Durham Issues Supoenas - Hillary
Showing posts with label Hillary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Paying FEC Fines in an Effort to Bury Story: Kash Patel (Clinton/DNC}
Paying FEC Fines in an Effort to Bury Story: Kash Patel
The lead investigator for the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 probe into the FBI’s investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion, Kash Patel, said the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign is paying a penalty to Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an admittance of guilt. Clinton and DNC are doing so to bury the narrative and prevent more media coverage of these illegal activities, said Patel.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Hillary's Greatest Caper - VDH (Slow Motion Coup)
Hillary Clinton’s never-ending shenanigans in 2015-2016 could be summarized as an attempted slow-motion coup.
Four years of national hysteria, a divided nation, and dangerous new tensions with Russia were some of the wages of Clinton’s machinations.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Durham’s Indictment of Democratic Lawyer Michael Sussmann
Andy McCarthy / National Review
The Real Story in Durham’s Indictment of Democratic Lawyer Michael Sussmann
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Durham Comes Out After the Swamp, Kind Of!
Today's topic.
Trump, the FBI and Russia. Yes, it's 2021. Yes, we're still getting new details. On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted a cybersecurity lawyer with ties to the Democratic party named Michael Sussmann on charges that he lied to the FBI in a September 2016 meeting.
Back up: Remember the Trump-Russia investigation? The one that produced Robert Mueller, and which many believed would lead to the end of the Trump presidency? Right now, there is an investigation into the investigation, being led by a different Special Counsel: this one is a man named John Durham. Durham was appointed in 2019 by former Attorney General William Barr to look into the origins of the Russia investigation.
The investigation has been going on for more than two years, and is reportedly nearing its end. Many Trump allies have heralded Durham as the man who would finally prove there was some shady business in the investigation, but he is also a well-respected lawyer with little in the way of partisan ties — which makes whatever he uncovers all the more meaningful.
So what happened? On Thursday, an indictment came down alleging that Michael Sussmann, a high-profile cybersecurity lawyer, lied to the former FBI general counsel James Baker. Specifically, when Sussmann approached the FBI with a tip toward the end of the 2016 presidential race, he allegedly told the FBI he was not representing a client but coming forward as a citizen. According to the indictment, though, he was representing the Clinton campaign and a technology executive. During the meeting, Sussmann presented the FBI with evidence that a server belonging to the Russia-based Alfa Bank appeared to be communicating with Trump organization computers.
The allegation he made about the ties between Trump and Alfa Bank was eventually proven false, and didn't appear in Robert Mueller's report, but the beginning of an FBI investigation into those ties was widely reported in the media and damaging to Trump toward the end of the 2016 campaign.
Any other context? Yes. Sussmann is the second person who has been charged by Durham. The other was Kevin Clinesmith, a former low-level FBI attorney who was charged with doctoring an email that was used to get surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith changed the email to say that Page was "not a source" for the Central Intelligence Agency, despite Page's cooperation with the CIA, so as to make his actions seem more suspicious and justify further surveillance.
The Trump-Russia probe did not prove a conspiracy between the campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere in the election, but it did result in convictions of a half dozen Trump advisers, including several who lied about contacts with Russian officials.
Sussmann denied the charges. “The special counsel appears to be using this indictment to advance a conspiracy theory he has chosen not to actually charge,” his lawyers said in a statement. “This case represents the opposite of everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for. Mr. Sussmann will fight this baseless and politically-inspired prosecution.”
Below, we'll take a look at reactions to this latest indictment from the right, left, and then "my take."
What the right is saying.
The right says the latest indictment confirms some of the suspicions about the dirty political tricks behind the Russia probe.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr. said Durham delivered on Russiagate.
"Whatever you hear on Twitter, this is a different kettle of fish from the after-the-fact lies charged by the Mueller task force against certain Trump campaign associates that, if they were lies at all, were incidental to the special counsel’s search for collusion crimes," Jenkins wrote. "Mr. Sussmann’s alleged lie, a charge he has now formally denied, would have been intended to spark an FBI investigation so the investigation’s existence could be leaked to the press on behalf of the Clinton campaign to influence a presidential election. If media reporters can’t see this, they aren’t trying very hard. The first sentence of the indictment filed by the Justice Department’s John Durham refers not to Mr. Sussmann or his allegations but to their appearance in the New York Times a week before Election Day.
