38

CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims

by Aaron Maté, July 5, 2019

At a May press conference capping his tenure as special counsel, Robert Mueller emphasized what he called “the central allegation” of the two-year Russia probe. The Russian government, Mueller sternly declared, engaged in “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American.” Mueller’s comments echoed a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) asserting with “high confidence” that Russia conducted a sweeping 2016 election influence campaign. “I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process,” then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate hearing.

While the 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump’s victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred “principally” on two fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.

But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:

  • The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks.
  • The report’s timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
  • There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
  • Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
  • U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
  • Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
  • Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, “a private Russian entity” known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
  • Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
  • John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party — in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.

None of this means that the Mueller report’s core finding of “sweeping and systematic” Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present sufficient evidence to substantiate it. This shortcoming has gone overlooked in the partisan battle over two more highly charged aspects of Mueller’s report: potential Trump-Russia collusion and Trump’s potential obstruction of the resulting investigation. As Mueller prepares to testify before House committees later this month, the questions surrounding his claims of a far-reaching Russian influence campaign are no less important. They raise doubts about the genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating it.

Uncertainty Over Who Stole the Emails

The Mueller report’s narrative of Russian hacking and leaking was initially laid out in a July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers and is detailed further in the report.  According to Mueller, operatives at Russia’s main intelligence agency, the GRU, broke into Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails in March 2016. The hackers infiltrated Podesta’s account with a common tactic called spear-phishing, duping him with a phony security alert that led him to enter his password. The GRU then used stolen Democratic Party credentials to hack into the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) servers beginning in April 2016. Beginning in June 2016, the report claims, the GRU created two online personas, “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0,” to begin releasing the stolen material. After making contact later that month, Guccifer 2.0 apparently transferred the DNC emails to the whistleblowing, anti-secrecy publisher WikiLeaks, which released the first batch on July 22 ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

The report presents this narrative with remarkable specificity: It describes in detail how GRU officers installed malware, leased U.S.-based computers, and used cryptocurrencies to carry out their hacking operation. The intelligence that caught the GRU hackers is portrayed as so invasive and precise that it even captured the keystrokes of individual Russian officers, including their use of search engines.

In fact, the report contains crucial gaps in the evidence that might support that authoritative account. Here is how it describes the core crime under investigation, the alleged GRU theft of DNC emails:

Between approximately May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, GRU officers accessed the DNC’s mail server from a GRU-controlled computer leased inside the United States. During these connections, Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016. [Italics added for emphasis.]

GRU stolen documents

The report’s use of that one word, “appear,” undercuts its suggestions that Mueller possesses convincing evidence that GRU officers stole “thousands of emails and attachments” from DNC servers. It is a departure from the language used in his July 2018 indictment, which contained no such qualifier:

DNC hacked May-June 2016

“It’s certainly curious as to why this discrepancy exists between the language of Mueller’s indictment and the extra wiggle room inserted into his report a year later,” says former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley. “It may be an example of this and other existing gaps that are inherent with the use of circumstantial information. With Mueller’s exercise of quite unprecedented (but politically expedient) extraterritorial jurisdiction to indict foreign intelligence operatives who were never expected to contest his conclusing assertions in court, he didn’t have to worry about precision. I would guess, however, that even though NSA may be able to track some hacking operations, it would be inherently difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific individuals to the computer transfer operations in question.”

The report also concedes that Mueller’s team did not determine another critical component of the crime it alleges: how the stolen Democratic material was transferred to WikiLeaks. The July 2018 indictment of GRU officers suggested – without stating outright – that WikiLeaks published the Democratic Party emails after receiving them from Guccifer 2.0 in a file named “wk dnc linkI .txt.gpg” on or around July 14, 2016. But now the report acknowledges that Mueller has not actually established how WikiLeaks acquired the stolen information: “The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016.”

Stolen documents

Another partially redacted passage also suggests that Mueller cannot trace exactly how WikiLeaks received the stolen emails. Given how the sentence is formulated, the redacted portion could reflect Mueller’s uncertainty:

Mueller's uncertainty

Contrary to Mueller’s sweeping conclusions, the report itself is, at best, suggesting that the GRU, via its purported cutout Guccifer 2.0, may have transferred the stolen emails to WikiLeaks.

A Questionable Timeline

Mueller’s uncertainty over the theft and transfer of Democratic Party emails isn’t the only gap in his case. Another is his timeline of events – a critical component of any criminal investigation. The report’s timeline defies logic: According to its account, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of the emails not only before he received the documents, but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.

As the Mueller report confirms, on June 12, 2016, Assange told an interviewer, “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton, which is great.” But Mueller reports that “WikiLeaks’s First Contact With Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks” comes two days after that announcement:

WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0

If Assange’s “First Contact” with DC Leaks came on June 14, and with Guccifer 2.0 on June 22, then what was Assange talking about on June 12? It is possible that Assange heard from another supposed Russian source before then; but if so, Mueller doesn’t know it. Instead the report offers the implausible scenario that their first contact came after Assange’s announcement.

There is another issue with the report’s Guccifer 2.0-WikiLeaks timeline. Assange would have been announcing the pending release of stolen emails not just before he heard from the source, but also before he received the stolen emails. As noted earlier, Mueller suggested that WikiLeaks received the stolen material from Guccifer 2.0 “on or around” July 14 – a full month after Assange publicly announced that he had them.

In yet one more significant inconsistency, Mueller asserts that the two Russian outfits running the Kremlin-backed operation — Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks – communicated about their covert activities over Twitter. Mueller reports that on Sept. 15, 2016:

The Twitter account@guccifer_2 sent @dcleaks_ a direct message, which is the first known contact between the personas. During subsequent communications, the Guccifer 2.0 persona informed DCLeaks that WikiLeaks was trying to contact DCLeaks and arrange for a way to speak through encrypted emails.

Why would Russian intelligence cutouts running a sophisticated interference campaign communicate over an easily monitored social media platform? In one of many such instances throughout the report, Mueller shows no curiosity in pursuing this obvious question.

For his part, Assange has repeatedly claimed that Russia was not his source and that the U.S. government does not know who was.  “The U.S. intelligence community is not aware of when WikiLeaks obtained its material or when the sequencing of our material was done or how we obtained our material directly,” Assange said in January 2017. “WikiLeaks sources in relation to the Podesta emails and the DNC leak are not members of any government. They are not state parties. They do not come from the Russian government.”

Guccifer 2.0: A Sketchy Source

While Mueller admits he does not know for certain how the DNC emails were stolen or how they were transmitted to WikiLeaks, the report creates the impression that Russian intelligence cutout Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen material to Assange.

In fact, there are strong grounds for doubt.  To begin with, Guccifer 2.0 – who was unknown until June 2016 – burst onto the scene to demand credit as WikiLeaks’ source. This publicity-seeking is not standard spycraft.

