Two (Three) Possibilities on the “WikiLeaks” Archive Story

Don Jr’s testimony to Congress yesterday has brought out several new details on the evidence he was provided. In this post I want to look at the report that someone sent key Trump figures a link to a Wikileaks archive and an encryption key.

Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.

The September 14 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race.

CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 — 10 days earlier — based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.

After this story was published, The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email Friday afternoon and reported that the email urged Trump and his campaign to download archives that WikiLeaks had made public a day earlier. The story suggested that the individual may simply have been trying to flag the campaign to already public documents.

CNN has now obtained a copy of the email, which lists September 14 as the date sent and contains a decryption key that matches what WikiLeaks had tweeted out the day before.

First, note there’s no explanation in the story why these are described as Wikileaks emails, aside from the fact that Julian Assange has on occasion posted archives with a key. Indeed, it sounds like this archive is more closely related to the DC Leaks side of the house, given the reference to Colin Powell emails in the larger story. So absent a more fulsome explanation of what makes these WikiLeaks documents, I wouldn’t necessarily bet that these documents are related to Wikileaks.

Second, one possible explanation for this archive is that it’s the same one that is the center of the skeptics’ theory. They focus on an archive called NGP/VAN (but which is not NGP/VAN), which was curated on September 1. In public form, the archive was pointed to by Guccifer 2.0 on September 12, but never posted on his site.

the files were posted during a speech given in London by another hacker as a proxy for G2.0 on that day. The Forensicator relies on a copy posted by NatSecGeek. And while on Twitter G2.0 pointed to the speech the day before it was given, he never actually pointed back to the data on his WordPress site.

It’s true that the “speech” that was read for G2.0 relied on and posted a link to these files at the conference.

This scheme shows how NGP VAN is incorporated in the DNC infrastructure. It’s for detailed examination, if you are interested. And here are a couple of NGP VAN’s documents from their network. If you r interested in their internal documents, you can have them via the link on the screen. The password is usual. It’s also on the screen. You may also ask the conference producers for them later.

But at the very least, it seems any analysis of these forensics needs to account for the hand-off and proxy involved.

The timing of this would suggest that (if this is the same archive) three days after the archive was curated but over a week before it was posted publicly, top campaign officials got a link.

But there is another possibility, a detail I’ve often alluded to but never laid out publicly. There is or was a grand jury investigation into some script kiddies that tried to hijack Guccifer 2.0’s password or ID or something like that. It is or was in Philadelphia, based on the location of an archive involved. As I understand it the thought was that this effort was unrelated to the chief Russian info op, but was a lead the FBI had to chase down. I’ve been waiting to see if that grand jury investigation was ever going to show up publicly, and it’s one possible explanation for this email.

Update: I should make clear, I lay out three possibilities here:

  1. These are actually DC Leaks emails, not WikiLeaks ones; this is consistent with what recipients of those emails say about timing.
  2. This is the NGP/VAN archive released in mid-September, associated with Guccifer 2.0.
  3. This is an effort from the unknown skiddies being investigated in Philly.

Update: By description, WaPo makes it clear that this was an email sending the Trumps to this material, though using a different link and password.

That means it is, in fact, the NGP/VAN materials at the heart of the skeptics’ counterarguments about Guccifer being Russian (number 2, above), being sent under an apparently Anglo name (albeit with a few errors; making number 3 possible), but branded as Guccifer 2.0 materials, not WikiLeaks materials (sort of, 1).

In other words, the emails are much more interesting for all these other related theories than for the fact that the Trump folks received it, apparently unsolicited.

Update: I’ve subbed in the corrected language from CNN confirming that this was a September 14 email.

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89 replies
  1. Domye West says:

    I am very confused. Why is this assumed to be a  Wikileaks thing? I would assume that in order to include that in the article, there has to be more evidence than the fact that wikileaks also used encrypted archives.

     

    I do not know what “script kiddies” are, so I do not understand the 2nd possibility.

    • pseudonymous in nc says:

      “Script kiddies” are amateur hackers, typically young men with too much time on their hands, who tend to use publicly-available exploit tools and methods and go after low-hanging fruit. They’re usually more concerned with causing grief and being able to show off that they’ve hacked something — big whoop — than with what they might acquire.

    • Silence Hand says:

      Script kiddies are to hackers (esp. state-associated ones) as taggers are to graffiti artists.  It’s also a term that was around when people were still using the phrase “information superhighway”.

  2. perris says:

    Here’s something to think about; was Trump responsible for uncovering covert assets in Russia;

    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/revealed-rachel-maddow-translates-russian-news-site-reporting-high-level-fsb-officers-were-arrested-for-being-us-intelligence-sources/

    Out of nowhere, Russia figures out who’s a source for our intelligence.

    Out of nowhere?

    If there’s some investigative journalism that will win the Pulitzer, finding out if that’s true will probably be the end of this presidency and as an added bonus, be recorded along side Bernstein and woodward

    • emptywheel says:

      Perris, I’ve been writing about this since January. There are some errors in this report. And I have reason to believe there’s some far more sophisticated stuff going on here than anyone is hitting on yet.

