The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[AmazonGrace]

I wonder if they can hear themselves talk. At all.

You have to be some kind of evil dumbass to not think you sound like a psychopathic twat if you're upset that people are talking when those people are upset because they've been shot at and lost several friends just the other day

[fraurosena]

It was bad, real bad. And not much has been done to stop it happening again. 

U.S. intel: Russia ‘compromised’ seven states prior to 2016 election

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The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

The officials say systems in the seven states were compromised in a variety of ways, with some breaches more serious than others, from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.

While officials in Washington informed several of those states in the run-up to the election that foreign entities were probing their systems, none were told the Russian government was behind it, state officials told NBC News.

All state and federal officials who spoke to NBC News agree that no votes were changed and no voters were taken off the rolls.

According to classified intelligence documents, the intelligence community defines compromised as actual "entry" into election websites, voter registration systems and voter look-up systems.

NBC News reached out to all seven states that were compromised, as well as 14 additional states the Department of Homeland Security says were probed during the 2016 election.

To this day, six of the seven states deny they were breached, based on their own cyber investigations. It's a discrepancy that underscores how unprepared some experts think America is for the next wave of Russian interference that intelligence officials say is coming.

Eight months after the assessment, in September 2017, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally contacted election officials in all 50 states to tell them whether or not their systems had been targeted. It told 21 states they had been targeted, and U.S. officials acknowledged that some of those attempts had been successful.

"I think the Obama administration should have been doing much more to push back against the Russians across the board," said Juan Zarate, an NBC News analyst who was deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush. "I think the U.S. was very meek and mild in how we responded to Russian aggression."

Denis McDonough, who was Obama's last chief of staff, strongly disagrees, arguing the administration acted to thwart the Russians before and after the election. Obama administration spokespeople also say they transmitted sensitive intelligence regarding state compromises to congressional leaders.

"The administration took a series of steps to push back against the Russians to include far-ranging sanctions, diplomatic steps to push people associated with the Russian effort out of this country and also warning our friends and allies," he said.

The Trump DHS, like under the Obama administration, has declined to share the intelligence assessment of which states were actually compromised, according to state election officials.

This month, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the current head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said that "an exceptionally small number" of those 21 states "were actually successfully penetrated." But Manfra declined to answer questions about the classified intelligence assessment, or to say specifically how many states had been penetrated.

Top election officials from all 50 states met in Washington this month for a National Association of Secretaries of State conference and received temporary security clearances for a classified threat briefing from intelligence officials. According to two officials present, one from the intelligence community and the other a state official, the actual intelligence on state compromises was not shared.

While numerous state election officials told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security has been stepping up communications with them, many say they're worried they are still not getting enough information from Washington.

Illinois itself had detected a "malicious cyberattack" on its voter registration system in the summer of 2016 and reported it to DHS, saying its voter rolls had been accessed but nothing had been altered. It is the only state to acknowledge actual compromise.

The other six states from the January 2017 assessment, however, say that when DHS told them last September that their systems had been targeted, it still did not tell them that their systems had been compromised. All six also say that based on their own cyber investigations, they believe their election systems were never compromised.

Three states — California, Texas and Wisconsin — said publicly in September that while some state websites were compromised, none were directly related to voting. But a former senior intelligence official told NBC News that these types of penetrations can be just as serious, either as gateways to other networks or as reconnoitering for future attacks.

FEARS OF A REPEAT IN 2018

Nearly 16 months after the presidential election, and more than eight months before the critical midterms, many state and federal officials are convinced the Russians will be back. They're concerned that 2016 was laying the groundwork for a possible future attack.

"We have an extreme sense of urgency on insuring security of the 2018 elections, because you don't get a chance to do it over," said Alex Padilla, California's secretary of state, who said there was no evidence of a successful hack in California.

Several state election officials, including Padilla, told NBC News they think they should have been told that U.S. intelligence agencies believed they'd been breached whether or not that turned out to be true.

"It is hugely imperative that intelligence be shared with state elections officials immediately in order to protect our election infrastructure and the integrity of election results," Padilla said.

[video]

Reluctance to share the information may be due, in part, to the classification of the intelligence itself. Multiple intelligence officials told NBC News that determining the Russian government was behind the hacks depended on "exceptionally sensitive sources and methods" including human spies and eavesdropping on Russian communications.

No state election official at the time had a security clearance sufficient to permit access to such sensitive information, according to DHS.

"Look, whether or not state elections officials had the proper clearance has unfortunately been an excuse in my opinion, a bureaucratic response for why information or intelligence hasn't been more quickly shared with state elections officials," Padilla said.

"We've got to fix that right away, because it does us no good, [when somebody is] sitting in Washington, D.C., with a bit of information about a significant cyberthreat and elections officials and locals are completely unaware. That doesn't help anybody and that needs to be addressed," Padilla said.

Zarate said that he thought "too much of this has happened behind the veil of the government," and that "much more has to be discussed openly with the public about what we know of the kinds of attacks that are happening, who may be behind them, and how we defend ourselves against [them]."