More important, as Raffi Khatchadourian has reported for The New Yorker, the documents Guccifer 2.0 released directly were nowhere near the quality of the material published by WikiLeaks. For example, on June 18, Guccifer 2.0 released documents that it claimed were from the DNC, “but which were almost surely not,” Khatchadourian notes. Neither was the material Guccifer 2.0 teased as a “dossier on Hillary Clinton from DNC.” The material Guccifer 2.0 initially promoted in June also contained easily discoverable Russian metadata. The computer that created it was configured for the Russian language, and the username was “Felix Dzerzhinsky,” the Bolshevik-era founder of the first Soviet secret police.

WikiLeaks only made contact with Guccifer 2.0 after the latter publicly invited journalists “to send me their questions via Twitter Direct Messages.” And, more problematic given the central role the report assigned to Guccifer 2.0, there is no direct evidence that WikiLeaks actually released anything that Guccifer 2.0 provided. In a 2017 interview, Assange said he “didn’t publish” any material from that source because much of it had been published elsewhere and because “we didn’t have the resources to independently verify.”

Mueller Didn’t Speak With Assange

Some of these issues might have been resolved had Mueller not declined to interview Assange, despite Assange’s multiple efforts.

According to a 2018 report by John Solomon in The Hill, Assange told the Justice Department the previous year that he “was willing to discuss technical evidence ruling out certain parties” in the leaking of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks. Given Assange’s previous denials of Russia’s involvement, that seems to indicate he was willing to provide evidence that Moscow was not his source. But he never got the chance. According to Solomon, FBI Director James Comey personally intervened with an order that U.S. officials “stand down,” setting off a chain of events that scuttled the talks.

Assange also made public offers to testify before Congress. The Mueller report makes no mention of these overtures, though it does cite and dismiss “media reports” that “Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”

Mueller does not explain why he included Assange’s comments as reported by media outlets in his report but decided not to speak with Assange directly, or ask to see his “physical proof,” during a two-year investigation.

No Server Inspection, Reliance on CrowdStrike

Before he nixed U.S. government contacts with Assange, Comey was implicated in another key investigative lapse – the FBI’s failure to conduct its own investigation of the DNC’s servers, which housed the record of alleged intrusions and malware used to steal information. As Comey told Congress in March 2017, the FBI “never got direct access to the machines themselves.” Instead, he explained, the bureau relied on CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, which “shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.”

While acknowledging that the FBI would “always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves, if that’s possible,” Comey emphasized his confidence in the information provided by CrowdStrike, which he called “a highly respected private company” and “a high-class entity.”

CrowdStrike’s accuracy is far from a given. Days after Comey’s testimony, CrowdStrike was forced to retract its claim that Russian software was used to hack Ukrainian military hardware. CrowdStrike’s error is especially relevant because it had accused the GRU of using that same software in hacking the DNC.

There is also reason to question CrowdStrike’s impartiality. Its co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the preeminent Washington think tank that aggressively promotes a hawkish posture towards Russia. CrowdStrike executive Shawn Henry, who led the forensics team that ultimately blamed Russia for the DNC breach, previously served as assistant director at the FBI under Mueller.

And CrowdStrike was hired to perform the analysis of the DNC servers by Perkins Coie – the law firm that also was responsible for contracting Fusion GPS, the Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm that produced the now discredited Steele dossier alleging salacious misconduct by Trump in Russia and his susceptibility to blackmail.

A CrowdStrike spokesperson declined a request for comment on its role in the Russia investigation.

The picture is further clouded by the conflicting accounts regarding the servers. A DNC spokesperson told BuzzFeed in early January 2017 that “the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers.” But Comey told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee days later that the FBI made “multiple requests at different levels,” but for unknown reasons, he explained, those requests were denied.

While failing to identify the “different levels” he consulted, Comey never explained why the FBI took no for an answer. As part of a criminal investigation, the FBI could have seized the servers to ensure a proper chain of evidentiary custody. In investigating a crime, alleged victims do not get to dictate to law enforcement how they can inspect the crime scene.

The report fails to address any of this, suggesting a lack of interest in even fundamental questions if they might reflect poorly on the FBI.

The Mueller report states that “as part of its investigation, the FBI later received images of DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs.” But it does not specify how much “later” it received those server images or who provided them. Based on the statements of Comey and other U.S. officials, it is quite likely that they came from CrowdStrike, though the company gets only passing mention in the redacted report.

Asked for comment, Special Counsel spokesman Peter Carr declined to answer whether the Mueller team relied on CrowdStrike for its allegations against the GRU. Carr referred queries to the Justice Department’s National Security Division, which declined to comment, and to the U.S. Western District of Pennsylvania, which did not respond.

If CrowdStrike’s role in the investigation raises a red flag, the potential exclusion of another entity raises an equally glaring one. According to former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, the NSA is the only U.S. agency that could conclusively determine the source of the alleged DNC email hacks. “If this was really an internet hack, the NSA could easily tell us when the information was taken and the route it took after being removed from the [DNC] server,” Binney says. But given Mueller’s qualified language and his repeated use of “in or around” rather than outlining specific, down-to-the-second timestamps – which the NSA could provide — Binney is skeptical that NSA intelligence was included in the GRU indictment and the report.

There has been no public confirmation that intelligence acquired by the NSA was used in the Mueller probe. Asked whether any of its information had been used in the allegations against the GRU, or had been declassified for public release in Mueller’s investigation, a spokesperson for the National Security Agency declined to comment.

Redacted CrowdStrike Reports

While the extent of the FBI’s reliance on CrowdStrike remains unclear, critical details are beginning to emerge via an unlikely source: the legal case of Roger Stone – the Trump adviser Mueller indicted for, among other things, allegedly lying to Congress about his failed efforts to learn about WikiLeaks’ plans regarding Clinton’s emails.

Lawyers for Stone discovered that CrowdStrike submitted three forensic reports to the FBI that were redacted and in draft form. When Stone asked to see CrowdStrike’s un-redacted versions, prosecutors made the explosive admission that the U.S. government does not have them. “The government … does not possess the information the defendant seeks,” prosecutor Jessie Liu wrote. This is because, Liu explained, CrowdStrike itself redacted the reports that it provided to the government:

At the direction of the DNC and DCCC’s legal counsel, CrowdStrike prepared three draft reports. Copies of these reports were subsequently produced voluntarily to the government by counsel for the DNC and DCCC. At the time of the voluntary production, counsel for the DNC told the government that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack. According to counsel, no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.