      • maybe ryan says:

        I remember that well.  For months I checked Christo Grozev’s blog for “Tower of Cards (part 2)” but eventually it fell out of my rotation.  Still wonder what more he knew.

      • maybe ryan says:

        I get why you might not tell us your theory yet, EW.  But can you at least define “here” for us?  :

        – the arrest or death of a small number of high-level Russian intelligence officers/cybersecurity execs?

        – those arrests, combined with the deaths of a number of Russian diplomats?

        – DC Leaks?

        – the campaign hacks generally?

        – the campaign and election hacks?

        – Trump/Russia?

          • maybe ryan says:

            I hope you will.  You’ll see below that even if I’m getting the general scope of your theory correct, I’m unable to do all the work needed to make solid sense of all the pieces of evidence.  I think we’d all love to know where your heading.

          • maybe ryan says:

            I’m fascinated/flabbergasted at the idea that you’ve got a channel to someone with an inside view of a Russian treason case.  I’m sure you can’t tell us more, but I wish.  Inside makes it sound like the source is a senior Russian official, but that just seems pretty hard to conceive.

          • lefty665 says:

            Is this the Russian connection, the “patriotic thieves” under the wing of the FSB who did at least the DNC and Podesta exploits?

            • Franklin says:

              Are we actually taking the CrowdStrike version of events as accepted fact? Even though not a single one of our intel people has ever been able to examine the servers personally? And not even consider the suggested possibility that it was in fact a leak and not a hack, and not at all done by the Russians? Just wondering.

      • Silence Hand says:

        I’m fascinated with the idea that contemporary Russian power is a weird hybrid of neo-fascist regime, KGB/GRU military apparatus, internet privateers, and “nobody shot me” mafia types.  The right (or probably only) way to approach human intelligence in such a nexus is with tactics developed in mafia-busting.  It’s a given that assets and maybe even operatives will also effectively be pirates (or are involved with their support system in some way).  I think this is what your posts regarding Stoyanov et al. get at – though Mikhailov is another matter entirely to my thinking.  The issue with a privateering system is getting everybody paid.  It’s not like the criminal hackers are getting a split of treasure and goods hijacked on the high seas and turned over to the government.  More likely they’re allowed to hack Yahoo and stuff (maybe with some state resources?) in exchange for exploits that advance Putin’s strategic goals.

        Enter Trump and cadre.  To what extent are these folks direct metastases of the Russian pirate-state, versus simpletons who give them everything they want for free?   In any event, someday there’ll be stories to rival “The Godfather” coming out of this.  Hopefully fictional.

  3. Silence Hand says:

    @perris, yeah.  That is serious high treason, if true.  Here, though, I think the “stupidity defense” would obscure matters.  When Trump was elected, my first thought was “there go our Russian intelligence assets”, a concern an old friend who used to work in naval intelligence shared. “Right now, if you’re a Russian CIA asset, you’re shitting a brick” were words I recall being said.  Sure enough, Mikhailov gets a black bag over his head and an all-expenses-paid suite in Lefortovo. “Financial irregularities”, nothing to see here.  See: https://themoscowtimes.com/news/the-bell-links-treason-case-against-top-russian-fsb-to-american-election-hacking-59810  The original article for those who read Russian is excellent:  https://thebell.io/kak-amerika-uznala-o-russkih-hakerah/.  Basically, there’s a good case that Trump helped the Russians roll up a substantial part of our asset matrix.  Whether this is just because he’s an easily played sap or because he’s actively working for them kind of doesn’t matter in the end.  No question Pops gave away a lot when he bluntly spilled the beans on Israeli methods and sources in his oval office meeting with Putin’s mucky-mucks and their “photographer”.

    The adversarial relationship between the CIA/NSA and the Russian intelligence apparatus is, of course, pretty much foundational for both sides and has never gone away.  Fuckups aside, it’s a game played at a pretty high level.  Just a little slip can give counterintelligence an edge, and what we have here is a motherfucking slip and slide.  I guess you could say it’s not actually treasonous if you’re just tweeting out classified info along with your rants about basketball players.

    • emptywheel says:

      How would Trump roll up our assets before he became President and at a time when he had a wholly antagonistic relationship with the Deep State? And why did we go on to indict two of these same people?

      • Silence Hand says:

        1.  In the darkest view of the situation, Trump had access to security briefings as President-Elect with information that could, if disclosed intentionally or inadvertently, lead to identification of assets from Nov. 8 forward.  I didn’t say that Trump himself (or whoever else became privy to information – not a small concern) rolled up the assets – my point was that doing so is a primary goal of every IC, and there’s no reason to think that the Russians weren’t/aren’t milking the sloppiness at the top for everything its worth.  Clearly, identifying anyone passing information to us about internet operations was important to them.