A spokesperson for Florida's secretary of state, Mark Ard, said the state was informed by DHS in September 2017 that Florida had been targeted by hackers in 2016. "This attempt was not in any way successful and Florida's online elections databases and voting systems remained secure," Ard said.

Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said in a statement that his agency had not seen any evidence that any voting or voting registration systems in Texas were compromised before the 2016 elections.

The public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission said the commission has never detected a successful hack on its system, "nor has it ever been notified of one by the Department of Homeland Security or any other state or federal agency."

A spokesperson for the Arizona secretary of state, Matt Roberts, said the state had still not been informed of a successful hack, and had seen no evidence of one. Roberts said the state had not been told that "ANY Arizona voting system has been compromised, nor do we have any reason to believe any votes were manipulated or changed. No evidence, no report, no nothing."

Alaska did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but has previously denied that any breach occurred.

Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security, tried to lift the veil and find out what U.S. intelligence knew about the Russian attempts to compromise the voter system. He sued for disclosure of government files and won last week, receiving 118 top-secret pages from the intelligence community. The pages referred to "compromises" and other breaches but the pages were almost completely blacked out.

Said Moss: "The spreadsheets show that there were documented breaches of election networks. That there were documented, numerous documented instances of attempted breaches of state election networks, and that there was a widespread concern among several agencies in the intelligence committee about the sanctity and the integrity of these election networks."

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it has been working with state and local officials for more than a year on the issue.

"This relationship is built on trust and transparency, and we have prioritized sharing threat and mitigation information with election officials in a timely manner to help them protect their systems," DHS acting press secretary Tyler Houlton said.

"In addition to granting state officials clearances to give them access to classified information, we work to declassify information rapidly and have the ability to grant one-day waivers when necessary to provide state officials with information they may need to protect their systems.

"We are committed to this work and will continue to stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have the confidence that their vote counts — and is counted correctly."

A statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said only: "The declassified Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6, 2017, found that Russian actors did not compromise vote tallying systems. That assessment has not changed."

NEXT STEPS

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, acknowledged that the White House has not directed him to try to stop Moscow from meddling in U.S. elections.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that was "outrageous" and asked whether the U.S. was in a position to stop Russia from "doing this again."

"We’re taking steps but we’re probably not doing enough," Rogers said.

"I want to know, why the hell not?" McCaskill shot back. "What’s it going to take?"

While the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are taking steps to shore up cyberdefenses, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress this month that the instructions did not come from the top.

When Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked Wray if the president had directed him or the bureau to take "specific actions to confront and blunt" ongoing Russian activities, Wray said, "We're taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt Russian efforts."

Reed then asked, "Specifically directed by the president?" Wray answered, "Not as specifically directed by the president."

The White House on Tuesday pushed back on any suggestion they’re not doing enough, saying President Trump is "looking at a number of different ways of making sure that Russia doesn’t meddle in our elections."

For the future, Zarate suggests taking a lesson from the past.

"After 9/11, the walls between law enforcement and intelligence sources had to be broken down in order to connect the dots," Zarate said. "There has to be a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to dealing with what is an assault on American democracy." 

 

[fraurosena]

Everyone, mark this date on your calendars. It's going to be an important day. 

Unless he flips before then, that is.

Judge sets Sept. 17 trial date for Manafort on Mueller charges

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A judge in Washington on Wednesday said she was setting a Sept. 17 trial date for former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on charges from special counsel Robert Mueller including money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent.

The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson would put Manafort on trial at the height of the midterm campaign season, a potentially unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they try to maintain majorities in Congress. 

 

[Cartmann99]

21 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

I wonder if they can hear themselves talk. At all.

You have to be some kind of evil dumbass to not think you sound like a psychopathic twat if you're upset that people are talking when those people are upset because they've been shot at and lost several friends just the other day

They don't think that gun violence will ever personally affect them, so they don't really care about the victims of gun violence. It's simply another example of the immorality of the "Fuck you, I've got mine" approach to life. Some people with that mindset do change after experiencing gun violence up close, but not always. 

I've seen where there has been a spike in conservatives buying or renewing memberships in the NRA and/or the more conservative gun groups. 

We definitely live in interesting times....

 

[fraurosena]

Oh my! It seems Mueller is getting real close to the presidunce with this line of questioning.

Mueller asking if Trump knew about hacked Democratic emails before release

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Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Donald Trump was aware that Democratic emails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.

Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the emails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia.

The line of questioning suggests the special counsel, who is tasked with examining whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, is looking into possible coordination between WikiLeaks and Trump associates in disseminating the emails, which U.S. intelligence officials say were stolen by Russia.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion and has described the special counsel's investigation as "illegal" and a "witch hunt."

In one line of questioning, investigators have focused on Trump's public comments in July 2016 asking Russia to find emails that were deleted by his then-opponent Hillary Clinton from a private server she maintained while secretary of state. The comments came at a news conference on July 27, 2016, just days after WikiLeaks began publishing the Democratic National Committee emails. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said.