In other words, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to decide what it could and could not see in reports on Russian hacking, thereby surrendering the ability to independently vet their claims. The government also took CrowdStrike’s word that “no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

According to an affidavit filed for Stone’s defense by Binney, the speed transfer rate and the file formatting of the DNC data indicate that they were moved on to a storage device, not hacked over the Internet. In a rebuttal, Stone’s prosecutors said that the file information flagged by Binney “would be equally consistent with Russia intelligence officers using a thumb drive to transfer hacked materials among themselves after the hack took place.” In an interview with RealClearInvestigations, Binney could not rule out that possibility. But conversely, the evidence laid out by Mueller is so incomplete and uncertain that Binney’s theory cannot be ruled out either. The very fact that DoJ prosecutors, in their response to Binney, do not rule out his theory that a thumb drive was used to transfer the material is an acknowledgment in that direction.

The lack of clarity around Mueller’s intelligence community sourcing might appear inconsequential given the level of detail in his account of alleged Russian hacking. But in light of the presence of potentially biased and politically conflicted sources like CrowdStrike, and the absence of certainty revealed in Mueller’s lengthy account, the fact that his sourcing remains an open question makes it difficult to accept that he has delivered definitive answers. If Mueller had the invasive window into Russian intelligence that he claims to, it seems incongruous that he would temper his purported descriptions of their actions with tentative, qualified language. Mueller’s hedging suggests a broader conclusion at odds with the report’s own findings: that the U.S. government does not have ironclad proof about who hacked the DNC.

Social Media Campaign

Mueller’s other “central allegation” regards a “Russian ‘Active Measures’ Social Media Campaign” with the aim of “sowing discord” and helping to elect Trump.

In fact, Mueller does not directly attribute that campaign to the Russian government, and makes only the barest attempt to imply a Kremlin connection. According to Mueller, the social media “form of Russian election influence came principally from the Internet Research Agency, LLC (IRA), a Russian organization funded by Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and companies he controlled.”

After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA’s activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that “[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin’s ties to Putin, and the two have appeared together in public photographs.” The footnote for this references a lone article in the New York Times. (Both the Times and the Washington Post are cited frequently throughout the report. The two outlets received and published intelligence community leaks throughout the Russia probe.)

Further, in a newly unsealed July 1 ruling, a federal judge rebuked Mueller and the Justice Department for having “improperly suggested a link” between the IRA and the Russian government. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said Mueller’s February 2018 indictment “does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government” and alleges “only private conduct by private actors.” The judge added the government’s statements violate a  prohibiting lawyers from making claims that would prejudice a case.

Even putting aside the complete absence of a Kremlin role, the case that the Russian government sought to influence the U.S. election via a social media campaign is hard to grasp given how minuscule it was. Mueller says the IRA spent $100,000 between 2015 and 2017.  Of that, just $46,000 was spent on Russian-linked Facebook ads before the 2016 election. That amounts to about 0.05% of the $81 million spent on Facebook ads by the Clinton and Trump campaigns combined — which is itself a tiny fraction of the estimated $2 billion spent by the candidates and their supporting PACS.

Then there is the fact that so little of this supposed election interference campaign content actually concerned the election. Mueller himself cites a review by Twitter of tweets from “accounts associated with the IRA” in the 10 weeks before the 2016 election, which found that “approximately 8.4%… were election-related.” This tracks with a report commissioned by the U.S. Senate that found that “explicitly political content was a small percentage” of the content attributed to the IRA. The IRA’s posts “were minimally about the candidates,” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

Yet Mueller circumvents this with what sound like impressive figures:

IRA-controlled Twitter accounts separately had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple U.S. political figures who retweeted IRA-created content. In November 2017, a Facebook representative testified that Facebook had identified 470 IRA-controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017. Facebook estimated the IRA reached as many as 126 million persons through its Facebook accounts. In January 2018, Twitter announced that it had identified 3,814 IRA-controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately 1.4 million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an IRA-controlled account.

Upon scrutiny, Mueller’s figures are exaggerated, to say the least. Take Mueller’s claim that Russian posts reached “as many as 126 million” Facebook users. That figure is in fact a spin on Facebook’s own guess, as articulated by Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch’s congressional testimony in October 2017. “Our best estimate,” Stretch told lawmakers, “is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a page associated with the IRA at some point during the two-year period.” And the “two-year period” extends far beyond the 2016 election, to August 2017. Overall, Stretch added, posts from suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s News Feed comprised “approximately 1 out of [every] 23,000 pieces of content.”

Yet another reason to question the Russian operation’s sophistication is the quality of its content. The IRA’s most shared pre-election Facebook post was a cartoon of a gun-wielding Yosemite Sam. On Instagram, the best-received image urged users to give it a “Like” if they believe in Jesus. The top IRA post on Facebook before the election that mentioned Hillary Clinton was a conspiratorial screed about voter fraud. Another ad featured Jesus consoling a dejected young man by telling him: “Struggling with the addiction to masturbation? Reach out to me and we will beat it together.”

Mueller also reports that the IRA successfully organized “dozens” of rallies “while posing as U.S. grassroots activists.” Sounds impressive, but the most successful effort appears to have been in Houston, where Russian trolls allegedly organized dueling rallies pitting a dozen white supremacists against several dozen counter-protesters outside an Islamic center. Elsewhere, the IRA had underwhelming results, according to media reports: At several rallies in Florida “it’s unclear if anyone attended,” the Daily Beast later noted; “no people showed up to at least one,” and “ragtag groups” showed up at others, the Washington Post reported, including one where video footage captured a crowd of eight people.

Far from exposing a sophisticated propaganda campaign, the reports suggest that Russian troll farm workers engaged in futile efforts to spark contentious rallies in a handful of states. When it comes to the ads, they may have been engaging in clickbait capitalism: targeting unique demographics like African Americans or evangelicals in a bid to attract large audiences for commercial purposes. Reporters who have profiled the IRA have commonly described it as “a social media marketing campaign.” Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of the IRA disclosed that it sold “promotions and advertisements” on its pages that generally sold in the $25-$50 range. “This strategy,” a Senate report from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project observes, “is not an invention for politics and foreign intrigue, it is consistent with techniques used in digital marketing.”

That, in fact, was Facebook’s initial conclusion. As the Washington Post first reported, Facebook’s initial review of Russian social media activity in late 2016 and early 2017 found that the troll farm’s pages “had clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren’t working for a foreign government.” That view only changed, the Post added, after “aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama” developed “theories” to help them “explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events” in their loss of the 2016 election. Among these theories: “Russian operatives who were directed by the Kremlin to support Trump may have taken advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms to direct their messages to American voters in key demographic areas.” Despite the fact that “these former advisers didn’t have hard evidence,” the Democratic aides found a receptive audience in both congressional intelligence committees. Democrat Mark Warner, the Senate intel vice chairman, personally flew out to Facebook headquarters in California to press the case. Not long after, in the summer of 2017, Facebook went public with its new “findings” about Russian trolls. Mueller has followed their lead – just as the FBI followed the leads of other Democratic sources in pursuing both the collusion (Fusion GPS) and Russian hacking (CrowdStrike) allegations.

