The Pelosis Are Heavily Invested in Crowdstrike

Crowdstrike being the cyber security firm that, if you believe what you read in the MSM, "investigated" the DNC email "hack." "Heavily invested" means that the Pelosis have invested no less than $1 million dollars in Crowdstrike, beginning just a month ago. That's per a long article by Aaron Maté: Pelosis Take a Big Stake in CrowdStrike, Democrat-Connected Linchpin of Russia Probe. Who knows--if Biden wins maybe there'll be a lot of cyber security and investigating the Dems will want Crowdstrike to get involved in.

Crowdstrike was co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russian with the shadowy background who, since coming to the US in 1994, has rocketed to the top of the cyber security sector. Bringing on Shawn Henry, formerly one of the top guys in Bob Mueller's FBI, probably didn't hurt when it came to gaining access to the the federal government and obtaining lucrative contracts. Here's the lineup of Crowdstrike's founders:

CrowdStrike was co-founded by George Kurtz (CEO),^[5] Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO),^[6] and Gregg Marston (CFO, retired) in 2011.^[7][8] In 2012, Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official, was hired to lead sister company CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which focused on proactive and incident response services.^[9] In June 2013, the company launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon, which provided threat intelligence and attribution to nation state actors^[10] that are conducting economic espionage and IP theft.

And here's what Wikipedia tells us about Crowdstrike's funding:

In July 2015, Google invested in the company's Series C funding round, which was followed by Series D] and Series E, raising a total of $480 million as of May 2019. In 2017, the company reached a valuation of more than $1 billion with an estimated annual revenue of $100 million. In June 2018, the company said it was valued at more than $3 billion. Investors include Telstra, March Capital Partners, Rackspace, Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.

In June 2019, the company made an initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ.

In case you were wondering, 

A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the primary stimuli for the development of new companies and technologies.

That means, at the least, that Google was and probably still is very influential in Crowdstrike.

As we all know, the FBI never examined the physical DNC server. Instead, at the insistence of the DNC and the Clinton Campaign--represented by Michael Sussmann, who presented the Alfa Bank Hoax to his good friend at the FBI, James Baker--the FBI deferred to CrowdStrike. However, Crowdstrike, as we learned from the Manafort case, has its own dodgy notions of cyber forensics and says it never took physical possession of any DNC servers. Both CrowdStrike and the DNC drew their conclusions about the alleged Russian hack based on an examination of software “images” of the server.

This led to an interesting exchange when former top FBI cyber exec Shawn Henry testified before the Senate and, later, before Adam Schiff. I quote here from Aaron Maté's article:

As RealClearInvestigations reported last month, Henry's House testimony also conflicts with his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee two months prior, in October 2017. According to the Senate report, Henry claimed that CrowdStrike was "able to see some exfiltration and the types of files that had been touched," but not the files' content. Yet two months later, Henry told the House that "we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw." 

Notably, Henry's acknowledgment to the House that CrowdStrike did not have evidence of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. Right before that intervention from CrowdStrike counsel, Henry had falsely asserted that he knew when Russian hackers had exfiltrated the stolen information:  

Adam Schiff: Do you know the date in which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC?  

Shawn Henry:  I do. I have to just think about it. I don’t know. I mean, it’s in our report that I think the Committee has. 

Schiff:  And, to the best of your recollection, when would that have been? 

Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated. 

Henry then improbably argued that, in the absence of evidence showing the emails leaving the DNC server, Russian hackers could have taken individual screenshots of each of the 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments that were ultimately put out by WikiLeaks.

I read Henry's response this way: "Counsel just reminded me to avoid committing perjury." Which is always sound advice in these circumstances. If my conclusion seems a bit harsh, consider the improbability of the answer he then gave.

Now, here is who Shawn Henry is--or was in a previous life:

Shawn retired as FBI Executive Assistant Director (EAD) in 2012, overseeing half of the FBI’s investigative operations, including all FBI criminal and cyber investigations worldwide, international operations, and the FBI’s critical incident response to major investigations and disasters. During his 24- year career, he held a wide range of operational and leadership roles in four FBI Field Offices and FBI Headquarters.

Serving in multiple positions relating to cyber intrusions since 1999, Shawn was the Bureau’s outspoken top agent on cybersecurity issues, boosting the FBI’s cyber investigative capabilities. In addition to his last position as EAD, he served as both Deputy Assistant Director and Assistant Director of the Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters; Supervisor of the FBI Cyber Crime Squad in Baltimore; and Chief of the Computer Investigations’ Unit within the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC).

During his tenure, Shawn oversaw major computer crime and cyber investigations spanning the globe, from denial-of-service attacks, to major bank and corporate breaches, to nation-state sponsored intrusions. Shawn led the establishment of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF), a multi-agency center led by the FBI, and forged partnerships domestically and internationally within governments and the private sector. He was an original member of, and key contributor to, the National Cyber Study Group, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This organization developed the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), the U.S. government’s national strategy to mitigate threats and secure cyberspace. Early in his cyber career, Shawn served on the U.S. delegation to the G8 as a member of the High-Tech Crimes Subgroup.

Most people would probably expect that a guy who rose to such exalted levels of the FBI, and remained there for over a decade, would be quite able to give a straight answer to a straight question. When he's asked, Do you know when exfiltration of data took place? and he doesn't actually know that any exfiltration ever did take place, this upstanding former G-man would forthrightly declare: I don't know that any exfiltration ever took place. 

It's not as if that was a trick question for a guy with that kind of background and who has had lots of time to prep for his testimony. After all, that's the question everyone was waiting for him to answer. And he knew that. And yet his lawyer had to "remind" him to avoid committing perjury. Weird, huh? Is he actually stupid, or was he just a bit over eager to please Adam Schiff?

All I can say is that I hope that, like Daniel Jones, Shawn Henry will be spending some quality time before a grand jury before Barr's investigation is over with.