Attorney's file on Roger Stone, LaRouche and Russia influencing the 2016 presidential election

[Ron Bulman]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/judge-orders-roger-stone-to-explain-imminent-release-of-book-that-may-violate-gag-order/ar-BBUgQcu?li=BBnb7Kz

[Douglas Caddy]

The judge has demanded Roger Stone be in court on Monday. Looks like she may lock him up.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-02/roger-stone-judge-wants-to-know-why-she-wasn-t-told-about-book?fbclid=IwAR36ZXysyPl9zG5F8wkLxB_ELc8NFT3OwXIUexxG_Sgj4MU3_6811IfXuwU

 

[Douglas Caddy]

John Dean: I Testified Against Nixon. Here’s My Advice for Michael Cohen.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/opinion/john-dean-michael-cohen.html?fbclid=IwAR2XS6UFiQp4S8lSvN2iutF3UKSCCZyxkvK-3i017asTVVsHHTvclRitZ60F

 

From the article: I am thinking of people like Mr. Stone, the longtime Trump associate who worked on the 1972 Nixon campaign and so admires the former president that he has a tattoo of the man’s likeness between his shoulder blades. Mr. Stone, whom I never met while at the White House, has been indicted as part of the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, on charges of lying to Congress about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He prides himself as a political dirty trickster, and he has never met a conspiracy theory he did not believe. Mr. Cohen can be sure that Mr. Stone will promote new conspiracy theories to defend Mr. Trump and himself, even if it means rewriting history. Presidential scandals tend to attract a remarkable number of dishonest “historians.”

    …………………..

Mr. Cohen has likewise come to see Mr. Trump for his true nature. At the very end of his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, he sought permission to read a closing statement.

He thanked the members, and again accepted responsibility for his bad behavior. He then told the legislators, “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why I agreed to appear before you today.” This was the most troubling — actually, chilling — thing he said in his five hours before the committee.

Since Mr. Cohen’s warning came in his closing words, there was no opportunity for committee members to ask follow-up questions. So I double-checked with his lawyer, Lanny Davis, if I had understood Mr. Cohen’s testimony correctly. Mr. Davis responded, “He was referring to Trump’s authoritarian mind-set, and lack of respect for democracy and democratic institutions

[Douglas Caddy]

Roger Stone must be out of his mind. He has committed a second violation of his gag order. The judge really has no choice but to lock him up now even though his trial is six months away.

 

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/03/04/roger-stone-may-have-just-broken-his-gag-order-on-instagram/23683608/

[Bob Ness]

On 2/21/2019 at 5:41 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Not so fast!

A Leak or a Hack? A Forum on the VIPS Memo

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-leak-or-a-hack-a-forum-on-the-vips-memo/#independent-review

Conclusion: Good-faith efforts to parse the available data to provide insight into the unlawful extraction of documents from the DNC in 2016 are admirable and necessary. All parties, however, must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses. Walking nontechnical readers down any narrative path that cannot be directly supported by evidence must be avoided. At this point, given the limited available data, certainty about only a very small number of things can be achieved. [/q]

Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller’s Hacking Indictment

https://www.lawfareblog.com/russia-indictment-20-what-make-muellers-hacking-indictment

This indictment...offers a potential factual breakthrough. It tells us that the prior factual premise was wrong: the alleged conduct violating the CFAA continued to occur throughout the summer of 2016. That affects the earlier analysis in two ways. First, it makes clear that the Russians did intend to release the information at the time the hacking occured. Second, and perhaps more important, the indictment alleges that the criminal hacking conspiracy was ongoing at the time individuals in the Trump campaign were in contact with charged and uncharged Russian conspirators, raising the possibility of more straightforward aiding and abetting liability.

In other words, stay tuned. This indictment represents a tightening of the ring in the story of criminal prosecution for the 2016 election hacking. The government has now alleged that the social media manipulations by Russian actors constituted a criminal conspiracy. It has alleged as well that the hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails were crimes conducted by officers of the Russian state. The question remains: Who, if anyone, helped? [/q]

Sorry I'm late to the party haha..

After reading the article Robert posted (https://disobedientmedia.com/2019/02/fat-anomalies-in-leaked-dnc-emails-suggest-use-of-thumbdrive/) and having some knowledge of the subject,  it seems the author has disproved his own point with this:

This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

Who says that Assange or whoever wasn't delivered this in a diplomatic pouch to be uploaded? The author states that the file allocation table isn't common but that's pure BS as techy dweebs like me and I assume hackers don't exclusively use NTFS or HFS+ (Mac) file systems. FAT 32 is readable by both PCs and Macs and are commonly used together to transfer files between the two. The forensic information they relay in the article is useless to determine the originating source as the hacker could have added the files to their own Dropbox account on a FAT drive (NOT necessarily a USB) or transferred otherwise.

