Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

[seemslikeadream]

Justice Department charging Russian spies and criminal hackers in Yahoo intrusion
By Ellen Nakashima March 15 at 9:46 AM
The Justice Department is set to announce Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first U.S. criminal cyber charges ever against Russian government officials.

The indictments target two members of the Russian intelligence agency FSB, and two hackers hired by the Russians.

The charges include hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage, according to officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the charges have not yet been announced. The indictments are part of the largest hacking case brought by the United States.

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The charges are unrelated to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the move reflects the U.S. government’s increasing desire to hold foreign governments accountable for malicious acts in cyberspace.

The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but officials have said that taking steps such as charges and imposing sanctions can be a deterrent. People also sometimes slip up and travel to a country that is able and willing to transfer them to the United States for prosecution.

Yahoo reported the 2014 hack last fall — in what was then considered the largest data breach in history. The company later disclosed another intrusion affecting more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013, far surpassing the 2014 event. Officials have not determined whether there is a link between the two.

The twin hacks clouded the prospects for the sale of Yahoo’s core business to telecommunications giant Verizon. The deal is proceeding after Verizon negotiated the price down in the wake of the breaches.

The compromised accounts may have affected more than just email. Breaking into a Yahoo account would give the hackers access to users’ activity on Flickr, Tumblr, fantasy sports and other Yahoo applications.

In the 2014 hack, the FSB — Russia’s Federal Security Service, and a successor to the KGB — sought the information for intelligence purposes, targeting journalists, dissidents and U.S. government officials, but allowed the criminal hackers to use the email cache for the officials’ and the hackers’ financial gain, through spamming and other operations.

The charges “illustrate the murky world of Russian intel services using criminal hackers in a wide variety of ways,” said Milan Patel, a former FBI Cyber Division supervisory special agent who is now a managing director at K2 Intelligence, a cyber firm.

Although FBI agents have long suspected that the Russians have used cyber mercenaries to do their work, this case is among the first in which evidence is offered to show that.

This is how Yahoo got the billion accounts that were recently hacked Play Video2:01
Here's who was affected, and what you can do to keep your accounts safe. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)
The indicted FSB officers are Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, his superior. Particularly galling to U.S. officials is that the men worked for the cyber investigative arm of the FSB — a rough equivalent of the FBI’s Cyber Division. That the agency that is supposed to investigate computer intrusions Russia is itself engaged in hacking is “pretty sad,” one official said.

Dokuchaev, whose hacker alias was “Forb,” was arrested in December in Moscow, according to the news agency Interfax, on charges of state treason for passing information to the CIA. He had reportedly agreed to work for the FSB to avoid prosecution for bank card fraud.

Another man indicted in the case is Alexsey Belan, who is on the list of most-wanted cyber criminals and has been charged twice before, in connection with intrusions into three major tech firms in Nevada and California in 2012 and 2013. He was in custody in Greece for a time, but made his way back to Russia, where he is being protected by authorities, officials said.

The other hacker-for-hire is Karim Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan but has Canadian citizenship. He was arrested in Canada on Tuesday.

The indictments grew out of a nearly two-year investigation by the San Francisco FBI with the aid of international law enforcement, officials said. Sanctions and criminal charges are two tools that the Obama administration began using to punish and deter nation state hackers.

“They have the effect of galvanizing other countries that are watching what’s happening,” said Luke Dembosky, a former deputy assistant attorney general for national security. “They show that we have the resources and capabilities to identify the people at the keyboard, even in the most sophisticated cases.”

Three years ago, the United States charged five Chinese military hackers for economic espionage, marking the first time cyber-related charges were levied against foreign government officials.

After the Chinese military hackers were indicted, officials said their activity seemed to dwindle. And the indictments, Dembosky said, helped wrest a pledge in 2015 from the Chinese to stop economic cyber espionage against U.S. firms.

In early 2015, the Obama administration imposed economic sanctions on North Korea for its cyberattack on Sony Pictures’ systems.

And in late December, the Obama administration levied economic sanctions on Moscow for its election-year meddling. At the same time, the government sanctioned two Russian criminal hackers with no apparent connection to the Kremlin’s interference campaign. They included Belan, who is one of the four indicted in the Yahoo case.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... efc239f7cf

[seemslikeadream]

Louise Mensch is another who believes that hackers keep regular 9-5 business hours and that this counts as evidence that GRU "hacked the U.S. elections."

she was the first to report the FISA warrants and was proven correct

[Rory]

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/v ... 0509379597

[seemslikeadream]

The Russian hacker with a $4 million bounty on his head
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... efc239f7cf

[seemslikeadream]

CBS Evening News: Trump Ally Roger Stone Contacted Russian Hacker "At Least 16 Times During The 2016 Campaign"
Roger Stone: "That's Called Networking"


From the March 14 edition of CBS' CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley:



ANTHONY MASON (GUEST HOST): The F.B.I. Is investigating whether the Trump campaign had improper contacts with Russians who wanted to meddle in the presidential election. Earlier this month, Roger Stone, a friend and former adviser to Mr. Trump, told our Jeff Pegues he had no contact with Russian hackers, including the mysterious Guccifer 2.0. But Stone's story has changed.

ROGER STONE: There is no collusion here.

JEFF PEGUES: Despite that claim, Roger Stone now admits that he was in contact with Guccifer 2.0, at least 16 times during the 2016 campaign. That Twitter handle released hacked information believed to be stolen from Democratic Party servers. It targeted Hillary Clinton and Democratic candidates in at least six states.

STONE: At the time I had my one and only communications with him --

PEGUES: You had more than just one contact with this person. You had. one two, at least three, between August 12 and September 9.

STONE: Right. I-- I would refer to it as an exchange.

PEGUES: That exchange appears to have started after Guccifer's first account was suspended, and then reactivated in mid-August. "Delighted you are reinstated," Stone wrote. Guccifer responded, "Do you find anything interesting in the docs I posted? A day later, according to these texts confirmed by Stone he asked Guccifer to retweet an article Stone had written. "Please retweet how the election can be rigged against Donald Trump." Guccifer replied, done." And later on the same day, "Please tell me if I can help you anyhow." Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence concluded that Guccifer's sites were a front for Russian military intelligence.

In a way, you're encouraging them to release more information.

STONE: Yeah, that's called networking. Remember, I have no idea that this gentleman is allegedly a Russian.

PEGUES: On Sunday, Arizona senator John McCain called for Stone to testify in upcoming hearings. Anthony, Stone defiantly told us that his response to that is "Game on."
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017 ... ign/215681

[seemslikeadream]

Moldova sees Russian plot to derail money-laundering probe
leftright

FILE PHOTO: The building of Moldova's ministry of Internal Affairs is pictured in central Chisinau, Moldova, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo

By Matthias Williams | CHISINAU
Two months ago, Moldova's Deputy General Prosecutor Iurie Garaba traveled to Moscow with an invitation to attend an official function for Russia's General Prosecutor's Day.

The visit didn't go as planned.

Garaba was stopped by border guards at Moscow's airport and taken in for questioning. He said one guard rifled through his passport for 15-20 minutes while another asked what he was doing in Russia - despite his official invitation and a document naming him as the head of the Moldovan delegation.

"I was asked questions that have absolutely nothing to do with border document checks. For example, 'How do I pronounce my last name?', or 'How to write it correctly?', Garaba told Reuters by telephone.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm his version of events.

But some Moldovan officials say the incident is part of a campaign by members of Russia's security apparatus to humiliate officials from the ex-Soviet state as they travel to or through Russia.

The primary aim, four top Moldovan officials including Garaba's boss Eduard Harunjen told Reuters, is to derail a Moldovan probe into a Russian-led money laundering operation that funneled $22.3 billion of Russian money through the Moldovan financial system between 2011-2014.

Under that scheme, Russian shell companies took fictitious loans from offshore companies based in Britain. The transactions were guaranteed by Moldovan citizens, a move designed to allow Moldovan judges complicit in the scheme to order the fake loans be paid out, thus ensuring the transfer of money out of Russia, according to Moldovan prosecutors who have been investigating the matter.

Moldova, Europe's poorest country, borders EU member Romania, with which it has close linguistic and cultural ties, but remains heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies.

As in Ukraine and Georgia, moves by Chisinau to forge closer ties with the EU have been strongly resisted by Moscow. Moldova signed a political and trade pact with the EU in 2014, prompting Russia to slap a retaliatory ban on Moldovan produce.

The Moldovan officials interviewed by Reuters said Moldovan intelligence had detailed knowledge of individuals in Russia's FSB security service who allegedly ran the scheme together with a Moldovan businessman called Veaceslav Platon. Platon's wife told Reuters by phone that he denies any wrongdoing.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Interior Ministry, in response to written questions submitted by Reuters, said the ministry could not comment on Moldova's complaints of harassment because the Garaba case and others described in this article were not within its remit.

Reuters also sent requests for comment on the harassment to the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the General Prosecutor's office, but received no response. The Russian Foreign Ministry told a regular briefing last week it was studying a complaint made by Moldovan authorities about treatment of their officials.



PRO-MOSCOW PRESIDENT

The row comes at a time when Moldova's recently elected president, Igor Dodon, is looking to pull the country away from the European Union's orbit and back towards Moscow, in opposition to the country's staunchly pro-Western government.

After months of waiting for Russia to change its behavior or for Dodon to intervene, the Moldovan government went public with its grievances last Thursday and announced that no officials would travel to Russia until the issue was resolved.

Its March 9 press statement said "all this abuse, harassing Moldovan officials at the entry into the Russian Federation and putting them on international monitoring, took speed and size once the (money laundering) investigation progressed."

The Moldovan officials said they do not believe the harassment is orchestrated from the Kremlin but by people in the interior ministry and the security service. In Russia, the FSB oversees the border guards service. They believe FSB officials used part of the money from the money-laundering to further Russian state interests.

The government has not specified an exact number of cases or when the abuse started, but estimates 25 officials had been harassed just in the last few months, and one officer at the Interior Ministry was stopped and questioned 35 times.

"We have tens of such cases," Interior Minister Alexandru Jizdan told Reuters.

One interior ministry official said she had been stopped three times at Moscow airport, most recently in January. On the third occasion, she said she jokingly told the Russian guard she could find her own way to the interrogation room.

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"RUSSIAN LAUNDROMAT"

The complaints of harassment comes as Moldovan prosecutors have launched criminal cases against 14 judges as well as 10 senior bank managers, senior central bank officials and four bailiffs in the money-laundering investigation.

Russian law enforcement authorities also say they have been investigating the Moldova scheme for several years. Some lawyers who work in the Russian criminal justice system say it is common for one arm of Russian law enforcement to investigate a crime while another arm resists that effort because they have competing interests.

Moldova says it has sent repeated requests to Russia over the past six years for help getting to the bottom of a scheme dubbed by local press as the "Russian Laundromat" which allegedly washed money from more than 100 Russian companies and 21 Russian financial institutions.

The Russian Interior Ministry said in response to inquiries that it could not comment on the money-laundering case itself because of the on-going Russian investigation into it.

Last week Moldova's Prime Minister and the President of the Moldovan parliament met the Russian ambassador in Chisinau to send a note of complaint to Moscow about the way Moldovan officials were being treated.

The note also said that the Russian authorities had repeatedly ignored Moldovan requests for help to trace the origins of the laundered money and information to piece together how the scheme was carried out and who was involved.

"We are studying it, trying to understand what specific issues the Moldovan side is raising with us, and we are ready for cooperation to solve complex issues," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told journalists at a routine briefing on Friday, speaking about Moldova's note to Russia.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, Maria Tsvetkova, Svetlana Reiter and Tatiana Ustinova in MOSCOW and Alexander Tanas in CHISINAU; editing by Mark John)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-moldo ... SKBN16M1QQ

[Rory]

He's not Russian

[Rory]

It's great to see how propaganda has its own inertial momentum even once you remove all fact based evidence

[seemslikeadream]

little traps are fun and quite entertaining

What did Russia get in exchange for hacking our electorate?

By Frank Vyan Walton
Sunday Mar 12, 2017 · 9:00 PM CDT

Last week I wrote a detailed overview of what is publicly known about contacts between Donald Trump, his associates, and members of Russian government, intelligence agencies, and even mobsters.

Despite their repeated claims that they didn’t meet or talk with any Russians before the election, we now know that Donald Trump himself met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at the Republican National Convention, as did his surrogate Jeff Sessions and advisors J.D. Morton and Carter Page—which just about all of them lied about. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met with Kislyak before the election, then again during the transition along with Jared Kushner in Trump Tower—in addition to discussing U.S. sanctions with him over the phone and lying about it.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Kislyak’s chief deputy Konstantine Kilimnik, who is Russian-born. Kilimnik has a professed background in Russian intelligence and has along with Manafort worked in support of Putin-backed former Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovych. Later reports by the New York Times of “intercepted Russian communications” in all likelihood involve attempts by the FBI and NSA to confirm whether Kilimnik is a current FSB operative.

