Thread: Mueller's Russian Interference investigation

GOP Activist Peter W. Smith Reportedly Raised $100K From Secret Donors in Hunt for Clinton Emails

Longtime Republican activist Peter W. Smith raised at least $100,000 from unidentified donors for a "scholarship fund…for Russian students" as part of an effort to obtain emails stolen by hackers from Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reports.


Smith’s activities were first reported by the Journal in 2017, when federal investigators first began zeroing in on his financial transactions to determine whether he had paid any members of the Russian government as part of the effort. Smith’s activities have reportedly warranted special scrutiny because the opposition researcher himself is said to have told acquaintances he was working with Michael Flynn, who was then a top adviser to candidate-Trump and later went on to become one of the first former Trump aides to be indicted in Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation.


New details revealed by the Journal on Sunday suggest Smith’s activities were far more extensive than previously known and may very well have involved Russian figures.

who would've guess that russians were involved.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-ac...clinton-emails

Originally Posted by raycarey

who would've guess that russians were involved.

They are involved..

of course.

with this crowd it's always the russians.

every.
single.
time.

it's never the spanish or the swedes or the pakistanis or whoever.....it's always the russians.

btw, there's an interesting article in the most recent new yorker about that weird server connection between trump tower and a russian bank.

^Also this.

https://nypost.com/2018/10/08/feds-f...-side-mansion/

Helicopter crash occurred on 3 October, but hardly in the news.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rosecutor.html

Crash specifics: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=215990

Sometimes reading this stuff makes me feel distraught.

The linked article gives away how Gates wanted Republican conventions delegates targeted with emails from fake accounts to persuade them to vote for Trump. Then, manipulate general election voters the same way.

I’m betting even if the PsyGroup didn’t do it, another group did.

Rick Gates Solicited Proposal for Online Disinformation Campaign to Help Trump

Rick Gates Solicited Proposal For Online Disinfo Campaign

Originally Posted by misskit

Sometimes reading this stuff makes me feel distraught.

I know what you mean. Ditto seeing how readily and easily some people are duped into believing obvious bullshit also.

If I see / read something I don't agree with or think is incorrect I fact check it. If I see / read something I do agree with or think is correct I fact check it, multiple times.

It doesn't mean I'm right 100% of the time, far from it, but it's not that fucking hard to do and it's just common sense.

Common sense = rare apparently ...

How much longer is he gonna drag this out?

Originally Posted by uncle junior

How much longer is he gonna drag this out?

Who knows, as long as it takes I suppose.

It has only been a year and a half, Whitewater went on for four years.

I don't get the imposition of arbitrary and subjective timelines to it all.

Originally Posted by misskit

^Also this.

https://nypost.com/2018/10/08/feds-f...-side-mansion/

Like sands through the hour glass,....
Mr D (Russian oligarch) let his friend Mr A's ex-wife stay in the mansion. Ex Mrs A is a close friend of Ivanka. Mr A (another Russian oligarch) is dating Mr D's estranged (not ex) wife.
All very cosy.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Who knows, as long as it takes I suppose.

It has only been a year and a half, Whitewater went on for four years.

I don't get the imposition of arbitrary and subjective timelines to it all.

the longer it drags on the more opportunities trump et al can stack the deck....or maybe that's what Mueller wants.

Sounds about right...

NATO coordinates Information War On Russia
https://www.strategic-culture.org/ne...on-russia.html
[editorial]

The US, Britain and other NATO allies upped the ante this week with a coordinated campaign of information war to criminalize Russia. Moscow dismissed the wide-ranging claims as “spy mania”. But the implications amount to a grave assault recklessly escalating international tensions with Russia.

The accusations that the Kremlin is running a global cyberattack operation are tantamount to accusing Russia of “acts of war”. That, in turn, is creating a pretext for NATO powers to carry out “defensive” actions on Moscow, including increased economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia, as well as “counter” cyberattacks on Russian territory.

This is a highly dangerous dynamic that could ultimately lead to military confrontation between nuclear-armed states.

There are notably suspicious signs that the latest accusations against Russia are a coordinated effort to contrive false charges.

First, there is the concerted nature of the claims. British state intelligence initiated the latest phase of information war by claiming that Russian military intelligence, GRU, was conducting cyberattacks on infrastructure and industries in various countries, costing national economies “millions of pounds” in damages.

Then, within hours of the British claims, the United States and Canada, as well as NATO partners Australia and New Zealand followed up with similar highly publicized accusations against Russia. It is significant that those Anglophone countries, known as the “Five Eyes”, have a long history of intelligence collaboration going back to the Cold War years against the Soviet Union.

