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The Robert Mueller Investigation

Hugo Stiglitz

By Hugo Stiglitz
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Goredho
Goredho

Just to make sure I have the alternative facts straight...  Our government -- but I'm guessing only the deep state part of it --- is now guilty of torturing a poor, naive Russian exchange student who

Incredulity
Incredulity

liberals suddenly being terrified of Russia and manic for election integrity is just pure comedy gold.

Chooky
Chooky

I don't believe for a moment that any of this is entertaining to you.  I think it gives you a bit of anxiety knowing that your best weapon against a group who you despise is a bumbling fraud as a busi

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triplehorn

triplehorn 2664

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

Pretty stupid of Trump to allow a non-family member who wasn't already a geriatric lifetime felon into the inner circle.

Cracks in the wall are appearing.  As these Congressional hearings ramp up, and progress to anticipated formal impeachment hearings, those documented pardon dangles from Trump and other assurances of protection for lying to or obstructing Congress are going to start looking awfully empty down the home stretch of this term.  Others have to be checking their calendars and recognizing those 14 farmed out Mueller investigations could outlive what might only amount to another 18 months of this presidency.  

remember, Mueller = Jaqen H'ghar

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Bama Chick

Bama Chick 28596

Posted
Posted

Yeah Hope is way to bougie to go to prison for Trump.

That’s one relationship in his inner circle where the person doing the majority of the using and ladder climbing wasn’t Trump.

He had some kind of creepy fascination with her and she rode that all the to a job in the White House she was completely unqualified for.

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Longhornfan1024

Longhornfan1024 1707

Posted
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Yeah Hope is way to bougie to go to prison for Trump.

That’s one relationship in his inner circle where the person doing the majority of the using and ladder climbing wasn’t Trump.

He had some kind of creepy fascination with her and she rode that all the to a job in the White House she was completely unqualified for.

Creepy fascination?  She's hot and he wanted to fuck her.  That's pretty much the extent of his thought process.  Of all the horrible shit he's done in the name of getting laid, it'd be pretty poetic if he gets taken down because he gave too much access to a woman he wanted to fuck and she screwed him (figuratively).  

Edited by Longhornfan1024
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conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21468

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Yeah Hope is way to bougie to go to prison for Trump.

That’s one relationship in his inner circle where the person doing the majority of the using and ladder climbing wasn’t Trump.

He had some kind of creepy fascination with her and she rode that all the to a job in the White House she was completely unqualified for.

Undefeated.

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woohorn

woohorn 1131

Posted
Posted

Hope ain't putting out for Congress. The ELECTION documents are public records and neither she, nor the Prez can stop disclosure.

She ain't cooperating any more than any other shit head in that admin. Ya'll white knights know that she is an Exec VP at Fox News, don't you?

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triplehorn

triplehorn 2664

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Do you guys actually read the articles, or just the tweets?

Quote

[...]

The White House instructed Hicks not to turn over documents to the committee related to her time in the administration, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The panel said White House officials issued similar instructions to Donaldson.

But House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Hicks, the Trump campaign's former press secretary, would provide "some documents" relating to the campaign.

[...]

Nadler said: "The president has no lawful basis for preventing these witnesses from complying with our request."

The committee is seeking any material Hicks has on a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City between campaign officials including the president's son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russians offering to help Trump's candidacy.

The subpoena also seeks documents relating to any payments made to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who allegedly provided hush money to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump including porn star Stormy Daniels.

cont.

I guess it remains to be seen what "some documents" means.  Do you get away with just the tip ? 

If you do commit something but not everything, I suppose there's a potential price for attempted withholding, or lying about what you've got.

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Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13545

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, Bruh Man said:

 

 

Meanwhile, in Cohen World...

 

Lawrence Dressler, a former Otisville prisoner who served 18 months for mortgage fraud, describes the facility housing about 800 inmates as being like a “summer camp.”

Cohen is not the only household name in Otisville. Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland is serving a six-year sentence for two counts of wire fraud. Jersey Shore’s Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is serving an eight-month sentence after he was found guilty on tax-evasion charges.

Dressler says there is a pecking order among inmates, and Cohen is at the top with his “celebrity status.”

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-cohen-treated-like-a-celebrity-in-prison

 

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

You know, Republicans want Mueller to testify too. That's how dumb the Democrats are. How do you out idiot the Republicans? It's astounding.

mueller's not talking anytime soon.  gonna be a whole lotta theater before that happens.

