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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Mueller Report

Mueller Report

Monday Evening Open Thread: John Durham Dumps His Final Report

by Anne Laurie|  May 15, 20236:18 pm| 120 Comments

This post is in: Mueller Report, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel

JUST IN: Special counsel John Durham finds the FBI should not have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 US election https://t.co/zmRcucf6dn

— CNN International (@cnni) May 15, 2023

… And one imagines he slammed the door as he departed in a huff. Per the Associated Press:

… The report Monday from special counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation that Trump and allies had claimed would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham’s investigation delivered underwhelming results, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.

The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham says were a series of missteps by the FBI and Justice Department as investigators undertook a politically explosive probe in the heat of the 2016 election into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to tip the outcome. It criticized the FBI for opening a full-fledged investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” saying the speed at which it did so was a departure from the norm. And it said investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward…

The impact of Durham’s report, though harshly critical of the FBI, is likely blunted by Durham’s spotty prosecution record and by the fact that many of the seven-year-old episodes it cites were already examined in depth by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The FBI has also long since announced dozens of corrective actions. The bureau outlined those changes in a letter to Durham on Monday, including steps meant to ensure the accuracy of secretive surveillance applications to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies…

Durham, the former U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, soon after special counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to move the outcome of the election in his favor.

The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed the help. But Mueller’s team did not find that they actually conspired to sway the election, creating an opening for critics of the probe — including Barr himself — to assert that it had been launched without a proper basis…

show full post on front page

The original Russia investigation was opened in July 2016 after the FBI learned from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign associate named George Papadopoulos had claimed to know of “dirt” that the Russians had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails…

Durham’s mandate was to scrutinize government decisions, and identify possible misconduct, in the early days of the Trump-Russia probe. His appointment was cheered by Trump, who in a 2019 interview with Fox News said Durham was “supposed to be the smartest and the best.” He and his supporters hoped it would expose a “deep state” conspiracy within the top echelons of the FBI and other agencies to derail Trump’s presidency and candidacy.

Durham and his team cast a broad net, interviewing top officials at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA. In his first year on the job, he traveled with Barr to Italy to meet with government officials as Trump himself asked the Australian prime minister and other leaders to help with the probe. Weeks before his December 2020 resignation as attorney general, Barr appointed Durham as a Justice Department special counsel to ensure that he would continue his work in a Democratic administration…

(It is widely known that Everything Trump Touches Dies, but I would be pleased if the Trickster God could speed up the defenestration of Bill ‘Ever Lower’ Barr’s reputation.)

CNN has put the entire report online, for the completists.

Josh Kovensky, at TPM, liveblogging: “Trump Was Treated So Unfairly, Durham Says”:

An entire section of this report is devoted to what Durham described as “disparate treatment” of the Trump and Clinton campaigns by the FBI.

It echoes in concept if not in tone one of Trump’s favorite complaints about the Trump-Russia investigation, or really any attempt to examine or hold him accountable in any way: that it’s unfair.

In this context, Durham raises the issue of which campaign received a defensive briefing from the FBI in 2016 and which did not, and also publicizes potential 2016 investigations into the Clinton Foundation which, he says, immediately went nowhere.

This, of course, is in contrast to the Trump-Russia investigation, which went on for years and resulted in the convictions of his campaign manager, national security adviser, and others…

But then again:

Durham: Nothing Should Change At DOJ or FBI

With more than 300 pages of narrative and criticism of the FBI’s decision to open its investigation into Trump-Russia, Durham says that he does not think there should be any “wholesale changes” in federal law enforcement.

“This report does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out,” the report reads.

He instead says that it’s all about “integrity,” and that he simply did his work to help the attorney general decide “how the Department and the FBI can do a better, more credible job in fulfilling its responsibilities, and in analyzing and responding to politically charged allegations in the future.” …

Today’s Conventional Wisdom, as declared by the CW experts at the NYTimes:

… The Durham report has been long awaited by supporters of Mr. Trump, who once hoped he would prove Mr. Trump’s theory that the Russia investigation had been a “deep state” conspiracy to sabotage him for political reasons. Mr. Trump would put high-level political or national security officials in prison, they insisted.

