U.S. intel agencies confirm Russia hacked RNC. Was RNC blackmailed? Here's timeline that raises Q

U.S. intel agencies confirm Russia hacked RNC. Was the RNC blackmailed? Here's a timeline that raises questions.

Alexandra Chalupa
17 hrs · Washington ·

U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee (RNC). This is a dangerous threat to our democracy with serious implications. Could they have blackmailed the RNC?
A timeline of key developments:

*** April 13, 2016: CNN reports, "The relationship between Trump and Priebus has been tenuous almost since Trump announced his campaign [on June 16, 2015], including periods of disagreement and détente." RNC Chairman Priebus defends the RNC against Trump's accusations that RNC is rigging the primary against Trump. Trump calls out Priebus directly and says he "should be ashamed of himself." Priebus defends himself and his party saying it's "not true."
http://www.cnn.com/…/polit…/donald-trump-reince-priebus-rnc/

*** May 4, 2016: "Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee following a decisive victory in the Indiana primary and the decision by Ted Cruz to drop out of the race."
http://www.cnn.com/…/03/politics/indiana-primary-highlights/

*** June 14, 2016: First report of DNC hacking: "The press reports "the DNC had been breached for nearly a year, from the summer 2015 and the other in April 2016. The attacker was knocked out of its network during the weekend of June 11 and 12, 2016."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Leaks

*** June 14th, 2016: Washington Post reports, "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b…

*** July 22nd @ 10:30 AM: "WikiLeaks released over 2 publications 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee." This happened a couple days before the official events began at the Democratic National Convention, with delegates, donors, activists and press arriving in Philly at the time for the week of festivities.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/

*** July 24th: The impact of the Russian hacking and releasing of the DNC emails leads to the resignation of Priebus's Democratic counterpart DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, "Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails..."
http://www.nytimes.com/…/debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-wikil…

*** July 25th @ 10:07 AM: RNC Chairman politicizes the Russian hacking of the DNC. Politico reports, "While Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook has suggested that Russia is behind the DNC email publication by WikiLeaks, Priebus told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday that he does not know "if we can definitively say who has them and who’s taken them." "But the point is, the Russians didn’t write the emails and neither did whoever else. The WikiLeaks people didn’t write the emails," Priebus said. "The DNC wrote those emails. So they have to answer for what those emails say and why paid staff and donors to the DNC were adding an arm to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primary season.”
http://www.politico.com/…/dnc-leak-reince-priebus-russia-22…

*** July 25th @ 12:31 PM: RNC Chair Priebus tells MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that the RNC was not hacked: "Maybe our, maybe our folks are better at securing our email and our cloud and our data than the DNC. I don't know what the answer to that is, Andrea, but at this point, we haven't been hacked. And we don't expect to be. And we're monitoring it every day, but, I can assure if someone hacked my emails, they wouldn't find me calculating against particular candidates, and that's not something that I would do."
http://www.politico.com/…/07/reince-priebus-rnc-hacking-226…

*** July 29th: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) reports it was hacked.
http://thehill.com/…/hou…/289773-dccc-confirms-it-was-hacked
*** August 12th: Press reports that DCCC stolen emails were made public. The DCCC said "a cyber security company it hired after the breach concluded two Russian security agencies were behind that hack. Cyber experts have told NBC News they believe Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian front, and also said the leaks show that Russia is seeking to influence the U.S. presidential campaign, perhaps with an eye toward helping Donald Trump."
http://www.nbcnews.com/…/guccifer-2-0-releases-documents-dc…

*** August 12th: Politico reports, "DC Leaks released roughly 300 emails from Republican targets, including the 2016 campaign staff of Arizona Senator John McCain, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and 2012 presidential candidate and former Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann."
http://www.politico.com/…/suspected-russian-dnc-hackers-als…

*** September 14th @ 6:16 PM ET: Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Russians hacked the RNC. "It's important to note, Wolf, that they have not only hacked into the DNC but also into the RNC. So, they are not discriminating one party against the other." "The Russians ... basically, have hacked into both parties at the national level. And that gives us all concern about what their motivations are," McCaul told CNN in an interview.
http://www.cnn.com/…/michael-mccaul-rnc-hack-russia-wolf-bl…

*** September 14th @ 6:40 PM ET: CNN's Wolf Blitzer reports that RNC spokesman Sean Spicer denies the RNC was hacked by the Russians, saying "there was no known breach of the RNC's cyber security."
http://www.politico.com/…/republican-national-committee-was…

*** September 14th @ 7 pm-ish: Rep. Michael McCaul issues a statement less than an hour after saying the RNC was hacked by the Russians, and now says he "misspoke"... "I misspoke by asserting that the RNC was hacked. What I had intended to say was that in addition to the DNC hack, Republican Political Operatives have also been hacked."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/…/gop-rep-i-misspoke-on-rnc-ha…

*** November 13, 2016: Wall Street Journal reports, "President-elect Donald Trump named Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House Chief of Staff."
http://www.wsj.com/…/leading-contender-for-donald-trump-s-c…


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It is also important to note that there have been a handful of Republicans in Congress who have been outspoken about Russia hacking and attacking our elections, including calling out Trump for denying the U.S. Intelligence Community's findings. We need more leaders like them who understand this is not a political issue but a national security issue. In addition to Senator Lindsey Graham, some of the strong Republicans on this issue are highlighted here:
http://www.politico.com/…/trump-russia-hackers-republicans-…

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