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
Posted
Just now, Thetexashammer said:

I know that. The point is that the only thing he could ever have possibly done is confirm what was in the report. Written or verbal, it's still testimony.

sure, i guess? 

he can answer any question he gets asked.  he can answer questions about phone conversations he's had with barr.  he can answer to why he decided to leave it up to the doj/congress.  almost nobody has actually read the report.  there are stories coming out from trump voters who claim they have no idea what's in the report, they just believe trump's tweets.  just getting mueller in front of a mic to confirm what's in the report will be eye-opening and jaw-dropping for a lot of the mouth-breathers that live among us.

the response to your "the republicans want mueller to testify too" was that he won't be testifying any time soon.  there will be a lot of shit going on between now and whenever that happens.  there will be a lot of hearings before this turns into any type of official "impeachment", just like the nixon situation.

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suddenly shaggy

suddenly shaggy 929

Posted
Posted

This is one of the stupidest things y'all have ever tried to gaslight us with. If Trumpublicans wanted Mueller to testify, he'd have been before the Senate the day after the report was turned in. McConnell doesn't fuck around and his base celebrates when he plays politics. He hasn't hauled Mueller before the Senate because he knows how it would play out. 

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zork

zork 629

Posted
Posted

Christopher Steele: MI6 agent to face questions on Trump Russia dossier

Quote

The former MI6 agent behind the Trump dossier has agreed to be questioned by US officials over his relationship with the FBI.

Christopher Steele, 54, has agreed to meet investigators in London within weeks, according to a source close to him. Mr Trump has tweeted more than 50 times about Mr Steele, calling him a “failed spy” and accusing him of spreading fake news.

Last year Mr Steele, who runs a corporate intelligence company, was named as the author of memos containing unsubstantiated allegations that the Kremlin held sexually lurid information about Mr Trump.

...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/christopher-steele-mi6-agent-to-face-questions-on-trump-russia-dossier-qkxk5p06c

I'm not a subscriber.  Anyone have the rest?

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triplehorn

triplehorn 2664

Posted
Posted

Holy shit.  And yes, Mueller related:

WaPo: Federal investigators to examine equipment from 2016 N.C. election amid renewed fears of Russian hacking

 

By Neena Satija 
June 5 at 8:00 AM 

It was a single phrase, offered without elaboration, in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report: In August 2016, hackers working for Russian military intelligence “installed malware on the company network” of an unnamed voter registration technology vendor in the United States. ... The claim amounts to one of the first indications that Russians successfully executed a cyberattack against a private company supporting American election infrastructure. And it has set off a scramble for answers in North Carolina, where officials have long been concerned about the security of a voting technology company called VR Systems — so much so that the state tried to halt the use of its electronic poll books, equipment used to check in voters. 

Problems checking in voters on Election Day 2016 in Durham County, one of the largest counties in the state, made national headlines. Later, leaked documents revealed that Russians had tried to hack VR Systems shortly before the election. After the Mueller report, state officials wanted to know: Was VR Systems the company referenced? What effect, if any, did the malware have? And how could they prevent it from happening in 2020? 

An examination of North Carolina’s struggle to answer those questions, detailed in court records and a dozen interviews, hints at the difficulties state officials face in shoring up security ahead of next year’s elections — a lack of technical expertise, poor communication between state and federal officials, and the apparent unwillingness, in this instance, of the federal agency involved to share information. Russian hackers targeted elections infrastructure in at least 21 states, and likely more, in 2016, federal officials have said. .... Hackers could not directly alter vote totals by breaching poll books. But they could create substantial delays or even prevent voters from casting ballots. 

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security told The Washington Post it will conduct a forensic analysis of the laptops used in Durham County elections in 2016. Lawson said North Carolina first asked the department to conduct such a review more than 18 months ago, though he added that DHS has generally been a “good partner” on election security. 

cont. VVV

Quote

“We appreciate the Department of Homeland Security’s willingness to make this a priority so the lingering questions from 2016 can be addressed in advance of 2020,” said Karen Brinson Bell, the newly appointed executive director of the State Board of Elections.