But over an investigation that lasted about four years — far longer than the Russia investigation — Mr. Durham failed to live up to those expectations.

Critics have long argued his investigation was superfluous: an inspector general for the Justice Department, Michael E. Horowitz, was already scrutinizing the Russia investigation for evidence of misconduct or bias, and he released a report on the matter in December 2019.

Mr. Horowitz did not find evidence that the F.B.I. had taken any investigative steps based on improper political reasons. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — the Australian diplomat’s tip — had been sufficient to lawfully open the full counterintelligence inquiry…

SAD!

Monday Evening Open Thread: John Durham Dumps His Final ReportPost + Comments (120)

A Sunday Night True Story

by Adam L Silverman|  December 19, 202111:21 pm| 48 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, 2024 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

Once upon a time, between 2016 and 2018, I got it wrong. On the front page and in the comments. Over and over and over again. While I recognized that Trump had around a 30% chance of winning in 2016, I thought it unlikely to happen. Unfortunately, the antiquated relic know as the Electoral College went off as it is occasionally wont to do.

What I really got wrong, however, is just how little resiliency our political systems and structures actually had to withstand what we all lived through. I made that mistake because I fell back on what I learned in my education and training as a political scientist, as well as my experience with career civil servants during my time serving on civilian mobilization orders with the Army and DOD. Specifically, that it is exceedingly difficult to overcome then inertia that is a career civil servant.

As a result, I convinced myself that our system was stronger than it was and would hold more firmly against Trump, his appointees, and their agenda. I overestimated what Robert Mueller would do, underestimated what Trump’s appointees, employees, family members, campaign officials, Republican elected and party officials, and surrogates would do to undermine Mueller’s investigation. And I told that to all of you in front page posts and in the comments. I was wrong. And a lot of you suffered as a result of my incorrect assurances.

I won’t make the same mistake twice.

I failed as a front pager between 20-6 and 2018. Instead of helping to make you all better informed and smarter, I made you dumber. I gave you false hope. I helped to make things worse.

Maybe we’ll get really, really lucky and everything will break just right and we’ll thread the needle again in November 2022 and November 2024 the way we did in November 2020. But right n0w Republican controlled state legislatures are doing everything they can to ensure that does not happen. That it doesn’t matter how many voters are registered or mobilized through changing the law to suppress the votes or make them irrelevant by allowing state legislatures to substitute their preferences for the actual will of the voters. That through even more extreme gerrymanders, these elected officials will even more precisely pick their voters rather than allowing the voters to pick their elected representatives. We are quickly regressing to how the US functioned at the state level prior to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed and the Supreme Court took the Reconstruction amendments seriously.

I was not sufficiently skeptical and paranoid in 2016, 2017, and into 2018. I won’t make that mistake again.

I have no idea how this story ends, though as you all know, I’m not particularly bullish about the potential outcomes, so to be continued…

Open thread!

A Sunday Night True StoryPost + Comments (48)

Why Do The Investigations Seem To End Too Early?

by Cheryl Rofer|  November 26, 201912:00 pm| 81 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Impeachment Hearings, Media, Mueller Report, Trump-Russia

Something has bothered me since Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Let’s look at the letter appointing him special counsel:

  • Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel…

Not Special Prosecutor, as he is often titled. Special Counsel.

  • any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump…

Based on these words, I expected a very different report from Mueller.

Mueller acted more as a prosecutor than an investigator. Perhaps I am getting this wrong; in internet parlance, IANAL, I am not a lawyer.

Mueller prosecuted cases against Paul Manafort and the the Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg. His investigations supported Michael Cohen’s conviction and Michael Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. There are probably others, but that is not my point. His investigation seems to have been for the purpose of finding prosecutable crimes.

I expected that “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” would have included a great deal more than what was in the report.

There were a great many contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign, or near misses like Maria Butina, who got cozy with the NRA, which supported Trump. The Russians used hacked files from the Democratic National Committee to help Republicans beyond Trump.

The Republican platform was changed to weaken support for Ukraine; the Mueller report mentions this, but notes that Trump seems to have been unaware of the change. The person who seems to have been responsible for it, J. D. Gordon, also is connected to Carter Page, who has his own Russian connections. And then there is George Papadopoulos, also with Russian connections.

