re: Postmodern Warfare: get off my Internet Vlad

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HEINRICH: The — the president has repeatedly talked about the Russian investigation into the U.S. — or the Russian — Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election cycle as a hoax and as fake news.

Can you talk a little bit about what you saw as FBI director — and, obviously, only the parts that you can share in this setting — that — that demonstrate how serious this action actually was, and why there was an investigation in the first place?

COMEY: Yes, sir.

The — there should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. And it was an active-measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that.

It is a high-confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community, and — and the members of this committee have — have seen the intelligence. It’s not a close call. That happened. That’s about as un-fake as you can possibly get, and is very, very serious, which is why it’s so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that, because this is about America, not about any particular party.

HEINRICH: So that was a hostile act by the Russian government against this country?

COMEY: Yes, sir.

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MANCHIN: Sir, the seriousness of the Russian aggressions in our past elections and knowing that it’ll be ongoing as senator King had alluded to, does — what’s your concerns there? I mean, what should American public understand?

MANCHIN: People said, “Well, this is a — why are we worried about this? Why make such a big deal out of this Russian investigation?” Can you tell me what your thoughts would be?

COMEY: Yes, sir.

MANCHIN: And then the final thing is on this same topic. Did the president ever show any concern or interest or curiosity about what the Russians were doing?

COMEY: Thank you, Senator.

As I said earlier, I don’t remember any conversations with the president about the Russia election interference.

MANCHIN: Did he ever ask you any questions concerning this?

COMEY: Well, there was an initial briefing of our findings, and I think there was conversation there — I don’t remember it exactly — where he asked questions about what we had found and what our sources were and what our confidence level was. But after that, I don’t remember anything.

The reason this is such a big deal has — we have this big, messy, wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time, but nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for, except other Americans, and that’s wonderful and often painful.

But we’re talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion, lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it.

It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them, and so they’re going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible.

That’s what this is about. And they will be back, because we remain — as difficult as we can be with each other, we remain that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it.

(CROSSTALK)

MANCHIN: This is extremely important. It’s extremely dangerous, what we’re — what we’re dealing with, and it’s needed, is what you’re saying.

COMEY: Yes, sir.

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