If you're surprised by this, you've been living in a cave

[...]

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

complete thread

ICIJ article

Throwback Thursday

Here's an article from December last year that perhaps didn't get as much atteniton as it deserved.  Of course, with Trump sucking all the air time out of the world, what does?

The article leaves open the possibility that Russia has successfully infiltrated the US Treasury Department - back in the Obama administration - and is siphoning off information.

Whistleblowers are having no luck.

Over the past two years, BuzzFeed News reporters have spoken at length to 12 individuals inside FinCEN. These men and women asked for anonymity to draw back the curtain on breakdowns inside the world’s most powerful financial watchdog. They described an agency turned upside down, where failures left them vulnerable to foreign threats, hampered their ability to investigate financial crimes, and ultimately put the public in danger.

  Buzzfeed

Check it out, if you haven't read it, or if you've forgotten the story.

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

Missing documents led to the leak of Cohen SAR

And the government is investigating the leak, of course.  The leaker, identified only as a law-enforcement official, gave The New Yorker an account, and a reason for leaking.

I'm not going to excerpt this article, because it's pretty packed with information worth reading for yourself. I'll just say, the leaker's reasoning was that the bank document - a suspicious-activity report (SAR) - detailing Cohen's pay-to-play account (with Novartis, AT&T, etc.) refers to two other similar documents which are supposed to be on permanent file at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, (FinCEN), but they seem to be missing. The missing SARs purportedly detail three times the amount of suspicious money noted in the leaked SAR.

The leaker must be truly concerned, because according to the article, the penalty for leaking this information carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

This shit is coming down hard.

OK, I'll excerpt this one bit:

The official who released the suspicious-activity reports was aware of the risks, but said fears that the missing reports might be suppressed compelled the disclosure. “We’ve accepted this as normal, and this is not normal,” the official said. “Things that stand out as abnormal, like documents being removed from a system, are of grave concern to me.” Of the potential for legal consequences, the official said, “To say that I am terrified right now would be an understatement.” But, referring to the released report, as well as the potential contents of the missing reports, the official also added, “This is a terrifying time to be an American, to be in this situation, and to watch all of this unfold.”

  The New Yorker

UPDATE 5/17: