More Mueller-related indictments of Russians who will never be extradited
The timing of the indictments, on the eve of Trump’s visit to Russia and meeting with Putin, is certainly interesting.
Eleven of the 12 Russian operatives are charged with either hacking into or “spearphishing” (sending emails to trick people into providing passwords) the computer networks of Democratic Party officials; spying on network activity and collecting information; and creating fictional personas to spread the information and conceal that the source was actually Russian officials with military intelligence agency GRU. The veiled proxies included an organization named DCLeaks (which claimed to be Americans) and Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be a single Romanian person. The hacking campaign dated back to March 2016, according to the indictment.
The 12th Russian operative (as well as one of the previous group of operatives) is charged with hacking into election-management systems on the state level, where that person is alleged to have stolen information about roughly 500,000 voters. Eleven of the 12 operatives are also charged with money laundering…and with aggravated identity theft, for using peoples’ names and passwords to commit fraud.
Rosenstein took great pains to explain that, thus far, there are no allegations that any Americans knew they were communicating with Russian intelligence officers as they went around arranging the release of the internal Democratic Party records. There’s also no allegation as yet that any attempts to meddle with the election systems affected the outcome of the presidential vote.
This sounds very similar to the previous indictments that went nowhere, except that these are not private individuals, they are with Russian military intelligence.
Russians also had attacked the Republican side of things, although they didn’t encounter much success and didn’t seem to try as hard.
The latest indictment can be found here. I wrote about the previous indictments here.
By the way, the activity in the present indictment began in March of 2016, before Trump won the nomination. Its main function, as in the activity described in the previous indictments, was apparently to sow discord in the American system.
All done in advance of Trump and Putin. Guess they want to muddy that mud.
It’s a silting operation, the mud comes in layers.
And if, like everyone else, they thought Hillary would win, wouldn’t they rather have dirt on her and her friends?
My guess is the Russians have plenty of dirt on the Clintons, their cronies, the dnc, and many democrat members of the House.And of course, they wanted hrc as POTUS. They certainly did not want a candidate with the MAGA hat to be POTUS. Trump campaigned to unleash the energy sector and build up our military resources; not something Putin would endorse.
I think the term dirt is an overstatement for both sides. I have no doubt Hillary has done many unethical things in her political career but are they really illegal dealings that can be used as material to blackmail anyone? She has a team of lawyers to work for her on top of her being a very good lawyer herself, I am sure most of the undertable dealings she has done albeit unethical were perfectly legal as well, she has all the resources at her disposal to jump through all hoops to find every loopholes to allow he to accomplish anything he wants legally.
They say that you can get a grand jury to indict a Ham sandwich.
Well, here you go.
I also note the news, out yesterday, that Mueller has asked the court for another 100 blank subpoenas, to supplement the 100 blank subpoenas he already asked for some time ago.
Stay tuned for the coming indictments of the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Michelin Tireman, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Clause, and Yogi Bear.
Russians also had attacked the Republican side of things, although they didn’t encounter much success and didn’t seem to try as hard.
Republicans are used to getting attacked, so there are less stupid cyber warfare people there in IT.
The Left are used to being open door so penetrations are far less a negative issue for them; in fact, if anything, it is part of their culture of reality based coolness.
If trump is smart he would troll the Mueller investigation by publicly fiercely and grandstandingly demand Putin to extradite those alleged hackers.
Seems reasonable to hypothesize that Hillary’s laxity in using her own personal server gave the Russians several legs up in penetrating Democratic servers – not to mention government servers full of secrets. Has anyone seen any discussion of this hypothesis? The various leaks we know of were some time after Hillary left office, maybe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t provide an easy way in that they used over time.
Oh, and Neo, my dad objected to “the proof is in the pudding.” He insisted that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” But of course, the meaning is clear, so ….
The Russians think they need to sow discord among American voters?
How much more discordant do they think they can make the situation between American constitutionalists and classical liberals on the one hand; and the soulless, vampiric, anal receptive, morally deconstructed, Junior Stalinist appetite-entities that make up the thieving membership of that unutterably corrupt left-fascist institution known as the Demonicrat Party, on the other?
