Trump campaign collusion?

Here's an interesting Twitter thread about the timing of Trump's unusual change in advertising locations a couple of weeks after the Russian hack of the DNC analytics.

Well, you can bet if it was done upon receipt of information from the Russians, Mueller knows it.

I'm starting to get concerned about what the Trump cabal might do once it settles in that Mueller really does have the goods on them.  I find it impossible to believe, judging by their behavior to date, that they'll just roll over and accept their fate.

Analyzing the latest Mueller indictments

The government has now alleged that the social media manipulations by Russian actors constituted a criminal conspiracy. It has alleged as well that the hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails were crimes conducted by officers of the Russian state. The question remains: Who, if anyone, helped?

[...]

[If]f the hacking indictment was generally expected, nobody seemed to see it coming this week before today’s announcement of an 11:45 am press conference. Special Counsel Robert Mueller moved with his usual combination of patience and strict operational security, and even though Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein briefed President Trump on the coming action before the Leaker in Chief left town, the matter held until Rosenstein disclosed it at a Justice Department press conference.

[...]

If Mueller had been trying to remind the public of what the investigation is really about and what the stakes are in it, if he had been trying to make a public statement in response to the Strzok hearing, he could not have timed this action better.

But, to be clear, Mueller was not trying to make a press statement. We know that not merely because that’s not the way Mueller operates but also because Rosenstein said specifically at his press conference that he had briefed the president on the matter before Trump left town.

[...]

Let’s presume that Mueller did not time this indictment to precede the [Helsinki] summit by way of embarrassing Trump on the international stage. It is enough to note that he also did not hold off on the indictment for a few days by way of sparing Trump embarrassment—and that Rosenstein did not force him to. Indeed, Rosenstein said at his press conference that it is “important for the president to know what information was uncovered because he has to make very important decisions for the country” and therefore “he needs to know what evidence there is of foreign election interference.”

  Lawfare Blog

Except Trump's only concern is his personal relationship with the Russian mobsters and businessmen who are intimately connected to Vladimir Putin.

Put less delicately: Rosenstein has informed the president, and the world, before Trump talks to Putin one-on-one that his own Justice Department is prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in public, using admissible evidence, that the president of the Russian Federation has been lying to Trump about Russian non-involvement in the 2016 election hacking.

Which is why the Republicans in the House are frantically trying to set up an impeachment of Rosenstein in the hopes of stopping Mueller. Even if they do get rid of Rosenstein, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Mueller already has indictments laid out and waiting for the principals in the Trump campaign and administration, up to and including Trump himself that would immediately be presented to the Grand Jury. If they haven't already been done - if that's possible.

Based on these factual allegations, the indictment includes 11 counts. The first count, citing all of the facts summarized above, charges nine defendants with conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2)(C), 1030(a)(5)(A), 1030(c)(2)(B), 1030(c)(4)(B), 371 and 3559(g)(1)).

[...]

The second count charges 11 defendants with aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028A(a)(1) and(2). The indictment describes the offense as “knowingly transfer[ing], possess[ing], and us[ing], without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person during and in relation to” the commission of computer fraud.

[...]

The [indictment also] charges the defendants with conspiracy to launder more than $95,000 in cryptocurrency with the intention of promoting unlawful activity in the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h).

[...]

The last count charges two of the GRU officers, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk and Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, with conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. The object of the conspiracy was to hack into and steal voter information stored on computers used by people and entities administering the 2016 election.

[...]

In October, Kovalev and others targeted state and local election offices in Georgia, Iowa and Florida, seeking to identify their websites’ vulnerabilities. And in November 2016, the conspirators sent more than 100 spearphishing emails to state and local election officials in Florida.

[...]

The indictment alleges a detailed and wide-ranging conspiracy to hack into the computers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and others and to reveal information in order to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The special counsel charges 12 officials of the Russian military intelligence agency (“GRU”) with targeting more than 300 individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party or the campaign and leaking tens of thousands of stolen documents.

[...]

[Starting in March 2016, the GRU] conspirators engaged in “spearphishing,” or sending fraudulent emails with embedded links to GRU-created websites disguised to look like trusted entities, such as Google security notifications, ostensibly asking recipients to change their password but, in reality, tricking the targeted users into revealing their login credentials.

Using these stolen credentials, the hackers logged into the targeted users’ personal and campaign email accounts. Later that month, the hackers began researching the computer networks of the DCCC and DNC to identify technical vulnerabilities and connected devices. In April 2016, the conspirators hacked into the DCCC computer network and installed malware to spy on users and steal information.

[...]

On June 8, 2016—one day before the Trump Tower meeting at which Russian actors met with senior Trump campaign officials promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton—the indictment alleges that the conspirators launched the website DCLeaks.com, which they labeled as being started by “American hacktivists.” That month, according to the indictment, the group began releasing materials it had stolen from individuals tied to the Clinton campaign as well as documents stolen from other operations dating to 2015, including emails from individuals affiliated with the Republican Party.

[...]

In mid-June 2016, when the Democrats publicly acknowledged that they had been hacked, the indictment alleges that the conspirators created the online persona Guccifer 2.0, which they described as a “lone Romanian hacker” to undermine claims of Russian responsibility for the hacks.

