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:

Did Rod Rosenstein Lead A Computer Intrusion Unit For The Obama Admin?

That's what a new lawsuit by Sharryl Atkisson suggests. I'm already spread thin, but you can read about the new lawsuit at American Greatness: New Lawsuit Claims Rod Rosenstein Led Task Force that Spied on Sharyl Attkisson’s Computers.

Of particular note is that, in addition to Rosenstein, another named defendant is Shawn Henry, who is currently president of Crowdstrike Services. At the time, Henry was executive assistant director (EAD) of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB), working for Robert "Bob" Mueller. Rosenstein, Mueller, Henry--it's a small world.

Here's a short excerpt from the article. For some reason I'm very familiar with the name Les Szwajkowski, but for the moment can't pinpoint it:

As part of the lawsuit, former FBI Unit Chief Les Szwajkowski confirms that he facilitated a forensic exam in January of 2013 that revealed government surveillance spyware in Attkisson’s computer. Szwajkowski signed a sworn Affidavit confirming the government intrusion into Attkisson’s computers. 

The specialist quickly identified spyware proprietary to the federal government in Attkisson’s computer, according to Szwajkowski. He advised Attkisson that he and his intel associates were “shocked” that the government had used covert surveillance on a national journalist and he said they thought it was “outrageous.” 

Szwajkowski says he reported to Attkisson that the analysis showed clear evidence that her computer was infiltrated with government spyware proprietary to the CIA, FBI or National Security Agency (NSA). Forensics indicated the particular intrusion uncovered by the analysis was accomplished through software attached to an otherwise innocuous email sent to Attkisson in February 2012. 

Attkisson alleges that “numerous other Americans” were also targeted by Rosenstein’s unit while he was the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dmitri Alperovitch, Founder Of CrowdStrike, Was A "Special Government Employee"

This is being reported by The Epoch Times: CrowdStrike Co-Founder Held Special Government Employee Status. And nobody responsible wants to comment about this. Go figure, hey? If I were the suspicious kind I'd say he was helping the Obama administration to prepare for the 2016 election in some way. Excerpt:

The Department of Defense granted Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, the status of a special government employee in 2013, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times. 

Alperovitch held the status for one year starting on Nov. 23, 2013. 

“He was an unpaid consultant limited to 60 total days in a year and has not provided any consulting services since that time,” Lt. Col. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon press spokesperson, wrote in an email. 

“In his role as a special government employee, Alpervotich provided services in cybersecurity, forensic cyber analysis, and post-incident remediation.” 

In 2013 and 2014, the U.S. government relied in part on CrowdStrike’s reports to identify China and North Korea as the culprits of state-sponsored hacks.

CrowdStrike did not respond to a request for comment. 

The “cyber-czar” at the defense department at the time, Eric Rosenbach, requested for Alperovtich to be brought on as a special government employee, according to a former official familiar with the matter. Steven Schleien, who is now the chief operating officer at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, directed the onboarding process, the source said. 

Rosenbach did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Alperovitch’s status as a special government employee has not been previously reported.

Obama's Role And Motive

Don Surber has a new blog up that's fascinating: Obama is behind impeachment. As it happens, just yesterday I was asking myself, as Joe Biden might say, Son of a gun! Where's Obama these days? Surber explains. In Surber's blog, as you'll see, he also quotes Rush Limbaugh at some length--and the focus is on Crowdstrike. Rush sums that angle up admirably. 

Normally I'd summarize a lot of this, but it's an excellent read, so I'm quoting it at length. The explanation for Dem hatred for Giuliani is worth it, alone. But read it all:

...

Leon Wagener reported in the Daily Mail on March 1, 2017, "Barack Obama is turning his new home in the posh Kalorama section of the nation's capital - just two miles away from the White House -- into the nerve center of the mounting insurgency against his successor, President Donald J. Trump. 

