Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

When we show up, we win.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

We’re not going back!

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Russiagate Open Thread: “GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails from Russian Hackers”

Russiagate Open Thread: “GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails from Russian Hackers”

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#EvenTheStaunchlyConservativeWSJ:

Before the 2016 presidential election, a longtime Republican opposition researcher mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers.

In conversations with members of his circle and with others he tried to recruit to help him, the GOP operative, Peter W. Smith, implied he was working with retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, at the time a senior adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump.

“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails.

Emails written by Mr. Smith and one of his associates show that his small group considered Mr. Flynn and his consulting company, Flynn Intel Group, to be allies in their quest.

What role, if any, Mr. Flynn may have played in Mr. Smith’s project is unclear. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Smith said he knew Mr. Flynn, but he never stated that Mr. Flynn was involved…

Mr. Smith died at age 81 on May 14, which was about 10 days after the Journal interviewed him. His account of the email search is believed to be his only public comment on it….

In the interview with the Journal, Mr. Smith said he and his colleagues found five groups of hackers who claimed to possess Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails, including two groups he determined were Russians.

“We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government,” Mr. Smith said…

Mr. Smith said he never intended to pay for any emails found by hackers.

He said he understood the risk in publishing the emails himself. If, under public scrutiny, they proved not to be genuine, “people would say we made them up,” he said, and the whole project would be dismissed as a Republican hit job on the Clinton campaign. In the early 1990s, Mr. Smith helped publicize Arkansas state troopers’ claims that then-Gov. Bill Clinton had enlisted them to arrange trysts with women, an unproven allegation denied by the Clinton White House…

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  2. 2.

    Alain the site fixer

    Late night crowd – mobile site now has pie filter, comment help, and the Quick Links menu at the top. More fun stuff for mobile site coming soon.

  3. 3.

    efgoldman

    In the early 1990s, Mr. Smith helped publicize Arkansas state troopers’ claims that then-Gov. Bill Clinton had enlisted them to arrange trysts with women, an unproven allegation denied by the Clinton White House…

    So, just another RWNJ ratfucker in a viper’s nest of ratfuckers. Not even a really good one.

    Speaking of ratfuckers, did I really hear CBS last nite quoting unnamed FBI officials that Manafort is *not* one of the people they’re looking at for Russian connections? I guess if he reported it (unlike Flynn) it’s unethical but not illegal, or something.

  9. 9.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It looks to me like the WSJ story explains a lot about Trump’s relationship to Flynn, but I am still using my phone, and am tired enough not to be able to parse it fully.

  10. 10.

    Barbara

    So maybe this is one reason why Trump wanted the FBI to cease its investigation of Flynn.

  12. 12.

    Lalophobia

    Well this is certainly interesting. Not in the least bit unexpected, but interesting.

  15. 15.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Mike J: yeah but they’re more likely to read this thread four hours from now than the post where I mentioned that info

  17. 17.

    MJS

    Cue the “Never knew the man” Tweet. When that lie is disproven, cue the “Disgusting media smearing a dead man. Sad!” tweet.

  19. 19.

    Alain the site fixer

    @EBT: we’re also working on a local storage solution for comment preview to ensure your comment meets filter and such guidelines. Perhaps a few related goodies, too.

  23. 23.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I can’t help wondering here about how the dude dropped dead ten days after the reporter spoke to him. The first thing I thought of was Putin sending somebody to put some thallium in his coffee, but then why kill the old dude and not the reporter? Somebody help me here. I don’t want to turn into some kind of crazy-ass conspiracy nut. Help me, people, don’t let me become one of those losers!

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Gvg: There was talk on the rumor twitter machine that Manafort’s belated registration as a foreign agent was a requirement of a proffer from Mueller.

    Another tweet today said there is no proffer on the table for Manafort.

    Stay tuned.

  26. 26.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Omnes Omnibus: I wasn’t expressing a problem with LGM (and the comment wasn’t made at the senator’s expense). I was asking because unlike Kosovo, in my experience the contingent against intervening in the first Yugoslav Wars is relatively where – except for (arguably) Chomsky and Scahill, it seems to be the fringe of the fringe among the left, even without genocide denial entering into the equation.

