[Prosthetic Conscience]

"We have already seen Iran sending spoof emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President (Donald) Trump," Ratcliffe added. "You may have seen some reporting on this in the last 24 hours, or you may have even been one of the recipients of those emails."

Ratcliffe did not explain what he meant by his statement that the emails -- which were sent to registered voters from "info@officialproudboys.com" and warned recipients to "Vote for Trump or else!" -- were intended to damage the President.

https://www.cbs58.com/news/feds-say-rus ... l-election

So Ratcliffe thinks that threatening emails would not make the people they purport to be from - the Proud Boys - look bad. He thinks they would make Trump look bad. ... Because ... ? Is he saying the Proud Boys are controlled by Trump? I see he skates over the fact that the intimidated voters were Democrats. So, if they thought the threats were real, it'd hurt Biden's vote, not Trump's.

Or was he just desperate to paint Trump as The Real Victim Here?

Can someone explain Ratcliffe's claims?

[Wulfschilde]

I'm occasionally amazed at how many assumptions people make about other cultures. Took me awhile to stop doing it myself.

In Muslim culture, a group like the Proud Boys threatening people would be plausible. But in western culture, the idea that the Proud Boys are threatening you to vote for Trump or else doesn't pass the smell test. Even among liberals, who accuse the group of being a white supremacist organization (which means little these days; Chik fil A is also a white supremacist organization), they don't expect overt force from such people, so they didn't believe it was real.

[Rancid]

I doubt those emails influenced any one in a anyway. That said, the US should at the least officially tell Iran "fuck you and fuck off."

Maybe hack them back or something.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

But in western culture, the idea that the Proud Boys are threatening you to vote for Trump or else doesn't pass the smell test. Even among liberals, who accuse the group of being a white supremacist organization (which means little these days; Chik fil A is also a white supremacist organization), they don't expect overt force from such people, so they didn't believe it was real.

They are a violent organization, so it's quite plausible that some of them would threaten violence:

Tactics: Public rallies and protests. Members have been known to engage in violent tactics; several members have been convicted of violent crimes.

The Proud Boys represent an unconventional strain of American right-wing extremism. While the group can be described as violent, nationalistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and misogynistic, its members represent a range of ethnic backgrounds, and its leaders vehemently protest any allegations of racism. Their founder, Gavin McInnes, went so far as to file a defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center when the SPLC designated the Proud Boys a hate group.

In McInnes’ own words, the Proud Boys are a “pro-western fraternity,” essentially a drinking club dedicated to male bonding, socializing and the celebration all things related to western culture. In reality, the Proud Boys bear many of the hallmarks of a gang, and its members have taken part in multiple acts of brutal violence and intimidation. While the Proud Boys insist that they only act in self-defense, several incidents ­—including one in which two members of the group were convicted of attempted gang assault, attempted assault and riot— belie their self-professed peaceful nature. Indeed, many members have criminal records for violent behavior and the organization actively pursues violence against their perceived enemies.
...
During an October 2018 brawl outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan, for which two Proud Boys members were convicted and sentenced to substantial prison terms, and seven others pled guilty, the Proud Boys were joined by the 211 Bootboys, an ultra-nationalist and violent skinhead gang based in New York City. In October 2019, members of the Denver chapter of the Proud Boys marched with members of Patriot Front and former members of the now-defunct neo-Nazi group Traditionalist Worker Party. These relationships show the Proud Boys to be less a pro-western drinking club and more an extreme, right-wing gang. Ideologically, members subscribe to a scattershot array of libertarian and nationalist tropes, referring to themselves as anti-communist and anti-political correctness, but in favor of free speech and free markets.
...
In October 2018, as law enforcement sought members of the Proud Boys for their role in the fight outside the Metropolitan Republican Club, Proud Boys leadership released a “clarified” set of bylaws that seemed to contradict their prior, violent rhetoric. The new language reads: “Any requirement that a brother commit a violent or illegal act as a condition precedent to receiving a fourth degree is, by this bylaw, abolished.”

https://www.adl.org/proudboys

So, yeah, plenty of violence, which they now find they have to officially foreswear, otherwise they'll get more convictions. Quite plausible that members are still the violent losers they were when they signed up. These are the kind of people who watched "Fight Club" and wanted to do it in real life.

[Rancid]

I've read that the Proud Boys are a hipster nationalist group. That's funny.

[Dimetrodon]

@Prosthetic Conscience

My guess is that he means it was a false flag operation where voters are threatened, people go after the people who supposedly threatened them and the person who they support (the Proud Boys and Trump) not realizing that the Proud Boys and Trump were not the real senders of those emails. Iran would have reason to have beef with Trump as he tore up the Iran Nuclear Deal and increased sanctions on them. I'm not a Trump supporter nor do I have sympathy for Trump, but I think that's probably what happened.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

Turns out Ratcliffe made up the "damage President Trump" on the spur of the moment - or carefully hid it from the intelligence professionals he had on the platform to give him some credibility:

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe went off script when he alleged during a press conference last week that Iran was sending intimidating emails to Americans in order to “damage President Trump,” according to two senior administration officials with knowledge of the episode.

The reference to Trump was not in Ratcliffe’s prepared remarks about the foreign election interference, as shown to and signed off by FBI Director Chris Wray and senior DHS official Chris Krebs, the director of the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.

Wray and Krebs stood behind Ratcliffe as he addressed the public, supportive of the general intention to alert voters to a malicious influence operation. But they were surprised by Ractliffe’s political aside, which had not appeared in the prepared text, the officials said.
...
In their intimidating emails, the Iranian hackers had posed as the Proud Boys, a far-right group that gained national notoriety at last month’s first presidential debate when Trump, asked to denounce white supremacists, instead told the Proud Boys to “stand down and stand by.”

That is another area where Ratcliffe went off script, the officials said: He omitted any references to the Proud Boys during last week’s briefing, even though the group was named in his prepared remarks.

A senior intelligence official said that Ratcliffe’s remarks were being edited “until mere moments before he went on stage” and that “the broad strokes were shared with agencies who had equities in the press conference to make sure everyone was on the same page.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/2 ... ran-433375

So it was baseless campaigining. Using non-partisan officials as unknowing props. Typical Trumpist scum.