In a recent statement to The Post, VR Systems said that “we think we are the company referenced” in the Mueller report — a document produced by a team of prosecutors and FBI investigators — but denied that its network was ever breached and said its technology did not fail in Durham County in 2016. The company’s election equipment is used in at least a half-dozen states, according to its website.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment on the company’s claims or to elaborate on the malware reference.

The FBI came under fire from Florida lawmakers last month for being slow to share information on another Mueller report contention — that Russian hackers had accessed “the network of at least one Florida county government in 2016.” 

The FBI now says two Florida counties’ voter registration databases were breached. The bureau has not publicly named the counties, and it did not disclose them to state officials until the Mueller report touched off a demand for answers. (Citing U.S. officials, The Post reported last month that one of the counties was Washington County, which has a population of about 25,000 people and is in Florida’s panhandle.) 

“It is untenable to continue to hold this information classified and not to let the public know,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) told The Post after the FBI briefed lawmakers. She has since announced plans to seek legislation that will force federal law enforcement to more quickly report election-related breaches.

Interrupted voting

On Election Day 2016, poll workers across Durham County reported problems with the VR Systems poll book, known as “EViD.” The software was showing that some voters had already cast ballots, while the voters themselves said they had not. It was also prompting poll workers to ask for some voters’ picture IDs, even though a North Carolina law that required those IDs had been struck down.

Alarmed, local officials decided to stop using EViD for the rest of the day. That slowed things down further, as workers scrambled to get paper poll books. In one precinct, voting stopped for two hours, local media reported. The county asked state officials to extend voting by 90 minutes in all its precincts; ultimately, extensions of 20 to 60 minutes were granted. 

No one knew the root cause at the time. But Susan Greenhalgh, an election security advocate who was fielding calls from voters and poll workers for the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition Hotline that day, thought of a disturbing connection: CNN had recently reported an alleged Russian cyberattack against a “contractor for Florida’s election system.” She’d come to suspect, through her own digging, that the vendor was VR Systems. 

“This is the same vendor that was hacked,” she remembers thinking. 

After the election, Durham County hired a firm called Protus3 to dig into what happened. The security consultant said it appeared the problems were caused by user error, but ended its 12-page report with a list of recommendations that included examining computers in a lab setting and interviewing more election workers.

Durham County elections director Derek Bowens said he is comfortable with the report’s conclusions. Even so, in 2017 the county switched to electronic poll books created by the state. Bowens said in an interview that the state’s software would save money and is, in his view, better.

But for North Carolina officials, concerns resurfaced in June 2017 when the website Intercept posted a leaked National Security Agency report referencing “cyber espionage operations against a . . . U.S. company in August 2016.” The NSA report said that “it was likely that at least one account was compromised.”

VR Systems soon acknowledged that hackers had targeted the company, but insisted that its network had not been breached.

North Carolina officials weren’t so sure.

“This was the first leak that indicated anything like a nation-state actor targeting a voting systems vendor,” Lawson said.

The state elections board soon launched its own investigation, seizing 40 laptops from Durham in July. And it suspended the certification that allowed more than 20 North Carolina counties to use VR Systems’ poll books during elections, an action that would later land in court. “Over the past few months there has been a considerable change in the election security landscape and the level of scrutiny we receive,” the board wrote in a letter explaining its decision to VR Systems.

No one working for the board had the technical expertise to do a forensic examination of the machines for signs of intrusion. Staffers asked DHS for technical help but did not get a substantive answer for a year and a half, Lawson said. The board went so far as to file a Freedom of Information Act request with DHS in the fall of that year.

It never got a response, Lawson said.

DHS spokeswoman Sara Sendek declined to comment on Lawson’s account. “DHS has been in regular contact with the State Board of Elections since 2017 offering and providing a variety of services,” she said.

The agency said it routinely scans North Carolina election systems for vulnerabilities. It said it has no information about “any previous or ongoing issues regarding election systems” in North Carolina.

Suspension appealed

In September 2017, three months after the Intercept report, VR Systems for the first time heard from DHS about the hacking attempt, the company said. The communication “came in the form of a voicemail left around 2:00 a.m.,” the company wrote in court filings. “The voicemail stated something to the effect that VR Systems may have been the subject of a phishing attempt and VR Systems should give Homeland Security a call.”

The call struck VR Systems Chief Operating Officer Ben Martin as being so unusual that he called his contacts in law enforcement “to ask if this was a hoax or if it was actually DHS,” he said in an email to The Post. He was assured the message was real.