Witnesses have been asked whether Trump himself knew then that Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were released several months later, had already been targeted. They were also asked if Trump was advised to make the statement about Clinton's emails from someone outside his campaign, and if the witnesses had reason to believe Trump tried to coordinate the release of the DNC emails to do the most damage to Clinton, the people familiar with the matter said.

The White House spokesman at the time, Sean Spicer, would later say that then-candidate Trump had been "joking" when he called on Russia to hack his opponent's emails.

[video]

WHAT DID ROGER STONE KNOW?

Investigators are also asking questions about Trump's longtime relationship with Stone, the Republican operative, according to witnesses. Investigators have asked about Stone's contacts with WikiLeaks during the campaign and if he's ever met with Assange.

"They wanted to see if there was a scheme. Was Stone working on the side for Trump?" after he officially left the campaign, one person interviewed by the special counsel's office said, adding that it seemed investigators wanted to know, "Was this a big plot?"

Russia stole emails from the DNC and Podesta, according to U.S. intelligence officials, and released batches of them through WikiLeaks starting in July 2016 and up until the election.

As part of his plea agreement with the special counsel, former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos revealed that in a conversation in late April 2016, he was told by a professor with ties to Russian officials that they had "dirt' on Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." A 10-page memo from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released Saturday noted that the Justice Department's October 2016 application for a FISA warrant on another Trump foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, included the fact that Russian agents had previewed their hack and dissemination of stolen emails to Papadopoulos.

Investigators were interested in statements Stone made in the final month of the 2016 campaign that strongly suggested he was aware of information the group had before it became public and when it might be released. In one instance, he wrote on Twitter that "it would soon be Podesta's time in the barrel." Weeks later Podesta's stolen emails were released by WikiLeaks.

As WikiLeaks was strategically publishing stolen emails in the closing months of the campaign, Trump also publicly said he loved the group. He mentioned WikiLeaks 145 times during the last month of the 2016 campaign. In 2017, President Trump's CIA director, Mike Pompeo, would label the group a hostile non-state actor.

[video]

Investigators also have shown interest in any connections Stone has to WikiLeaks and Assange, its founder. Stone has said he communicated with Assange and WikiLeaks through an intermediary he described as a journalist.

The Atlantic reported this week that Stone exchanged direct messages on Twitter with WikiLeaks. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has said his committee should subpoena Twitter to produce any direct messages "from and between the Twitter handles identified as relevant to the Russia investigation," including WikiLeaks, Assange and Stone. According to Schiff, Twitter has told the committee it won't produce such messages "absent compulsion."

Mueller's team has asked witnesses if Stone ever met with Assange. Stone has denied ever communicating directly with Assange.

Stone served briefly on the Trump campaign in 2015, leaving in August of that year. At the time he said he quit, while the campaign said he was fired.

Investigators have asked witnesses about Stone's time on the campaign and what his relationship was like with Trump after he left.

"How often did they talk? Who really fired him? Was he really fired?" a witness said, describing the line of questioning.

In a statement, Stone said he had "no advance knowledge of the content or source of information published by WikiLeaks."

"I have not been interviewed by the special counsel," wrote Stone. "I never discussed WikiLeaks, Assange or the Hillary disclosures with candidate Trump, before during or after the election. I have no idea what he knew about them, from who or when. I have never met Assange."

Stone appeared before the House Intelligence Committee for four hours last September. In his prepared opening statement, which he also delivered publicly on the InfoWars YouTube channel, Stone denied that he ever engaged "in any illegal activities on behalf of my clients, or the causes which I support." He denied having direct contact with Assange and called any exchanges with Guccifer 2.0, which took credit for hacking the DNC, "innocuous."

And he said his tweet predicting that Podesta would spend time in the "barrel" was in the context of the coverage of the resignation of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, whom he called his "boyhood friend and colleague," over allegations about business activities in Ukraine.

TRUMP'S POLICY POSITIONS

At that same July 2016 news conference where he referenced Clinton's missing emails, candidate Trump said he was open to lifting sanctions on Russia and possibly recognizing its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine. The U.S. and its European allies had sanctioned Russia because of its intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, which the Obama administration refused to recognize.

Investigators have asked witnesses why Trump took policy positions that were friendly toward Russia and spoke positively about Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the probe.

Investigators have also inquired whether Trump met with Putin before becoming president, including if a meeting took place during Trump's 2013 visit to Moscow for his Miss Universe pageant. Trump has given conflicting responses on when he first met Putin.

At least one witness was asked about Trump's business interests in Moscow and surmised afterward that the special counsel investigation may be focused on business dealings that took place during the campaign.

Witnesses also have been asked about Stone's connections to Manafort.

At least one witness has been asked about Trump aide Dan Scavino, specifically about any involvement he may have had in the campaign's data operation. Scavino currently runs the White House's social media operations and is one of Trump's closest aides.