John Brennan and the ICA

As it falls short of proving its case for a “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference campaign, the Mueller report also fails to support its claim regarding the motive behind such efforts. In the introduction to Volume I, Mueller states that “the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.” But nowhere in the ensuing 440 pages does Mueller produce any evidence to substantiate that central claim.

Instead Mueller appears to be relying on the intelligence community assessment (ICA) released in January 2017 – four months before his appointment – that accused the Russian government of running an “influence campaign” that aimed “to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process,” and hurt Hillary Clinton’s “electability and potential presidency” as part of what it called Russia’s “clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

But the ICA itself produced no evidence for any of these assertions. Its equivocation is even more blunt than Mueller’s: The ICA report’s conclusions, it states, are “not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

On the core conclusion that Russia aimed to help Trump, there is not even uniformity: While the FBI and CIA claim to have “high confidence” in that judgment, the NSA makes a conspicuous deviation in expressing that it has only “moderate confidence.”

As it casts doubt on a core allegation of Russia’s alleged motives, the NSA’s dissent debunks the oft-repeated claim that the ICA represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Moreover, it would even be misleading to portray the ICA as the product of the three agencies that produced it – the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Instead, there are multiple indications that the ICA is primarily the work of one person, who would spend the next two years accusing Trump of treason: then-CIA Director John Brennan.

A March 2018 report from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee says that Brennan personally oversaw the entire ICA process from start to finish. In December 2016, the GOP report recounts, President Obama “directed … Brennan to conduct a review of all intelligence relating to Russian involvement in the 2016 elections.” The resulting ICA “was drafted by CIA analysts” and merely “coordinated with the NSA and the FBI.” The GOP report observes that Brennan’s CIA analysts were “subjected to an unusually constrained review and coordination process, which deviated from established CIA practice.”[Italics added for emphasis.] A lengthy Democratic rebuttal to the GOP members’ report does not refute any of these findings.

Echoing the NSA’s dissent, the House GOP questions the ICA’s conclusion that Putin interfered to secure Trump’s victory. The committee, they write, “identified significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic objectives for disrupting the U.S. election.” [Italics added for emphasis.]

The Brennan-run process may have also excluded dissenting views from other agencies. Jack Matlock, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, has claimed that a “senior official” from the State Department’s intelligence wing, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), informed him that it had reached a different conclusion about alleged Russian meddling, “but was not allowed to express it.” An INR spokesperson declined a request for comment.

The ICA’s production schedule also raises a red flag: The outgoing Obama administration tasked Brennan with churning it out in seemingly unprecedented time. “Ordinarily, the kind of assessment that you’re talking about, there would be something that would take well over a year to do, certainly many months to do,” former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy told the House Intelligence Committee in June. “…[S]eems to me, in this instance, there was a rush to get that out within a matter of days.”

But even if Brennan had been given all the time in the world, the very fact that he was placed in charge of the intelligence assessment was a massive conflict of interest. Brennan was handed the opportunity to validate, without independent scrutiny or oversight from unbiased sources, serious allegations that he himself helped generate.

Efforts to reach Brennan through MSNBC, where he is a commentator, were unsuccessful.

Months before he oversaw the intelligence assessment, Brennan played a critical role in the FBI’s decision to open the probe of Trump-Russia collusion. “I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion,” Brennan told Congress in March 2017, “and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion-cooperation occurred.”

On top of his self-described role in generating the investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion, Brennan also played a critical role in generating the claim that the Russian government was waging an influence campaign. According to the book “The Apprentice” by the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, the CIA unit known as “Russia House” was “the point of origin” for the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion during the presidential campaign that “the Kremlin was actively seeking to elect Trump.” Brennan sequestered himself in his office to pore over the CIA’s material, “staying so late that the glow through his office windows remained visible deep into the night.” Brennan “ordered up,” not just vetted, “‘finished’ assessments – analytic reports that had gone through layers of review and revision,” Miller adds, but also “what agency veterans call the ‘raw stuff’ – the unprocessed underlying material.”

Anyone familiar with how cherry-picked, false intelligence made the case for the Iraq War will recognize “raw material” as a red flag. Here’s another: According to Miller, one piece of intelligence that was “a particular source of alarm to Brennan,” was the “bombshell” from “sourcing deep inside the Kremlin” that Putin himself had “authorized a covert operation” in order to, “in his own words … damage Clinton and help elect Trump” via “a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.” A former CIA operative described that sourcing as “the espionage equivalent of ‘the Holy Grail.'”

Undoubtedly, a mole within Putin’s inner circle – able to capture his exact orders – would indeed fit that description. But that raises the obvious question: If such a crown jewel of espionage exists, why would anyone in U.S. intelligence allow it to be revealed? And why hadn’t that “Holy Grail” source been able to forewarn its American intelligence handlers of any number of Putin’s actions that have caught the U.S. off-guard, from the annexation of Crimea to the Russian intervention in Syria?

Brennan was the first to alert President Obama of a Russian interference campaign, and subsequently oversaw the U.S. intelligence response.

Since leaving office, Brennan has laid bare his personal animus towards Trump, going so far as to call him “treasonous” – an unprecedented charge for a former top intelligence official to make about a sitting president. In the weeks before Mueller issued his final report, Brennan was still predicting that members of Trump’s inner circle, including family members, would be indicted. Given Brennan’s bias and consistent patterns of errors, Mueller’s unquestioning, apparent reliance on a Brennan-run process is suspect.

Although Mueller seemed to accept the ICA’s explosive claims at face value, Brennan’s work product is now facing Justice Department scrutiny. The New York Times reported on June 12 that Attorney General William Barr is “interested in how the C.I.A. drew its conclusions about Russia’s election sabotage, particularly the judgment that Mr. Putin ordered that operatives help Mr. Trump.” In what is most likely a direct reference to Brennan, the Times adds that Barr “wants to know more about the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding of the details of the Russian interference campaign,” as well as about “the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016.”

Until Barr completes his review of the Russia probe, the April 2018 report from GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee remains the only publicly available assessment of the Brennan-controlled ICA’s methodology. One reason for this is the fact that President Obama personally quashed a proposed bipartisan commission of inquiry into alleged Russian interference that would have inevitably subjected Brennan and other top intelligence officials to scrutiny. According to the Washington Post, in the aftermath of the November election, Obama administration officials discussed forming such a commission to conduct a sweeping probe of the alleged Russian interference effort and the U.S. response. But after Obama’s then chief-of-staff, Denis McDonough, introduced the proposal, he:

began criticizing it, arguing that it would be perceived as partisan and almost certainly blocked by Congress. Obama then echoed McDonough’s critique, effectively killing any chance that a Russia commission would be formed.

With Obama having killed “any chance that a Russia commission would be formed,” there has been no thorough, independent oversight of the intelligence process that alleged an interference campaign by Russia and triggered an all-consuming investigation of the Trump campaign’s potential complicity.

