Russian Foreign Ministry Accuses US Intelligence Agencies of Interference in Presidential Election

The classic allegorical definition for chutzpah asks that we imagine someone who murders both parents then begs for mercy as an orphan. Today, the Russian Foreign Ministry has upped the ante on that.  Vladimir Churov, Russia's ambassador-at-large (in an interview with RIA Novosti) complains that US intelligence agencies are interfering in the presidential election by revealing Russian hacks of state voter rolls and the Clinton campaign.

Churov is something of an expert of the subject of rigged elections. In 2007, upon assuming office as Putin's hand-chosen head of Russia's Central Election Commission (CIK), Churov declared his "first rule" to be "Putin is always right". In 2011, then-president Dmitry Medvedev declared him "a magician" after Putin's United Russia Party was handed an extremely questionable victory in a parliamentary election marred by rampant violence and flagrant vote count manipulation.

According to RFERL Moscow correspondent Tom Balmforth:

"As state television network Rossiya-24 broadcast preliminary results of those same parliamentary elections in December 2011, it cited Central Election Commission figures as saying that turnout in the southern Rostov region had hit 146.47 percent. As ridicule mounted, the commission blamed the strange figures on the state TV journalists who, it said, had got their numbers wrong. 

"This, however, did little to subdue to the general mood of anger. The 146 percent result spawned a pervasive Internet meme, often targeting Churov, who claimed the tally was a 'provocation' organized 'from abroad' and carried out by a person 'who later received a very nice place overseas.' 

So Churov has extensive experience rigging elections and blaming the CIA. Now he's finding that experience very valuable in the post-truth world of the Trump-Putin alliance.