        2.  Stoyanov is an interesting case, for sure, but Mikhailov (not indicted by us) is the more deeply troubling of them.  Former FSB cheif.  I’m very interested in your  take on the indictments, something very complex is going on here that isn’t real clear.  Dokuchaev is opaque to me.

         

         

          • Silence Hand says:

            Apologies for being dense, but I don’t see how indictment or mention within it precludes any of these fine upstanding bandits from being intelligence assets.  The indictment certainly suggests that these gentlemen were involved in criminal exploits, but isn’t this kind of what the Russian IC enables (or at least winks at)?

            Thanks.  Enjoying becoming familiar with your work; fortuitous for me that the 10-year retrospectives went up.

        • greengiant says:

          Here is a little help.  Buzzfeed published the dossier around January 11.  Stoyanev and Miklailov were arrested in December. Don’t you think Putin and Milailov’s enemies had the contents of the dossier before Buzzfeed published?

      • Franklin says:

        Answer: Trump wouldn’t have been able to do any of this stuff, except in the minds of Maddow-watching wanna-believers like perris and Silence Hand. Kindly pay them no mind.

        • Silence Hand says:

          Hey, Franklin, thanks for your lesson “Introductory Obtuseness: High Handed Missing of the Point”!

          The point at issue is the possibility that Trump or his close affiliates provided Russian counterintelligence information – intentionally or unwittingly – that allowed identification of US intel assets.  Our IC was highly confident that DNC hacks were perpetrated by Russia, a position almost certainly developed with both signal and human intelligence.  Like any IC or mafia, the Russians naturally prefer that these sources stop providing information.  Here, their interests converge powerfully with those of Trump et al., most notably DJT himself who is enraged that anyone dares to question the legitimacy of his popular vote losing presidency.

          Effective intelligence gathering certainly requires discretion at the top, which we most definitely do not have.

          Sadly, I don’t own a TV and have never watched Maddow.

          • Franklin says:

            Too bad you don’t watch Maddow, so you didn’t get my reference which spoke to the fact that perris’s rawstory link is based on a story by tinfoil-hat Rachel whom The Intercept aptly descirbes as seeing a Russian conspiracy lurking behind every corner.

            I find it hilarious your “obtuseness” charge coming from someone whose views are clearly motivated by politics (“popular-vote losing presidency” which has to do with exactly what in terms of intelligence gathering?). You’re obviously the typical butthurt Hillary or Bernie supporter who’s already made up your mind that Trump’s in bed with Putin, and are just looking for “facts” to confirm your bias. Your aim isn’t to debate what Russia did, it’s to scream what Russia did to help Trump, as a means of reaching the Holy Grail of impeachment. Therefore any real debate with you is impossible.

            It’s politics that steer you clear of inconvenient truths such as the fact that our IC can’t be “highly confident” that Russia hacked the DNC, since as both Comey and Jeh Johnson testified, the DNC wouldn’t allow a single U.S. intel professional to inspect its servers. Instead we all have to rely on the word of Crowdstrike, the DNC’s own private for-hire cybersecurity firm.  Maybe that’s good enough for anti-Trumpers like you, but for some of us it’s insufficient evidence. And since DNC hacking is the “mother” claim of the entire Russian hacking narrative, it’s grounds to question everything related to Russiagate — at least for an objective kind of person.

             

             

    • bmaz says:

      If you are using the word “treason”, you are nuts and have no clue what the legal parameters of “treason” are.

      Please don’t do that.

      • maybe ryan says:

        I think people can use the term treason for adhering to the enemies of the country and its democracy without worrying about whether the etymology of their usage would be upheld in an appellate circuit.   If Trump did it, it’s certainly high treason regardless of what mess the attorneys might make of it.

        Too many professions hijack words and then pretend their definition is the only meaningful one.  The animals being restored on prairies around the midwest are fucking buffalo, regardless of whether some biologist has co-opted the common word for non-bos but bovine grass-eater in order to apply it only to certain clades.  Sure, they can be called bison too, but anybody who tells me I’m wrong in calling them buffalo is a fucking idiot.

        BMaz, that you certainly are not, but scolding someone for having the nerve to say that outing American agents is treason …  It’s one of those professional proclivities smart professionals avoid.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          Outing a covert intelligence asset may be a crime, Valerie Plame could attest to that; unless we’re at war with the relevant party, it can’t be “treason”.  As this site constantly repeats, words matter.

          • SpaceLifeForm says:

            The US Constitution is flawed re Treason because it assumes the enemy is not within, I.E., it *must* be a foreign country that the US is at war with. (declared war or not. See WoT)

          • Silence Hand says:

            Yes, I take the point.  Alger Hiss is widely said to have committed “Treason”, but in actuality was locked up for perjury and I guess taking pictures of fire extinguishers or something.  If he had been caught spying in time, he’d have been sent up for espionage, not Treason.