New Opportunities to Answer Unresolved Questions

Barr’s ongoing review, and Mueller’s pending appearance before Congress, offer fresh opportunities to re-examine the affair’s fundamental inconsistencies. Authorized by the president to declassify documents, Barr could shed light on the role that CrowdStrike and other sources played in informing Mueller and the Brennan-directed ICA’s claims of a Russian interference campaign. When he appears before lawmakers, Mueller will likely face questions on other matters: from Democrats, his decision to punt on obstruction; from Republicans, his decision to carry out a prolonged investigation of Trump-Russia collusion despite likely knowing quite early on that there was no such case to make.

If the U.S. government does not have a solid case to make against Russia, then the origins of Russiagate, and its subsequent predominance of U.S. political and media focus, are potentially even more suspect. Given that allegation’s importance, and Mueller’s own uncertainty and inconsistencies, the special counsel and his aides deserve scrutiny for making a “central allegation” that they have yet to substantiate.

Correction:
July 5, 2019, 7:40 PM Eastern
An earlier version of this article misstated the month of FBI Director James Comey’s testimony in 2017 to Congress about the bureau’s handling of Democratic National Committee servers. It was in March, not January.

First published by RealClearInvestigations.

 

 

 

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

38 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Steve Hayes
Steve Hayes
Jul 27, 2019 11:35 AM

The US elite jump up and down with moral indignation about an evidence-free allegation of foreign interference in its domestic politics, whilst ignoring actual evidenced foreign interference in its domestic affairs, and all the while constantly interfering in the domestic affairs of foreign countries and boasting about it.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 29, 2019 7:28 AM
Reply to  Steve Hayes

That’s an excellent brief summary description of events ongoing, Steve 🙂 & very telling …
I have the feeling that most of the moral indignation is from those with most to hide !

Roberto
Roberto
Jul 26, 2019 7:51 PM

The takeaway of 2 1/2 years of nonsense, succinct version:

The congressman asks:
“When you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?”
“I am not familiar with – with that,” Mueller replied.
“It was. It’s not a trick question. It was Fusion GPS,” Chabot retorted.
The Congressman then asked whether Mueller was familiar with the owner of Fusion GPS.
“That’s outside my purview,” Mueller replied.”

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 1:03 PM

It seems likely, that Trump planned to discredit Robert Mueller’s integrity, from the very beginning.
Think about it: Robert (d’Mule) Mueller and his history:-

1) Heavy involvement in Uranium One deal, with the Russians.

2) Cover up of all investigations 9/11, as FBI Boss.

3) Clean up of Epstein’s abhorrent dealings, last time around.

4) The Great Russia-Hoax, by Magic Mueller & Co.

For my mind, I can imagine BTO -“You ain’t seen nothin’, yet…”

GRAFT
GRAFT
Jul 26, 2019 12:55 AM

But the lunatics still believe millions upon millions of people believe it still

Cesca
Cesca
Jul 25, 2019 9:46 PM

This is just one of the events where the psychopathic scum show how divorced they are from humane consciousness.

They are thick as sh.t when it comes to hiding what they do, have the power to make it hard to find the truth tho.

Maggie
Maggie
Jul 26, 2019 10:25 AM
Reply to  Cesca

Ah but Cesca, they aren’t hiding anything… All we have to do is replace the word Russia with America and US elections with British elections. And there you have it.
The reason they ‘know’ so much for a fact is because that is precisely what THEY are doing.

And, as we are all aware now the arch ‘blackmailer’ Epstein is on the verge of spilling the beans.. some of which were allowed to be leaked about Trump and his proclivity for golden showers.. and no doubt other childish, unfathomable stimulii . That was just the tip of the iceberg, intended to get him back in line after he had let his mouth run away with him, and veered from the script he had been given.

mark
mark
Jul 25, 2019 9:43 PM

Off topic news
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Epstein was found unconscious in his jail cell today with neck injuries.

One way of making a scandal disappear.

Slick Willie Clinton, Prince Andy, Maxwell’s daughter and Dershowitz are probably breathing a sigh of relief.

Maggie
Maggie
Jul 26, 2019 10:27 AM
Reply to  mark

Like we didn’t know that this was going to happen….

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 12:23 PM
Reply to  mark

Coulter was calling for him to be in solitary in a ‘SuperMax’, as if that would protect him.

Meanwhile, Priti Patel wants to bring back the death sentence …
(stoooopid woman, not interested in learning, better said, in others learning) 😉

Off with their heads: Final Solutions ? Judge Priti Patel ?

Personally, i’d love to see Epstein in a safe cell, in between Cardinal sinner George d’Pedo Pell & Harvey Weinstein: all with webcams & wifi LIVE & pay per view:-

VIP Big Bro. Chokey & the Bandits, (online Live 🙂 )

I would actually pay to view that, even if only briefly on the BBC, though I’ve never given a penny to the BBC, since 1979 … I swear m8 🙂

mark
mark
Jul 25, 2019 4:41 PM

The Muller Report is proof positive that the US is equally adept as Blair and Campbell in producing Dodgy Dossiers.

The poor chap is obviously suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. You’d think they could come up with a better front man for their conspiracy theory.

It was a novel idea to outsource the investigation to Crowdstrike.
There’s a lot to be said for privatisation.
Most commendable.
Maybe the next time there’s a high profile criminal investigation the FBI will outsource the murder investigation to Sam Spade, Ace Gumshoe.

Roberto
Roberto
Jul 26, 2019 8:20 PM
Reply to  mark

It wasn’t [the dreaded, one-day] Alzheimer’s.
It’s a Modified Limited Hangout version of ‘I don’t recall’, ‘What page is that on?’, ‘What page?’, ‘Oh I see it now’, ‘Can you repeat the question?’, and ‘It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is’ (well, OK, everything except that – it’s copyrighted).
Add dozens of ‘That’s not my purview’ or some variation of it, and 5 hours magically shrinks.

Question This
Question This
Jul 25, 2019 11:46 AM

Why not write an article why so much time, effort & money has been wasted on this subject.

Is it a surprise to anyone that competing super powers (I use the term loosely) attempt to interfere in election results? Frankly i take it as given that Russia, USA & US of Europe do so at any & all possible opportunity.