  28. 28.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Villago Delenda Est: Lock them up? Why on earth would we do that? These are all good people, and nobody has yet proven any collusion, and James Clapper testified on his mother’s grave that there wasn’t any proof of any collusion anywhere, ever, and there never will be, and so did James Comey, and this is just history’s biggest and most unfairest witch hunt, and besides Killary used a private e-mail server, and we all know that if Mike Flynn had done anything half as bad as that he’d have been in jail so fast it would have made his hair spin, and she killed people in Libya by personally ordering that the people guarding the embassies in Libya could only be armed with yoyos just because she wanted them all to die because she’s evil, and Fast and Furious, and Clinton talked to Loretta Lynch on a runway, and Obama lied and people died! and where’s the birth certificate!! AND I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!!!!11!!!!!!ahundredandeleven!!!!!!!

  30. 30.

    Anne Laurie

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I can’t help wondering here about how the dude dropped dead ten days after the reporter spoke to him.

    I’m just grateful someone got him on the record before he dropped dead.

    Even the healthiest 81-year-old can drop unexpectedly of natural causes, and of course we don’t know anything about Mr. Smith’s health. Hell, a political paranoid could argue that Putin only allowed Smith to speak to the WSJ from his deathbed, on the grounds that his subsequent collapse would be seen as more proof of Russia’s deadly reach!

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): And because everyone says that Flynn is a Great Guy and that Comey told Donnie three times that he wasn’t being investigated!

    And did you know Donnie won by the greatest Electoral College margin in History? And had the largest inauguration crowd in History?!?!! He’s bigly historical!!11!

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Anne Laurie: Yeah, well do we even know whether he’s dead at all? I have a theory that this guy only faked being a Republican shitbag out to get the Clintons all the way back to 1978 in Arkansas so he could build up his cred so he could fake this whole collusion thing to implicate Flynn and Trump 38 years later when Trump ran for president by saying that Flynn was colluding with Putin, who he knew would be the Russian president in 2016, and then he could spill all the beans to a reporter and frame Flynn and Trump just before he takes his big payoff from Killary and go live on the beach in Mallorca. I’m still a little hazy on why he waited to do this until after Trump won instead of before so Hitlery would win, but, you know, these Clintons are nothing if not devious.

  43. 43.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Don’t I know it. He says he hates Hillary Clinton. I mean, he truly loathes her. It’s personal, and I don’t understand why. It’s so weird to me. I don’t really hate Trump. I hate what he does and says, but it feels so hard to hate the guy himself, he’s such a pitiful loser. And I really don’t want to hate him. I work hard not to hate him, and it is a struggle sometimes, but so far, I’ve pulled it off. I don’t understand this visceral hatred of Clinton. She hasn’t ever done or said anything anywhere near as bad as what Dear Leader says and does every damned day. And now I really am going to bed.

  46. 46.

    debbie

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I don’t really hate Trump. I hate what he does and says, but it feels so hard to hate the guy himself, he’s such a pitiful loser.

    Colbert just now quoted Lindsay Graham’s tweet which said Trump’s tweet showed what’s wrong with American politics. No, Colbert said, they show what’s wrong with the American president. POW!

    You should definitely be really hating Trump.

  47. 47.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @lamh36: I’ll have to record that. Can’t wait to see the media rally around Scratch and Grounder

  49. 49.

    mai naem mobile

    I am waiting for the ‘Failing left wing rag WSJ and their dishonest reporters….’ Dolt 45 tweet tomorrow AM. Bet Rupert will be happy for his media property to be described in this manner.

  50. 50.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @debbie: If Mz. Lindsey actually meant those words, he’d never vote to confirm one of Donald’s appointees again, he’d vote against the AHCA, he’d do everything in his power to get Donald tossed out of office and into a cell.

    But he won’t do any of that, because party first.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I don’t think he hates Hillary. Remember how well he and Bill [and Hillary] got along at his wedding. Remember how well he and Obama got along immediately after the election. [Remember all the old quotes of him saying he thought she’d be a ‘great’ president.]

