Secret CIA source claims Russia rigged 2016 election

I’m getting thirsty for some reason.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/10/politics/manafort-yohai-justice-department-investigation-russia/index.html

Washington (CNN)Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, met with Department of Justice investigators in recent months, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
[…]
Yohai has been under federal investigation for real estate deals he made with Manafort.

Neither Yohai nor Manafort has been accused of any wrongdoing in either investigation.

An attorney for Yohai declined to comment.

Manafort’s daughter, Jessica Manafort, filed for divorce from Yohai in March.

Yeah, nobody in Trump’s inner circle would do something like that.

Lewindowsky got paid by CNN after he left, and now he runs a lobbying group in washington that specifically sells itself has having influence in the trump administration.

I mean, that is literally happening right now. This is what they do. This is how every single person in Trump’s administration, past and present, operates. They are all a bunch of shady charlatans.

Rhona Graff, a senior vice president at the Trump Organization who has worked at Trump Tower for nearly 30 years, has acted as a gatekeeper to Trump. She remains a point of contact for the sprawling universe of Trump associates, politicians, reporters and others seeking Trump’s time and attention, even now that he’s in the White House.

Graff’s position in Trump’s orbit recently gained attention after Donald Trump Jr. released a June 2016 email exchange with British publicist Rob Goldstone leading up to the meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower.

“I can also send this info to your father via Rhona," Goldstone wrote Donald Jr. in the email, "but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.”

Graff was not on the email chain and it’s unclear if Goldstone ever made direct contact with her.

“Since her name is in the email, people will want her to answer questions,” said Rep. Peter King, R-New York, a member of the House Intelligence Committee who knows Graff. “If you go into Trump Tower, you’re going to mention her name.”

The president, who has said he does not use email, communicated with associates for years through Graff. "Everybody knows in order to get through to him they have to go through me, so they are always on their best behavior,” Graff told Real Estate Weekly in 2004.

According to sources familiar with Trump’s habits, Graff would often receive emails on his behalf and print them out for his review. If Trump felt the need to respond he would write on the print out – typically with a Sharpie pen – and hand it back to Graff so should could scan the message and send it on electronically.

Just throwing this out there without comment…

Isn’t that your usual shtick?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article166560102.html

Jared Kushner, who has spent months divesting pieces of his vast business empire to serve in the White House, was slapped with a fine by the Office of Government Ethics for late reporting of a financial transaction, according to a newly released document.

Another 17 White House staffers, including some of President Donald Trump’s top aides, filed their required personal financial disclosure statements late, according to data compiled by American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic opposition research group, and confirmed by McClatchy.

Reince Priebus, who served as chief of staff until recently, was four days late. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was 23 days late. And Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, received a 32-day extension but still missed her deadline by eight days.

Well it would explain why the DNC and Obama didn’t act like they gave much of a damn about the “hack” until after the election. True or not? No idea. Just interesting that it was published in The Nation.

Hack or inside job? Does it really matter how the Russians got their hands on it and approached Trump’s team with the information? It’s definite meddling by the Russians and collusion on Team Trump’s part.

That article is a largely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. What it’s presenting is akin to the 911 truther stuff.

He didn’t say substantiated, just that it’s interesting.

This is actually pretty interesting. The Nation is openly left-leaning and usually backs their articles with good sourcing. This article would seem to press up against one or both of those traits.

It’s going to get a lot of traffic. It’s prime click bait.

So I don’t have to bother pointing out why it’s bullshit:

If you want to get to the actual claims being made, you’ll have to skip the first 1,000 or so words, which mostly consist of breathtakingly elaborate throat-clearing. (“[H]ouses built on sand and made of cards are bound to collapse, and there can be no surprise that the one resting atop the ‘hack theory,’ as we can call the prevailing wisdom on the DNC events, appears to be in the process of doing so.”) About halfway through, you get to the crux of the article: A report, made by an anonymous analyst calling himself “Forensicator,” on the “metadata” of “locked files” leaked by the hacker Guccifer 2.0.

This should, already, set off alarm bells: An anonymous analyst is claiming to have analyzed the “metadata” of “locked files” that only this analyst had access to? Still, if I’m understanding it correctly, Lawrence’s central argument (which, again, rests on the belief that Forensicator’s claims about “metadata” are meaningful and correct) is that the initial data transfer from the DNC occurred at speeds impossible via the internet. Instead, he and a few retired intel-community members and some pseudonymous bloggers believe the data was transferred to a USB stick, making the infiltration a leak from someone inside the DNC, not a hack.

The crux of the whole thing — the opening argument — rests on the fact that, according to “metadata,” the data was transferred at about 22 megabytes per second, which Lawrence and Forensicator claim is much too fast to have been undertaken over an internet connection. (Most connection speeds are measured at megabits per second, not megabytes; 22 megabytes per second is 176 megabits per second.) Most households don’t get internet speeds that high, but enterprise operations, like the DNC — or, uh, the FSB — would have access to a higher but certainly not unattainable speed like that.

If that’s your strongest evidence, your argument is already in trouble. But the real problem isn’t that there’s a bizarre claim about internet speed that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s that Lawrence is writing in techno-gibberish that falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny. You could try to go on, but to what end? As an example: Lawrence writes that “researchers penetrated what Folden calls Guccifer’s top layer of metadata and analyzed what was in the layers beneath.” What on earth is that supposed to mean? We don’t know what “metadata” we’re talking about, or why it comes in “layers,” and all I’m left with is the distinct impression that Lawrence doesn’t either. Even if you wanted to take this seriously enough to engage with, you can’t, because it only intermittently makes sense. There may be evidence out there, somewhere, that a vast conspiracy theory has taken place to cover up a leak and blame Russia. But it’s going to need to be at least comprehensible.

IMG_0444

Yeah, you’re just “asking questions.”

I don’t think anyone here other than maybe @Malathor thinks there’s any merit to it. The eyebrow raiser is that The Nation is posting a clearly right-leaning crazy-ass BS conspiracy article.

Dude, I said I have no idea if there any truth to it. Just that I thought odd that it was published in The Nation.

I agree with the overall oddness.