"By now, the pattern is familiar thanks to the Steele dossier, which Mr. Sussmann’s firm also promoted," Jenkins wrote. "Unsupported allegations aren’t reportable; the existence of a federal investigation is. The FBI and the Justice Department have strong institutional interests in not being manipulated in this way and it’s tempting to interpret Mr. Durham’s indictment partly as a reminder to them of this... Mr. Durham is not disingenuous for leaving out what we can also readily suspect: The FBI knew on the spot Mr. Sussmann was lying. He was well-known to the agency as a former U.S. prosecutor specializing in cybercrime and as a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party."
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said Durham cracked the Russia case.
"The indictment adds new details about the sweeping nature of the Clinton campaign’s effort to falsely tag Donald Trump as in bed with the Russians," the board wrote. "The indictment says the Alfa bank allegations came via an unidentified tech executive ('Tech Executive-1'), who according to one of his emails expected to get the 'top [cybersecurity] job' in a Clinton Administration. The executive owned internet companies that had access to vast amounts of 'public and nonpublic' data. The exec was tipped to purported traffic between Alfa bank and a Trump email domain and alerted Mr. Sussmann... The executive ordered his employees to 'search and analyze their holdings of public and non public internet data for derogatory information on Trump.'
"These searches came up with little or nothing," the board added. "But the executive handed the innuendo to Mr. Sussmann, who wrote white papers he handed to the FBI and worked with Fusion GPS and Mr. [Marc] Elias to feed it to a credulous press corps. Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI’s Mr. Baker gave the media a hook to write that law enforcement was investigating the Trump-Russia ties. The FBI opened its probe into Mr. Trump, which cascaded into the collusion political frenzy that damaged the Trump Presidency for more than two years."
In Fox News, Jonathan Turley said the left wants to shut down the probe, but it needs to continue.
“Durham has been praised as an apolitical career prosecutor by both Democrats and Republicans,” Turley wrote. “Nevertheless, Democrats have long denounced the investigation, even as they demanded full support for Robert Mueller's investigation into the Russian collusion claims. It is the methodical reputation of Durham that makes him so dangerous. He is known for dogged pursuit of wrongdoing and no one has ever claimed that he is political or biased. I have referred to his investigation as an 'eephus,' a slow pitch, due to the impact of the pandemic and his decision not to move publicly before the election.
"Ironically, before the election, Democrats demanded that Durham slow down or stop any action," Turley added. "Mueller top aide, Andrew Weissmann, even called on prosecutors and investigators to refuse to assist Durham before the election. In reality, Durham decided that he would not act before the election even though it further delayed his investigation. Now the Washington Post and others are chastising him for waiting so long."
What the left is saying.
The left says the latest indictment is more evidence Durham has found very little evidence of a plot to damage Donald Trump.
Randall D. Eliason, a George Washington law professor, asked incredulously if this is "all" Durham's got.
"Donald Trump and his supporters expected Durham to blow the lid off a vast, 'deep state'/FBI conspiracy to bring Trump down," Eliason wrote. "But far from a legal bombshell, this indictment is more like a political pop gun. The 27-page indictment charges Sussmann with a single verbal false statement he allegedly made to the FBI general counsel in September 2016. Sussmann met with the FBI attorney to provide details about unusual Internet data potentially suggesting back-channel communications between the Trump organization and a Russian bank with ties to the Kremlin. During that meeting, Sussmann allegedly said he was not there on behalf of any client. In fact, the indictment charges, Sussmann was acting on behalf of two clients: an unnamed executive at a major tech company and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
"This is a remarkably weak case, both factually and legally," Eliason said. "The indictment doesn’t allege that the computer data itself was false or was doctored to implicate Trump. On the contrary, it says the various researchers recognized some weaknesses in the data and noted their clients were looking for a 'true story' that would bolster a narrative about Trump’s Russian ties. Nor was the FBI deceived about who Sussmann was. The indictment itself says the FBI knew Sussmann represented the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But when he brought them computer data allegedly implicating Trump less than two months before the election, the FBI supposedly thought Sussmann was there simply as a 'good citizen' who had somehow stumbled across that information? If that’s really true, someone at the FBI should be indicted for aggravated naivete."
