The war between Trump and the CIA

[TopHatter]

Just to be absolutely clear ...

And let's not forget Trump publicly announced to the world that he believed Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies....just the first of many times he's pulled that shit.

But I'm sure the CIA was "asking for it" or some shit like that

[TopHatter]

What you need to know about the John Durham filing that Trumpworld is fuming over

The right-wing media sphere erupted this week over a legal filing from the special counsel John Durham, who is investigating the origins of the FBI's Russia probe, that former President Donald Trump and his allies said presented definitive proof that his political opponents illegally "spied" on him.

Trump declared in a statement that the filing provided "indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia," adding that such conduct "would have been punishable by death" in a "stronger period of time in this country."

Trump's claim that such activity would have at any time in American history been "punishable by death" is false and misleading, since the only crime Durham has accused anyone of committing is lying to the FBI. No one involved in the investigation has been charged with illegally spying on the Trump campaign or White House, or with a capital crime.

But the special counsel's investigation has in the past uncovered evidence of a connection between a lawyer with connections to the Clinton campaign named Michael Sussmann and and a technology executive who Durham claims "exploited" internet data legally gathered from the White House and Trump Tower. Friday's filing also suggests that Sussman exaggerated evidence of a connection between Trump and Russia in meetings with law enforcement agencies.

What the Durham filing actually says
The filing contains almost no new information. It's not an indictment, meaning that no new criminal conduct was alleged. Instead, it relates to a conflict-of-interest matter in Durham's ongoing case against Sussmann, who worked at the law firm Perkins Coie, which represents the Democratic National Committee.

Sussmann was charged last year with lying to the FBI while trying to get it to investigate an allegation that the Trump campaign used a secret email server to communicate with Russia's Alfa Bank during the 2016 campaign. The FBI has not uncovered any evidence of such a connection.

Durham's Friday filing said there's a potential conflict because the law firm representing Sussmann, Latham Watkins, previously represented Perkins Coie and the lawyer Marc Elias, who testified before Durham's grand jury.

It also details a February 2017 meeting in which Sussmann flagged to the CIA that internet data he had obtained suggested someone using a Russian-made smartphone was connecting to White House and Trump Tower networks. The New York Times reported on this meeting last year.

The filing says Sussmann got the data from an unnamed technology executive who Durham said "exploited" DNS traffic to gauge if there was a link between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives during the 2016 election.

Multiple media outlets have reported that the executive is Rodney Joffe, who works at the American tech company Neustar.

What Durham outlined doesn't amount to domestic political espionage
Durham's filing said some of the internet data that was mined was connected to two Trump buildings in New York City, the executive office of the president (EOP), and an unrelated Michigan hospital company that had also interacted with the Trump server.

It added that Joffe had access to this data because his employer had a set of "dedicated servers" for the White House as part of a "sensitive arrangement" in which it provided DNS resolution services to the White House.

As Durham pointed out later in the filing, these DNS lookups started as early as 2014, when Barack Obama was in office, and continued until early 2017.

Lawyers for one of the researchers who worked with Joffe highlighted that in a statement to The Times: "The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office."

A spokesperson for Joffe told NBC News that "contrary to the allegations in this recent filing," he had legal access to the DNS data under a contract that allowed Neustar to comb through the data, including from the White House, to look for security threats.

"As a result of the [Russian government's] hacks of EOP and DNC servers in 2015 and 2016, respectively, there were serious and legitimate national security concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election," the spokesperson continued. "Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-made Yota phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cyber-security researchers were deeply concerned about the anomalies they found in the data and prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the CIA."

The Washington Post reported that internet providers frequently let third parties collect DNS lookups because the information can be helpful for tracking bad actors.

DNS services like the one offered by Neustar essentially "monitor your traffic in the event that you might be sent to a malicious site," Karim Hijazi, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm Prevailion and a former intelligence community contractor, told Insider. "They'll stop the traffic, limit it, or redirect it to somewhere safe. So by definition, if you're using a service like Neustar's, your activity is being monitored because that's what you're buying."

Durham's filing noted that the lookups took place on a broader scale as well.

According to the filing, Sussmann claimed the lookups "demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations."

But "the more complete data" that Joffe and his associates gathered "reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with US-based IP addresses," the filing said. Fewer than 1,000 of those lookups came from IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower, it added.

The information Durham laid out raises questions about the ethics of Joffe using the data his company had legal access to for purposes that went beyond the scope of what the firm was hired to do. And it's true that Durham has alleged that criminal conduct occurred. But the crime that's being alleged is lying to the FBI, not domestic political espionage or anything related to spying or hacking.

That doesn't mean Durham won't bring more serious charges down the line related to Democratic efforts to establish a Trump-Russia link, or that Sussmann and his source didn't behave unethically. It just means that Friday's filing doesn't lay out any such efforts that would constitute what Trump has implied is treasonous conduct punishable by death.
________

As Buck said, by all means, investigate. If Sussmann or others, up to and including Clinton, are indictable, then indict them, try them and convict them.

