This is the least plausible conspiracy theory I've ever heard. C'mon man. Imagine you're whoever-it-is you think is behind this, and you want to discredit Trump for whatever reason. What would you do?

You've got access to all of his tax returns, and all the sealed details of his divorces, and all of his medical records, and all of his business records. You've got a whole squad of spies working for you, you can fabricate evidence, whatever you want. And this is a guy a guy who has outstanding loans from Russian banks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and who has cheated on at least two of his wives. And this is what you go with? Accuse someone unrelated to him of hacking in to someone unrelated to him? That's your big plot? And you wait to do it until after the election? Via press release?

The Democrats (of whom I am one since birth) are using "The Reds did it!" as a tried and true excuse to explain the utter failure of their muddled, ineffective ideology on the national stage.

It's face saving through and through. And it makes a better story than "Trump beat us because we half-assed this election."

To be fair, I think three things:

1. The Democrats ran a crap campaign based (in part) on racism and sexism. The probably would've lost by a wider margin to a ham sandwich than they did to Trump.

2. Russia probably is behind the DNC hacks and definitely tried to meddle in the election.

3. Russia definitely took hints on what would be useful from Trump and Trump probably actively collaborated with them.

Just because I think Russia meddled in the election doesn't mean that either domestic party ran a good campaign, or that Russia was ultimately able to sway the election.

The only question I want the intel community to weigh in on is the politically charged one they're avoiding: did Trump actively collaborate with a foreign power during the election?

That question is of pressing import (and disqualifies him from being president if he did). The rest of it is just details.

I think the parent of your post was implying there are 2 parties here: the one responsible for the hack, and the people saying the hack was the Russians.

All those you mentioned don't interfere with the election process. The last couple weeks all I have heard were Russians rigging the election process to help elect Trump, i.e. the election result is not what is should be, i.e. Trump's presidency is not completely legitimate.

It has been couple weeks of non-stopped Russian blaming from the news. So far there's not much direct evidence beyond a unnamed CIA source. Now this lackbuster report and Obama expelling Russians happen on the same day. It really smacks an orchestrated political propaganda campaign.

Mind you I am not a blue dog Republican. I've voted 16 years straight for Democratic tickets including twice for Obama. Democratic Party has been a real disappointment this year, and Obama making this last partisan political act really tarnishes his legacy.

I disagree. All signs point to Russia wanting peace with the US, and I think they are cozying up to Trump so he will roll back the sanctions that have been choking the Russian economy since 2014 or so.

Clinton was the one saber rattling against Russia during the election, not Trump. So assuming your theory is Russia hacked the DNC, their motivations seem to be to avoid war, not escalate.

However, there is definitely a cultural war going on within Western civilization between cultural Marxists wanting a global, totalitarian state and libertarian civic nationalists wanting a decentralized, limited state.

Where Russia comes in, and what's really funny about all this, is that the "right" now finds itself aligned with former Soviet communists and the "left" finds itself aligned with the Islamic caliphate. Politics can make strange bedfellows indeed.