"Obama's goal, according to a close family friend, is to oust Trump from the presidency either by forcing his resignation or through his impeachment. 

"And Obama is being aided in his political crusade by his longtime consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, who has moved into the 8,200-square-foot, $5.3-million Kaloroma mansion with  the former president and Michelle Obama, long time best friends.

"Jarrett played a vital -- if at times low-key -- role in the Obama presidency. She lived in the White House, dined with the Obamas, and help shape his domestic and foreign policies." 

Under Obama, the Democrat Party has become a Racketeer Influence Corrupt Organization. Maybe it always was. 

President Trump may be their Rudy Giuliani, the man who brought down both Marc Rich (a major Democrat donor who sold Iranian oil despite an embargo) and the Genovese and Colombo crime families. Never forget that Rich (pardoned by Clinton for a million bucks) and defeating the Mob are the reasons Democrats hate him. 

Rush Limbaugh said, "Oh! By the way, if I’ve had one, I have had five emails, 'Hey, Rush, hey, Rush, I see people talking about CrowdStrike all over the media now. Congratulations. Thank you.' I was happy to see that myself because Trump mentioning CrowdStrike in that phone call with the Ukrainian president, let me tell you something. You don’t know this. You’re not gonna see this represented, you’re not gonna see the media, the Democrats, react to it. They’re gonna ignore it. 

"But Trump mentioning CrowdStrike, that’s the firm that examined the DNC server after it was hacked in 2015, everybody thinking that the Russians did it. The FBI never examined it. We don’t know who hacked the server. We don’t know that there was a hack. We don’t know that it wasn’t an inside job to release some of the data on that Democrat National Committee server, whoever tried to hack the RNC computers. But they never got into theirs, but the DNC was hacked."
CrowdStrike is owned by Google, which is evil. 

...

Limbaugh said, "When Trump mentioned CrowdStrike to the Ukrainian president — do not doubt me — what he was really asking, because he specified the business of Biden and his son, he’s really asking the president of Ukraine to help Barr in the investigation of when the Trump-Russia collusion investigation actually began. That’s what Trump wants to know. That’s what Barr is trying to find out." 

UPDATED: Tony Shaffer: What The Left Is Most Worried About

In the wake of yesterday's events I may be updating this post multiple times. We'll see. It appears to me that we'll be getting bits and pieces of insight rather than major revelations at this point. Here, Tony Shaffer--a knowledgeable guy--hits the nail on the head:

Tony Shaffer
‏
Verified account

@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y

Based on the panicked calls I got from a @washingtonpost reporter yesterday - every 30 minutes - who wanting me to discuss the #Crowdstrike issue, this is what the left is most worried about - Catherine Herridge does a great job here with @LouDobbs breaking down why...Tony Shaffer added,

2:15
The “Dirty” Truth

@AKA_RealDirty
Catherine Herridge talks about crowd strike and the server. 

5:10 AM - 26 Sep 2019

Of course the Left is freaking over the revelation that Barr/Durham are hot on the trail of the Crowdstrike coverup and the truth about the DNC server and "Russian hack." That whole narrative is at the heart of the CIA/FBI con of Intel Assessment--Barr knows this and has taken aim at that heart.

Meanwhile the idiot editorialists at the WSJ think that because "Bill Barr" didn't contact Zelenskyy that somehow means nothing came of the phone call. Durham's team is hard at work--they're the ones doing the nitty gritty investigation. We know that because DoJ confirmed that yesterday at the same time DoJ said Barr never talked to Zelenskyy. Barr is far too smart to go stepping on SoS Pompeo's toes by communicating directly with heads of state. However, Trump's constant references to Barr in the transcript--only Zelenskyy brings up Giuliani--is a strong indication of how highly Trump values Barr. And it was an indication to Zelenskyy and "his people" that Barr and "his people", i.e., Team Durham, have Trump's full backing.