But it’s not just the fact that all these contacts and communications took place, even though the Trump camp lied about it all for months. The smoking gun in this entire scandal may be what the Russians very likely received potentially in exchange for their DNC hack and election interference in opposition to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and in favor of Trump.

This week Rachel Maddow may have cracked that code.

In addition to all the above there’s also this, which I wrote about earlier in the week:

Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen setting up a secret peace deal between Ukraine and Russia to end the sanctions. Rex Tillerson’s $500 Billion ties to Putin. Wilbur Ross’s ties to Putin. Manafort’s ties to Yanakovych, and therefore Putin as well as a former Russian intelligence officer. Trump’s shady business deals with Felix Sater and Bayrock, his links to Russian mobsters, selling a $95 Million mansion at a $60 Million profit to a Russian Oligarch and helping to launder money to Russia’s ally the Iranian Guard with a giant dead Hotel in Azerbaijan.
Here’s Maddow on the topic:


Lying about meeting Russians is one thing. But the really strange lie is the one about how and why the RNC platform plank regarding our support for providing weapons to the Ukraine in opposition to pro-Russian violence was suddenly and mysteriously dropped. Initially, Donald Trump and Paul Manafort flatly denied that their campaign had anything to do with it.

And then the truth came out.

Manafort said on NBC’s Meet the Press this past weekend that the change in language on Ukraine “absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign.”

Eric Brakey, a Maine delegate who identifies as a non-interventionist, said he supported the change, which was pushed in part by the Trump campaign.
“Some staff from the Trump campaign came in and… came back with some language that softened the platform,” Brakey told The Daily Beast. “They didn’t intervene in the platform in most cases. But in that case they had some wisdom to say that maybe we don’t want to be calling… for very, very clear aggressive acts of war against Russia.”
“They substantively changed it,” added Washington, D.C., delegate Rachel Hoff, who was present during the meeting. “It absolutely was my understanding that it was Trump staff.”
According to two Republican delegates, the Trump campaign’s efforts were led in part by J.D. Gordon, a Trump campaign official and a former spokesman at the Pentagon.
So they did change the platform in a way that very specifically benefited Russia. And the person who personally implemented the change was J.D. Gordon, one of the three Trump associates, along with Trump himself, who had met personally with Kislyak at the convention.

And who had decided to make this change? According to what we know now, Trump did. And all of them lied about it.

In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.

According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.
Is it possible this is all merely circumstantial? Is it just a coincidence that Manafort’s favorite Russian made a specific trip to the U.S. to meet with him and advocate for this change in the RNC platform? Is this something that Trump wanted anyway on his own, without being lobbied by Kilimnik or Manafort?

If so, then exactly why did they all lie about it so profusely?

The answer to that may link back to something that was claimed in the so-called Steele dossier, which has been gradually proven more and more credible. The dossier alleged that this change in the platform was arranged as payback for Russia helping the Trump campaign.


Segment from Steele Dossier on Russia and Trump
“Other issues where the Kremlin was looking to shift the US policy consensus were Ukraine and Syria. “
Ukraine was a priority for the Kremlin. Then somehow during the RNC, after meeting with Ambassador Kislyak, it suddenly became a priority for Trump. And then they lied about for it months.

There is a thing in law enforcement known as “consciousness of guilt.” It’s the way that people behave when they have something to hide, when they know something they don’t want you to know because if you knew that thing, you would realize that they’ve done something bad. Really bad.

Perhaps they’ve sold our country out to the Kremlin.

And as Rachel Maddow described in her “B Block,” they may not have stopped yet. The Trump administration appears to be hollowing out the State Department with a giant purge of their institutional knowledge.


Via the Guardian:

The Trump White House carried out an abrupt purge of the state department’s senior leadership last week, removing key officials from posts that are essential to the day-to-day running of the department and US missions abroad.