“We had already been in close contact with the FBI and DHS and continued to work with them after that,” he said.

That same month, the elections board said in a news release that it had received reassuring information from DHS: North Carolina was not thought to be among the 21 states whose election systems were targeted in 2016.

“We are greatly relieved to hear that North Carolina’s systems were not directly targeted by Russian hackers,” Kim Westbrook Strach, then the board’s executive director, said in the Sept. 22, 2017, release.

But in an affidavit filed later in court, Strach noted a caveat. “The Department could not state any conclusion regarding the success of hacking activities against third-party election vendors operating in North Carolina, including VR Systems,” she wrote.

Later that fall, less than a month before local elections, VR Systems appealed its suspension, arguing that it had not received proper notice or a hearing. An administrative law judge agreed and issued a temporary order that forced the state to allow counties to continue using VR Systems.

North Carolina appealed the order in state court on Nov. 6, the day before the elections. It argued that the “malfunctions of EViD last year in Durham combined with a Russian cyber espionage campaign against VR Systems combine to pose a significant potential harm to the State’s elections.”

The court dismissed the case that same day, finding that it lacked jurisdiction and letting the administrative law judge’s ruling stand. An appellate court later agreed. Neither court addressed the merits of the state’s election security concerns.

In early 2018, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D) sent a letter to DHS pleading for more information about VR Systems and the problems in Durham County. “North Carolina’s situation illustrates the need for information-sharing among all levels of government,” he wrote. “. . . Without this information, state officials may be unable to take appropriate and necessary actions to ensure that hacking and other forms of disruption by malicious actors do not occur in upcoming elections.”

The attorney general did not get a “substantive response,” spokeswoman Laura Brewer said in an email. “We continue to be very concerned about this issue.”

Last July, the FBI indicted 12 Russian government agents for allegedly interfering in U.S. elections. The documents once again referred to a company that matched the description of VR Systems, stating that “in or around August 2016” the accused “hacked into the computers of a U.S. vendor that supplied software used to verify voter registration information for the 2016 U.S. elections.” 

‘A right to know’

Shortly after the release of Mueller’s final report, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and one of the most outspoken U.S. lawmakers on issues of election security, sent VR Systems a letter asking for assurances of the security of its network.

“Given the voting problems caused by the failure of electronic poll books manufactured by your company in November 2016, the American people have a right to know if there was any connection to the Russian cyber attack against your company three months earlier,” Wyden wrote.

In response, VR Systems said a cybersecurity firm it hired to review its computer network in 2017 found no evidence of a hack. A subsequent review by DHS also found no issues, the company said. VR Systems declined to give Wyden documentation of those reviews, citing the need to protect proprietary information.

Wyden in a statement to The Post accused VR Systems of “stonewalling congressional oversight.”

A senior U.S. official confirmed DHS’s review of VR System’s network to The Post and noted that by the time agency investigators arrived, a commercial vendor had already “swept” the networks. “I can’t tell you what happened before the commercial vendor came in there,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The official said DHS has no information about the malware mentioned in the Mueller report. 

Today, VR Systems continues to operate in many North Carolina counties. To avoid future court battles, state lawmakers explicitly granted the Board of Elections the power to“halt the use of electronic poll books.” The law also says that companies must agree to cover the cost of a new election if their products fail. Voting machine vendor Election Systems & Software has agreed to pay $17 million in the event of failure, while VR Systems and the state are still negotiating over a number, board spokesman Patrick Gannon said.

North Carolina officials say they’ve made progress in securing the state’s elections since 2016. After receiving $10 million in federal grant money last year, the state is in the process of hiring its first chief information security officer along with analysts dedicated to election integrity.

Two staff members, Lawson and Strach, obtained security clearances so they could receive classified briefings on election-related issues. But last month, the State Board of Elections voted to replace Strach; the board is now controlled by Democrats, and Strach had been appointed by Republicans. As a result of the decision, Lawson, too, left the agency. His last day was Friday.

 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Hey, good thing McConnell is on this to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen in the upcoming election. 

McConnell figures the hacking will ultimately help his party so he supports the hacking. 

And I’m being serious. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

No doubt

Watched the movie Scent of a Woman last night. Mitch McConnel is what happens to the country if the Baird school in response to Al Pacino’s speech had said “yeah good speech colonel, but we’re gonna expel old Charlie Simms anyway and nominate George for senator.”