Commenter Titan 28, importantly, points out that the absurd attempt to smear AG Barr as Trump's "personal" lackey--the "whistleblower" says Trump names "Giuliani and Barr" as his "personal representatives"--may well be one of the main points in the entire "whistleblower" narrative. The point reinforces that the Left viscerally fears Barr and knows how important he is to Trump.

Here's how I addressed that in a comment earlier (edited):

MULTIPLE UPDATES: Woops! Dems Score Own Goal

And they can't say Trump didn't warn them.

But pardon me while I take another victory lap. Back in Does Paul Mirengoff Have Things Backwards Re Ukraine? I predicted what we would learn, and it's all been confirmed by the call transcript between President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. At that time I predicted that what we would ultimately learn is that President Trump was not asking Ukraine to initiate an investigation of Biden, but that he was asking Ukraine to cooperate with the official investigation of the entire Russia Hoax that is being conducted by Attorney General Bill Barr and USA John Durham. And that's exactly what the call transcript confirms.

That would be bad enough for the Dems, but it goes even further. As we'll see in the transcript (below), Trump specifically asks Zelenskyy for Ukraine's help in locating the missing DNC server--the original server, the one that Crowdstrike looked at but that the FBI didn't bother with. [But please refer to Update 3 below!] That is confirmation of what the focus of the investigation is--not specifically Biden but specifically the entire Russia Hoax. This confirms Rudy Giuliani's explanation of what the Biden angle was really about (Giuliani Tells Us What It's All About). Who thinks the Dems really wanted to bring that up again, about the DNC server and Seth Rich? And that the server may be concealed in Ukraine! What's more, this should confirm for all the Barr detractors out there (I'm lookin' at you, sundance!) that Barr and Durham are really determined to get to the bottom of the Russia Hoax--in detail. This could not be worse news for the Dems--except that they probably are already well aware of where Barr's investigation is heading and how thorough it is (as commenter Unknown has been emphasizing lately).

So, I'll paste in the relevant parts of the call transcript. In addition to Trump confirming that there's a US investigation going on and the specific mention of Crowdstrike and the server, please note that it's President Zelenskyy who asks Giuliani to get in touch with him--it appears to be Zelenskyy's attempt at ingratiating himself with Trump, by seeking out Trump's personal attorney. Trump's response is very, very telling. At every mention of Giuliani, Trump is careful to include AG Barr, to keep it on an official footing, not personal. That's all the confirmation you need to know that the investigation under discussion is being led by the US Department of Justice and that Trump is totally aware of the distinction between his private attorney and the DoJ. Trump is supporting his Attorney General and the Department of Justice, but at the same time he's entitled to his private legal team to protect him--both going back and going forward--against the lawfare assaults, both legal and illegal, that have been ongoing since long before his election.

At the beginning of this relevant portion, Trump introduces the topic of Ukraine doing the US "a favor." That favor doesn't involve Biden--it has to do with the DNC server, which Bill Barr is seeking. Note that there's no mention by Trump of Giuliani, but instead "the Attorney General" is brought in as the person who needs to be in touch with the Ukrainian authorities ("you or your people"). Trump is respectful throughout and is placing no pressure on Zelenskyy, except to remind him that the US has been very supportive of Ukraine--in contrast to countries like Germany and France. This is standard diplomatic speak. Again, the focus is very clearly on the big picture of the Russia Hoax.

UPDATED: Was Seth Rich Julian Assange's "internal Source" At The DNC?

CTH has a new post up titled: "IMPORTANT – Video Confirms Butowsky Lawsuit Claim: Julian Assange Told Ellen Ratner DNC Emails Received From Seth Rich – Not a Russian Hack…"

This is what we discussed just a week ago in Seth Rich In The News Again. The CTH title is a bit misleading, as I understand this new information. Ellen Ratner does not state that Assange told her that Seth Rich was his DNC source who provided the DNC emails--Assange never identifies his confidential sources. Rather, Ratner does confirm that Assange told her that the DNC emails were not received from the Russians but instead were obtained from a source internal to the DNC. It could have been Seth Rich, but it could have been someone else. OTOH, and in all fairness, it might also have been the case that Assange was lying and that he did receive the emails from the Russians.