Just for the record:
Dear Russian bots, spies and Phishers, if you are trolling the Internet looking for feedback and happen to be reading this: Let me repeat that I would not, as I have said here before, so much as lift a finger to dial 9-1-1 in order to interfere in a rat fight between Muslim jihadists and a screaming Debbie Wasserman Shultz who they just happened to be dragging down the middle of the street by her hair on their way toss her into a bonfire.
In the war between two parties of mindless, boundaryless, desiring-machine, enemies of liberty, such as the Stalinists of the Democrat party. and Rad-Muslims, there is no lesser of two evils.
Hope this message also helps to calm the nerves of any Democrats who might otherwise have imagined that the Russians could have somehow said or done something which would have caused me to devalue the lives of Democrats any more than the pronouncements and actions of your party of left-fascists have already done.
“Russians also had attacked the Republican side of things, although they didn’t encounter much success and didn’t seem to try as hard.”
Hey, ya think the fact that many Democrats have a way of not taking security seriously might’a’ had little to do with that?
As engineer writes at 5:31 pm,
“Seems reasonable to hypothesize that Hillary’s laxity in using her own personal server gave the Russians several legs up in penetrating Democratic servers – not to mention government servers full of secrets.”
Hmmm, this has interesting possibilities. Suppose that this batch of Ruskies also show up in court via lawyers, but they say that they do have all that stuff. “In the interests of openess we’re dumping it all, unencrypted in the internet. And by the way, all the unredacted proceedings of the Uranium One committee, including SOS Clinton’s and FBI Director Mueller’s remarks, can be found in batch 2011-07-14.” Bureaucratic back stabbing, deviousness, lying, cheating, and generaly nasty behavior is a long and honorable tradition in Russia going back to the Czars and refined and perfected by the Communists. Could be fun.
hen are we going to look at Russia’s involvement in environmentalist groups that oppose pipelines, fracking, GMOs etc? They are everywhere.
The Rosenstein announcement is blatantly political, but I think one of the purposes is to not only attempt to taint the Trump-Putin summit but to distract from the the fact that Peter Strzok lied his way through his testimony. Including the part where he says he doesn’t remember the content of the meeting he had with two members on the Intelligence Community Inspector General’s staff who informed him (and can document that fact) that all but four of Hillary Clinton’s self-admitted 30,000 work related emails had been forwarded to a foreign entity that was not Russia.
The head of the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division is purported to be investigating whether Clinton’s use of a private basement server violated the Espionage Act, the ICIG informs the DoJ/FBI that practically every single email that transited her server had been compromised well before “unbiased patriot” Strzok finished what was clearly a Potemkin investigation into the practices of the candidate he instant messaged his concubine should beat Trump “100 million to 0” and he claims not to remember what the information the ICIG handed him about the central issue he was supposedly investigating. That Hillary Clinton had in fact compromised the national security of the United States.
The only thing I can compare it is if a homicide detective is investigating a murder in which witnesses find Hillary Clinton is standing over Bill Clinton’s body with a smoking revolver in her hand. At the sound of the gunfire Secret Service agents assigned to protect the former President burst through the door and find her screaming obscenities at the deceased. The door the USSS agents broke down is the only way in or out of the room. There are no windows in the interior room. The agents had heard the two arguing just prior to the gunfire. She claims that she simply found Bill Clinton like that and she hadn’t fired the revolver. She just picked it up from where it was lying next to the body. Only her fingerprints are on the handgun. And they swab her hands and discover powder residue showing that she recently fired a weapon. The revolver is registered to her in NYS. The Secret Service security detail assigned to the former President attest under oath, confirmed by security camera video, that other than the security detail no one was in the house except for Hillary and Billy Jeff. The USSS agents can confirm each other’s location, again confirmed by security camera video, and none of their weapons had been fired. It turns out that Hillary had left messages on Billy Jeff’s cell phone threatening to kill him over the very public affair he’s having with the “energizer bunny.” And two forensics experts from the department lab meet with the homicide detective and inform him that the bullets they recovered from Billy Jeff’s body did in fact come from her revolver based upon the fact the engraving marks on the bullets matched the rifling in Hillary’s revolver. And, just as Peter Strzok did with the ICIG staffers, the homicide detective thanks the experts, shakes their hands, and ushers them out of the room.