Although the article seems to suggest somebody copied them at the DNC onto a USB drive (which is convenient for the author to make a point) I don't think it means anything.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Bob Ness

[Douglas Caddy]

Special Counsel Mueller tells the judge that Stone has violated her gag order. If she agrees, Stone could be jailed immediately while awaiting his trial.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6770935/Mueller-tells-judge-Framed-Roger-Stone-Instagram-pic-violate-gag-order.html

[Jeff Carter]

11 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

Sorry I'm late to the party haha..

After reading the article Robert posted (https://disobedientmedia.com/2019/02/fat-anomalies-in-leaked-dnc-emails-suggest-use-of-thumbdrive/) and having some knowledge of the subject,  it seems the author has disproved his own point with this:

This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

Who says that Assange or whoever wasn't delivered this in a diplomatic pouch to be uploaded? The author states that the file allocation table isn't common but that's pure BS as techy dweebs like me and I assume hackers don't exclusively use NTFS or HFS+ (Mac) file systems. FAT 32 is readable by both PCs and Macs and are commonly used together to transfer files between the two. The forensic information they relay in the article is useless to determine the originating source as the hacker could have added the files to their own Dropbox account on a FAT drive (NOT necessarily a USB) or transferred otherwise.

Although the article seems to suggest somebody copied them at the DNC onto a USB drive (which is convenient for the author to make a point) I don't think it means anything.

hi Bob

The information regarding the FAT files supports the idea Wikileaks received the purloined emails on or uploaded from a thumb drive, which is consistent with the position they have always maintained. The claim that the files may have been hacked then uploaded to a thumb drive is also possible, and that argument has been made by others as well.  But there are other mitigating factors:  the technical argument that online download speeds are/were not fast enough to facilitate the hack; the fact that, if there was a hack, the NSA would have the forensic evidence, but they don’t, as confirmed by their middling “moderate confidence” that the hack occurred (this alone should end the matter); Wikileaks and associates with direct involvement insist the emails were leaked, and there was no connection with Russia; Wikileaks and associates such as former British ambassador Craig Murray have a stirling record of integrity and truth-telling; Wikileaks and associates have approached the Mueller people to share information pertinent to their investigation and have been ignored.

On the other hand, the hack allegations stem from the DNC’s tech firm Crowdstrike and have no third-party confirmation; the FBI did not examine the servers though persons familiar with these types of investigations say they should have; Crowdstrike’s activity in wake of the security breach was slow, piecemeal, and not consistent with discovery the problem which they allege; Crowdstrike’s personnel have an anti-Russia bias ev ident in both personal and professional conduct.

Weighing the positions of the two sides - hack vs leak - it seems obvious that the “leak” argument is far stronger on both technical and procedural grounds, backed by Wikileaks proven integrity. If there’s a coherent argument why Crowdstrike’s assertions should be believed instead, I have not yet seen it.

[Kirk Ross]

11 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

After reading the article Robert posted (https://disobedientmedia.com/2019/02/fat-anomalies-in-leaked-dnc-emails-suggest-use-of-thumbdrive/) and having some knowledge of the subject

If you haven't already, you might be interested in reviewing the source of the information. 

https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/when-usbs-fly-recent-research-supports-forensicators-controversial-theory/

[Douglas Caddy]

Judge gives Stone until March 11 to produce documents to support his alleged violation of the gag order.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6774555/Judge-revoke-Roger-Stones-bail-new-book-calling-Mueller-crooked-sale.html

 

 

 

 

[Bob Ness]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

hi Bob

The information regarding the FAT files supports the idea Wikileaks received the purloined emails on or uploaded from a thumb drive, which is consistent with the position they have always maintained. The claim that the files may have been hacked then uploaded to a thumb drive is also possible, and that argument has been made by others as well.  But there are other mitigating factors:  the technical argument that online download speeds are/were not fast enough to facilitate the hack; the fact that, if there was a hack, the NSA would have the forensic evidence, but they don’t, as confirmed by their middling “moderate confidence” that the hack occurred (this alone should end the matter); Wikileaks and associates with direct involvement insist the emails were leaked, and there was no connection with Russia; Wikileaks and associates such as former British ambassador Craig Murray have a stirling record of integrity and truth-telling; Wikileaks and associates have approached the Mueller people to share information pertinent to their investigation and have been ignored.