The Netherlands, another NATO member, added to the “spy mania” by claiming it had expelled four members of Russian state intelligence earlier this year for allegedly trying to hack into the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague.

There then followed predictable condemnations of Russia from the NATO leadership and the European Union. NATO was holding a summit in Brussels this week. It is therefore plausible that the timing of the latest claims of Russian “malign activity” was meant to coordinate with the NATO summit.

More sanctions against Moscow are expected – further intensifying tensions from already existing sanctions. More sinister were NATO warnings that the military alliance would take collective action over what it asserts are Russian cyberattacks.

This is creating a “casus belli” situation whereby the 29 NATO members can invoke a common defense clause for punitive actions against Russia. Given the rampant nature of the claims of “Russian interference” and that certain NATO members are rabidly Russophobic, it is all too easily dangerous for cyber “false flags” to be mounted in order to criminalize Moscow.

Another telltale factor is that the claims made this week by Britain and the other NATO partners are an attempt to integrate all previous claims of Russian “malign activity”.

The alleged cyber hacking by Russia, it is claimed, was intended to disrupt OPCW investigations into the purported poison-assassination plot against Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy living in Britain; the alleged hacking was also claimed to be aimed at disrupting investigations into alleged chemical weapons atrocities committed by the Syrian government and by extension Syria’s ally Russia; the alleged Russian hacking claims were also linked to charges of Olympic athletes doping, as well as “interference in US elections”; and even, it was asserted, Russia trying to sabotage investigations into the downing of the Malaysian civilian airliner over Ukraine in 2014.

Up to now, it seems, all such wildly speculative anti-Russia narratives have failed to gain traction among world public opinion. Simply due to the lack of evidence to support these Western accusations. The Skripal affair has perhaps turned into the biggest farce. British government claims that the Kremlin ordered an assassination have floundered to the point of ridicule.

It is hardly coincidence that Britain and its NATO allies are compelled to shore up the Skripal narrative and other anti-Russian narratives with the ramped up “global cyberattack” claims made this week. Photographs of alleged Russian intelligence operatives have been published. Potboiler indictments have been filed – again – by US law enforcement agencies. Verdicts have been cast by NATO governments and compliant news media of Russian state culpability, without Moscow being given a fair chance to respond to the “highly likely” claims. Claims and narratives are being accelerated, integrated and railroaded.

It is well-established from the explosive disclosures by Edward Snowden, among other whistleblowers, that the American CIA and its partners have the cyber tools to create false “digital fingerprints” for the purpose of framing up enemies. Moreover, the vast cyber surveillance operations carried out by the US and its “Five Eyes” partners – much of which is illegal – is an ironic counterpoint to accusations being made against Russia.

It is also possible in the murky world of all foreign states conducting espionage and information-gathering that attribution of wrongdoing by Russia can be easily exaggerated and made to look like a campaign of cyberattacks.

There is a lawless climate today in the US and other Western states where mere allegations are cited as “proof”. The legal principle of being innocent until proven guilty has been jettisoned. The debacle in the US over a Supreme Court judge nominee is testament to the erosion of due process and legal standards.

But what is all the more reprehensible and reckless is the intensification of criminalization of Russia – based on flimsy “evidence” or none at all. When such criminalization is then used to “justify” calls for a US-led naval blockade of Russian commercial oil trade the conditions are moving inevitably towards military confrontation. The blame for belligerence lies squarely with the NATO powers. A further irony is that the “spy mania” demonizing Russia is being made necessary because of the wholly unsubstantiated previous claims of Moscow’s malfeasance and “aggression”. Illusions and lies are being compounded with yet more bombastic, illusory claims.

NATO’s information war against Russia is becoming a self-fulfilling “psy-op”. In the deplorable absence of normal diplomatic conduct and respect for international law, NATO’s information war is out of control. It is pushing relations with Russia to the abyss.

^ So you quote another right wing biased site. No surprise..

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/strat...ure-foundation

Based out of Moscow...

https://www.whois.com/whois/strategic-culture.org

You are making this to easy lemming.

Fuck off skkinny, it's bad enough that Hoho has to rely on posting fucking propaganda all the time.

...those Russians...what scoundrels: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.e66c184040b1

^ Paywall there, tc. We can’t get into the WaPo.