But here's the real problem.

Imagine yourself as a Special Counsel, charged with investigating claims that the Trump campaign colluded with "the Russians" to obtain help to win the 2016 presidential election. I key issue in your investigation is the claim--made by the DNC through their contractor, Crowdstrike--that the Russian government "hacked" the DNC server, stole a huge trove of emails, and gave those emails to Assange at Wikileaks. The issue for you is whether Wikileaks was simply a cutout, whether "the Russians" gave those emails to Wikileaks precisely so that Wikileaks could disseminate them publicly to help the Trump campaign. To assess that claim, you need to know:

1) Who actually took those emails?

2) How did the emails got to Wikileaks?

3) Was the Trump campaign involved in some, all, or any of this?

Two Good Russia Hoax Reads For Today

Neither of these two articles are news, exactly, but both are shrewd commentary and both deal with the current state of play in the Russia Hoax on the Dem side. The narrative has collapsed and current events make its collapse ever more apparent. Indeed, the collapse is increasingly dangerous for the Dems themselves, who look to be caught in the house of cards as it comes crashing down.

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, points out in Mueller, Dems Scramble as Russiagate Falls Apart that the entire Russia Hoax is collapsing. Now, that slow motion collapse has been apparent for quite some time, but McGovern is pointing out that this collapse is now becoming official. McGovern focuses on the two prongs of the Russia Hoax "collusion" narrative--the supposed Russian government "meddling" via social media, and the supposed Russian "hacking" of the DNC. He does this in the context of the current delay in Mueller's testimony to the House.

Another important point to bear in mind in all this is that Mueller's bizarre no-questions press conference--so seemingly inexplicable at the time--can now be seen to have been the price Mueller had to pay to avoid criminal contempt charges in the New York court room of Judge Dabney Friedrich, who is presiding over the Concord Management:

Friday’s surprising report that Robert Mueller had successfully sought an extra week to prepare for his House testimony on Russiagate (now set for July 24) must have come as scary news to those of his fans who can put two and two together. Over the past few weeks, it has become clearer that each of the two frayed findings of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams. 

Saturday’s New York Times reports that “the Democrats said they chose to delay at the request of Mr. Mueller” after a day of negotiations, “as both Democrats and Republicans were deep in preparations for his testimony” earlier scheduled for July 17. ... 

["two recent bombshell revelations from the United States District Court"] 

Perhaps the most damning of the two came last Monday, when it was disclosed that, on July 1, Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency’s supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. ... 

Seth Rich In The News Again

There's a story that came out earlier today that injects the whole Seth Rich - DNC narrative into the public view again. Here's the slightly more than 25 word version:

A businessman and ex Fox Business contributor named Ed Butowsky has, through his lawyer Ty Clevenger, filed a lawsuit in which he alleges--among much else--that Fox analyst Ellen Ratner told him that she had been informed by Julian Assange that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Obviously, IF TRUE, this is mind boggling. It's that "if true" that gives pause.

This is Ed Butowsky, via Wikipedia:

Edward "Ed" Wayne Butowsky (born February 12, 1962) is an American financial adviser and former Fox Business Network commentator. Butowsky was purportedly banned from the network's building in August 2017 after he gained notoriety over his role in a story published and subsequently retracted by Fox News concerning the murder of Seth Rich and his alleged ties to WikiLeaks.