NBC News reached out to Trump's legal team and the White House.

John Dowd, the president’s outside attorney, told NBC News, "We do not discuss our knowledge of or communications with the special counsel."

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment.

 

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff is soooo done with the Repugliklan shenanigans.

 

[fraurosena]

Mueller eyes charges against Russians who stole, spread Democrats’ emails

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Special counsel Robert Mueller is assembling a case for criminal charges against Russians who carried out the hacking and leaking of private information designed to hurt Democrats in the 2016 election, multiple current and former government officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News.

Much like the indictment Mueller filed last month charging a different group of Russians in a social media trolling and illegal-ad-buying scheme, the possible new charges are expected to rely heavily on secret intelligence gathered by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), several of the officials say.

Mueller's consideration of charges accusing Russians in the hacking case has not been reported previously. Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing. Potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. One U.S. official briefed on the matter said the charges are not imminent, but other knowledgeable sources said they are expected in the next few weeks or months. It's also possible Mueller could opt not to move forward because of concerns about exposing intelligence or other reasons — or that he files the indictment under seal, so the public doesn't see it initially.

The sources say the possible new indictment — or more than one, if that's how Mueller's office decides to proceed — would delve into the details of, and the people behind, the Russian intelligence operation that used hackers to penetrate computer networks and steal emails of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The release of embarrassing Democratic emails through WikiLeaks became a prominent feature in the 2016 presidential election, cited at least 145 times by Republican candidate Donald Trump in the final month of the campaign. At one point he publicly urged "Russia" to find and release emails Trump believed were missing from Democrat Hillary Clinton's private server.

DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a joint statement in the month before the 2016 election saying officials were "confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises" that led to leaked emails being published by DCLeaks.com, WikiLeaks and an online persona known as Guccifer 2.0. — all considered to have been acting as Russian agents.

No criminal charges have been filed, however. In July 2016 the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into how the Russians carried out the operation and whether any Americans, including members of the Trump campaign, were involved. Mueller took over the probe in May 2017. His office has filed more than 100 criminal charges against 19 people and three companies, securing guilty pleas and cooperation agreements from three members of the Trump campaign.

It is unlikely that the United States would be able to extradite alleged Russian hackers or their paymasters, but an indictment would "send a signal" both to Russia and to any Americans who may have participated, a government official said. In 2014, the Justice Department filed charges against five Chinese military hackers, accusing them of economic espionage. In 2016, authorities indicted seven hackers associated with the government of Iran, accusing them of hacking into bank websites and a computer system that controlled a small New York state dam. None of the accused in either case are in custody.

It could not be learned to what extent, if at all, Mueller's office would make allegations in the possible indictments about the role of Russian President Vladimir Putin in ordering and supervising the operation. NBC News has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have evidence Putin was closely involved, but sources say the intelligence underlying that conclusion is extremely sensitive.

The CIA long ago turned over all the relevant intelligence it had on the Russian operation to FBI investigators, officials said. The NSA, DHS and the ODNI have also passed along to Mueller analysis and forensic information connected to the hacks, including telltale "signatures," malware and methods.

Another question is whether Mueller will charge Russian intelligence officers alleged to have supervised the operation. Often, the people who do the hacking for the Russian government are private freelancers. A former FBI official briefed on the matter said it was likely Russian government officials would be charged — but that Mueller would have to consult widely in the government about that decision.

"The Kremlin has used hackers to steal personal communications that Russian operatives then parceled out in targeted leaks, and created fake social media personas and news items on all sides of controversial issues in the hope of stirring discord in the West," Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, told Congress this week.

Last November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department had identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information that became public during the 2016 presidential election, and that prosecutors and agents have assembled evidence to charge the Russian officials.

Another major unanswered question is whether Mueller's grand jury will charge any Americans as witting participants in the hacking and leaking scheme — including anyone associated with Trump's presidential campaign. Americans referenced in Mueller's previous indictment of Russians were described as "unwitting."

One source suggested that a new indictment could include unnamed American co-conspirators as part of a strategy to pressure those involved to cooperate. The previous Mueller indictment involving the Russian social media operation cited a co-conspirator that it did not name.

Much like the social media activity laid out in Mueller's recent indictment, the Russian hacking operation began long before the 2016 election.

In 2015, Russian hackers stepped up a campaign to use "spear phishing" techniques to steal emails and other data from Capitol Hill staffers, political operatives and foreign policy experts, U.S. officials and outside experts tell NBC News. Such techniques involve sending what appears to be a friendly email that is actually loaded with malware that gives the sender access to the recipient's computer, and potentially the organization's network.

In March 2016, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta got an email instructing him to change his password. A staffer told him it was legitimate. The staffer was wrong. The Russians soon were inside his machine.

A few days later, a DNC employee acted on a similar email.

The GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, began vacuuming up emails from Podesta and from DNC accounts, according to CrowdStrike, the firm hired to analyze the breach. Another Russian intelligence agency, the SVR, also at some point breached DNC networks, CrowdStrike found.