The Washington Post editorial board said this "is not the confirmation of some broad 2016 deep-state conspiracy against Mr. Trump."
"The danger of special counsel investigations is that, given unlimited time and resources, they often find some bad action tangentially related to their original inquiry that may have had little or no substantial negative impact," the board wrote. "Mr. Durham has uncovered alleged wrongdoing that has little to do with whether federal officials tried to sabotage the Trump campaign.
"Even if true, the Sussmann episode is far less alarming than the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom Mr. Barr moved to protect from punishment and Mr. Trump later pardoned," the board said. "Mr. Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, an issue of central importance to the investigation of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. The consequences of Mr. Sussmann’s alleged lie are minimal by comparison... So far there are no indications he [Durham] has uncovered anything suggesting an illegitimate government plot to subvert the 2016 Trump campaign — or even that the Russia inquiry was unwarranted. That is because the facts already public proved long ago that there was ample reason for federal investigators to launch and pursue the Russia investigation."
In MSNBC, Barbara McQuade said Durham appears to be ending his work "not with a bang, but with a whimper."
“It is hard to see how the case Durham filed on Thursday against Washington lawyer Michael Sussmann meets Justice Department standards," McQuade said. "A grand jury only needs to find probable cause that a crime was committed to return an indictment, but DOJ policy requires a higher standard. Before putting a person through the expense, burden and stigma of criminal charges, a prosecutor should make a determination 'that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.' This case comes woefully short of that standard.
"Let’s start with the easy one — admissible evidence," she wrote. "The indictment appears to rely on the handwritten notes of an assistant director with whom Baker spoke after his meeting with Sussmann. The notes state, among other things, 'Said not doing this for any client.' Anyone who’s played the game 'Telephone' understands that as information is repeated, it often gets altered along the way. Instead, testimony at trial must be based on personal observation. If the prosecution attempted to offer these notes or even the writer’s testimony about what he heard Baker say before he wrote them as evidence, either would likely be ruled hearsay."
My take.
I have to say, I was a bit taken aback to read The Washington Post editorial board lament the "danger" of a special counsel investigation that "given unlimited time and resources," can "often find some bad action tangentially related to their original inquiry that may have had little or no substantial negative impact." That's precisely the argument many conservatives made about Robert Mueller's investigation, which turned up loads of tangentially related crimes that were successfully prosecuted (none of which I recall The Washington Post editorial board condemning).
This latest indictment, if it is proven true, would show that there were some classic dirty Washington D.C. politics at play in the early stages of the investigation into Trump. Surely, Sussmann and the Clinton campaign knew that the presence of an FBI investigation would be hugely damaging to Trump — and helping bring forth evidence to prompt such an investigation would help the Clinton campaign. That such evidence was fed to the FBI by someone on the Clinton campaign’s payroll is no small deal, especially when that evidence was later dismissed but the news of the investigation caused a tidal wave of bad press.
There are a few other important things at play here, though. For one, I don't actually see this indictment turning into a prosecution. McQuade made this case in compelling terms, but the short version is that there is one witness here — FBI General Counsel Jim Baker — and one piece of evidence: a note someone took from something Baker said after his meeting with Sussmann. That means in court, this will essentially turn into Baker's word against Sussmann's. Even then, Durham will be working with an iffy witness: in 2018, Baker told Congress that he didn't even recall whether Sussmann had represented himself as working on behalf of the Democratic party or Hillary Clinton.
It's also true, as Eliason says, that the FBI knew who Sussmann was. The idea that they would have treated the information he was passing to them differently had they known he was a Democratic lawyer is laughable. Frankly, if that's true, someone at the FBI should be fired. Sussmann was a high-profile lawyer working at a firm well-known for its work with the Clintons and Democrats. They knew precisely who he was, and would have known he was lying if he actually lied during the meeting with Baker.
