title:  Donald Trump Is An Illegitimate President-Elect Because Russia Helped Him Steal Election
text: Russian interference in our election should immediately disqualify Donald Trump from the presidency.On Friday, a CIA assessment found that the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies and officials is that Russia hacked our election system to not only hurt American confidence in our democratic institutions but to help Trump win against Hillary Clinton.According to the Washington Post,The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton s chances.This, of course, is a huge blow to Trump s legitimacy because he and his transition team have been strenuously insisting that Trump won by historic margins and that the country needs to unite behind him and kiss his ass. Now we know why.In response to the CIA report, Trump s team issued what amounts to a  nothing to see here, move along  statement, all while throwing intelligence officials under the bus. These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It s now time to move on and  Make America Great Again. In fact, most intelligence officials and agencies warned President Bush that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So Trump just pushed a Bush Administration lie in order to hurt the credibility of our intelligence agencies.Also, Trump s  victory  is hardly one of the biggest in history. This is merely Trump trying to convince everyone that he s legitimate by exaggerating his election performance. The only problem is that we have the records from past elections. All of them. In just the last century alone, 18 other presidential election victories are bigger than Donald Trump s. That includes President Obama s victories in 2008 and 2012.Furthermore, Hillary Clinton is winning the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, which Trump is desperately trying to undermine by claiming that 3 million people voted illegally.Evidence of Russian hacking is what originally caused activists to call for recounts late last month in three battleground states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. A recount in underway in Wisconsin while courts are preventing them in the other two as Green Party candidate Jill Stein continues to fight for election integrity.Now that our intelligence services have concluded that Russia DID hack our election in an effort to help Trump steal the election, it is more important than ever to make sure these recounts happen. In fact, they should happen in every state. Until then, Donald Trump should be considered an illegitimate president-elect.The fact that Trump and his team have been desperately trying to kill these recount effort is even more suspicious and gives the appearance that they are trying to hide something or prevent something from being discovered.Let s also not forget that Donald Trump himself encouraged Russia to continue hacking American institutions for his benefit. And they obeyed his request.This is a serious moment for our democracy. Allowing Trump to take office while ignoring the evidence that he cheated to win will only irrevocably damage American confidence in the integrity of our elections it will set a dangerous precedent. If Trump is allowed to get away with being aided by foreign agents, nothing stops Republicans or even Democrats from employing the same strategy in future elections. This needs to be stopped now before it it too late and the only way to do that is to stop Donald Trump from taking office and declaring Hillary Clinton the true victor.Impossible, you say? Not so fast. As it turns out, there is precedent for installing a defeated candidate when evidence of fraud is found. Huffington Post notes that a state Senate race in Pennsylvania was overturned and awarded to Republican Bruce Marks over Democrat William Stinson after real evidence of voter fraud was brought to light.Two of the elected officials who testified in the Pennsylvania case said under oath that they were aware of the fraud, had intentionally failed to enforce laws, and hurried to certify Stinson the winner in order to bury the story. The narrative recalls the Washington Post s revelation that Republican Mitch McConnell was aware of the CIA s conclusion that Russians had intervened and opted to do nothing.In the end, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court order that Marks be sworn in to fill the Senate seat.So not only could the courts restore election integrity by ordering Trump to step aside, they can install Hillary Clinton as the true President of the United States by citing Russian interference in the election. The Electoral College could intervene as well by not voting for Donald Trump on December 19th. They should vote for Clinton instead.The bottom line is that Donald Trump had outside help, which means he owes Russian a huge favor should he be allowed to take office. Russia would own him and that puts our nation at serious risk. Russian interference makes Trump illegitimate and he should be disqualified from holding office. If we really care about our democracy, this is what needs to be done.Featured Image: Mark Makela/Getty Images