Here is Ty Clevenger's account of the facts that Butowsky alleges in his lawsuit, linked to FR:

Briefly Noted: Devin Nunes On The GOP Strategy For Questioning Mueller

I'm pleased that Nunes appears to be on the same page with my recommendation for questioning Mueller. Nunes was on Hemmer Time with Bill Hemmer earlier this week, and Hemmer led off with questions about how the GOP would approach the Mueller testimony. Nunes' response was that he was advising all the GOP members to "keep it simple," don't give speeches that would allow Mueller to respond with his own counter-speech. Instead, confine yourselves to very specific "yes or no" questions. And he gave an example:

Did you know that Andrew Weissmann was briefed on the "dossier" in the summer of 2016? That's an easy one to start with. ... If an attorney is involved in the chain of custody of the evidence he shouldn't be involved in the investigation itself. I'm not a lawyer myself but all the lawyers around me ... say that's like in the 101 handbook of what not to do as a prosecutor.

There are plenty of other simple, binary type questions of that sort. Now that Judge Dabney Friedrich has slammed half of the "collusion" narrative, I strongly recommend--as have various commenters here--that the GOP members focus on the other half: the claim of Wikileaks and Russian involvement in the DNC "hack." Again, just simple questions regarding the failure to take custody of the physical evidence and yet conduct investigations and prosecutions that relied on third party claims (by Crowdstrike) about that evidence.

The whole half hour interview is fairly interesting.

Briefly Noted: The Stone, The Hopester, The Barr

Here we are, we got what we wanted--Barr and Durham are conducting a real investigation the way it's supposed to be done--and the result is pretty much no leaking, no revelations. Tough on us.

In the meantime ...

The Roger Stone Case

Roger Stone is doing a good job demonstrating that the entire Russia Hoax narrative--importantly including the Russia-hacked-the-DNC part of it--is ... a hoax. This is an important, and public, supplement to the Barr/Durham investigation of the ICA.

Stone's argument in pre-trial motions is simply this: The Team Mueller search warrant affidavits against Stone simply assumed that Russians hacked the DNC--that's part of their probable cause narrative. Problem: Probable cause is normally based on independently verifiable information or testimony. In this case the FBI, which is behind the search warrant, did essentially NO investigation to justify the Russia-hacked-the-DNC narrative. They did not examine the DNC server, having been refused access to the physical evidence by the lawyers for the purported victim, the DNC. What they did was to rely on a redacted report by a private company, Crowdstrike, hired by the DNC--which very arguably has an interest in smearing Stone and Trump. Further, Crowdstrike appears not to have followed standard protocols for handling the physical evidence, protocols that the FBI would have been held to had they obtained the physical evidence. And now, having relied on that narrative for purposes of the search warrant Team Mueller wants to say that they can't be held to prove the underlying narrative. Stone says the evidence should all be thrown out and, IMO, that's reasonable. However, all bets are off with Judge Amy Berman Jackson. My understanding, subject to correction, is that if Jackson rules against Stone an interlocutory appeal should be allowed. We shall see.

Hope Hicks v. Dem Impeachment Theater

Briefly Noted: News Roundup

It's a bit of a slow newsday. Here are a few items worth noting, however.

Let's start with a couple of tweets from Paul Sperry that tend  to confirm earlier word:

Paul Sperry‏

@paulsperry_

BREAKING: House GOP leadership has soured on Comey replacement Wray. They r now convinced Wray's not part of the FBI cleanup & not cooperating w AG Barr & is in fact part of the cover-up of #SpyGate scandal after burying documents & refusing to make people available for interview

7:41 PM - 14 Jun 2019

It has been previously reported that IG Horowitz's wrapup is being delayed by Wray's stonewalling on document release. Difficult to say definitively at this distance, but I've made by view of Wray pretty clear. I'd like to see Barr muscle him. Publicly. Obviously there's politics involved here, but the situation seems unsatisfactory--the legacy Mueller FBI that Wray is running must be stopped in its tracks.