All told: I'm leaning much more toward "ending with a whimper" than I am toward "cracking the Russia case." It’s likely Sussmann is a shady political actor, and this is a nice piece of insight into how these stories often make their way to the press. But when Durham was appointed, many Trump loyalists assured me — in interviews, on social media, in conversations over drinks — that this investigation would bring down the whole thing. Obama, Clinton, Jim Comey, the corrupt deep state. Durham was going to turn the rocks over and prove Trump was right all along.
So far, though, he's got one low-level lawyer on the hook for doctoring an email to continue monitoring Carter Page and another, well-known Democratic lawyer who is almost certainly going to evade prosecution for allegedly misrepresenting the capacity in which he was bringing forward evidence. And the evidence itself wasn't even deemed doctored or fraudulent — it just didn't turn up any smoking gun.
Does Durham have more? Could this be the tip of the iceberg? It's possible. And if he does I'll change my tune. But it seems increasingly unlikely every day. He's had over two years now, longer than the entire Mueller investigation into Trump, and so far I'm seeing some evidence of dirty campaign politics but not a whole lot of evidence of a deep, corrupt federal government using the intelligence agencies to derail Trump’s presidency.
We'll find out soon if there's more. But don’t hold your breath.
Your questions, answered.
Today's main story took up a lot of space, so we are skipping the reader question. But if you want to ask something to be answered in the newsletter, you can simply reply to this email or fill out this form.
A story that matters.
The first lawsuits against a doctor who performed an abortion have been filed in Texas. Dr. Alan Braid, a San Antonio doctor who admitted in a Washington Post column that he performed an abortion prohibited by the law earlier this month, has officially been sued in two separate lawsuits. However, the circumstances are bizarre: One of the plaintiffs says he's not opposed to abortion, and the other's lawsuit reportedly asks that the state's new abortion restrictions be ruled unconstitutional. Both of the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuits are disbarred lawyers, and Oscar Stilley — the plaintiff who said he is not opposed to abortion — openly described his motivation as wanting the $10,000 in damages or to find out if the new law can actually hold up in court. If the law is struck down because of his lawsuit, he would view it as a good thing. In other words: he sees the lawsuit as a win-win. The Texas Tribune has the story.
Numbers.
- 675,000. The approximate number of Americans who have been killed by Covid-19, more than the 1918-19 Spanish flu.
- 50 million. The estimated number of people who died globally from the Spanish flu.
- 4.6 million. The number of people who have died globally from Covid-19.
- 7,800,000,000. The estimated population of earth today.
- 1,800,000,000. The estimated population of earth in 1918.
- $2.1 billion. The estimated price Google is paying for a New York City office building in Manhattan.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Ukraine Prosecutor & Clinton Foundation COLLUSION
Ukraine Prosecutor & Clinton Foundation COLLUSION
We received 38
pages of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that represented
Burisma Holdings.
This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy Chief of
Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie
Yovanovitch.
The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant
to President Clinton and deputy White House Chief
of Staff. She is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm
that was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption
allegations.
In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by
recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns with Burisma
and the Clinton Foundation.
We obtained these documents in response to our FOIA lawsuit
against the State Department seeking documents related to a reported
“untouchables list” given in late 2016 by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Marie Yovanovitch to Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of
State (No. 1:19-cv-03563)). Our lawsuit requests:
- All records of communication between the Department of
State and any representative of the Ukrainian government regarding any
actual or proposed investigation or prosecution of the AntAC; the
International Renaissance Foundation [Open Society Foundations’ office in
Ukraine]; and/or Transparency International.
- All records concerning any meeting or telephonic
conversation between former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
- All records related to the list of individuals and
entities provided to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch in late 2016.
The records include a September 3, 2016, email
from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that Lutsenko
informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The email’s subject line is
“Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.”
The email says:
[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them out. He
said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid – he didn’t have
funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of
Parliament] that we probably didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had
introduced them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could
gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she was
Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s tenure), and
that was appealing – to meet the possible next Presidential Chief of Staff.
Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko not take
that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also mentioned
corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and Podesta:
In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of Burisma/Zlochevsky,
mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to lobbyists that had been
prominently int he news this past month, whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels
to Podesta Group and Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to
Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and the media
attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy train….
…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience, and wrong
facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more
traction/better audience.
This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019 testimony
under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment
inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running
corruption investigation against it stating, “it just wasn’t a big issue.”
This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an
influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016
election. This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of
President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption.
Monday, December 14, 2020
Friday, December 20, 2019
The ‘Romp in the Swamp’ Coming in 2020
The ‘Romp in the Swamp’ Coming in 2020
Remember the “Thriller in Manilla” or the “Rumble in the Jungle”? Frazer vs. Ali wouldn’t hold a candle to the coming match of this century. Mark it down: it will be Trump vs. Clinton, the “Romp in the Swamp.”
Donald, the Manhattan Blue Collar Billionaire, and reigning champion of the Free World against Crooked Hillary, the two-time loser who must think the third time’s the charm.
Yes, 2020 is about to shape up in an unexpected and unprecedented rematch. Here’s how it goes down.
Going for the Golden Belt and ultimate prize, in one corner we have the incumbent president of the United States, who has delivered on all his promises and made us stronger, safer, and richer than ever: That instrument of the divine, “Geo Deus.”
In the opposing corner, we have a woman who was only a candidate because of her rapist husband. She is in favor of globalism, identity politics, and apologizes for American strength, especially these days. This despite her hypocritical uber-hawkishness in office when she was the failed Secretary of State for lightweight, wimp President Barack Obama.
The two dueled in 2016 and Trump thumped her convincingly in an upset, and the electoral college victory was large: 304-227.
Now she wants more; a comeback?
And since the Democrats do not have another viable candidate, in spite of having two-dozen crazy options—from socialists to fake Indians, from Spartacus to a gay mayor, and even Old Creepy Joe—Hillary will be back, yet one more time.
Here’s how it happens: Bernie’s operation narrowly lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016 (people have said that Hillary cheated there)—it is likely that a lot of the Sanders 2016 operation still feels the Bern in 2020. New Hampshire is also Sanders territory.
First place showings in both look likely—by the time South Carolina rolls along, Biden will be looking like the only thing standing between the Democrats and an ass-kicking like the one Comrade Jeremy Corbyn just got across the pond.
That’s where the axe comes down.
Just like Jeb Bush—another busted flush of a candidate—Biden will be forced to pull out after losing South Carolina. At this point, the flavor of the month candidate will have a short run to inherit the support of the Democratic Party’s mainstream in Nevada.
But it will be too late. Hillary’s plan will have worked. The long path has begun towards a brokered convention—one that begs Hillary to ride in on a white horse to save us from bad Trump’s second term, just like she dreams of every day. She can always count on the superdelegate vote (except in 2008 I guess—ouch) and the mainstream candidates will gladly make their bid for VP with their delegate factions just like in the old days.
She is the best they can do. Even the billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, cannot buy their way in. They’ll be busy making sure the candidate is someone they can work with, like Hillary. Bloomberg has been busy building a coalition of lefty mayors like himself, and coal magnate Steyer crusades against climate change. Watch as the party lines out of their operations spread into the audition scripts of the Democrat candidates who will be reading for them.
What will the central issues be?
Cut taxes or increase them?
Build a Wall or let them all in?
Defend American might or try more diplomacy and giveaways?
Have a private health system or socialize it?
Increase GDP and growth rates or go back to no growth and more poverty?
Support the Second Amendment or take away your guns?
Judge people based on their merits or use identity and race to decide everything?
The prognosticators have it as a third-round knockout, after Clinton is knocked down four times and bleeding badly. The referee will feel sorry for her.
The match will be recorded as the slugfest that never ended and the result even larger than before.
After the fight, Clinton will allege Russian collusion, Ukrainian compromises, and say he should immediately be impeached and removed from office. But in the end she’ll have cashed in on yet another round of lucrative campaign grease for her folks, stayed in the headlines, and written yet another memoir she can use as an excuse for a listening tour to prepare for the 2024 campaign.