…

The motives behind the sudden wave of sackings are unclear. Some of the outgoing diplomats saw it as one more sign of chaos from a new administration that is desperately short of experience. Others saw it as a wrecking operation, aimed at debilitating the state department at a time of upheaval: while the White House planned its ban on entry for people from a list of Muslim countries, and while Trump frames a new foreign policy before Tillerson arrives in his post.
Cutting the State Department budget by 35 percent. Purging it of all of its most experienced and knowledgeable top diplomats. Could that be a great big boxed and ribbon-covered gift to the Kremlin and Putin?

Could our government now be an active arm of the Kremlin itself?

The more time goes on, the more this seems to be the case. And exactly what, if anything, can or will be done about it? The FBI appears to be compromised by packs of rabid Trump fans in their midst. Trump’s hand-picked deputy at the Department of Justice—who with Jeff Sessions’ recusal will have the primary task of investigating all this or assigning an independent counsel—is now going through confirmation hearings, with little indication that he may be blocked. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are led by former Trump campaign and transition members who—along with CIA Director Mike Pompeo—have already shown they’re more than willing to shill for the administration to the press.

So who—or what—is going to get to the bottom of this?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/12 ... electorate

[Rory]

So "it" happened and Clapper is lying?

[seemslikeadream]

you should study his words more closely

Kaine expects FBI to announce White House-Russia investigation
BY OLIVIA BEAVERS - 03/15/17 08:34 AM EDT 145

Kaine expects FBI to announce White House-Russia investigation
© Getty Images
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Wednesday he expects FBI Director James Comey to announce the FBI is investigating possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign, transition and administration.

“I think many of us are expecting that [Comey] will say, ‘Yes, the FBI is looking at it.’ That’s what I expect to hear,” Kaine told CNN “New Day” host Chris Cuomo.

Kaine stressed that the investigation must look into whether the White House is connected to Russia.

“When you get to the bottom line of it, we have to understand everything about the ties between Russia, the Trump campaign, the Trump transition and the Trump administration, especially the degree to which Russia tried to invade the American election — because we have to protect future elections,” Kaine continued.
The former Democratic vice presidential nominee suggested this investigation would aid and protect U.S. allies in case Russia also tried to interfere with their elections.

“There’s elections in France coming up, there’s elections in Germany coming up. Russia has already been engaged in the Brexit election. They are engaged in the French election to some degree. We have got to give our allies some idea about how they can protect themselves,” he said, referring to Britain's referendum last year on whether to leave the European Union.

Kaine often questioned Trump's ties to Russia during the presidential campaign when he was as Hillary Clinton's running mate.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... estigation

[Rory]

Wow, Kaine said so so it must be true.

[seemslikeadream]

Pelosi on Clapper's 'No Evidence' of Trump-Russia 'Collusion' -- We Still Need an Investigation

By Andrew Eicher | March 9, 2017 | 3:30 PM EST


House Minority Leader Nancy

Pelosi (D-Calif.) (AP)
(CNSNews.com) -- Although the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he saw "no evidence" of "collusion" between Team Trump and Russia regarding the 2016 election, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that is what only Clapper apparently knows and a full investigation is needed.

As the Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, Clapper's office oversaw intelligence gathering from the FBI, CIA, and NSA.


On the March 5 Meet the Press, NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Clapper if there was any evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, to which Clapper replied “not to my knowledge.” He added that while it is possible that new evidence has been produced since he left the government, he saw “no evidence of such collusion” while serving as Director of National Intelligence.

On March 9 on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Pelosi: “On Sunday's Meet the Press, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that for the agencies he oversaw -- CIA, FBI, and NSA -- to his knowledge there was ‘no evidence’ of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. Do you agree with Clapper?”



James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence in

the Obama administration. (AP)
“Well…he’s talking about to his knowledge,” the Minority Leader responded. “We haven’t had the investigation that we need to have, and that’s what we’re saying is follow the facts, follow the facts.”

“So I also heard him say,” she continued, “that he didn’t think there was any reason to believe that the president, President Obama, was tapping Donald Trump. But what we’re saying is follow the facts.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/and ... still-need

[Rory]

Wow, Pelosi too. I thought citing Louise Mensch was the cherry on the RUSSIA DONE DID IT cake, but no, there's so much more

[seemslikeadream]

traps can be fun AND entertaining


DOJ brings first ever criminal cyber charges against Russian govt officials
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... a8dd135d4e


I do learn a bit here every single day