    It’s all TV drama for Donnie. It’s all a game to him. He thinks he’s a Super Genius™ and he can get anyone to do what he wants either by threatening them or flattering them (because they’re useful to him and said nice things to him).

    Of course, he’s too stupid to know that being President isn’t the same as hosting a “reality” TV show. China and Japan and Korea have had civilizations and bureaucracies and royal courts for thousands of years and they know how cheap flattery and fake threats work. In short, they don’t.

    It’s all an act to rile up the rubes while he and his minions try to loot the Treasury.

    Eyes on the prize.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Cathie from Canada

    This story is bizarre because I didn’t think there were any of Hillary’s emails that had been hacked. Here is what I recall from all of the stories I have read about the emails over the last year:
    First, the 30,000 emails that Trump kept saying were “missing” were not actually missing at all but were the personal emails that Hillary deleted from her server when she gave her 2009-2012 emails back to the State Department.
    Second, the server that Hillary used for both her State and personal emails during her time as SOS was actually located in her house and had never been hacked by anyone at all. None of her emails — either personal or business – were ever stolen by anyone.
    So third, there never were any “hacked” Hillary emails — the emails that were hacked by Guciffer or whoever and published by Wikileaks were actually from other servers like the Democratic National Committee.
    So do I have this right? Or did I get something wrong?

  56. 56.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I hate him. With every fiber of my being. And Mitch. And Ryan. And all of the GOP from the current president* down to lowest precinct boss. I hate them for ruining my country’s global standing. For selling out to the Russians. For trying to vote to kill me and tens of millions of others over the next several years. For the nonstop, mendacious lying. And for just generally making life harder for the all of us and the most vulnerable

  57. 57.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    Trump’s a person who’s in the moment. He may not have hated her back when he got married, but he sure does now. I’d bet he’s come to believe Crooked Hillary is responsible for all his woes since January 20, 2017.

  60. 60.

    efgoldman

    @debbie: @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:

    You should definitely be really hating Trump.

    Goku said it first. I hate them worse than I hate centipedes. Every fucking one of them deserves wasting away from something slow, painful and incurable. Every fucking one of them needs to lose their house(s), their bank account(s), their jobs, and find out how real people live.
    Villago is right. Villago has always been right.No more fucking comity; no more milk of human kindness.

    Fuckem

  61. 61.

    efgoldman

    @debbie:

    I’d bet he’s come to believe Crooked Hillary is responsible for all his woes since January 20, 2017.

    Like the four year old he is, nothing – not one fucking thing – is ever his fault.

  62. 62.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Another Scott: I don’t think this is any kind of an act. Trump is too stupid and psychologically shattered to do that. All this shit is just an angry, bewildered manbaby lashing out at anybody who makes him feel bad. When somebody makes him feel bad, he hits them harder. There’s no plan to any of this. This is just a pathetic, soulless loser trying to hide the awful magnitude of his own inadequacy from himself. And now that I’m saying this for the third time, I’m going to step away from this demonic computer for real and go to bed.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    @Cathie from Canada: I think you’re right.

    And the Podesta e-mails weren’t “hacked” either – he was a victim of a phishing scam (and their IT guy typed “legitimate” when he meant “illegitimate” and they got in through his credentials (not via “hacking” – which usually means breaking in through some flaw in the software)).

    I imagine 50 years from know now this will morph into “everyone knows” that Hillary’s server (which of course had a backup of the entire State Department’s classified network traffic and server archive) was stolen by Huma and Valerie and Susan and Samantha and shipped to Putin’s office in the Kremlin, or something. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    @Cathie from Canada: If you read the linked articles, Smith — like other Repubs — was convinced those ‘deleted’ emails were actually full of HRC-indicting scandals. He was trying to get ‘someone’ to fish those emails out of the virtual ether and deliver them to him for future rat-fvcking purposes. Since the Russian hackers did get into Podesta’s DNC emails, he hoped they could find magical number-stuff in those emails that would lead back to Hillary’s no-doubt-explosive trashbinned personal notes (about yoga appointments and Chelsea’s wedding planners).

    Hey, don’t the tech professionals keep telling us that nothing ever disappears from the internet? So how hard could it be to find a few thousand specific emails in ‘the cloud’, as Jared Kushner calls it?