Perhaps some of these Russian connections, like Butina, can be said not to have been connected with the Trump campaign. The hacked files used against other candidates, again not related to the Trump campaign. Although the platform change may not have involved Trump, his campaign certainly was involved with it, and with those other folks with hinky Russian connections. But these were investigated cursorily, if at all.

I don’t understand how Mueller interpreted the charge and why. I would like to know more about that.

It seems to be difficult to report on connections to Russia without being accused of paranoia. Additionally, some popular voices have greatly exaggerated connections to Russia on the basis of inadequate information.

I do not believe Putin is minutely directing a campaign to destroy the United States. He does not work like that. He remains a KGB colonel with access to the power of a state. He is a tactician rather than a strategist. He wants Russia to be recognized as a great power. Russia is in a strange position internationally. Its nuclear arsenal is equivalent to that of the United States, but its economy is about the size of Texas’s, based primarily on extractive industries. A nuclear great power, but not much else.

The way for Russia to be a great power is to lessen the influence of other great powers. Hence a campaign to divide Americans and Europeans, internally and from each other.

The campaign is loosely run – more a matter of “Who will rid me of these turbulent adversaries?” than of detailed planning and late nights in the Kremlin. Thus, multiple Russian actors, backed by multiple oligarchs, show up in the Mueller Report and in other ways.

Trump always has something bad to say about America’s allies, but never about Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. The connections across the Republican Party to Russia are many, as far as we know now, largely through donations. The Dallas Morning News has had major articles on this means of influence (August 2017, December 2017, two in May 2018) . Why haven’t other news outlets joined the investigation? Why isn’t this mentioned as common knowledge when Tucker Carlson sides with Russia over Ukraine?

There are so many stories that need more investigation.

Trump’s history with Russia. 1987 seems to be a turning point. And, of course, the noteless meetings with Vladimir Putin, particularly in Helsinki in July 2018.

Devin Nunes’s midnight run to the White House

Kevin McCarthy’s comment about Putin paying Trump and Dana Rohrabacher. McCarthy received a campaign contribution from Rudy Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, which he is returning. He is not the only one to receive money from them.

Parnas and Fruman are currently a focus of media attention. Parnas would like to testify to Congress, but there is little reason to believe anything he says until we understand better his connections to Giuliani and Trump and to people like Dmytro Firtash.

Eight Republican members of Congress spent the Fourth of July, 2018, in Moscow. They met with senior Russian officials. They are Richard Shelby (AL), Ron Johnson (WI), John Neely Kennedy (LA), Jerry Moran (KS), Steve Daines (MT), John Hoeven (ND), John Thune (SD) and Rep. Kay Granger (TX). Johnson and Kennedy have been extremely vocal lately in spreading the Russian propaganda meme that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the campaigns in 2016.

And, oh yes, the US Intelligence Community report of January 2017 said that the Republican campaign was hacked too. We haven’t seen any more about that.

That’s the list I come up with over a day or two of thought. I’ll bet there’s more.

There is a throughline to all this: Russian interference in American politics. It’s a big story, to be sure, but one that we need to hear. Most of it was not covered in the Mueller investigation. The House Intelligence Committee hearings have been on a very small part of it. News organizations are working on parts of it. We need more.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

Why Do The Investigations Seem To End Too Early?Post + Comments (81)

The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and Ukraine

by David Anderson|  November 15, 201912:16 pm| 75 Comments

This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Election 2016, Goddamned Traitors, Grifters Gonna Grift, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russia, Trump Crime Cartel, Trump-Russia

Just another day when a president's oldest political adviser is convicted on 7 criminal counts including lying to Congress and witness tampering during a break in an impeachment hearing in which the president's tweets from the morning are described as intimidating by the witness.

— Philip Bump (@pbump) November 15, 2019

Roger Stone was convicted on all counts of obstruction, false statements and witness intimidation.

Open Thread

UPDATE 1

1) Trump on his way to impeachment

2) His longtime political adviser convicted on 7 counts

3) His personal lawyer under investigation for ties to 2 indicted associates

All happening around the noon hour on a Friday.

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) November 15, 2019

At least this Friday has the courtesy of news-dumping during normal business hours.