Then suspends the investigation in which Hillary is the prime suspect because, he claims, he has no information that the bullets matched the rifling in the revolver. So he claims he can’t solve the case. When the head of the forensics lab goes public, as the ICIG himself did in the Clinton email case, that the detective knew the bullets came from Clinton’s revolver and can document the date and time of the meeting the homicide claims he doesn’t remember the content of the meeting.
What Strzok is attempting with his obvious lies is on this order of magnitude. And Rosenstein knows the lies Strzok told in his public testimony simply can’t be sustained but he’s got to try run out the clock until, he hopes, the Democrats who are in on the cover-up retake the House. So this is twofer. He keeps Trump-Putin collusion canard alive ahead of their summit and distracts the MSM from Strzok’s lies. Not that they need much help in that regard
I used to be amazed at the lengths the MSM will go in order to lie to advance the narrative but I’ve been used to it for at least 30 years. For instance the news people at one of my favorite talk radio stations here in the Dallas Metroplex claimed that at the NATO summit Trump was upset with Germany and lectured their NATO rep because Germany is an “economic powerhouse” that conducted “too much trade with Russia.”
Too bad for them I actually listened to Trump’s comments and he said the exact opposite. He said trade was fine, trade is good. But he said energy is different. By being overly dependent on Russian oil and gas Merkel had made herself vulnerable to Putin and his extortion. It’s one of the reasons why it’s been US policy under both Obama and Trump to help Ukraine become less dependent of Russian energy, and why Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania buy their oil and natural gas from us.
It’s like the MSM is just phoning it in. I don’t even think they believe their own brain=dead talking points anymore. But they’re going to keep it up because they still think they should have a monopoly on what we’re supposed to believe and like the Democrats refuse to accept Trump’s victory the MSM refuses to accept reality as well.
What’s going to be interesting is what Rosenstein and Mueller fhink they’re going to do when the Russian government obtains counsel on behalf or their accused agents, plead innocent, and demand discovery.
That was something that Mueller and his team were completely unprepared for in their previous Russian collusion indictment of 13 named individuals and several business entities back in February. “Putin’s chef” Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of the named individuals and proprietor of two of the business entities retained counsel and through counsel plead innocent, then demanded extensive discovery. Mueller and his “ace’ prosecutors were pathetic. First they claimed the defendants hadn’t been properly served, an allegation destroyed by the fact counsel was present. Then they begged the judge to hide the evidence for the defense team for the indicted Russians because the evidence was supposedly classified as if this were the Soviet Union and he gets to convict people using secret evidence. Then they demanded the judge waive the Speedy Trial Law. But the right to a speedy trial belongs to the defendant, not the government, and the judge dismissed that motion without comment. Apparently the prosecution did at least in part comply with the defense discovery request because in May the defense counsel did agree to a 90 day delay to review the evidence. The trial is scheduled to resume in late August and then Mueller is going to have to put up or drop the charges. If he tries any more shenanigans I wouldn’t be surprised if the judge simply dismisses the charges.
Mueller is threatening to flood the court with 30,000 documents all in Russian as a further delaying tactic. Like Rosenstein he’s hoping ,run out the clock until, he hopes, the Democrats retake Congress. Fat chance. A little bird tells me while he certainly has 30,000 documents in Russian there are over 144 Russian speakers in Russian proper. A few million more in the other former Soviet Republics and abroad, and he won’t be able to tie the defendants to those documents.
Same thing with this latest indictment. What evidence could they possibly have? They didn’t even take custody of the DNC servers and according to Donna Brazile they’ve been destroyed. Are they simply relying on the DNC’s chosen IT contractor Crowdsource? Right, they’ve had a lot of luck relying on third party information like the Steele Dossier. I have other reasons to doubt the GRU is the principle player here if it’s involved at all. Technically this is the kind of mission that should be performed by Russia’s foreign intel service. But Putin is an old KGB thug so he has a soft spot for the KGB’s successor the FSB. It’s supposed to be Russia’s internal spy agency and used to operate in what they called the “near abroad,” the old Warsaw Pact nations. But Putin would assign them this kind of mission.
So I wouldn’t be surprised it they, like Putin’s crony the “chef,” engages counsel and demands to see the evidence that ties their clients to the activity they allege. And as with Yevgeny Prigozhin they won’t be able to do so. At least based on their demonstrated desperation I seriously doubt they can. I expect more “monkeys flinging poo at the wall” delaying tactics.