A month later, in April, a junior Trump campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos met a mysterious European professor for breakfast at a London hotel.

According to court documents, the professor conveyed to Papadopoulos that he had learned from Russian government officials in Moscow that the Russians had obtained "'dirt' on then-candidate Clinton," including "thousands of emails."

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents and is now cooperating with Mueller.

The bulk of the stolen Democratic emails ultimately were made public through WikiLeaks, the self-described transparency organization that CIA Director Mike Pompeo has branded as a “hostile nonstate intelligence service” that “collaborated” with Russia. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disputes that his organization got the emails from the Russians. Another big question is whether Mueller will seek to charge anyone associated with WikiLeaks, who may claim in defense that they were acting as journalists.

On Wednesday, NBC News reported that Mueller's team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Trump was aware that Democratic emails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.

Trump has repeatedly denied collusion and has called the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt."

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.axios.com/robert-muller-questions-list-trump-russia-54d00d1c-f008-457c-b304-ee601a98d78c.html?source=sidebar

Scoop: Mueller's hit list

Axios has reviewed a Grand Jury subpoena that Robert Mueller's team sent to a witness last month. 

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What Mueller is asking for:

 

Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received regarding the following people:

Carter Page

Corey Lewandowski

Donald J. Trump

Hope Hicks

Keith Schiller

Michael Cohen

Paul Manafort

Rick Gates

Roger Stone

Steve Bannon

The subpoena asks for all communications from November 1, 2015, to the present. Notably, Trump announced his campaign for president five months earlier — on June 16, 2015.

Bottom line: In December, the president's lawyer Ty Cobb told me the White House would be free of the Mueller investigation "shortly after the first of the year absent some unforeseen delay." We know very little about what's keeping the investigators so busy, but the breadth of this subpoena means Mueller's team could easily stumble into goodies about Trump's inner circle given so many people are coughing up material. (Cobb didn't respond to a request for comment.)

 

 

[fraurosena]

Come on! This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. How else are they going to win elections?

State Dept. Was Granted $120 Million to Fight Russian Meddling. It Has Spent $0.

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As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy.

As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts.

The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. More broadly, the funding lag reflects a deep lack of confidence by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in his department’s ability to execute its historically wide-ranging mission and spend its money wisely.

Mr. Tillerson has voiced skepticism that the United States is even capable of doing anything to counter the Russian threat.

“If it’s their intention to interfere, they’re going to find ways to do that,” Mr. Tillerson said in an interview last month with Fox News. “And we can take steps we can take, but this is something that once they decide they are going to do it, it’s very difficult to pre-empt it.”

The United States spends billions of dollars on secret cybercapabilities, but these weapons have proved largely ineffective against Russian efforts on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere that simply amplify or distort divisive but genuine voices in the United States and elsewhere.

The role for the Global Engagement Center would be to assess Russian efforts and then set about amplifying a different set of voices to counter them, perhaps creating a network of anti-propaganda projects dispersed around the world, experts said.

“There are now thousands of former Russian journalists who have been exiled or fired who are doing counter-Russian stuff in exile who we could help,” said Richard Stengel, who as the under secretary for public diplomacy in the Obama administration had oversight of the Global Engagement Center.

Concerted campaigns to highlight the roles of Russian troll farms or Russian mercenaries in Ukraine and Syria could have a profound effect, Mr. Stengel said.

At the end of the Obama administration, Congress directed the Pentagon to send $60 million to the State Department so it could coordinate governmentwide efforts, including those by the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, to counter anti-democratic propaganda by Russia and China. This messaging effort is separate from other potential government actions like cyberattacks.

Mr. Tillerson spent seven months trying to decide whether to spend any of the money. The State Department finally sent a request to the Defense Department on Sept. 18 to transfer the funds, but with just days left in the fiscal year, Pentagon officials decided that the State Department had lost its shot at the money.

With another $60 million available for the next fiscal year, the two departments dickered for another five months over how much the State Department could have.

After The New York Times, following a report on the issue by Politico in August, began asking about the delayed money, the State Department announced on Monday that the Pentagon had agreed to transfer $40 million for the effort, just a third of what was originally intended.

State Department officials say they expect to receive the money in April. Steve Goldstein, the under secretary for public diplomacy, said he would contribute $1 million from his own budget to “kick-start the initiative quickly.”

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation,” Mr. Goldstein said.

On Wednesday, Mark E. Mitchell, a top official in the Defense Department, said much wrangling remained before any of the promised $40 million is transferred to the State Department.

“We’re still a ways off,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The delays have infuriated some members of Congress, which approved the funding transfer with bipartisan support.

“It is well past time that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center gets the resources Congress intended for it to effectively fight Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and other foreign propaganda operations,” Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday.

