Congress to push back against the Russian interference in our election," Graham said at a stop on a three-day visit to the Baltics with fellow Republican senator John McCain, seen as a bid to soothe concerns over the policy of President-elect Trump.

Separately, the Estonian defence minister said the country was increasing its efforts to defend itself against cyber attacks after NATO recognised cyber attacks as an element of warfare, alongside land, sea and air.

In what Estonian officials say was a wake-up call, the country was hit by cyber attacks on extensive private and government Internet sites in 2007. State websites were brought to a crawl and an online banking site was closed.

Lithuania also said last week the Kremlin was responsible for cyber attacks that have hit government computers there over the past two years. Putin's spokesman dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated.

Lithuanian intelligence services, in their annual report, say cyber attacks have moved from being mainly targeted at financial crimes to more political spying on state institutions.

"We have almost finished the submission for the government to create the new cyber command and it should be up and running within two years", Estonia's Defence Minister Margus Tsahkna told Reuters on Wednesday.

NATO leaders agreed earlier this year to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland for the first time and increase air and sea patrols to reassure allies on its eastern border.

Estonia is due to host around 1,000 British, French and Danish troops in 2017.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-senator...180732873.html

Where are the sanctions for assad - even after he crossed the red line - nothing.

The problem for the democratic party with the emails is that their contents are "factual" and expose the reality of clinton, podesta, dnc, soros influence/paid violent protesters & promotion of cop killing, obama's racist based selections for our gov't jobs, big banks supplying latino names for high end jobs sans qualifications to further the globalist agenda aka anti-Americanism, etc.

We should all be calm and confident that the TRUTH will never hurt US. When the CORRUPT MEDIA is out digging up crap on Trump, they love finding something they can twist and distort into something negative to publish about Trump true or not and they cheer, grin and high five and slap themselves on the back for it. But, when someone else like WikiLeaks publishes TRUTH about Clinton, it's "troubling", "an attack on democracy", and a call for sanctions, retaliation and payback.

Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials sayhttps://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/im...Eea4oowqYbBDbw
The headquarters of FSB, grey building at center, in downtown Moscow, Russia on Friday, Dec. 30, 2016. FSB is a Russian spy agency named by the administration as being behind the Grizzly Steppe operation. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

By Juliet Eilperin and Adam Entous December 30 at 7:55 PM

A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.

While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the penetration of the nation’s electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability.

Government and utility industry officials regularly monitor the nation’s electrical grid because it is highly computerized and any disruptions can have disastrous implications for the function of medical and emergency services.

American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The penetration may have been designed to disrupt the utility’s operations or as a test by the Russians to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid.

Federal officials have shared the malware code used in Grizzly Steppe with utility executives nationwide, a senior administration official said, and Vermont utility officials identified it within their operations.

While it is unclear which utility reported the incident, there are just two major utilities in Vermont, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric.According to a report by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.

The Russians have been accused in the past of launching a cyberattack on Ukraine’s electrical grid, something they have denied. Cybersecurity experts say a hack in December 2015 destabilized Kiev’s power grid, causing a blackout in part of the Ukrainian capital. On Thursday, Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russian of waging a cyber war on his country that has entailed 6,500 attacks against Ukranian state institutions over the past two months.

A DHS spokesman declined to comment on the matter Friday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...36f_story.html

Read more:

Putin says he won’t deport U.S. diplomats as he looks to cultivate relations with Trump

Trump praises Putin’s response to sanctions, calls Russian leader ‘very smart!’

The luxurious, 45-acre compound in Maryland being shut down for alleged Russian espionage

‘Grizzly Steppe': How Russia hacked the US election—intel report

The liberals are leading us around by the nose. We are all obsessed about alleged hacking of Democrat emails by Russia. Nobody has even denied the truth of the email revelations because the information is undeniably, factually true. Exposing the corruption of Hillary Clinton to the public is what caused here to loose the election. She was defeated by the truth not the Russians or any other entity.

So with a mountain of proof of massive Democrat corruption it is Donald Trump who is on the defensive as if he were the bad guy. This Russian myth is being promoted to create the false idea that Trump was in a dark collusion with a foreign power, the Russians, to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. It is a vicious smear designed to forever poison the public’s opinion of Trump.

Almost all of the leaked emails came from WickiLeakes and its chief officer, Julian Assange, has stated publicly that they did not get their information from the Russians.
WickiLeakes has a impeccable reputation for being 100% accurate.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch commenting on the alleged Russian hacking stated
”we didn’t see the sort of tactical interference that I know people had concerns about.”