On the other hand, the hack allegations stem from the DNC’s tech firm Crowdstrike and have no third-party confirmation; the FBI did not examine the servers though persons familiar with these types of investigations say they should have; Crowdstrike’s activity in wake of the security breach was slow, piecemeal, and not consistent with discovery the problem which they allege; Crowdstrike’s personnel have an anti-Russia bias ev ident in both personal and professional conduct.

Weighing the positions of the two sides - hack vs leak - it seems obvious that the “leak” argument is far stronger on both technical and procedural grounds, backed by Wikileaks proven integrity. If there’s a coherent argument why Crowdstrike’s assertions should be believed instead, I have not yet seen it.

Thanks Jeff. Right but flying from DC to Chicago, hanging at Starbucks on their network and snagging an Email client's index files is 15 minutes (not including the flight and taxis haha). It's done all the time by script kiddies and the like who have that as a hobby. The modern day listening to conversations at a bar so to speak. Most people don't know how to protect their server creds and so forth from people who actually know what they're doing and that's where the hacks come from, not some blizzard of password requests followed by a login and download. I obviously don't know the full story but the article Robert posted raised some eyebrows with me because there are assertions in it that don't jive with my experience.

Oh, and by the way, the NSA isn't likely to reveal their capabilities, even slightly. Their preference is to be viewed as the village idiot.

[Andrew Prutsok]

Obviously Seth Rich planted malware associated with Russian intelligence agencies on the DNC computers, months if not years before he stole the emails. 

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/he-solved-the-dnc-hack-now-hes-telling-his-story-for-the

 

 

[Jeff Carter]

Scott Ritter  "Crowdstrike: Making It Up As They Go Along?"

quote - 

“Part of the evidence supporting Russian government involvement in the DNC and related hacks…stemmed from the assumption that X-Agent malware was exclusively developed and used by Fancy Bear. We now know that’s false, and that the source code has been obtained by others outside of Russia.”

…if the presence of X-Agent no longer automatically equates Fancy Bear with Russia, then the same can be said about Guccifer 2.0. In short, the entire foundational premise upon which CrowdStrike, and by extension the US intelligence community, constructed its case for Russian attribution, just falls apart.

The intelligence underpinning the US government’s case against Russia has been undermined by the flaws that have been exposed in the analysis and methodologies used by CrowdStrike to make the Russian attribution the FBI and US intelligence community is using as its starting point. If, for instance, one changed “Russia” to “private hacker collective,” the entire premise of Russian involvement, and with it Russian collusion, is undone.

This doesn’t mean the Russian government didn’t have a favorite horse in the US Presidential race, or that Russian media outlets didn’t take an editorial stance in favor of a given candidate. It does, however, significantly weaken the foundational arguments surrounding Russian meddling that were built around the hacking of the DNC server, and the subsequent release of documents.

endquote - 

https://medium.com/@HFINetwork/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f

"Why The DNC Was Not Hacked By The Russians" by William Binney and Larry Johnson

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/02/why-the-dnc-was-not-hacked-by-the-russians.html

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Ahoy Polloi!

Just a photo of Robert Swan Mueller Sr. (L.) showing off his recently won sailing cup with the winner of the Cruising Division, Eugene DuPont.

One can almost hear Judge Smales Sr. congratulating old “Swanny” for his expert skippering of the “Quest” as he offers him a celebratory Glenfiddich.

Dinner at the club with the Bissells, Avery’s. Walkers Pearres, and Symingtons must have been electric, that night. I can imagine a young Charles of the St. Louis Cabells doing his best to try to convince his mother Sadie (née Pearre) Cabell to extend their stay on the Chesapeake to avoid the ponderous Texas heat a little longer. 

“Prohibition for thee, but not for me”, Alice Truesdale exclaimed to her older cousin Richard Bissell and future husband Robert Swan Jr.

Haha gads, how cliche'...

 

[Ron Bulman]

Who framed roger rabbit?  Stone loved Nixon which means he despised JFK for beating Nixon in 1960.  The link to today though Stone was only as teenage campaign assistant at the time in the 1968 election.  And the tattoo on his back.  He's bending over for tumph.  Cohen's suing trumph.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Andrew Prutsok]

Sweet little innocent Maria Butina helped arm anti-American thugs in Crimea. She's so innocent and harmless, as The New Republic article pointed out.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/nra-russia-maria-butina-putin-crimea/

 

Mother Jones has uncovered a trail of activity showing that during the same period when top NRA leaders welcomed Butina into the fold—meeting with her extensively in Moscow and the United States—Butina actively supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military takeover of Crimea. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists. Her efforts there included pledging support to a leader of a militia group that violently seized a Crimean news outlet it deemed “pro-American” and swiftly repurposed for a Kremlin propaganda operation.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Andrew Prutsok