Paul Sperry
‏
@paulsperry_

BREAKING: House Republicans r upset w what they call Sen Graham's showboating since taking over Senate Judiciary from Grassley, who they say was "serious" bout getting to bottom of #SpyGate. But Graham's just putting on "charade" on Fox for S.C. voters & "not doing a f*cking thing"

7:30 PM - 14 Jun 2019

We've seen these rumors before, too. Graham is talking a good game, but what action is he taking? I'm willing to assume that Graham doesn't want to step on Barr/Durham toes and that there's a need for a higher profile pol to do some "showboating" on TV. Could that be the coordination with Barr? Who are the "House GOPers?" We're not told. It's another situation worth watching.

OTOH, significant evidence that Barr hasn't lapsed into somnolence--even as he's threatened with contempt in one area Barr takes "aggressive" action in another. He's clearly not shying away from confrontation:

Remember: The DNC Was NOT Hacked By The Russians

The current buzz about the Russia Hoax--which will certainly continue through the weekend and into next week--is about the apparent willingness of the disgraced former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe to demolish the whole Russia narrative in order to be sure that others will go down with him--and most of all, Rod Rosenstein. Paradoxically as it may seem, this may be a good time to recall a key part of the whole Russia Hoax narrative, one that has largely been ignored: the patently false claim that the DNC was hacked by Russians. This episode has special significance because of the active involvement of the Clinton campaign attorneys from Perkins Coie, who were also intimately involved in contracting with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS for the Steele "dossier" on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

Fortuitously, yesterday The Gateway Pundit had a guest article on the subject by no less an expert than William Binney (with an assist from Larry Johnson). For anyone not familiar with Binney, here is the Wikipedia version of his career:

Binney ... [after joining the Army with a BS in Math] was found to have strong aptitudes for mathematics, analysis, and code breaking, and served from 1965 to 1969 in the Army Security Agency before going to the NSA in 1970. 

Binney was a Russia specialist and worked in the operations side of intelligence, starting as an analyst and ending as a Technical Director prior to becoming a geopolitical world Technical Director. In the 1990s, he co-founded a unit on automating signals intelligence with NSA research chief Dr. John Taggart. Binney's NSA career culminated as Technical Leader for intelligence in 2001. He has expertise in intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, systems analysis, knowledge management, and mathematics (including set theory, number theory, and probability).

After retiring from the NSA, he founded, together with fellow NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, Entity Mapping, LLC, a private intelligence agency to market their analysis program to government agencies.

The Government took a dim view of Binney's post-retirement whistleblowing. Although Binney has never been arrested, much less tried, for any of his activities, Government efforts to discourage his activities led to incidents such as this:

James Baker And Michael Sussman Revisited

Jeff Carlson has a summary out of James Baker's testimony to the House. Baker, a close friend of James Comey, was General Counsel for the FBI, which is to say that he worked directly with Comey. Baker is currently the subject of a criminal leak investigation. The summary of Baker's testimony--which is mostly very self serving--doesn't contain any bombshells but, as usual, is worth reading. It is mostly concerned with Baker's interaction with Michael Sussman, which I covered extensively in two previous posts. Nevertheless, this aspect of the Russia Hoax is well worth reviewing, if only to remind ourselves of aspects that we may have forgotten:

James Baker Identifies Another Source Behind the FISA Application

It's James Baker's Turn To Throw Rosenstein Under A Bus

Here, below, are the two paragraphs of Sussman's bio from his page at Perkins Coie, the law firm where he's a partner--yes, the same law firm that represented the DNC and laundered DNC money to Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS (that part's not in his official bio). I urge you to peruse the rest:

Michael Sussmann, formerly with the U.S. Department of Justice, is a nationally-recognized privacy, cybersecurity and national security lawyer. He is engaged on some of the most sophisticated, high-stakes matters today, such as his representation of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in their responses to Russian hacking in the 2016 presidential election. This work was detailed in the best-selling books The Apprentice (2018), The Perfect Weapon (2018), Russian Roulette (2018), and Hacks (2017).