Must be US geo-blocked or something because I can access it:

Russian hackers were caught in the act — and the results are devastating




This image released by the Dutch Defense Ministry on Thursday shows the diplomatic passport of Aleksei Morenets, one of four Russian officers of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) expelled from the Netherlands for allegedly trying to hack into the chemical watchdog OPCW's network. (AP)


Dutch authorities have photographs of four Russian military intelligence (GRU) operatives arriving at the Amsterdam airport last April, escorted by a member of the Russian embassy. They have copies of the men’s passports — two of them with serial numbers one digit apart. Because they caught them, red-handed, inside a car parkedbeside the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague — the GRU team was trying to hack into the OPCW WiFi system — Dutch authorities also confiscated multiple phones, antennae and laptop computers.

These have produced a trove of additional information. Among other things, the Dutch have proof that some of these men have been to Malaysia, where they were spying on the team investigating the crash of MH17 , the passenger plane brought down by a Russian missile in eastern Ukraine in July 2014. They have proof that these same men hacked a computer belonging to the World Anti-Doping Agency(WADA), the organization that revealed the drug use by Russian athletes. They found train tickets to Switzerland, where it seems the GRU team was planning to hack the laboratory tasked with identifying Novichok, the chemical nerve agent that their colleagues used to attack an ex-spy in England. They even found a taxi receipt from the cab the team took from GRU headquarters to the Moscow airport.

Once upon a time, the Dutch authorities might have kept all these things to themselves. But not now. On Thursday, the Dutch defense minister presented this plethora of documents, scans, photographs and screenshots on large slides at a lengthy news conference. Within seconds, the images spread around the world. Within hours, Bellingcat, the independent research group that pioneered the new science of open source investigation, had checked the men’s names against several open Russian databases. Among other things, it emerged that, in 2011, one of them was listed as the owner of a Lada (model number VAZ 21093) registered at 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt, the address of the GRU. While they were at it, Bellingcat also unearthed an additional 305 people — names, birthdates, passport numbers — who had registered cars to that very same address. It may be the largest security breach the GRU has ever experienced.

It also represented a new turning point in the West’s fight against the onslaught of Russian disinformation, for this particular GRU team was not engaged in a traditional form of spying. They were not looking for secret information; they were looking for dirt. They wanted embarrassing stories, catty emails or anything at all that would discredit organizations that seek to establish the truth about Russian crimes: OPCW, WADA, the MH17 investigation, the Swiss chemical lab. Had they found anything, they would not have analyzed it in secret, they would have leaked it.

This is a familiar pattern. A similar search for kompromat was one of the motivations for the GRU’s hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, as well as of Hillary Clinton’s election campaign. The GRU agents who ran that operation were also looking for material, however banal, that could be leaked and then spun into compromising, distracting stories that would dominate news cycles and discredit Clinton. In any institution, whether a laboratory or a campaign office, there are private conversations that differ, in language and tone, from announcements made in public. The GRU seeks to exploit this distinction in order to create distrust and suspicion. They can’t alter the verdict of the OPCW or the results of the MH17 investigation, but they can persuade people not to take them seriously.

How to fight back? Here is one way: Do what the Dutch did. Conduct a competent and thorough investigation, and then flash the contents of the GRU’s laptops on a big screen. Do what Bellingcat did and provide confirmation of the Dutch presentation, plus some extra amusing details. Do what the British tabloids did, and think up angry and amusing headlines to describe the whole thing (“Novichumps”). And then let a million social media accounts spread the word.

None of these tactics would work on its own. But when state security institutions and an NGO with a reputation for accuracy combine with traditional media, they can undermine the Russian strategy. Russia’s military intelligence operatives were seeking to create distrust of international institutions. Instead, they have created distrust of Russia itself.

^ I dun used um up.

Always run out of my free articles early in the month.

Originally Posted by misskit

Paywall there, tc. We can’t get into the WaPo.

This add on extenuation/add on will allow you to bypass paywalls for WSJ, WAPO etc..

FIrefox;

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir.../anti-paywall/

Chrome;

https://www.crx4chrome.com/extensions/likpiciaabojkjnaigjfhgdfokcahooc/

Must be another "right-wing" site...no doubt controlled by Moscow.



Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointment
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/19/mueller-investigation-findings-914754

Dems and Hillary fans are going to be more butthurt

That’s some serious conflation you’ve got going on there.

There is actual evidence of attempts to influence the US election by a foreign power but that somehow becomes evidence of a conspiracy behind the conspiracy.

Would it change things if it turns out it was George Soros funded Russian Jews wot done it??