2016 Election: Did Russia assist Donald Trump?

As if the 2016 election didn’t need anymore drama, there happened to be a major bombshell that was dropped on Friday night that if it happens to be proven to be true could have serve ramifications.

What happened was late Friday night, several major outlets started reported that the CIA had done an investigation and uncovered that supposedly Russia indeed assisted Mr. Donald Trump in winning the 2016 election over Hilary Clinton.

The Washington Post report happens to cite that they have indicated specific people who are connected with the Russian government who gave WikiLeaks emails that were hacked from the Democratic National Committee and one of the top aides in the Clinton campaign, John Podesta. Now Republicans are faced with questions of if Russia didn’t intervene, then would Donald Trump have won as big as he did?

If you recall, Donald Trump won by a margin of approximately 80,000 votes that were cast across three states. Basically, he ended up winning these three states by less than one percent.
While talking about how Russia clearly tried to help Trump, it does not call into question the legitimacy of Trump winning.

White House officials stated on Friday that they are not trying to make a case about the legitimacy of Trump winning because it is not hard to connect the dots. The other problem that is now being brought up is if any GOP official wants to go deeper into this story, then they could end up antagonizing Donald Trump. He has even gone on record by saying that he does not believe that Russia interfered in any way or shape.

There also happens to be third thing that would end up being brought up, if these findings are true. This would be a clear violation of the Logan Act and would end up causing more drama. In case you didn’t know what the Logan Act is, I will explain it to you. It was first enacted on January 30,1799 and basically is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments having a dispute with the US. It is also intended to prevent the undermining of the government’s position.

Now, the reason why the Logan Act is being brought up with Donald Trump is that in high sight, he essentially negotiated with the Russian government.
I would also like to stress that this is just a rumor and should be taken with a grain of salt.