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23390

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, zork said:

Christopher Steele: MI6 agent to face questions on Trump Russia dossier

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/christopher-steele-mi6-agent-to-face-questions-on-trump-russia-dossier-qkxk5p06c

I'm not a subscriber.  Anyone have the rest?

The rest?  Probably rhymes with "Steele getting thrown under the bus in the OIG report that he refused to cooperate with, and now wants to attempt to distance himself and his reporting from what was done with that work product by the FBI". 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The rest?  Probably rhymes with "Steele getting thrown under the bus in the OIG report that he refused to cooperate with, and now wants to attempt to distance himself and his reporting from what was done with that work product by the FBI". 

Steele is obviously smart. His refusals to cooperate with the OIG “investigation” is pretty good evidence of that, given its true purpose. 

Steele just did what he was hired or and paid to do. Just because trump and the trumpkins don’t like what he found, doesn’t mean he was even close to being wrong. .

I bet when he agreed to take on the job he had no idea what kinds of shitstorm he was signing up for. That only came to light when it became clear how corrupt the future president actually was. 

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23390

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Steele is obviously smart. His refusals to cooperate with the OIG “investigation” is pretty good evidence of that, given its true purpose. 

 Steele just did what he was hired or and paid to do. Just because trump and the trumpkins don’t like what he found, doesn’t mean he was even close to being wrong. .

 I bet when he agreed to take on the job he had no idea what kinds of shitstorm he was signing up for. That only came to light when it became clear how corrupt the future president actually was. 

Yes, Steele is smart.  He is in mid 50s and needs to protect his earning power in his field for at least another decade.  Steele was hired to dig Russia dirt.  He did that by trolling media reports for intel, lacing it with disinformation from Russian intelligence sources chasing paychecks, and in the process creating a fantasy conspiracy narrative with no basis in reality. His fault as far as I can tell was, at best, deluding himself wrt to the veracity of his reporting as a result of his political bias. He was not "close to being wrong" with his very specific claims of an advanced conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, was very fucking wrong. If he was right, we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump would be swinging from a gallow. 

Edited by Anastasis
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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Yes, Steele is smart.  He is in mid 50s and needs to protect his earning power in his field for at least another decade.  Steele was hired to dig Russia dirt.  He did that by trolling media reports for intel, lacing it with disinformation from Russian intelligence sources chasing paychecks, and in the process creating a fantasy conspiracy narrative with no basis in reality. His fault as far as I can tell was, at best, deluding himself wrt to the veracity of his reporting as a result of his political bias. He was not "close to being wrong" with his very specific claims of an advanced conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, was very fucking wrong. If he was right, we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump would be swinging from a gallow. 

Hmm. You seem rather sure of yourself on this one. Doubt anything I say could possibly convince you otherwise. So I wont. 

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23390

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

 Hmm. You seem rather sure of yourself on this one. Doubt anything I say could possibly convince you otherwise. So I wont. 

You seem rather unsure of yourself. Nonetheless, I doubt that anything I say convinces you that maybe there is some merit to my perspective.  

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David Dennison

David Dennison 18646

Posted
Posted
38 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Yes, Steele is smart.  He is in mid 50s and needs to protect his earning power in his field for at least another decade.  Steele was hired to dig Russia dirt.  He did that by trolling media reports for intel, lacing it with disinformation from Russian intelligence sources chasing paychecks, and in the process creating a fantasy conspiracy narrative with no basis in reality. His fault as far as I can tell was, at best, deluding himself wrt to the veracity of his reporting as a result of his political bias. He was not "close to being wrong" with his very specific claims of an advanced conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, was very fucking wrong. If he was right, we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump would be swinging from a gallow. 

I don't think you read the report very closely. 

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23390

Posted
Posted
Just now, David Dennison said:

I don't think you read the report very closely. 

You are an idiot. Steele reported that the Trump campaign funded and organized a group of eastern European hackers who operated under operational control of the Kremlin. He reported that Cohen and Page played central roles in an advanced conspiracy involving coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to undermine American democracy in trade for brokerage rights on the rosneft deal. Only in the most deluded of minds does a close reading of the Mueller report support these reports. It's amazing that you guys can't just disengage from political opposition research conducted by a foreign intelligence operative trafficking in Russian disinformation. 

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