The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and UkrainePost + Comments (75)

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

by Adam L Silverman|  October 14, 201910:36 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:

I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.

Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).

Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary @Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

The other point of comparison that immediately comes to mind is an ongoing Federal criminal investigation of Elliot Broidy, a former top Trump fundraiser and the former vice chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. More on him in a second. 4/ pic.twitter.com/DWADspZ8sI

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That’s a curiously menial role for Parnas who presented himself as a high roller and whose campaign contributions gave him access to Trump and other GOP leaders. (Lawyer John Dowd says they had a similar role for Giuliani on behalf of President Trump) https://t.co/3MYZlQcVc3 6/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past [including] private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.” https://t.co/1PYZ6oj9eN

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Arguably the single biggest set of toes belongs to Firtash. He was arrested immediately after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine and has been stuck in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged by the Feds with FCPA violations. 10/ pic.twitter.com/gNAOcwdo8F

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s also good to think of the gas trade as Exhibit #1 for the comingling of the Russian govt/organized crime. Firtash served as the top gas trade intermediary for the Kremlin & a Russian mob figure Semyon Mogilevich who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List & helped control it 12/ pic.twitter.com/LdTWKGpc2h

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. https://t.co/vYeGu25kYf 14/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

show full post on front page

What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://t.co/TmhXrjmhNn @elainaplott 16/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Bloomberg's @nwadhams broke a story about Trump and Giuliani seeking special favors from DOJ/State Dept for one of the latter’s clients, a convicted Turkish gold trader who had violated Iran sanctions. Rex Tillerson thought these requests were illegal https://t.co/OFJn5fWC1m 18/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

What is AG William Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Remember: Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/ pic.twitter.com/3nYNsF64B4

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a major shoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

Open thread!

 

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia MessPost + Comments (170)

The Mueller Report Book Club – III. Russian Hacking and Dumping Operations

by Cheryl Rofer|  August 5, 20194:23 pm| 36 Comments

This post is in: Mueller Report, The Mueller Report Book Club

A and B. GRU Hacking and Dissemination of the Hacked Materials

pp 36 – 49

Thanks to all for the feedback on whether we should continue.

It looks like Jerrold Nadler plans to make the Mueller report a central part of the leadup to impeachment proceedings, so we should continue to pay attention to it. I was concerned that it would go on the ever-mounting pile of Donald Trump’s misdeeds and fade from sight. With Nadler subpoenaing the materials behind the report, we will be hearing more about it. Lawfare continues to produce their podcasts. Here are Part II and Part III.

Section III is long. I am going to take it a bit at a time. We are now getting into the part of the report that describes how the Russians interfered in the 2016 election and how the Trump campaign interacted with them.

GRU is the acronym for the Russian-language name of Russia’s military intelligence organization, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. The GRU competes in such things with the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, roughly the equivalent of the FBI.

The hacking of computers belonging to various organizations and individuals in the Democratic Party was massive. The purpose was to release the documents in ways that would be damaging to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.

The hacking began in March 2016 and continued into April, targeting

the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton Campaign, including the email account of campaign chairman John Podesta. (p. 36)

The computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were compromised.

The hacking was carried out by spearphishing. It was hard to find a good definition of spearphishing. Many definitions come from the viewpoint of computer developers, rather than the users that are targeted. For example, the “spear” part indicates a relatively narrow targeting to a particular group of people, in this case the DCCC and DNC.

The FBI has a definition that can be helpful to users. The perpetrators get enough information to design emails that look like they come from a trusted source.

…the victims are asked to click on a link inside the e-mail that takes them to a phony but realistic-looking website, where they are asked to provide passwords, account numbers, user IDs, access codes, PINs, etc.

Only one person needed to fall for this to let the Russians into the Democratic Party networks. Twenty-nine computers on the DCCC network and more than 30 on the DNC network, including the mail server and shared file server, were compromised. Malware was implanted to record keystrokes and to download data.

 

Dissemination of the Hacked Materials (pp 41-48)

The simplicity of the statements in the report indicates a deep set of sources.

The GRU carried out the anonymous release through two fictitious online personas that it created – DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 – and later through the organization WikiLeaks. (p. 41)

DCLeaks had Facebook and Twitter accounts. The DCLeaks.com website remained operational and public until March 2017.