Adele Ruppe, the center’s chief of staff, defended the administration’s broader efforts to counter Russian propaganda, pointing out that the State Department had provided $1.3 billion in assistance in 2017 to strengthen European resilience to Russian meddling. But that money was largely obligated during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration has proposed slashing that assistance by more than half for the coming year, to $527 million, and to $491 million for the next year.

While it waits for the funding transfer from the Pentagon, the center, which has a staff of around 60 people, including 23 contract analysts, will continue working on its original mission: countering jihadist and extremist propaganda.

Most of the center’s leaders are working in temporary assignments, a product of Mr. Tillerson’s halt in promotions. The analysts work in a warren of cubicles in the basement of a tired building that once housed the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II predecessor to the C.I.A.

The analysts are divided into five teams that largely work in four languages: Arabic, Urdu, French and Somali. The analysts said in interviews that they had notched some significant victories, including a video montage proving that the Islamic State had itself destroyed Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, and a widely seen cartoon in French depicting the miserable life of an Islamic State fighter.

Still, these efforts are a small fraction of what Congress envisioned. A 2015 internal assessment found that the Islamic State had been far more nimble on social media than the United States had been. In May, Congress more than doubled the center’s budget, providing an additional $19 million over its earlier budget of $14 million. But by Jan. 1, the department had spent just $3.6 million of the additional $19 million, Mr. Goldstein said.

James K. Glassman, the under secretary for public diplomacy during the George W. Bush administration, said the center’s uncertain funding and temporary leadership reflected the administration’s lack of interest in countering either jihadist or Russian propaganda.

“They’ve got the vehicle to do this work in the center,” Mr. Glassman said. “What they don’t have is a secretary of state or a president who’s interested in doing this work.”

Mr. Tillerson is focusing his energies instead on drastically shrinking the department, leaving a significant part of its budget unused and hundreds of important decisions unmade.

Last year, the State Department spent just 79 percent of the money that Congress had authorized for the conduct of foreign affairs, the lowest such level in at least 15 years and well down from the 93 percent spent in the final year of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of data from the Office of Management and Budget.

Because of the hiring and promotion freezes that have left large sums unspent, as well as Mr. Tillerson’s refusal to delegate spending decisions, the department had a backlog of more than 1,400 official requests for Mr. Tillerson’s signoff at the end of last year, according to a former senior diplomat who left the department then.

Anyone in Congress not clamouring for action on the Russian meddling should be considered a traitor to the US. 

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Come on! This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. How else are they going to win elections?

State Dept. Was Granted $120 Million to Fight Russian Meddling. It Has Spent $0.

Anyone in Congress not clamouring for action on the Russian meddling should be considered a traitor to the US. 

It does scare me that they are oddly not too panicked about November. And as you said, they aren't actively doing anything. This tells me that the fix is in and they are relying on it to get by in November. I don't believe that the 2016 elections weren't effected. And they know it worked so they're doing everything they can to keep that system in place.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mueller is casting a wide net. We now know the target is Trump."

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is now directly gunning for President Trump — and not just on one front. It appears that Mueller is investigating whether Trump himself committed misconduct or possible criminality on two fronts, and possibly more.

NBC News is now reporting that Mueller has sent a subpoena to an unnamed witness that appears to hint at just how wide a net Mueller has cast. NBC reports that the subpoena suggests Mueller is focused, among other things, on determining what Trump himself knew about Russian sabotage of the 2016 election as it was happening.

The subpoena demands a range of documents that involve Trump himself, in addition to nine of his top campaign advisers and associates. The documents solicited include emails, text messages, work papers and telephone logs dating back to November 2015, about four months after Trump declared his presidential candidacy.

This builds on NBC’s previous report that Mueller’s investigators are asking witnesses questions that indicate that Mueller is examining whether Trump knew Democratic emails had been hacked before that became public, and whether he was somehow involved in their “strategic release.” As NBC’s new report puts it:

The subpoena indicates that Mueller may be focused not just on what Trump campaign aides knew and when they knew it, but also on what Trump himself knew.

In a certain sense, it isn’t that surprising to learn that Mueller is focused on what Trump knew about Russia’s hacking of emails and interference in the election, and any potential conspiracy with them. Mueller is charged with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated” with Trump’s campaign, as well as any other matters that arise from that line of inquiry. This was inevitably going to include what Trump himself knew and when.

But the subpoena’s search for documents dating all the way back to November 2015 and its demand for documents relating to so many of Trump’s top associates “indicates just how wide a net Mueller is casting,” Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel for Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton, told me today.

Bob Bauer, the former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, added in an interview with me that the subpoena may serve as a reminder of Trump’s centrality to the collusion tale.

Indeed, as Bauer noted, the publicly known facts already point to Trump’s centrality. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. eagerly held a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer fully expecting that he’d be getting dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. It has not been established whether Donald Trump knew about that meeting. But recall that Trump himself helped draft the initial statement misleading the nation about the real purpose of that meeting.

Also recall that former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon told author Michael Wolff that, in his view, the “chance that Don Jr. did not walk” the Russians “up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.” (Bannon is one of the advisers whom the subpoena seeks documents about.)