And asking if politicians are corrupt is like asking what colors the sky, we all know the answer.

binra
binra
Jul 25, 2019 11:28 AM

The lie accuses its own sin in the other – as intent at sustainability of power by deceit.
Unravelling to source is the nature of a true harvest.
Each unto its own.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 25, 2019 11:54 AM
Reply to  binra

There’s gonna’ be one helluva’ bumper Harvest this year, 4Sure Binra 😉 and it will logically take more time than usual to check for genetically modified organisms …

Thus, disMay’s positioning became wholly untenable. Did you ever see the photo from their Uni. days, of Angela Merkel (Y.O.B.1954) Theresa May (Y.O.B.1956)
& Gina Haspel (Y.O.B.1956) ? >>>

it was not just my impression, that Gina looked fully capable of evil in that photo! (Way back then in Dresden, if memory serves). And I can never forget the patronising tones of Helmut Kohl, as he always referred to Merkel as “Das Mädchen” , as if he were grooming her… as for disMay, well she never had kids and she knows her husband’s business dealings inside out … void of any morals, Mercenary May would even cover up a pedophile politician & silence Lord Justice Leveson, as a matter of priority, rather than annoy the Murdochs & Maxwells of this world or compromise hubby’s dirty arms deals.

binra
binra
Jul 25, 2019 1:04 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

I have a simpler – for me at least – sense.
To those who have, more shall be given and to those who have not more shall be taken – even the little that they have.

I address this not to material possession but to a sense of self-lack.

My sense of self lack is that it stems from the wish to be or pass off as who you are NOT – as a false sense of self. A false sense of self lacks support in truth and so has to be propped up, defended and cast against others so as to seem worthy or moral or whatever.

Judging the intentions of others is always fraught with our own. As for untruth – don’t buy into it – or don’t be surprised at the cost.

The undoing of a false foundation is its replacement with true – but the shifting forms of false foundation masquerade as good at war with ever changing evils. because without the ‘enemy’ the moral superiority would have nowhere to stand.

I don’t dispute that those who are most invested in deceits are most captive to them. But identifying in polarised reaction against an evil, is to become its hidden support.

Who is incapable of fear, hate and denial? Particularly when the denial is an active mind-capture of which the ‘victim’ is unaware by nature of their role?
The mind can be a deceiver – and I didn’t assign this to any special persons.

Where we are ‘coming from’ is ‘where we are going’ or garbage in; garbage out.
Because a mind set is of Mind – we can always change it for renewal. But not without releasing a false or poor (impoverishing) investment.

Who believes they suffer at their own hand and yet persists in it? Only if it is believed to get something greater in return.
Follow the pay-off is a variation on a well known theme.

Do you think anyone under the dependencies of ‘power’ is a free agent?
Are ‘moral justification’ framed as the means justifying the end? or the use of a feared greater evil justifying the lesser?

I prefer an engineering sense of integrity – as integrated and congruent or coherent – where no parts are in conflict with any other – as a working balance point. the attempt to force ‘ideals or idols onto life is then the reaction of resisting, mitigating, changing or overcoming the asserting ‘order’.

I am not one who sees heaven in gloating over those I hold in hell. Rather release another to their own responsibility by not presuming to fit them to the mind I assigned them.

I see self betrayal as already in hell because the hateful is hellish no matter what ingenuity of mind is summoned or invoked to redefine it as a mitigation of guilt or indeed a virtue of which a weak and foolish world could never grasp. We PUT the self we reject – onto others as if it is escaped – and then attack or control or deny it as if putting the world to rights.

The Greek pharmakoi, singular pharmakos, refers to victims who were ritually beaten, driven out of cities, and killed, for example, by being forced over the edge of a precipice. The word pharmakos, designating a person who is selected as a ritual victim, is related to pharmakon, which means both “remedy” and “poison,” depending on the context. In the story of the horrible miracle of Apollonius, the beggar is a pharmakos, a kind of ritual victim. Apollonius points to him as the demon causing the plague (he is the source of pollution or poison), but his lynching restores the well being of Ephesus (he becomes the remedy for the crisis). — Trans.”
~ René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

This scapegoat magic appeals to the dictate that ‘healing’ be achieved WITHOUT any process of inner transformation. This extends to ‘sustainability’ of systemic corporate predation upon the living as well as crying ‘wolf!’ as a basis to manipulate and target the alarm that might rightly be assigned to those who stage manage ‘democracy’ openly and with impunity.

wardropper
wardropper
Jul 25, 2019 1:38 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

I honestly don’t think our current “oversight” committees are remotely interested in “checking for genetically modified organisms”.
Not until, or unless, a large number of people become strangely and seriously ill, or a catastrophic shortage of edible food occurs, will anybody bother to investigate, since checking is an expensive business, and our money needs to go to the Middle East – preferably in perpetuity.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 25, 2019 1:53 PM
Reply to  wardropper

Yep, true enough wardropper, I’m not holding my breath on the crop problems, either: it was meant more as an allegory for seeding & grooming young women for high position, many decades ago. I’ll see if I can find a way to do a screenshot the ole’ photo, without accessing FB 🙂

wardropper
wardropper
Jul 25, 2019 4:44 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

I get that Tim. No criticism intended. Just using the opportunity to bewail the fact that, in general, oversight is non-existent where it should be most conspicuous.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 10:10 AM
Reply to  wardropper

Wail on, brother & i’ll wail with you, at every opportunity …

‘Bob’ Barley & the Wailers, ‘natural mystic’ classic frequencies
(‘bob’ / beans in Cyrillic 🙂 )

Mikalina
Mikalina
Jul 25, 2019 6:13 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Gender is not an issue for the deviants. Possibly for breeding – but then I’m sure that they’ve got that covered too. What’s this post, Tim? Ooooh, look everybody, a squirrel…..?

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 9:07 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

How wrong you are. Gender is a huge issue for the marketing dept. of zionist strategy, objectives & goals, as a method of distraction & division within societal parameters. But, I fear this subject is perhaps above your realms of comprehension & working knowledge of history at a corporate boardroom level of researching & networking individual talents.

Have you ever been ‘head-hunted’, exiting your work place, invited for dinner and offered an interview to work for the most wealthy Corporate CEO in the world?

These things happen and you would be astounded by the corporate data that exists on you personally, including a psychological profile, whether you’ve been ‘hooked’ or ‘head-hunted’ or not … some people are even unwittingly born to be persons of interest due to a potential scientific legacy in their DNA, male or female,
whilst others are fixated on squirrels 🙂

Mikalina
Mikalina
Jul 27, 2019 1:39 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

I wasn’t talking about gender for marketing purposes, i.e. perceived reality, but gender as a determinate in power distribution amongst the deviants, i.e. reality. In your defense, I do, of course, understand your dilemma in distinguishing between the two.

As for working in a corporate environment, I got a bit bored with the back stabbing and grovelling. I think you need to have a certain type of personality to stay within these walls, don’t you?

Psychology is a controlled method of interpreting the world in order to manipulate, lead and destroy us. Invented about 150 years ago, it bears little resemblance to real life although its inventors and perpetrators do an excellent job of persuading us that it does by reducing our life knowledge and experience into its little box. A psychological profile of me is of little value if I choose not to live within its given parameters.

Scientific legacy in DNA, hmm. This would again be a matter of interpretation? The code of life developed under the auspices of Molecular Biology – originally named, aptly, psychobiology? I would refer you to Lily E Kay who suggests that a metaphor used for description (that of information theory) became ontology – due to the hunger for eugenics and, of course, Rockefeller money (and Linus Pauling’s ego).

