That's 496 citations and a warning "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably".
In other words, there's overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered. Like, not even a question. Suggesting it's a made-up media frenzy is just... alternate universe.
The article is not the source of truth. The article is simply a collection of facts. A very large number of externally sourced and undisputed facts. Facts like "On December 29, 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an unclassified report[91] that gave new technical details regarding methods used by Russian intelligence services for affecting the U.S. election, government, political organizations and private sector.", to pick one virtually at random.
I'm not pointing to the length of the article or the number of citations as direct support - I'm simply showing how overwhelmingly the burden of proof is on the person claiming it's all made up. To suggest that there was no Russian election interference of any sort is on par with moon landing denial. Literally nobody seriously asserts that - not even Trump! (Not anymore, anyway). That bears repeating, if you think Russians didn't interfere with the 2016 presidential election, you have a weaker grasp of reality than Donald Trump. It's frightening post-truth wingnuttery.
It's highly disputed. We just don't hear about that outside alternative sources. Taibbi alludes to this in the OP:
I didn’t really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece of the story seemed “solid,” but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an “assessment” by the intelligence services that always had issues, including the use of things like RT’s “anti-American” coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government didn’t even examine the DNC’s server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.
Words like "wingnuttery" and "moon landing" weaken your case. If you get enough publications to print something, you can make a terrifically long list of citations, but what does that prove? Quality matters, not quantity, and the quality of journalism devoted to this case has been astonishingly low, as Taibbi shows. As he says:
We won’t know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors.
I said what I needed to say with my original comment, however there is an important lesson here.
I can find you 496 citations that the Loch Ness Monster ate Freddie Starr's hamster. If this mattered as a matter of national security, would you prefer to simply ask Freddie Starr if someone is having a laugh?
There are precisely zero citations on that page to any Russian sources. There should be. With the original Russian and English translation. With those sources being official.
Why is this?
When I was at school my history teacher told me that we always had to check sources.
Am I to believe that it is beyond the wit of the journalist to link to words uttered by the Kremlin, posted onto an official Kremlin blog? So we can read the original denials verbatim and in context?
I checked the citations and I am only seeing articles by the media that have been advancing the RussiaGate agenda. Quality is not the same thing as quantity, 496 articles written by Western pundits does not magically make something true.
Not all of the people in those citations are Mother Theresa types. Luke Harding from the Guardian gets a mention in those citations but some Guardian readers know what Luke Harding's game really is. It has something to do with propaganda.
Any story can be made into something it isn't by being economical with the truth. Then we start believing and regurgitating our own falsehoods.
There were a few quips on there about what Putin and Lavrov had to say. Are these cherry picked to support a given narrative? Without links to the source words and the context, who can say?
We need to listen and understand our global neighbours, not live in a world where we only listen to the journalists that Tabibbi is lampooning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
That's 496 citations and a warning "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably".
In other words, there's overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered. Like, not even a question. Suggesting it's a made-up media frenzy is just... alternate universe.