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: He’s certainly vengeful and holds a grudge. But he also has the grift foremost in his mind. If he thinks it’s advantageous to flip positions on people, he will do so in an instance instant. In that sense, I don’t think it’s “hatred” in the usual sense. It’s too tactical and not enough strategic, if you see what I mean.

    With any luck, this nightmare – of having this brain damaged, incompetent, dangerous man as president – will be over (via Constitutional means) soon. Even if it were over tomorrow, we would still have years of work to do to repair the damage (Gorsuch, etc., etc.).

    [eta:] Typos reaching Critical Levels! Must sign off now!!11

    ‘night all.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @efgoldman: Four year olds worldwide would like an apology. Their vocabularies mostly do not include “defamation,” but they know intuitively that your comment is mean and (mostly) unfairly unflattering to them. And they’d like me to make you take it back. I’ll get cookies if you do.

  68. 68.

    Cathie from Canada

    @Anne Laurie: Thanks — yes, I thought there was actually nothing to find, though that never stops a Republican True Believer from believing that where there is no smoke at all, there must be a fire….
    I wonder how difficult it is going to be for Muller to make a case against these people.

  69. 69.

    danielx

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I know a guy who seriously believes that Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama and Eric Holder are all going to be indicted any day now for… Well, for something. Also James Comey. And Elaine Farkas, too, for some reason. I have a hard time keeping up with this shit…

    Not to mention Allan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac. And Martin Luther King Jr, too.

  70. 70.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Anne Laurie: Not a tech professional, but I think the only thing that could make data completely disappear from the internet is physically destroying the infrastructure that supports it. So basically the apocalypse.

  72. 72.

    burnspbesq

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    In the coming months, your shares of Orville Reddenbacher will grow more and more valuable.

    I’m sure if you made a fair offer for those shares, ConAgre (which has owned Orville since 1990, and is always willing to part with brands that it sees as not being strategic) would probably listen.

  73. 73.

    burnspbesq

    @efgoldman:

    Every fucking one of them needs to lose their house(s)

    Nagahappen as along as Florida has an unlimited homestead exemption. When they all start buying down there, that’s a sure sign that the shit is about to go down.

  74. 74.

    Mike in DC

    If nothing else, this shows us one way that collusion could have happened. There are a variety of other ways–direct; going through intermediaries; public and private signaling;an arms length transaction, etc. It will take some time to get a definitive answer to whether there was collusion/coordination/conspiracy.

  76. 76.

    efgoldman

    @burnspbesq:

    When they all start buying down there, that’s a sure sign that the shit is about to go down.

    As long as they buy at or very near what is now the coastline.

    “Damn. The tide never reached to the second floor before.”

  81. 81.

    piratedan

    Well I am sure that I do hate Donald Trump… do I dislike him, yes, his agenda (which is whatever was last whispered in his ear) most assuredly so… I hate how he treats women, minorities, anyone that he sees as an opponent is someone to be put down or made inconsequential. He wants to not just quiet them, he never wants them to have a voice, about anything. That’s why I hate Donald Trump, he simply a reprehensible human being who apparently has never had his Id checked.

    The people I loathe, all all of these fuckers that put him into place to “stand” for them, thinking they could manipulate him him to their ends, at the cost of American political institutions and cherished ideals and tenets that have been the foundation of this country all in the name of a few more bucks, when many of them were already rich and powerful and set up for life, just so they could steal even MORE money and get the twofer of trying to erase the legacy of the man who preceded DJT. These people are dead set on rigging a political process that is already tipped in their favor in hopes of establishing themselves as some kind of American nobility.

  82. 82.

    TenguPhule

    @efgoldman:

    Villago is right. Villago has always been right.No more fucking comity; no more milk of human kindness.

    Hey, Village wants to wipe out the Media, I’m the one that wants the GOP wiped off the face of the Earth.

  85. 85.

    kindness

    Oh shit. This Smith guy goes all the way back to the Clinton used Arkansas Troopers to get babes days? Christ all mighty is this a re-run? I’m almost expecting the whole Whitewater crew to jump in on this. Where is Ken Starr?

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