The Nation, hardly a bastion of right-wing conspiracists, picks up the story that the alleged Russian hack of the DNC was in fact an inside job. This notion has percolated on the right for a while but now the Democracy Dies In Darkness crowd will need a bigger pillow. Between this and the Awan-Wasserman non-story they have a lot to not cover.

Let's have some previous coverage of the DNC leak theory:

Talking Points Memo poo-poohs a Jan 17 2017 report from retired intelligence officials which called for more evidence and disclosure.

Last December "an ally" of Julian Assange claimed it was an inside job.

More recently the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity prepared a report that is a basis for The Nation's story. If the VIPS ring a bell (or try the VIPers) it may be because they emerged during the Bush years in opposition to the Iraq war. They may have been kooks but they were hardly right-wing kooks.

UPDATE: From the Ace of Spades:

This seems to be the most easily provable or disprovable -- and most dispositive on the subject -- claim being made:

There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial “hack,” as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.

The VIPS group also made this claim on July 24th -- that the speed of the download was not possible over the internet, but could only be accomplished through the computer downloading to a physically-attached external storage device.

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I don't know if that's true -- but it seems easily checkable, and we deserve answers about that.

Given The Nation's long, long history of flacking on behalf of Mother Russia, I am suspicious of their interest in disproving a Russia Hack narrative.

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I'd like this either rebutted or admitted by the "intelligence" community.

If all this speculation holds up it is easy to guess why Loretta Lynch's FBI never examined the DNC server. But what explains Sessions? Is everyone recused?

MORE: Leonid Bershidsky at Bloomberg assess the current state of play:

Having been burned so badly on the Iraq intelligence claims in 2003, you would think major U.S. media would apply more journalistic skepticism and rigor here, even if, to the broader public, Russia is a faraway power to which it's easy to ascribe pretty much any nefarious activity. Instead, these outlets seem more intent on noting Putin's bare-chested physique and accusing him of further meddling on social networks.

I would think the US media is too busy Resisting and Persisting.