Remember Alfa Bank?

Anyone might be forgiven for imagining that the Russia Hoax is over and done with. But it's not. And Techno Fog has a very interesting article to remind us of that fact. As you may recall, during the final month or two of the 2016 election campaign, outlandish accusations were leveled against Alfa Bank. The basic idea was that a Russian bank, Alfa Bank, was laundering money on behalf of Donald Trump, money that the Putin regime was paying Trump as their supposed agent. These outlandish accusations came from the Hillary campaign and its oppo research branch--in other words, Fusion GPS (remember?), Glenn Simpson, and shady Clinton campaign lawyers.

The whole story quickly collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity, after a brief flurry of excitement ginned up in the Dem media proxy outlets. Even oppo research stories require some minimal factual content, and this story lacked the bare minimum. Apparently the Clinton campaign thought the whole thing would be water over the dam, but Alfa bank had other ideas. They sued, and Techno Fog brings us up to date:

Why is a Fusion GPS attorney risking sanctions?

Fusion GPS appears desperate to settle a potentially catastrophic case.

First, some minimal background:

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:

Marc Elias: A Reminder

A search of this blog reveals, remarkably, that there appear to be no references to Marc Elias, so this post will remedy that. And right up front I want to offer (FWIW) a hat tip to Mark Penn, the former "pollster and adviser" to Bill Clinton, whose (typically) excellent article on the Roger Stone indictment and arrest brought Elias specifically to my attention (Mueller’s selective prosecution of Stone, Venezuelan-style).

Who is Marc Elias, and why is he important for understanding the Russia Hoax? Wikipedia explains it lucidly:

Marc Erik Elias (born February 1, 1969)[1] is an American attorney. He is a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie LLP and head of its Political Law practice. He is the general counsel for Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. He worked in the same role for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. 

... 

He served as lead counsel for Senator Al Franken in the 2008 Minnesota Senate election recount and contest, the longest recount and contest in American history.[6] Elias has testified before committees in both houses of Congress and before the Federal Election Commission on campaign finance.[7] Elias has worked on voting rights and redistricting lawsuits in Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.[8] 

... 

In April 2015 Hillary Clinton engaged Elias as attorney of record for her 2016 presidential campaign.[5] According to The Washington Post, in April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to complete the research that resulted in the Donald Trump–Russia dossier.[11] ...

Are you getting the picture? You've heard of Super Lawyers? Well, in the legal field of Democrat politics, or simply politics generally, Marc Elias is an 800 lb. gorilla.

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.