Actually, it would be irresponsible for any major foreign government to not hack into or otherwise spy on an American national election campaign, or the US government itself, because of the leading influence our country has in the world and foreign policy.
Mr. Trump at least understands that other countries are going to aggressively look out for their own interests. The timing of these indictments is so odd, because it follows right after the Strzok testimony and the FBI Inspector General report, just like it was designed to be a distraction.
What makes this Mueller clown think they won’t demand discovery, just for grins?
My guess is the Russians have plenty of dirt on the Clintons,
They have her 60,000 emails.
With all the news reporting over the last day or so, here is a very relevant question that should be asked of Mr. Rosenstein:
Why did you choose to make this indictment in the first place?
I took the time to read it, and there’s nothing there that could not have been guessed at by thinking about how an intelligence agency or a hacker might work. So, the question is, why make an indictment, especially of Russian nationals who will never be in US courts, when a simple report that lays out what these same people did during 2016 would have been adequate?
The simplest answer is that the purpose of this indictment, especially with its timing of right after the Strzok testimony and right before the summit with Mr. Putin, is to create a certain narrative within the media and the general public, and to attempt to shape foreign policy, by undermining whatever President Trump might choose to do.
These people just cannot be fired soon enough.
As President Trump recently tweeted, “where is the DNC server?”
Just saw an analysis of this indictment that pointed out the gigantic elephant in the room, and that is that, for all their talk about the “forensic analysis” that the FBI did to discover the names of those Russians they indicted, their “forensic analysis” was done without ever having the server in question in their possession, or ever actually examining it.
Says this article, their “analysis” merely takes whatever the DNC hired firm of “Crowdstrike” says was done to the server that the FBI never actually examined, assumes Crowdstrike was 100% accurate in it’s analysis, and then jumps off from there.
How can you charge someone with a crime when you have never actually gotten access to and examined the evidence of that crime, to determine if a crime even took place, and, if a crime did take place, who did it, and how?
As for the answer to Trump’s question, I’d say start combing some of the landfills in the areas of Virginia and Maryland surrounding D.C.
Those “Hillary E-mail server/hacked DNC server” “investigations” were shams from the very beginning.
As I understand it, the normal investigative procedure–that is always followed–is for the investigatory branch, the FBI, to develop information of wrongdoing and, then, for the prosecutorial branch, the Justice Department, to get a court to empanel a grand jury, present that FBI developed information to it, and–if there is sufficient evidence—to get the grand jury to issue subpoenas to compel the production of evidence and witness testimony to further develop the case.
But, it has been reported that in these particular cases the DOJ did not seek the empaneling of a grand jury.
Thus, there was no way to compel the production of physical evidence, or the testimony of witnesses.
Therefore, when the FBI went to the DNC, they had to “request” that the DNC turn over their server, and when the DNC said “no,” the FBI had no way to compel the DNC to turn over that server. So, astoundingly, they took the word of the firm that the DNC hired to examine their server–Crowdstrike–for what had been done to it, and that it had been hacked. But, the FBI never actually had possession of or examined the server in question.
Similarly, the dozens of witnesses that were supposedly interviewed by the FBI in the Hillary email “investigation” could not be compelled to turn over their bank or phone records, their computers, dell phones and other electronic devices but, instead, were allowed to turn certain of their electronic devices over, with very specific lawyer negotiated limitations on what the FBI could look at on each of them.
Some reports even said that the FBI also agreed to the absolutely insane request that they destroy those electronic devices after they had conducted their limited searches of them.
Likewise, since the FBI had no subpoenas to compel testimony from witnesses, it was that these witnesses testimony was “voluntary,” and also came with restrictions on what they could be asked and under what conditions, as arranged by their legal counsel.
In the case of Hillary, it was reported that she was not even questioned under oath, and that several of her staff members–witnesses, and under suspicion themselves–were allowed to sit in on her questioning, and to offer her legal advice on which questions she could refuse to answer.
Moreover, according to reports, no record–no video, no audio, no written notes–no Form 302, one presumes–was made of either the questions asked, or her answers.
Finally, Comey has said that he neither sat in on or observed Hillary’s questioning.
I wonder. What would it take for one of us to be the beneficiary of such a thoroughgoing, casual, relaxed, wildly outside the norm sweetheart deal?
Can everyone shout, THE FIX WAS IN?