          • maybe ryan says:

            No one deemed the murder of Wilson by a foreign power a likely result of the Libby outing, whereas it’s a very likely result of outing Russian nationals who are American assets, and EW at least allowed for that possibility in citing the case of Erovinkin in this connection.  I’m curious for your citations of cases or instances where consciously, secretly, arguably in recompense for assistance in taking over the government, sending individual American war-fighting assets to their deaths at the hands of a foreign power was considered wholly outside the definition of treason?  I’ve looked at some of the legal material and didn’t find anything directly relevant.  Maybe your research is more exhaustive.

            Regardless, outing a covert asset most certainly can be treason, which was an English word before it was a statute, and continues to be.  The theory that outing a covert intelligence asset can’t be § 2381 – Treason isn’t relevant.  Words do have meaning.  They are not always coterminous with their definitions at court.

        • Silence Hand says:

          I actually concede BMaz’s point of linguistic precision in a larger sense.  I’m not nuts or clueless however.  My point in using the “T word” is that a high official revealing intelligence gathering methods and sources to a hostile power could arguably be “levying war against the United States”.  I would be one of the people arguing that if Trump were found to be providing key information requested by handlers in Moscow.  I should be clear that I don’t think that’s happening here.  My view is that the Russians probably consider DJT a useful idiot, who will react in a predictable way when enticed to do so.

          In another word, “High Treason” requires demonstrable intent and active collaboration with the hostile power (as the Rosenbergs had).  It is very unlikely that Trump has either of those.  This doesn’t mean that his various id-driven utterances aren’t degrading our capabilities.

          I’ll respond to Marcy’s points separately.

          • bmaz says:

            Yes. And did not mean to imply you are nuts, the larger genre of the invocation of “treason!”, however, is..And not just Hiss, but also the invocation of the Rosenbergs too.

            Oh well, at some point I guess you have to get over it in public discussion, but I sometimes struggle to do so. Fun times we live in, eh?

      • Silence Hand says:

        Adding a bit to my response above:

        Notably, of course, the Rosenbergs weren’t convicted of “Treason” but “Conspiracy to commit espionage”.  Kaufman, however, referred to their “treason” in sentencing them to death.  I do get the legal framework here, and will certainly be more careful to be precise.

        I’ll respond to Marcy’s points separately.

        • maybe ryan says:

          Tried to reply here but it went to the bottom of the comments.

          These are the most interesting 14 words I’ve read in my life.  A charge of treason advanced by a serious, cautious person who dots her i’s and does the math.

          We are in for a wild ride.

      • Silence Hand says:

        Thinking over this thread, nested in the detritus of a clusterfuck news jam.  TREASON: to paraphrase the Supremes on pornographgy, hard to define, but I know it when I see it.

    • maybe ryan says:

      Loved it.  “He’s a patriot.  He can let them know what really happened.”  (That’s actually a paraphrase from recollection, not a quote.)

      The interview accords with my theory, that Papa and Page were simultaneously in and out of the loop, not close enough to know the bargains that were being cut, but close enough to have a lot of useful information that can contradict the stories being woven.  I think that’s why Page can seem so blithe.  He is blithe.  He (believes he) has nothing to hide.  Page may well believe that Trump has nothing to hide either, which seems misguided.

      Papa seems more aware that something was going on.

      The Mangiante line about teaching George to make coffee is brilliant.  Though probably honed in wording and timing over a month of conversations with friends, so it’s not like she just came up with it for the interview.

  4. greengiant says:

    Exactly, what a waste of thought power. Random guy points out hey the NGPVAN is out on the net. Next we get CNN article and at least WaPo has it right as of 1:00 PM Eastern. I want to know who did Weiner in and how come one of Trump’s mouthpieces broke the news.

    • maybe ryan says:

      Chuck Johnson the Claremont Institute alum clearly wrote the girl’s letter.  The McKinley reference (chocolate eclair) is the clincher.

      • greengiant says:

        Julian’s and Dana’s personal buddy Chuck Johnson?  Anyways whomever,  if it was known they used say a hacker of Russian orgin to help in their endeavor in any way well there we went.  The other step in the game is what about VAN and corrupting the election. Lefty and others might know this, can the individual parties or is it the only election officials who can use VAN to crosscheck or otherwise change address etc.  Would the Feds not touch this because “elections” are state regulated thank you very much? Great American tradition to vote early and often and disenfranchise voters. It does reach a new level if some used foreign vendors to hack databases or give actors the current database,  to be modified for the day of the election and then rectified thereafter. The same applies to out sourcing voting machine hacking.

        • maybe ryan says:

          I’d be interested to hear more of what/why you make a big deal of Weiner.  I do think Chuck Johnson was involved.  I haven’t believed the grander conspiracy theories partly because Weiner went down without a fight; and partly because if they were able to put anything (ie, Abedin’s Hillary correspondence) onto his computer, why wouldn’t they have faked something more damaging rather than just dumping emails that Comey’s team had already seen?

          • greengiant says:

            Last first and just making this up out of thin air.