The American public is tired of her profiteering globalism that always comes at their expense.
With almost 70 million people voting for him this time and carrying all but the few coastal states, Trump’s second term will be a walk in the park.
America will be stronger than ever as the President chants: “We will make America strong again, we will make America safe again, and we will make America great again.”
USA! USA! USA!
It is truly MAGA country!
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
CrowdStrike, Russian Collusion and DNC
If
Trump loses in 2020, all the investigations by Judicial Watch and other
organizations and all the crimes uncovered will come to nought because the
democrats don't want their dirty deeds exposed and prosecuted. Three years of
this crap by the democrats, trying to undue the 2016 Presidential election.
People need to be indicted, found guilty and sent to Leavenworth.
CrowdStrike and the Impeachment Frenzy
No wonder the Dems are nervous: The
alleged Russian hacking of the DNC’s computers is proving to be a Hillary
campaign and DNC scam that went unchallenged by Messrs. Comey and Mueller.
By George Parry | October 4, 2019
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release stolen computer files that pertained to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Two days later, CrowdStrike, which was working for the DNC, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC’s computer server. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC’s server. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack.
On July 22, 2016, just days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published approximately 20,000 DNC emails.
Much to the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton, the released files showed that the DNC had secretly collaborated with her campaign to promote her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination over that of Bernie Sanders. This caused the Clinton campaign serious political damage at the Democratic convention.
Well after the convention, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s public relations chief, said in a March 2017 Washington Post essay that she worked assiduously during the nominating convention to “get the press to focus on … the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary.”
their breathless coverage of the Russian hacking story, the media downplayed the very odd behavior of the DNC, the putative victim. For, when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI learned of the hacking claim, they asked to examine the server.
But the DNC refused.
Why would the purported victim of a crime refuse to cooperate with law enforcement in solving that crime? Was it hiding something? Was it afraid the server’s contents would discredit the Russia-hacking story?
answers to those questions began to emerge thanks to a July 2017 memorandum to President Trump by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), an organization of former CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and military intelligence officers, technical experts, and analysts.
VIPS has a well-established record of debunking questionable intelligence assessments that have been slanted to serve political purposes. For example, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, VIPS courageously and correctly challenged the accuracy and veracity of the CIA’s intelligence estimates that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he posed a threat to the United States. Similarly, VIPS has condemned the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists. In short, VIPS can hardly be described as either a right-wing cabal or a group carrying water for the Republican Party.
its analysis of the purported DNC hack, VIPS brought to bear the impressive talents of more than a dozen experienced, well-credentialed experts, including William Binney, a former NSA technical director and cofounder of the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, former NSA technical director for the Office of Signals Processing; and Skip Folden, a former IBM information technology manager. As the French would say, these are l’hommes sérieux, as are the other computer-system designers, program architects, and analysts with whom they investigated the Clinton-DNC hack story.
As set forth in its memorandum, VIPS’ investigative findings were nothing short of stunning.
First, VIPS concluded that the DNC data were not hacked by the Russians or anyone else accessing the server over the internet. Instead, the data were downloaded by means of a thumb drive or similar portable storage device physically attached to the DNC server.
How was this determined? The time stamps contained in the released computer files’ metadata establish that, at 6:45 p.m. July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes (not megabits) of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. This took 87 seconds, which means the transfer rate was 22.7 megabytes per second, a speed, according to VIPS, that “is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack.” Such a speed could be accomplished only by direct connection of a portable storage device to the server. Accordingly, VIPS concluded that the DNC data theft was an inside job by someone with physical access to the server.
VIPS also found that, if there had been a hack, the NSA would have a record of it that could quickly be retrieved and produced. But no such evidence has been forthcoming. Can this be because no hack occurred?
Even more remarkable, the experts determined that the files released by Guccifer 2.0 have been “run, via ordinary cut and paste, through a template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints.” In other words, the files were deliberately altered to give the false impression that they were hacked by Russian agents.