‘Potential scientific legacy’ sounds like deviant’s reality – the blood, the blood, it’s all in the blood……..

Finally, there must be a joke somewhere with gender, squirrels and nuts, but it’s way past my bed time………..

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 28, 2019 9:15 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

Lol, good responses I must say, Mika: let us hope that the vast majority of the deviants are indicted & exposed in the near future, also in the UK: and yes the internal office politics was always something i found to be one of the most negative factors in the corporate world, that both undermines productivity & destroys any sense of pleasure, purpose and trust in the work environment.

Grafter
Grafter
Jul 25, 2019 10:41 AM

How tedious and tiresome is this American inspired drivel of “Russian interference” in their ongoing hatred of Russia based on a never to be forgotten paranoia of an inbred and irrational fear of Communism which in their deranged minds still lurks in the background ready to once again devour the whole world. Poor little children locked in a dark room. Open the door, let them out and hopefully they might grow up into something approaching mature adults who might like to contribute positively to the world in which we all live.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 25, 2019 10:56 AM
Reply to  Grafter

Do you seriously think that the “drivel of Russian interference” is purely of American inspiration ? !

Grafter
Grafter
Jul 25, 2019 11:46 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

99.9% sure.

UreKismet
UreKismet
Jul 25, 2019 12:05 PM
Reply to  Grafter

Well IMO you’d be wrong. English elites have been saying “the evil russian other” for at least 200 years. Even in the islands no one sees as a good earner, Aotearoa, has an ‘anti russian fort” It was built in the 1880’s when some pommie pols beat up a “Russia is trying to steal our empire” scare.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 9:34 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

I’m quite proud of these 3 thumbs down for asking a most innocent & simple question.

It’s telling and a real compliment to OffG that they must be flying their ‘bomber’ in the right direction, on target to gee see HQ . . .

I’m gonna’ refuel the ‘Spit-fire’ 😉

mark
mark
Jul 25, 2019 11:05 PM
Reply to  Grafter

I disagree, G. Putin is clearly interfering in all our politics. I wanted to vote Remain in Brexit, but Putin phoned me up and told me I had to vote Leave. He threatened to publish some old KGB photos of me having sex with a rhinoceros, so I had no choice.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 25, 2019 10:39 AM

Get Mifsud, Now !
****************

“Mueller does not explain why he included Assange’s comments as reported by media outlets in his report but decided not to speak with Assange directly, or ask to see his “physical proof,” during a two-year investigation.” with an unlimited budget to investigate !

What more than that did you need to know ? Alles Klar and if you are still unsure, then just ask yourself why Bill Binney & Kurt Weibe, ex NSA programmers of “Parallel Platforms”, have NOT been called to testify, either ! The technical end ‘stuff’ proves that Mueller has been lying all along on his ‘Witch Hunt’ & Russia-Hoax and has NOT been addressing any one of the most important questions & problems that lead to further investigations & indictments of many key figures: which include potentially prosecuting the murderer of Seth Rich and why Mueller charged all others for lying to him during his pathetic investigation, but NOT Jo’ MIFSUD ! Mueller himself should be prosecuted for his omissions & failure to prosecute Mifsud & question Richard Dearlove more intensively !

Get Mifsud under Oath immediately: he started all this … who the hell is MIFSUD? Why is MIFSUD being protected? What the Fuck were Steele & Mifsud & Dearlove thinking to conspire & concoct on behalf of Deep State Governors & Operatives, who transcend both the USUK Governments combined ! ? !

This is an old article that helps you comprehend something of the background of the lies & deceptions of Mueller’s pathetic efforts, & yesterday’s statements confirm that he never intended to reveal anything at all, including yesterday, but why do we not have some brief qualification of Mueller’s Testimony just yesterday, as an addendum here @OffG ?

How does OffG expect the Brits. to keep up to speed ? Especially, what will happen next with Boris Johnson and his dilemmas @home with GCHQ ? Coz’ GCHQ were wholly involved in this TREASON USA attempt & Russia-Hoax, as were Italian Secret Services and the Ukrainian S.S. !

These matters can no longer be resolved behind closed doors, unless you wish to live continuously & forever onwards, under a corporate Fascist Dictatorship of “Parallel Platforms” & Pedophile Politicians ! it’s that simple, so take 5 minutes and listen to Jim Jordan cross question Mueller, just yesterday, and you’ll begin to see that Mifsud is being protected and we need to know WHY? HOW? & What from … ? & by whom Logic, the wholly zionist owned & controlled mainstream media, surely! Coz’ the ball is still rolling and it will not stop @Mifsud’s desk, nor the boss of GCHQ’s desk … heads are gonna’ roll, when this ball gets finally kicked into the annals of a very pissy secret service “History of the National Security State” and BoJo has some serious thinking to do about how he deals with the nameless cnuts in the British not so civil service, who used orphans kids in Ireland to entrap politicians and leverage any future political discussions with British Pedophile Politicians fully controlled !!!
E.G. GARY HOY !

It should be noted that yesterday, before Bill Barr stepped into his bullet proof vehicle, after answering a few questions to journalists, he beamed the biggest smile I ever saw on his public face and uttered the words “it goes with the territory”. Bill Barr has clearly grown more comfortable with where he stands, today and he has no intention of kicking this can of worms down the road, including Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, charges will be brought, thankfully finally and Boris Johnson will be forced to reveal much more than he would likely wish regarding “The History of the National Security State” and it will help mask his inevitable blunders, down the road.

In the above link you will find a photo of Mifsud and Boris Johnson … and some comments regarding Richard Dearlove … any questions ?

You should have, after watching Mueller !

I have pasted three links deliberately so that Admin must read this 😉

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Jul 25, 2019 2:12 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Superb post Tim and a great catch! I missed David Nunes bit yesterday. The PM of GB and Mifsud in full colour! Lol

The Guardian live reporting missed every mention of Steele, Dearlove, a ‘Russian’ … how very suspicious! Lol

I do believe the Russian State is capable of hacking – as is every such capable state in the world. I surmise they did hack – that is the most likely source of the Integrity Initiative / Institute of Statecraft material.