            A.  Weiner’s laptop was straight up synchronizing.  No changes in emails. No bleached emails there.

            B.  A,  except bleached emails there but already redacted by Clinton’s lawyers. Comey won’t touch them.

            C. Ala Gucifer 2.0  and Shadow Brokers, somehow the disk image is corrupted on Weiner’s laptop.  With just enough crazy provocation to back up Prince messaging and Giuliani on the air saying Clinton would be indicted. Just like CNN today, whose fault is it if you have a been trolled by own team excuse. Add in a couple of image files. Enough to get the Albany and/or NYC FBI totally excited. Think child porn the FSB’s true pedophile’s favorite weapon. Maybe something more subtle. For the second investigation cycle Oct 28 to Nov 6th this is considered. The polls show Clinton ahead. Nov 6th is not the day to talk about actors messing with Weiner’s laptop. Basically if someone was setting Weiner up why stop when you can do Clinton as well.

            Recall the most heinous charge was that Clinton’s aides were taking screen shots in the SCIF and attaching them to emails to be sent to Clinton.

            https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/james-comey-fbi-director-letter  comes up in a search. Part of story is that 3 months of lost emails were on the laptop.

          • greengiant says:

            First question last. In previous Wall street/oligarch dealings the “media” has been bought. So no surprise that there might be major disinformation going on. Suppose someone “knows” how Weiner was hacked. They misdirect and blame it on someone else and it is all tin foil. Or they leave out key details.  They will have someone at Zerohedge write a hit piece on them to give them anti Trump credibility.

            Infiltrators and political operatives were sent into both campaigns and into protests. Remember the undercover in the Occupy movement or BLM demonstrations? The guy with the worst anti Trump slur at the rally.  Yes he was a GOP operative not a democrat. Want to charge that demonstrators are paid then go hire some on craigslist. Is there a peaceful protest?  Then send in the Trump antagonists. Then like magic someone attacks one of them and the protest is declared a riot. The attacker is identified but never charged. But there is world wide video of “protesters” attack Trump supporter. The same press that is pulling this off is the one who “found” Weiner.

            Supporting Trump and supporting Assange go hand in hand in the operatives’ personas.

            • maybe ryan says:

              You don’t mention it, but perhaps you know. It wasn’t just any press that found the Weiner story.  It was a particular person at the Daily Mail, Alana Goodman, who is a party-friend of Sputnik-ite Cassandra Fairbanks.  She had just arrived at the DM, and had written almost nothing for them.  The Chuck Johnson role is surmise, but there’s strong enough reason to believe.  He talked about a role in the case, and he studied under the pre-eminent scholar of fin-de-siècle American politics.  There’s really no way a 15-year old girl used a McKinley reference that doesn’t even make sense in the year 2015 (“backbone of a chocolate éclair” – do they even sell chocolate eclairs anymore?  Is there a subculture in which people in this millennium think eclairs are uniquely soft and spineless?)

              So that part of the nexus is pretty clear on Weiner.  It would be interesting to know exactly how Goodman got on the Daily Mail, and exactly how the story came to her.  Remember that the outraged father went to Goodman first!  Not to the FBI or local law enforcement, who at least putatively found out from the article.  No, he went to a cub reporter at a British newspaper.  Like any outraged father would.

              • greengiant says:

                If the Nixon whitehouse was behind the Muskie letter then we can assume Trump was behind both #fakenews on Clinton and the latest CNN jump.  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/pizzagate-anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-w511904 for some words on how the Weiner #Fakenews was pushed.

                • greengiant says:

                  EW tweets I don’t normally recommend Seth. But do read the first 68 tweets of this. https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/939432544008921088   truepundit.com is mentioned by Macedonian #fakenews repeater in the rollingstone article.   You can also check the poorly retweeted twitter/true_pundit today or on the wayback machine.  The twitter account dates back to March 2015 with a July 16 2016 archive with 512 tweets.   Per Seth the Weiner laptop was never read in NYC and it was all #Fakenews by team #TrumpRussia and still active today attacking Mueller.  @thomas1774paine claims to be @true_pundit and Gerald Loeb award winner and two times nominated Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting nominee.

                  @thomas1774pain has 3 times the followers.  July 15, 2016 was the night of the attempted coup in Turkey,  the Republican conventions started July 18.

                   

                  • greengiant says:

                    I missed this at the time,  May 10, 2017  “the FBI acknowledged that only a “small number” of more than 49,000 “potentially relevant” emails found on Weiner’s laptop had been forwarded from Clinton deputy Huma Abedin to Weiner, her husband, not hundreds or thousands as Comey had stated. The FBI said just two of those messages contained classified information.”

                    https://www.propublica.org/article/comeys-testimony-on-huma-abedin-forwarding-emails-was-inaccurate

                    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/09/why-does-it-matter-how-many-clinton-emails-were-on-anthony-weiners-computer/

                    Comey did not know or would not say what was on the laptop. The FBI came out with nothingburger on Weiners laptop to the press in May after Comey’s hearing. Just a few Clinton emails not 690,000 or whatever spun us up in 2016. The first 8 weeks or three months of missing emails was when Clinton was using a blackberry and have not shown up.