Posting of documents began in June 2016. The documents seem to have come from email accounts, including those of an advisor to the Clinton Campaign, a former DNC employee and Clinton Campaign employee, and four other campaign volunteers.

The GRU released through dcleaks.com thousands of documents, including personal identifying and financial information, internal correspondence related to the Clinton Campaign and prior political jobs, and fundraising files and information. (p. 41)

 

Guccifer 2.0

On June 15, the day after the DNC announced the breach of its network, GRU officers using the persona Guccifer 2.0 created a WordPress blog, posing as a lone Romanian hacker. That same day, the website began to release DNC and DNCC documents, ultimately releasing thousands of them.

Released documents included opposition research performed by the DNC (including a memorandum analyzing potential criticisms of candidate Trump), internal policy documents (such as recommendations on how to address politically sensitive issues), analyses of specific congressional races, and fundraising documents. Releases were organized around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g., Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (p. 43)

Later in June, the Guccifer 2.0 persona released documents to reporters and other interested individuals. This continued into August.

Through the Guccifer 2.0 persona, the GRU was in contact with a former Trump campaign member. The member’s identity is redacted because of Harm to Ongoing Matter.

 

Use of WikiLeaks

In November 2015, Julian Assange emailed WikiLeaks staff to set an anti-Clinton tone for the organization. In March 2016, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of approximately 30,000 Clinton emails that had been obtained through FOIA litigation. Both actions were before the GRU hacked the DNC and DCCC.

Shortly after the GRU began releasing stolen documents through dcleaks.com in June 2016, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks, and WikiLeaks contacted Guccifer 2.0. WikiLeaks wanted their material. The communications were partly hidden, but it is clear that the GRU transferred stolen DNC and Podesta documents to WikiLeaks.

The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016. For example, public reporting identified Andrew Müeller-Maguhn as a WikiLeaks associate who may have assisted with the transfer of these stolen documents to Wikileaks. (p. 47)

On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks released the first emails stolen from the Podesta email account. WikiLeaks released 33 tranches of stolen emails between October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, immediately before the election. The releases included private speeches given by Clinton; internal communications; and correspondence related to the Clinton Foundation. WikiLeaks released over 50,000 documents stolen from Podesta’s personal email account.

WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements about the source of the materials designed to obscure that source. They implied that Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016 and the subject of rightwing conspiracy theorizing, was the source. After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking.

 

The report gives much more detail about how the communications took place.

The second paragraph of the section overview (p. 36) has significant redactions, the reason for which is given as “Harm to Ongoing Matter.” This probably refers to the counterintelligence investigation. Mueller referred to that investigation in his testimony on July 24. Obviously this is justifiable in terms of legal procedure, but we need to know more about that investigation. I’ll write a post about this later in this sequence.

Investigative methods are redacted. This is not important for understanding. Clearly the FBI hacked into the GRU’s communications and materials. That’s all we need to know. A couple of years ago, Dutch intelligence gained access to Russian government computers in 2014 and warned the US about potential hacking of Democratic Party organizations. The operation that provided information to Mueller must have been something like that.

 

The Mueller Report Book Club – III. Russian Hacking and Dumping OperationsPost + Comments (36)

Wednesday Open Thread

by Betty Cracker|  July 24, 20193:57 pm| 207 Comments

This post is in: Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Trump Crime Cartel, Trump-Russia, Assholes, General Stupidity, Our Failed Media Experiment

There are several Mueller thread(s) below this post. I haven’t been watching, so I have no idea if the testimony is ongoing, but the latest thread is getting way long, so here’s a new one.

From what I gather from occasional glances at Twitter, the hearing aired facts established by the written report, including that: 1) the report didn’t exonerate Trump, 2) Russia fucked with our election for the purpose of helping to elect Trump, 3) the Trump campaign eagerly welcomed that help, 4) Trump obstructed the investigation.

However, the emerging media consensus seems to be that the hearings were a huge victory for Trump and the Republicans because 1) Mueller is old, and 2) pundits and reporters are bored with the proceedings. Does that about sum it up?

Open thread.

Wednesday Open ThreadPost + Comments (207)

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