“We have the president apparently involved in drafting a fallacious statement on behalf of Don Jr. about what actually happened in the Trump Tower meeting,” Bauer told me. “We have Bannon speculating — and I think this only stands to reason — that Don Jr. would never have arranged this meeting without his father knowing that it was coming. It is known that the Trump campaign was communicating with the Russians about help for the campaign and that Trump was personally involved in an effort to conceal information about these contacts from the public.”

“The president in particular is right in the middle of questions about Russian interference,” Bauer said.

Also recall that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos’s plea agreement with Mueller indicated that he had been informed in April 2016 that the Russians collected “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. What’s more, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) — the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — has now openly stated that information gathered by the committee shows that “the Russians previewed to Papadopoulous that they could help with disseminating these stolen emails.” The question is whether Trump campaign higher-ups were told of these things — and whether Trump knew of them.

We don’t know the answer to those questions, and again, it must be stressed that Mueller may find no evidence of coordination. But the already known facts are troubling enough on their own. And it’s obvious that Mueller knows a lot more than we do.

Trump has acted methodically to hamstring the Mueller probe

Indeed, this feeds into the second way that Mueller is investigating Trump — for possible obstruction of justice. We learned last week that Mueller is closely scrutinizing Trump’s state of mind during his repeated efforts to push out Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to determine whether the goal was to replace him with someone who would better protect him from the Mueller probe (Sessions had recused himself, enraging Trump). Mueller is trying to determine whether this conduct, along with Trump’s firing of his FBI director, establishes a pattern that constitutes obstruction of justice. As I have argued, we know beyond any doubt that Trump has acted methodically, again and again and again, to constrain or derail the investigation, and only pulled back after those efforts were foiled.

That particular conduct can potentially be explained by Mueller’s scrutiny of what Trump and/or his associates knew and when about Russian efforts to sabotage the election on his behalf. This confluence doesn’t prove anything, of course. But as Bauer put it to me: “Trump came into office frantic to deny any collusion with the Russians during the campaign, and from the beginning, he is apparently maneuvering to choke off an investigation by pressuring and then firing Comey, and attacking Sessions over the recusal. And so he added an obstruction inquiry to his problems.”

Beyond all this, we also know Mueller is scrutinizing whether any White House policies might have been shaped by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business discussions with foreigners during the transition. And who knows where that might lead.

...

It would be so gratifying to watch the orange menace escorted out of the WH in cuffs.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmm: "Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg called before grand jury, says he will refuse to go"

Spoiler

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Monday that he has been subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election but that he will refuse to go.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Nunberg said he was asked to come to Washington to appear before the grand jury on Friday. He also provided a copy of what appears to be his two-page grand jury subpoena seeking documents related to President Trump and nine other people, including emails, correspondence, invoices, telephone logs, calendars and “records of any kind.”

Nunberg forwarded an email listed as coming from the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III seeking his appearance in front of the panel on Friday.

Among those that the subpoena requests information about are departing White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adviser Roger Stone.

Nunberg said he does not plan to comply with the subpoena, including either testimony or providing documents.

“Let him arrest me,” Nunberg said. “Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in on Friday.”

Nunberg said he was planning to go on Bloomberg TV and tear up the subpoena.

It is unclear what actions Mueller would take if Nunberg does not appear in front of the grand jury. Nunberg, an early campaign aide, was dismissed by Trump and no longer is in his good graces.

“The Russians and Trump did not collude,” Nunberg said. “Putin is too smart to collude with Donald Trump.”

“I’m not spending 80 hours going over my emails with Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and producing them,” Nunberg said. “Donald Trump won this election on his own. He campaigned his ass off. And there is nobody who hates him more than me.”

 

[onekidanddone]

23 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Hmmm: "Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg called before grand jury, says he will refuse to go"

  Hide contents

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Monday that he has been subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election but that he will refuse to go.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Nunberg said he was asked to come to Washington to appear before the grand jury on Friday. He also provided a copy of what appears to be his two-page grand jury subpoena seeking documents related to President Trump and nine other people, including emails, correspondence, invoices, telephone logs, calendars and “records of any kind.”

Nunberg forwarded an email listed as coming from the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III seeking his appearance in front of the panel on Friday.

Among those that the subpoena requests information about are departing White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adviser Roger Stone.

Nunberg said he does not plan to comply with the subpoena, including either testimony or providing documents.

“Let him arrest me,” Nunberg said. “Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in on Friday.”

Nunberg said he was planning to go on Bloomberg TV and tear up the subpoena.

It is unclear what actions Mueller would take if Nunberg does not appear in front of the grand jury. Nunberg, an early campaign aide, was dismissed by Trump and no longer is in his good graces.

“The Russians and Trump did not collude,” Nunberg said. “Putin is too smart to collude with Donald Trump.”

“I’m not spending 80 hours going over my emails with Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and producing them,” Nunberg said. “Donald Trump won this election on his own. He campaigned his ass off. And there is nobody who hates him more than me.”