And it's about this time that the public started to be inundated with complaints about Russian hacking, without the necessary verification and details to wash away legitimate skepticism. In August, Harry Reid wrote a letter to James Comey insisting he let the public in on the investigation enough to clear up any doubt. Instead, Comey only made public the investigation into Hillary Clinton's & her team's emails and her server. Whether we would have still ended up with Trump as president is just speculation at this point. But it was really a spectacular fucking Comey gave this country, whether that was his intention or not.

And it seems to me that there could just as easily be a charge of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act leveled against Trump himself for very publicly calling on Russia to steal and release Hillary's emails.

Additionally, the indictment shows a massive, and successful, counterintelligence operation by the U.S. government against the Russian government. U.S. authorities do not rely merely on technical forensics for the conclusion that the hack and release of emails was a Russian operation; the indictment also lays out the departments within the Russian government that were behind it, specific individuals who were involved, which officers did what and when, the slang terms used internally, and the breakdown of responsibilities within the teams—down to identifying the specific officers with hands on keyboards.

And this is how they got John Podesta's email account (let it be a lesson to all of us):

If you get anything from any company you deal with that asks you to change your password, be safe.  Don't do it from the link in the email/text.  If you think you need to change your password, go directly to the website where you have your account, log in with your current information just as you normally would to access your account, and change your password on your profile information there.

hile the indictment does not charge any American with specific criminal conduct, it does describe conduct by Americans that, depending on further factual development, raises potentially serious questions. The most striking example of this occurs in paragraph 43(a): “On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.”

We don't know who this "candidate for the U.S. Congress" is, or whether he/she was subsequently elected. But don't be surprised if there aren't other Congress critters who get nailed in this investigation.

Continue reading the Lawfare Blog article on the Mueller indictments.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why didn't the FBI take the DNC's server to investigate?

Trump keeps asking that question, and I've wondered about it myself.  I haven't until now ever seen an explanation.



So, the answer then is they didn't need to physically take it.  They simply copied it.  This should probably be addressed every time Trump tweets the question.  (This particular tweet was from June 28.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's message to Russian hackers

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," then-candidate Donald Trump said at a July 27, 2016 press conference in Florida, urging Russian hackers to work to find emails belonging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

"I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

[...]

He also posted on Twitter, urging Russia "or any other country or person" to release Clinton emails.

[...]

Although he later said he was speaking in jest, the comment was made the same day that Russian state hackers are now alleged to have made fresh attempts to hack Clinton campaign emails.

According to an indictment handed up on Friday against 12 Russian military officers by special counsel Robert Mueller, the hackers on July 27, 2016 "attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton's personal office." [emphasis added]

[...]

Spearphishing refers to the practice of attempting to steal a person's password or gain access to their computer.

[...]

"At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign," Mueller wrote.

  Buzzfeed

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.



UPDATE:



UPDATE:

Friday indictments

The Justice Department announced indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election against 12 Russian nationals, accusing them of engaging in a "sustained effort" to hack Democrats' emails and computer networks.

All 12 defendants are members of the GRU, a Russian federation intelligence agency within the main intelligence directorate of the Russian military, who were acting in "their official capacities."

DOJ says the hacking targeted Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with the intention to "release that information on the internet under the names DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 and through another entity."

  CNN

Twelve Russians.  Which means we won't get any satisfaction. What it may also mean, however, is that Mueller is nearing the end of that facet of the investigation, which must include Junior's Trump Tower fiasco. I do hope we get to see Junior indicted before long.

"There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime," he said at a news conference. "There is no allegation that the conspiracy altered the vote count or changed any election result."

Trying to mitigate His Lardship's inevitable shitfit? He has to go to Putin now with this information.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Is requesting and receiving stolen documents from a foreign agent not a crime?

An interesting twist in the DNC-Guccifer hacking story

On Jeremy Scahill's current podcast, ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern tells Jeremy that Bill Binney, ex-NSA intelligence officer, computer programmer and whistle-blower, has researched the DNC hack and determined it was an inside job. The reason he gives is that the download time to get the files was too short to have been done outside the system. The time it took to download the emails suggests it was done from the internal system onto a thumb drive. IF that's true, who would have done that and then turned the file over to the Russian Guccifer? Or is that how it happened?

Lots of questions, lots of answers. Are any of them right?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

One step closer to Roger Stone's orange jumpsuit

Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.

That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.

[...]

[O]n one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation.

[...]

Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story. But the attribution of Guccifer 2.0 as an officer of Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency would cross the Kremlin threshold—and move the investigation closer to Trump himself.

Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone admitted being in touch with Guccifer over Twitter’s direct messaging service. And in August 2016, Stone published an article on the pro-Trump-friendly Breitbart News calling on his political opponents to “Stop Blaming Russia” for the hack. “I have some news for Hillary and Democrats—I think I’ve got the real culprit,” he wrote. “It doesn’t seem to be the Russians that hacked the DNC, but instead a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0.”

[...]

“I myself had no contacts or communications with the Russian State, Russian Intelligence or anyone fronting for them or acting as intermediaries for them,” he wrote.

  Daily Beast

Either he's lying or he didn't know who he was talking to.  I'm guessing it's the former.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.