Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta has accused Donald Trump’s campaign of being in cahoots with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. Podesta referenced the FBI’s recent conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking of Clinton’s server and that of the DNC. Podesta specifically singled out long-time Trump adviser Roger Stone, stating that it’s “a reasonable conclusion, that Mr. Stone had advance warning, and the Trump campaign had advance warning about what [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange was going to do.” Podesta charged that the Trump campaign had advanced knowledge about the WikiLeaks release of damaging emails.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration “will ensure that our response [to the Russian hacking] is proportional” and that “it is unlikely that our response would be announced in advance.” This is rather interesting considering the gravity of the situation if it is indeed accurate that Russia is behind the hackings. In fact, it seems to be a rather muted response, considering that the nation’s security would necessarily be at stake. The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are attempting to shift focus off of the bigger scandal issue of Hillary’s endangering national security due to her illegal private server by attempting to foment outrage over a “potential” Trump and Russia connection. In other words, blame an outsider for the failings of the one who was responsible and knew better.

Heck, even Vladimir Putin got this one right: “They started this hysteria, saying that this [hacking] is in Russia’s interests. But this has nothing to do with Russia’s interests. It’s basically a way of manipulating public opinion, but for some reason nobody discusses that. They only talk about who did it.”

(Updated.)