Michael has been ranked as a “Privacy and Data Security Expert” in the Chambers Global and Chambers USA directories. He is often quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and other media. His legal work has been cited by investigative reporters in two other important books: Power Wars (2015) and Dragnet Nation (2015). He has provided Congressional testimony and litigated national security cases in federal court.

You'll see why I said in the first post "In a Hillary Clinton administration the sky would have been the limit for Sussman--or close to it," especially when you read the rest of the details of his involvement with the FBI during the 2016 campaign.

UPDATED: Crossfire Hurricane: The How and Why

We're getting to the point in Obamagate where it's possible to begin to gather some of the disparate threads together. Yes, there's still plenty to uncover, but a lot of the picture is slowly emerging--and the process is gathering momentum as the Deep State begins to switch over to damage control mode. That aspect has become apparent with the revelation of Stefan Halper as a key operative for the FBI, the revelation of the codename for the FBI Full Investigation as "Crossfire Hurricane," and the floating of the desperately absurd new narrative: We weren't spying on Trump--we wanted to protect him!

To understand what Crossfire Hurricane was all about, it helps to begin with the realization that it was not the FBI's first choice--in the big picture it amounts to a fall back option that was more or less forced on the FBI by circumstances beyond their control.

Make no mistake about it--the FBI was all in with the effort to enable a Democrat presidential handoff from Obama to Clinton. In modern political campaigns, intelligence and data in digital form is essential to success, and that's where the FBI came in. Running informants, such as Halper, against the GOP wasn't going to guarantee a Clinton victory--not in and of itself. However, access to bulk amounts of sensitive inside data could play a significant role. And the FBI had that access, in the form of access to raw NSA data, which means just about all digital communications in the world. Remember Nellie Ohr? The former CIA contractor and former employee of Fusion GPS? She became a ham radio operator during the 2016 campaign, so I guess she understood what it takes to fly under the Deep State radar.

Now, the FBI wasn't about to do something totally stupid, like mine the NSA for data and ship boatloads of it over to the DNC or some other intermediary to the Clinton campaign. Not as an institution. No, the smart way to do this would be to hire non-government contractors--we'll call them Fusion GPS and Crowdstrike--to provide the FBI with "analytical assistance." As if the FBI didn't have an army of analysts already. And then give these contractors total access to NSA data without telling NSA, who would have thought that only FBI employees were combing through their data. You can read the gory details in Jeff Carlson's excellent article: The FBI’s Outside Contractors, DNC Servers & Crowdstrike.

The beauty of this approach was that it totally bypassed legal controls. There was no need to falsify things in writing, no need to make stuff up to open a Full (Counterintelligence) Investigation (FI) on a US Person (USPER), and then lie to the FISC to get FISA coverage on the USPER. No need to have to regularly renew the FISA and lie all over again to the FISC each time. Of course, it wasn't as if the FISC was doing much besides rubber stamping FISA applications but, hey, who needs the bother? And besides, better safe than sorry. Because, in the unlikely event that the FBI would be questioned about this arrangement, they could just play dumb: Gosh, we didn't know the contractors were looking at all that stuff! How do you prove criminal intent?

So this cute arrangement was humming along, working like a charm. For how long? That's hard to say, but we know that it was in operation no later than December of 2015. And the way that came to light was that in the Spring of 2016 the unlikely event actually occurred: Admiral Mike Rogers, head of NSA, learned of irregularities in FBI accessing of NSA data and did an audit of the activity. That audit covered the period beginning from December 2015, and it discovered that fully 85% of the queries failed to comply with what are called "minimization procedures" (procedures designed to shield the identities of persons who fell within certain criteria--like, USPERs who had no connection to intelligence or terrorist activities). Then, as if Rogers learning about this weren't bad enough, Rogers went and blew a whistle--to the FISC itself--and put a stop to it all. That was in April, 2016, just as it was becoming obvious that Trump was going to be the GOP candidate for President.