Thanks to the VIPS experts, the Russia-hacking claim — the very prologue of the Trump-Russia conspiracy story — appeared to have been affirmatively and convincingly undercut.
After the DNC denied law enforcement access to its server, the FBI — under James Comey’s leadership — meekly agreed to accept the findings of CrowdStrike, the DNC’s private cybersecurity firm, as to the server’s contents. This was in lieu of the FBI’s using legal process (such as a search warrant or forthwith grand jury subpoena) to seize and search the server for Russian malware and evidence of hacking, even though, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Comey conceded that “best practices” require “direct access” to the allegedly hacked computers.
So why did Comey and the FBI agree to such an impotent, absurd, and self-defeating arrangement?
In June 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr asked Comey whether he ever had “access to the actual hardware that was hacked.” Comey replied under oath, “In the case of the DNC … we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity [CrowdStrike], that had done the work.”
Sen. Burr then asked, “But no content? Isn’t content an important part of forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?” To which Comey answered, “It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks … is that they had gotten the information from the private party [CrowdStrike] that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.”
Given that the allegation of Russian hacking resulted in increased tensions between the United States and the nuclear-armed Russian Federation and also served as a cornerstone of the argument that Trump had engaged in treasonous conduct, why were Comey and his FBI willing to rely solely on the word of CrowdStrike? Weren’t the stakes high enough to mandate that the FBI use the “best practice” of conducting its own forensic examination of the DNC’s computers?
And then came the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his band of Hillary Clinton sycophants. On March 13, 2019, a month before the Mueller report was released, VIPS submitted a memorandum to the attorney general in which they accurately predicted that Mueller would choose to “finesse” the key issue of whether or not the Russians hacked the DNC computers by relying on the purported analysis by “CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations.”
VIPS stated that “direct access to the actual computers is the first requirement” in any valid forensic analysis. The memorandum then set forth VIPS’ additional analysis of the WikiLeaks DNC files which revealed “a FAT (File Allocation Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive, before WikiLeaks posted them” (Emphasis in original).
After explaining in detail the significance of the FAT system property, the memorandum then re-addressed the elephant in the room that the media and investigators were ignoring: “the apparent failure of NSA’s dragnet, collect-it-all approach — including ‘cast-iron’ coverage of WikiLeaks — to provide forensic evidence (as opposed to ‘assessments’) as to how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks and who sent them.” Further to this point, VIPS posed this critical question:
Is it possible that NSA has not yet been asked to produce the collected packets of DNC email data claimed to have been hacked by Russia? Surely, this should be done before Mueller completes his investigation. NSA has taps on all the transoceanic cables leaving the U.S., and would most certainly have such packets if they exist.
VIPS proved to be prescient. As with the seemingly feckless Comey, Mueller reported neither a direct access forensic examination of the DNC computers nor a query directed to the NSA for its intercepts of the purportedly hacked files.
In summary, by denying law enforcement access to its allegedly hacked computers, the DNC conducted itself like a criminal suspect with something to hide. And, in the face of this suspicious behavior, the failure by Comey’s FBI and Team Mueller to conduct a direct access forensic examination of the DNC’s computers or to seek corroboration from the NSA of any hacking strongly suggests that they had no interest in getting to the truth about the Russian hacking story.
As the old saying goes, the cover-up is frequently worse than the crime. That certainly appears to be the case with the Russian hacking story given that Comey’s FBI and Team Mueller appear to have deliberately declined to probe the Russian hacking claim purveyed by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign with the assistance of CrowdStrike.
So it is that Trump’s reference to CrowdStrike had to have sent shockwaves through the Democrats and their media enablers. Unless the DNC has followed Hillary Clinton’s example by using BleachBit or hammers on its computers, it is still possible that an honest direct access forensic analysis coupled with a simple records search by the NSA could prove that — in addition to Mueller’s finding of no evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia — the whole Russian hacking story was a scam orchestrated by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
No wonder the Democrats and their media co-conspirators are running around with their hair on fire.
George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He is a regulate contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer and blogs at knowledgeisgood.net. He may be reached by email at kignet1@gmail.com.
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