We will see how many independent news sites and bloggers actually exist by their journalism and blogging on this revealed conspiracy.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 25, 2019 4:01 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

My pleasure, thanks DG & I honestly ‘almost choked’ early morning, when sifting through the guardian script writers & their video editing efforts for today’s ‘damage limitation’: (no doubt, on command of GCHQ), just how much key info. was truly omitted, scandalous … clearly, ‘The Lobby’ is working hard on distractions, for not just all the government politicians, but also all journalists & editors: and therefore, Operation Charlemagne never gets mentioned, so that the ‘Mifsud confusion’ prevails and a disconnect is established from GCHQ, Steele & Treason USA & Epstein Island & Ghislaine Maxwell’s historic sexual endeavours to control key political figures’ future decision making: which includes Judges, down the line, as well as key figures working on “Parallel Platforms” of computing, within the National Security State throughout NATO nations !
And this all presents a prime opportunity for OffGuardian. 🙂
It will be a tough ole’ cookie for Kit to crack: maybe in bite sized pieces, step by step …

It’s a very real tangled web that transcends borders of governance and forces one to not shy away from the words Corporate Fascist Dictatorship, with zero privacy & total control of all flows of Knowledge,

Not just Scientific . . .
Mercer & Cambridge Analytica ? the tip of the iceberg,
as UreKismet rightly points out below, Carole d’Cad certainly has much to answer for, in the biggest internet Psyop sting & string of distractions from the Key issues of programming our futures, collectively.

UreKismet
UreKismet
Jul 25, 2019 8:33 AM

AFAIK there is zero evidence that the russian state was involved in the pathetic beauty contest which the US elites use to distract the more credulous citizens every 4 years. Why would they? They know damn well this quadrennial farce is a crooked game from start to finish. A game that only allows the same two contestants, the republican tweedledee and the democrat tweedledum to compete – both sides cheat like f++k on a massive scale so whatever skullduggery the Russian state could insert into that rigged crapshoot would have two chances of success, Buckley’s and none.

But more important than even that is, even if the Russian State – oops sorry. . . “Putin” {said quickly with all emphasis on vowels none on consonants so it sounds more like a hoick & spit than a word} by some miracle did succeed so what? You cannot push a decent spliff skin between the dems & rethugs on the stuff which really matters.

Disagree? Check out the Tufts alumni diary entry for yesterday. The article tells us how the Senate Foreign Relations committee, who are the mob allegedly responsible for devising and implementing amerika’s foreign policy, actually had a falling out on monday, a disagreement between a dem senator and a rethug member of the old boys steamroom and bar club.

This was the first public contretemps in decades. Wow I bet that was over something vital!

Nah, the dispute was over the murder of that Kashoggi creep, they reckon the dems wanted to slap Saudi with a wet bus ticket, whereas the rethugs preferred a damp feather as the instrument of corporal punishment.

Why on earth would anyone who hadn’t bought a seat at the table e.g. the invaders of occupied Palestine waste energy, let alone the $30,000 that crowdstrike claimed Russia had spent on a forlorn hope of trying to get something up like sanctions relief, when everyone knows the correct way to do it is to bribe both sides with tens of millions?

Now “tens of millions” may seem a lot until you understand you will get it all back plus a lot extra for the hassle. Yep the amerikan pols become dependent on your ‘donation’ real quick. So from then on out, they find a way to give you money for some nonsense program which you then give back to ’em all as donations – less about 95% for expenses natch – but everyone is cool with that, they know there are considerable overheads in the lobbying biz.

That is why just about all of them plan on getting into lobbying themselves – just as soon as their little black books are chocka with the foibles of all the other congress-creeps and senate-slugs.

I watched the netflix doco “The Great Hack” which tries a camera eye view of the Cambridge Analytica investigation. IMO It reveals graun contractor Carole Cadwalladr to be the sort of deeply dedicated journo not too proud to let the facts stand in the way of a good beat up/fit up.

Shockingly for the graun, the target of this character assassination is a ‘sister’, yep another member of the victimised by patriarchy club.

A young woman by the name of Brittany Kaiser whose parents were financially destroyed by the cfc. After the family home was seized in 2014 she had to quit being an unpaid worker for the dems in DC & took an extremely well paid gig (VP) with CA. Apparently her conscience got the better of her so when the stories about what they and facebook had been doing came out she whistle blew in the US inquiry and the english parliament enquiry.

Too bad Cadwalladr decided she (Kaiser) would be useful in yet another graun attack on Julian Assange.

Kaiser had sent Wikileaks a couple bit coins back in the noughties when she was an idealistic Obama intern and bit coins weren’t worth much. Years later she visited Julian at the Ecuador embassy on CA business and she insists that neither Russia or H Clinton’s email were discussed, but Cadwalladr ran this article claiming she did both, without a scintalla of watchamacallit – evidence, proof whatsoever.

Of course in reality Kaiser may be nothing like the possum trapped in the headlights she presents as; this is a TV show (all over the torrent and usenet sites if like me, people prefer not to pay for the fibs they are told) in which both Cadwalladr & Kaiser get lots of time. For me Kaiser came across as someone acting more like a human than, the bigger the front, the smaller the back, Cadwalladr did.

None of us can ever know for sure who did what to whom during prez 2016, so we are left with considering the mountains of bulldust using our sense of humanity mixed with the few facts we can be sure of. In that light IMO, it makes zero sense for the Russian state to try on something that is so obviously doomed to fail, so they didn’t.

Antonym
Antonym
Jul 25, 2019 6:08 AM

Good to see a factually well informed author here ATL void of ideology or theory.

Mueller has bended truth when ordered since decades while looking like Eliot Ness. A good fella.

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Jul 25, 2019 5:22 AM

The fundamental flaw in the whole “Russiagate” thing is the failure to differentiate between Russia, the state and its government, and Russians, individuals who are Russian nationals. This failure is a direct result of an inability to recognize that the Cold War finished 30 years ago, a failure highlighted by the breathless Tom Clancy style of reporting and reinforced by a huge military/industrial complex that recognizes that in the absence of war or threats or war their business is a bust.

I’ve always maintained that any connections Trump has with Russia are going to be based on money. As in “there are people who have lots of money who need some kind of investment vehicle to launder it” and “a tangled web of casinos and real estate holdings is a perfect laundromat for money of dubious origins”. This doesn’t automatically suggest that Trump’s a money launderer for the Russian mob but rather there’s no clear cut line between what’s clearly criminal and what’s clearly totally legal and a lot of businesses operate in the gray between the two.

(Politically, though, the last word on Trump support was spoken to me by a Hungarian/American colleague who intended to vote for him. He lived in Budapest and his interest wasn’t in US domestic politics so much as not being caught in WW3. He thought Hilary was going to start a war, Trump would keep us out. I thought he was being a bit naive (and have been proven right) but you couldn’t blame him for exercising an abundance of caution.)

mark
mark
Jul 25, 2019 11:15 PM
Reply to  Martin Usher

Some people think the notion that Trump is a Kremlin spy is rather fanciful.
But if you look more closely, all the evidence is there.

He once got drunk on a bottle of vodka before he became a teetotaller.
He often wears a red tie.
He was once seen attending a film performance of “War And Peace.”
And (a dead giveaway) he has been seen talking to Putin and actually shaking his hand.

And if all that isn’t conclusive evidence that he’s a Kremlin spy, then I don’t know what is.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Jul 26, 2019 9:14 AM
Reply to  mark

IVANKA 😉 ?

case closed 🙂