                    Going with totally successful ratfucker fakenews operation similar to 3 million alien voters in California and 6,000 New Hampshire voters bused in from Massachusetts. Old theory means more work of actually hacking Weiner’s computer at NYPD/FBI or earlier and suggested both Comey/Trump deal to bury it took place and continuous FBI misinformation. Now I get why Democrats were super pissed at Comey’s October surprise.

        • lefty665 says:

          Hi GG, there’s a hierarchy of access all the way from local Dem committee volunteers up to Perez about what can be seen or changed in VAN data. But, I never saw anyone with access who could not change (correct) basic data like addresses in records they had access to. Election officials have access based on their position in the Party. Breadth of data visible varies with position, both whose basic records (name, address, voting history, etc) can be accessed and how much other data in the record can be seen or manipulated. Different people have different views of the data. For example, OFA had access to the basic voter records for our committee’s jurisdiction, much of which we had gathered and input, plus their own data. We did not have access to the OFA input fields, or even records for that matter (a local sore point, OFA generated a huge amount of data from canvassing). A congressional campaign had access to basic voter records for the entire district that spanned close to a dozen local committees, but again not OFA specific voter data. The state Party ran VAN access and had access to the entire data structure. They parceled it out as they deigned to us peasants at the local or campaign levels. Dunno what the state Party’s relationship to the DNC was. There may have been DNC VAN restrictions on state level access.

          Think Hillary and Sanders. Both would have access to basic voter data but not the proprietary stuff entered by the other campaign, like which Dem voters had pledged undying fealty to which candidate. The scandal was when in an update the VAN techies left Hillary fields visible to Sanders operatives, and vice versa.  I would not be surprised to find that Hillary’s campaign had access to the OFA data and Sanders did not, but that’s getting pretty far down into the weeds of cooking the primary.

          • greengiant says:

            Thanks Lefty.  You said anyone with access could correct the address.  In your state(s)  this was for voting roll purposes or only for party data base purposes?  What is OFA? Thanks again.

            • maybe ryan says:

              There’s no access for correcting voter rolls from the outside.  I can say that with authority.

              The only direct route into the voter rolls is that many states now have online registration.  In my experience, it is secured by a significant amount of personal identifying information, including, in my state, the date of issue of your driver’s license, which isn’t commonly held by private information databases.  It’s conceivable someone could hack such info somewhere (probably only a DMV itself would have data in the scale needed), then use it to update records to incorrect addresses.  I’ve not seen that particular offense alleged, and everyone alleging related things seems to have no idea what they’re talking about.

              Aside from that, jurisdictions of any size typically have the real voter rolls substantially firewalled, with data-trimmed mirrors used for public facing operations.

    • SpaceLifeForm says:

      DrainIng the swamp exercise?

      Apparently there are plenty of leaks coming from Congress.

      But, this comment about ‘not read’ caught my eye. From the wapo article.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/email-offering-trump-campaign-wikileaks-documents-referred-to-information-already-public/2017/12/08/61dc2356-dc37-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html

      “The email was never read or responded to — and the House Intelligence Committee knows this,” he [Futerfas] said. “It is profoundly disappointing that members of the House Intelligence Committee would deliberately leak a document, with the misleading suggestion that the information was not public, when they know that there is not a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Trump Jr. read or responded to the email.”

      Futerfas said that he and Trump Jr. had been required to surrender their electronic devices during the interview for security reasons. He expressed anger that details of the session leaked out before it had even concluded.

      [Wonder how he knows the leak really happened before end of session, for a fact]

      [Briefly, IMAP and POP3 are email protocols. POP3 is old. With POP3, when the user pulls their emails from their email provider, the entire email is delivered to the users computer. For all intents and purposes, it no longer exists on the email providers server.

      With IMAP, only the email headers (From, To, Date, Subject, etc) are initially delivered to the users computer. The body (the actual message) stilll resides on the email providers server. Only when you want to read it does the body get pulled over the net.

      Key is that is does not disappear on the server.

      This allows one to check their email from multiple devices and not lose track]

      [How could one know that an email was ‘not read’? Because Trump Jr must have been able to convince IC dummies that he was using IMAP instead of POP3. Which does not really prove that the email was not read. For example, with gmail you can use both IMAP and POP3 simultaneously. So, would have to see his email address and also know what email client software jr was using. And if windows (likely), then there is good chance that he was not really using IMAP]

      https://www.outlook-apps.com/download-headers-only/

      [Bottom line: there is no proof that Jr eyeballs did not see the body of the email. Or the others that were recipients of the email]

      [And how did Michael J. Erickson collect all of the recipient email adresses in the first place? Major donor?]

      https://www.outlook-apps.com/download-headers-only/

      • orionATL says:

        your comments on imap and pop3 provide depth. much appreciated.

        among others, it explains why my isp hassels me from time to time about my disk space on his system being full.

        how could that be i argue.

