Mea Culpa

This is huge. Huge.

In The Nation, Patrick Lawrence bylines this story that suggests that there was no hack of the DNC servers, but that it was a leak -- an inside job. It is important to note that this story does not exonerate Moscow completely. This deals exclusively with allegations of hacking DNC servers; it does not speak in any way of the June 9 meeting in Trump Tower, nor of allegations that voting systems in 39 states may have been breached. These are still ongoing investigations, with no conclusions drawn as yet.

The puzzle now becomes:

• If this was indeed an inside job, who was it?
• What was the end goal? Was it simply to sabotage the election, or was it part of a larger effort to discredit the Democratic Party? If it was the latter, who would have masterminded this thing?
• Is there a possibility that this story is itself a false narrative designed to further muddy the waters? If this is the case, who is behind it?

Unfortunately, I do not have any solid answers to these questions. I have conjectures and theories, many of which, if voiced publicly, would identify me as a card-carrying member of the Tinfoil Hat Society, but nothing concrete.

That being said, it appears that I -- along with many, many others -- was in error in reporting on the veracity of the events as reported by the intelligence community. To my conservative friends who have maintained all along that the Russia story was bullshit, I will freely admit that this story appears to support some -- not all, but some -- of your claims.

Granted, there is still much that is unanswered here, but it appears that the basic premise -- that the DNC servers were hacked by the Russian government -- may be incorrect. Stipulating that, I will say, clearly and unequivocally to my two conservative friends (you know who you are) that you were right. I was wrong.

I gotta lie down.

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