No wonder the Mueller investigation is taking so long

The Mueller probe is going to be one of those things that's so complicated it will be able to be buried again.

US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what multiple US intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.

[...]

In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange information with other countries.

[...]

The first chapter in this extraordinary chain of communications began in late 2015, when a unit of the Treasury Department called the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes entered into an agreement, named the ISIL Project, that called for Russia and the US to share information on financial institutions in the Middle East suspected of supporting ISIS.

According to a senior FinCEN intelligence analyst, Russia’s subsequent actions suggest that was just a cover. “What we were seeing with Russia was the fruition of a long-term strategy to try and compromise Treasury by cultivating civil servants. That’s why we sounded the alarm and reported it.”

[...]

Analysts at an elite agency within Treasury first warned supervisors in 2016 that the Russians were “manipulating the system” to conduct “fishing expeditions.” And they raised fears that the Treasury’s internal systems could be compromised by viruses contained in emails from the unofficial Russian accounts. But staff continued using the Gmail back channel into 2017, despite repeated internal warnings that Russia could be trawling for sensitive financial records — including Social Security and bank account numbers — to spy on, endanger, or recruit targets in the West.

[...]

But documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal that Russia’s attempts to extract information about Western targets triggered alarms inside the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, a powerful unit of the Treasury Department with exclusive access to the most comprehensive and sophisticated financial database in the world.

Officials at FinCEN said they reported the use of the back channel to Treasury’s counterterrorism unit and security office, and requested an investigation. They said it was a breach of protocol and that it exposed the Treasury to potential hackers because the Russian messages contained attachments — a common way for intruders to worm inside an organization’s servers.

[...]

The FinCEN officials reported the incidents in July and August 2016, and claim that there was no substantive investigation of the matter. These sources said that other senior officials continued to use the back channel even after they were told to stop by the Treasury’s office for security.

[...]

FinCEN is a critical US law enforcement agency that each day collects and analyzes thousands of bank reports about suspicious financial behavior. Analysts have played a key role in current investigations by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller, assisting FBI agents with inquiries into the murky finances of President Donald Trump and his associates.

Yet hundreds of internal records and interviews with more than a dozen insiders — from frontline workers to senior leaders — show an agency in turmoil, torn apart by turf battles, sinking morale, and internal chaos. Officials there say that, as a result, the unit struggles to hold the line against global money launderers, terrorist organizations, and drug cartels, and lies vulnerable to foreign threats.

Critical financial records on some Trump associates and Russian figures, collected by FinCEN analysts, have not been turned over to Congress, despite numerous requests. And more than a dozen FinCEN officials say that a rivalry with another unit of the Treasury Department cost them several crucial hours of work to track suspects’ movements in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 London Bridge terror attack.

  Buzzfeed

Are we getting the picture that this country is in serious trouble? Good thing we have such a competent leader in the White House.

And where's Mnuchin in all this?  Writing his damned name on the walls at Fort Knox?  Posing with gold bars and sheets of greenbacks?

There's a lot of detail in this report if you care to know more.

 Oh yeah...



And there's the possibility of a government shutdown to think about. So if you're going to read the above article you might want to wait until after Christmas. And try not to worry. It's enough that the troops are coming home, right?