        • maybe ryan says:

          Unless you’re storing Netflix movies in your email, that can’t be, and those emails from your ISP are really from hackers.  Or maybe you have a very small indie ISP.

          • orionATL says:

            nah. it’s because he gives so little space and we never pay attention to isp storage. when we are reprimanded and forced to go in and delete on isp’s disk the damned stuff stays there in “trash”. we must delete twice. this ain’t at&t :)

            i couldn’t use all the storage gmail provides me seperately in a millenium.

      • greengiant says:

        Hmm.  Well Jr. was the supposed contact person and also the one who hired and managed Parscale?  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/   When the bad news is about to come out,  then is the best time to distract and devalue ala Rather.

      • greengiant says:

        Still about wikileaks and Jr.?   Jr. hired and managed Parscale?   https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/

    • greengiant says:

      Been burned by #Fakenews a number of times,  the problem is that you have actors on all sides trying to get someone to run with it.  Like the Koch brothers and OKeefe spinning up the WaPo. Possibly no accident here,  possibly just a mistake on someone’s part.

    • SpaceLifeForm says:

      CNN updates:

      CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 — 10 days earlier — based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email.

      [So just two sources/leakers now?
      And two people get the date wrong? Hmmm]

      • greengiant says:

        They were probably fed #fakenews by a troll like O’keefe.  If something fits what you hope for  it is easy to believe what you see.

        I could say the GOP was set up by Gucifer/etc  and so on in the same way.  Did Giuliani and Prince make that shit up about Hillary?  Anyway there is no end of mileage in havoc.   4chan was all over the supposed Clinton porn tapes and DOS the weekend before the election.  Slightly different scam, but whatever.

        • Silence Hand says:

          Honestly, this is a pretty minor thing – on a Friday, no less.  Barely a blip on the news cycle, and CNN/WSJ hopefully get to vet sources (or at least tighten editorial policy).  Correction in  ~12h is pretty damned good for normal humans and historical standards.

  5. maybe ryan says:

    Wow. So you think treason is the appropriate term “in this case” which presumably is the case of the lost American intel assets. You think it’s inaptly targeted, because “how could Trump know …”

    So you think that someone else committed treason, by selling out the American assets, in the window before the administration took office. (Why get greedy? Why move early?) Who? Someone with the highest clearance. Someone who know where to look and what he was looking for. Someone who thought he was in. Like …

    Thereby casting Trump in the role I was auditioning Page and Papa for. A naïf at the absolute highest level, sold out by the mercenary degenerates he had hired. Himself degenerate, vice-riddled, yet innocent of the particular crime, and so angry and self-righteous in his defense of the very men who sold him out – Paul “Cash” Manafort, Jared “Kush” Kushner, and Michael “Squish” Flynn. But most egregiously Flynn.
    I almost want to sign this with a different pseudonym, since even EW seems to shy away from giving more than hints. Except who the f**k cares about me. If that’s the case, it’s going to be explosive.

    Now to go back and re-read the Stoyanov Degrees of Separation post 6 or 8 times till I figure out every last implication, insinuation and ellipsis.

    • maybe ryan says:

      This would explain some of the ridiculousness of the whole affair.  Cobb’s strategy of cooperation on the theory the President has no exposure.  Maybe he (thinks he) doesn’t.  The idea that anyone needed to tell the Russians not to respond to Obama’s sanctions.  If Trump’s election was in part the culmination of a long, tightly coordinated operation between Trump, his campaign and the Russians, surely they would get that Obama’s actions had nothing to do with Trump, and they’d just wait 6 weeks.  The likewise strange, amateurish meetings and contacts.

      If there was no conspiracy, but instead a dozen conspiracies major and minor, unaware of each other, by the various reprobates, degenerates, naïfs and assholes in the campaign, then at the end, the Russians might have believed they won, while having no idea what they’d won or who they were supposed to talk to.  Meanwhile, Cash Manafort is gone; Papa and Page are too low level; Kush Kushner thinks he needs a better line of communications and maybe he should just ask the Russians to set it up; and Squish Flynn is off to the Caribbean to talk on his super secret spy phone.

      The Keystone Kops do High Treason.

      I think we need a new remake of Get Smart.

      • Silence Hand says:

        I think “Keystone Kops do High Treason” is on the money.  Chaos and idiocy, however, is not a defense.  In and of itself, and in my personal opinion, that should disqualify this bizarre cadre from leading the free world.

  6. maybe ryan says:

    [Crap – I lost the post above, then re-wrote it, but now it’s fuera de serie.  It was intended to be a direct reply to Marcey’s “um.  I think it (treason) is highly appropriate.” comment far above.]

    Of course, my attempt to draw out her hints could be completely off target.  If I’ve caught her implication, and if she’s right, then Mueller and his crew have shown extraordinary self-restraint in charging Flynn with a minor crime for the moment.

      • Silence Hand says:

        Agree.  What did they know, and when did they know it?  Of most interest, the period between Nov 8 and the moment Mikhailov got a black bag over his head.  Certainly US IC, or parts of it anyhow, would like to know.  I wonder if the number of current US assets in Russia is > zero.