And let me know when Biden engages in mass-obstruction of the DoJ, including asking Durham “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Sussmann go,” and Clinton and her crew refuse to obey subpoenas and refuse to testify.

[zraver]

You mean like Obama interjecting himself into the IRS scandal, Holder being held in contempt, the sweetheart deals given to Hillary and her cronies and of course the destruction of tens of thousands of documents. You didn't have a problem with that then. Why the change in heart? What caused you too find religion or is it just partisan posturing?

[TopHatter]

You mean like Obama interjecting himself into the IRS scandal, Holder being held in contempt, the sweetheart deals given to Hillary and her cronies and of course the destruction of tens of thousands of documents. You didn't have a problem with that then. Why the change in heart? What caused you too find religion or is it just partisan posturing?

Say it with me, once again:

I'm not responsible for your delusions, nor am I obligated to dignify them with a response.

[zraver]

Say it with me, once again:

I'm not responsible for your delusions, nor am I obligated to dignify them with a response.

Partisan posturing it is.

[TopHatter]

Partisan posturing it is.

You made these laughable claims about my posts during the Obama years and yet you can't even remember the nativist shit you posted within weeks of me calling you out on, insisting that they were my "9chan fever dreams".

Now your delusions have made you think I was pro-Obama from 2008-2017. By all means, go back through my post history and show me proof.

On a completely related note, what exactly are you smoking on a daily basis? Have you suffered brain trauma lately? Are you getting enough sleep?

[Parihaka]

The raw hatred here of anything right of extreme left is a sight to behold. Remember this: you've made the new rules, now you get to live with them.

[InExile]

The raw hatred here of anything right of extreme left is a sight to behold. Remember this: you've made the new rules, now you get to live with them.

If you are going to be fair, I think you would admit that few if any active posters here fall to the far left, let alone the extreme left.

If I had to guess I would say the majority of active posters are probably democrats if American or on the center to center left. A few are center right.

I will admit though there is general hostility to the right wing populist movement represented by Trumpism in the US.

[DOR]

If you are going to be fair, I think you would admit that few if any active posters here fall to the far left, let alone the extreme left.

If I had to guess I would say the majority of active posters are probably democrats if American or on the center to center left. A few are center right.

I will admit though there is general hostility to the right wing populist movement represented by Trumpism in the US.

And those, my friends, are the reasons I like this place: low tolerance for idiots on either extreme.
(It is curious, however, that I've never seen any true lefties on WAB...)

[TopHatter]

If you are going to be fair, I think you would admit that few if any active posters here fall to the far left, let alone the extreme left.

If I had to guess I would say the majority of active posters are probably democrats if American or on the center to center left. A few are center right.

I will admit though there is general hostility to the right wing populist movement represented by Trumpism in the US.

He's not being fair, he's being just as delusional as Zraver, or, still doing his trolling routine.

Because either Zraver's proud nativism

or

Pointing out the true nature of my post history (tl;dr it's not pro-Obama) is now considered "raw hatred here of anything right of extreme left".

Or it's all of the above.

In any case, he's welcome to it. Who am I to disturb his belief?

[TopHatter]

And those, my friends, are the reasons I like this place: low tolerance for idiots on either extreme.
(It is curious, however, that I've never seen any true lefties on WAB...)

That's because anyone left of Donald Trump is considered "extreme left" by Jason and Iain.

[Parihaka]

Such outrage, such hatred.

[Parihaka]

Anyhoo, back on topic.

Remember this blast from the past, defending uncle Joe with arrant nonsense?
Former IC Officers Public Statement (politico.com)

In truth, yes Hunter lost his laptop and yes, they were his emails. But that's ok because RUSSIANS

[zraver]

Because either Zraver's proud nativism

What exactly is wrong with thinking that a nation's first duty is to its citizens?

That's because anyone left of Donald Trump is considered "extreme left" by Jason and Iain.

Your only ding on Biden so far is that he did not go hard left enough for your tastes in screwing over property owners with a rent moratorium. You are perfectly comfortable with J6C goign way past J6 and being used for partisan political ends and as a personal cudgel by Cheney to go after private citizens with no connection to J6 but wo is running a super pac to unseat her. You routinely lump anyone you think supported Trump into deplorable status who could not have voted for him for rational reasons. I don't care what you might have been in 08, now you might as well be a Bernie bro.

[DOR]

What exactly is wrong with thinking that a nation's first duty is to its citizens?



Your only ding on Biden so far is that he did not go hard left enough for your tastes in screwing over property owners with a rent moratorium. You are perfectly comfortable with J6C goign way past J6 and being used for partisan political ends and as a personal cudgel by Cheney to go after private citizens with no connection to J6 but wo is running a super pac to unseat her. You routinely lump anyone you think supported Trump into deplorable status who could not have voted for him for rational reasons. I don't care what you might have been in 08, now you might as well be a Bernie bro.

But, of course thinking people "lump anyone you think supported Trump into deplorable status."
That's their natural habitat.