 

I would think he would get a sweet immunity deal and then sing like a cannery. Sing to the roof tops. Of course Trump is going to pounce on the "Putin is too smart to collude with Donald Trump" and say LOOK NO "collude". Trump might however have to follow up on the 'Putin is too smart" and give us another "really stable smart guy".  What Trump will do with the Nunberg haring him might be another huge meltdown 

[fraurosena]

I don't think he'll be offered a plea deal anymore. He's been subpoenaed after all. Maybe he got offered a deal and he refused, or it fell through, or maybe no deal was offered. No matter though. His refusal to appear will lead to criminal charges, he'll be arrested, and held until he eventually does consent to appearing before the Grand Jury. He might plead the fifth then, but we all know that's only done to avoid implicating one's self, and will be reason enough for Mueller to start digging even more.

Either way, Nunberg's fucked. He might think he's being a big manly tough guy, and trying to spit in the face of the Special Counsel with his refusal, but he's shooting himself in the foot here. Bigly. He's on the outs with the presidunce, so he'll get no help in the form of a presiduncial pardon either. 

[Howl]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Hmmm: "Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg called before grand jury, says he will refuse to go"

This guy is off his meds or having a drunk dial moment when he decided to contact MSM cable outlets to pour his heart out.   He's out Mooching the Mooch. 

He'll probably be in boxers and a wife beater with a four-day growth of beard when agents show up at his door on Thursday.

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

He thinks it would be funny to be arrested because he doesn't want to spend 80 hours to go over emails.

 

[onekidanddone]

10 minutes ago, Howl said:

This guy is off his meds or having a drunk dial moment when he decided to contact MSM cable outlets to pour his heart out.   He's out Mooching the Mooch. 

He'll probably be in boxers and a wife beater with a four-day growth of beard when agents show up at his door on Thursday.

Not guilty by being bat shit crazy? 

80 hours! 80 hours! What is is obsession with 80 hours? What is he after with all the name dropping? This guy really is bat shit crazy.  He can't out smart Mulller.

[AmazonGrace]

Oh he's such a liar. He says he went through his emails, then he says he didn't go through his emails, then he says he decided not to hand over his emails while going over them.

Also he thinks that his emails would damn Roger Stone.

[onekidanddone]

6 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Oh he's such a liar. He says he went through his emails, then he says he didn't go through his emails, then he says he decided not to hand over his emails while going over them.

Also he thinks that his emails would damn Roger Stone.

In the beginning he said Trump didn't do anything. Then at the end, he says well maybe Trump did 'do something' I lost count of how many times he said Rodger Stone and Steve Bannon. Deflect deflect deflect.  Look over there! Look how shiny Steve and Rodger are.

[AmazonGrace]

And he's mad about people having legal bills because of the investigation. Genius, just genius, I tell you. If you want to avoid legal bills, any lawyer would tell you the  best thing to do is to avoid a grand jury subpoena.

There was a funny bit about being subpoenaed pretty down on the list too. Like he's mad that he wasn't the first person Mueller wanted to grill. Mean girls invited all the cool kids first

Here's Nunberg with Jake Tapper:

 

[AmazonGrace]

49 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Not guilty by being bat shit crazy? 

80 hours! 80 hours! What is is obsession with 80 hours? What is he after with all the name dropping? This guy really is bat shit crazy.  He can't out smart Mulller.

He also mentioned 30 hours, 40 hours, 50 hours and so on. 

He told Tapper that he never communicated with Manafort or Gates or Carter Page so I can't imagine fowarding the emails from them would take very much time.

 

This is why I love Jake Tapper : "Life and special counsels aren't always fair."

 

[AmazonGrace]

This may be totally unconnected to anything we're interested in here but I just thought this was notable in light of all the dead Russians that have been cropping up in these threads.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43295134

[Howl]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Also he thinks that his emails would damn Roger Stone.

He says Roger Stone is like a father to him and his mentor and he won't throw him under the bus.  He fears that Mueller is trying to make a case against Roger Stone, who he swears up and down is innocent, innocent, innocent. 

Sam also hates, HATES, HATES! Trump, Corey Lewandowski and Hope Hicks with the heat of a thousand suns.  He discovered that Trump is loyal to no one (duh) and that Corey and Hope conspired to get him fired.  He's getting good legal advice from lawyer on TV, and people are going over and over with Sam why it's a bad idea refuse to appear before  the grand jury.   Sam can't get over how unfair this is because the scope of the request for records and how he doesn't want to produce these because it might hurt his friend. 

Sam has been granted immunity by Mueller. 

[AmazonGrace]

Why? Why? Why do I have to answer a subpoena if I don't wanna?

I had forgotten this tidbit:

 

The Roger Stone thing... he goes on about how they want him to testify "against Roger Stone" but if Roger is his friend and Roger really did nothing wrong. wouldn't it be better to proudly go forth and produce a bunch of emails that prove that Roger is a sweetiepie.