        Given DJT’s ADHD-fueled inability to sit through intelligence briefings, who else was receiving intel post Nov. 8? And, how interested might they be in eliminating sources of information about Russian hacking?

        Where was Bannon in all of this?

      • maybe ryan says:

        Sorry to be utterly obtuse.  But I’m not sure whether you’re saying “not that” to the idea I even interpreted your hint about treason correctly at all.  Or whether “not that” is a reply to my concern that I’m off target?

    • Silence Hand says:

      I think your analysis is on the money.  But what would the framers think of this fucking corrupt free-for-all?  Is our system even prepared to deal with it?

      • maybe ryan says:

        Well, it’s just my interpretation of EW’s likely theory.  Any errors mine, any insights hers.

        More like my floundering effort to follow the breadcrumbs she has left.  I’ve been thinking since.  The theory also seems to fit well with EW’s New York Review article, where she suggests that more happened in Flynn’s conversations than Mueller has told us he’s asking about; and that in particular, Flynn gave them something big by Dec. 29th.

        But Erovinkin happened on 12/26.  Stoyanov and Mikhaylov if I remember were both arrested  earlier in December.  So I’m clearly not connecting the dots correctly.

        Flynn could’ve provided those names earlier. But then what was the big deal about 12/22 and 12/29. If Flynn had already provided those names, then Putin had already gotten his payoff, and there should have been little need to smooth over the sanctions, since everyone knew they were all in.

        Still, the idea that Flynn did something much more heinous than “just” reassuring the Russians about sanctions (setting aside that it might be a felony violation of the Logan Act) fits well with the Sally Yates warning. It always seemed a little weird to warn the White House about Flynn if he Flynn was following the new administrations wishes. But if he was giving the Russians American assets, that’s different.

        It also makes sense of the IC’s willingness to let the Russians learn about their ability to monitor communications channels they may have believed were secure – if such significant secrets have already been handed off.

        • maybe ryan says:

          In trying to remember more exactly what Yates is said to have told McGahn, I found this CBS News piece, a decent summary if anyone needs one, but I just want to point out that they call Yates an “Obamacare administration holdover.”  Just a slip of the tongue, but pretty amusing.

          https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-sally-yates-said-about-michael-flynn-to-white-house-counsel/

          Yates says she tells McGahn that “Flynn’s underlying conduct was problematic in and of itself.” This seems awfully coy if you’re describing someone you know to have given away American intel assets. But I don’t know how you communicate something like that. Particularly if there is some underlying question of revealing classified sources. I don’t know what McGahn was written in on.

          • Silence Hand says:

            What’s with the intensive parsing of “making untrue statements” versus “lying” that CBS reports here?  Cripes, it’s nearly Clintonian…

  7. orionATL says:

    between 2-4 this afternoon i wrote a comment, then edited it. with 18 secs to spare i entered it. the entire comment disappeared into the bit bucket.

    in modesty, i must assert no big loss to the world.

    but there is one paragraph of questions i would like to reenter:

    fusion-glenn simpson, aka, fusion-gps was involved in spring 2016 in 3 or 4 activities that involved the the russians. tl

    -they did oppo work for some republicans on trump

    – they did oppo work for democrats on trump thru a dem law firm

    – they did work for a russian corporation named prevezon accused of fraud by the dept of justice. for that they were hired by bakerhostetler.

    – one of their associates (or employees) attended a july 9, 2016 meeting in trump tower with donald, jr. and an unusual number of other russian types, a very unusual number.

    what connections, if any, are there between these 4 endevors as far as fusion-glenn simpson is concerned?

    somewhere recently, maybe from ew, i read that fusion had hired christopher steele in close time proximaty to the 7/9 trump tower confab – where, as the grim fable we are read goes, nothing bad went down.

    i do wonder though if fusion’s hiring steele to research russian intent on helping trump get elected might have been an outcome of hearing about the 7/9 meeting?

  8. greengiant says:

    Reply in thread is not working today. In reply to maybe Ryan concerning Weiner gate.
    The press has Johnson and others involved in gamer gate. The theory that crackas with attitude was involved includes the Sputnik reporters tweets to them and request for interview when they were being arrested and arraigned.That seems to be misdirection or flawed.
    The political editor of the dailymail is not mentioned prominently in those theories. Yet he worked at the daily caller and attended the candidate on the Trump plane in 2016. After the election it was said he was in the running for White House communications director or Spicer’s job. Imagine that. Someone from team Trump the political editor where Weiner was busted. For how Weiner was busted and what differences if any were on the laptop we have crickets from the FBI and crazy accusations from Prince and Giuliani.
    To close the loop CWA, ( two failed to launch North Carolinians and three very young British teens?), passes their Brennan and Clapper thefts on to Wikileaks and the Trump operatives are “defenders of Wikileaks”. Did the script kiddies have any help like someone passing on an exploit?

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