The VIPS analysis doesn't prove its point. It is NOT known that the July 5 copying operation was exfiltration from DNC. Indeed, it is very unlikely that it was. Adam Carter, Forensicator and myself have all looked at Guccifer 2 metadata in microscopic detail and our opinion is that it is probably/almost certainly a copying operation that took place AFTER prior exfiltration. In the cf.7z dossier, there is evidence of exfiltration at expected rates on other earlier dates.
Also, it is correct that the seemingly pointless opening and closing of five documents in the first G2 drop, which had effect of inserting metadata with name of Russian equivalent of J Edgar Hoover, cannot be plausibly explained as an "opsec error". This was pointed out long before VIPS. Precisely what it means is impossible to say right now.
On balance, I think that the VIPS article has been unhelpful to objective analysis, since its over-egged certainty on copying speeds has tended to distract skeptics towards an almost certainly irrelevant scenario and away from better leads.
I would parenthetically add: it's also seems like the sort of thing you'd have your attorneys file while negotiating a plea/cooperation agreement with Durham, so as to minimize the chances of taking an inadvertent self-induced dirt nap in Ft. Marcy Park. If Sussmann wants a deal, the last thing he needs is for co-conspirators to get wind of it before he spills the beans to Durham.
Another observation I have not seen anywhere else: note that the judge has granted a protective order on all non-classified material that the prosecution provides to the defense. The order forbids the defense from sharing the information it gets from prosecutors with anyone outside of the defense team for any purpose other than the defense on THIS specific charge.
If Durham doesn't plan on indicting anyone else, why would it be necessary to obtain such an order?
Hence, this is further independent circumstantial evidence he is planning on indicting others, in relation to what he has described in this indictment.
>> "But it could also be that Durham is running a conspiracy case out of edny where the Clinton campaign HQs were. Also of note was that Barr made EDNY the clearing house for Ukraine stuff, and inserted Seth Ducharme there in July of 2020." <<
.... the March 5, 2018 edition of the New Yorker ... featured a lengthy and sympathetic portrayal of Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who was employed by Fusion GPS — yet another entity retained by Perkins Coie — to investigate possible connections between Donald Trump and Russia.
Buried toward the end of the article comes the revelation that, on July 26, 2016 (four days after WikiLeaks published the DNC emails), “Steele filed yet another memo” in which “Steele’s sources claimed that the [DNC] digital attack involved agents ‘within the Democratic Party structure itself…’”
[end quote]
The list of Dossier reports available to the public does not include a report dated July 26, 2016.
4) Report 95, undated, but apparently written in late-July 2016
5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016
--------------------------------------
So, Report 96 must be dated July 26, 2016, and it must indicate that " the [DNC] digital attack involved agents ‘within the Democratic Party structure itself".
The public has not seen Report 96, but the FBI did receive Report 96.
2) Guccifer 2.0 came on the scene via Twitter at the same time DNC server hacked. Alleged Ukraine connection/communications of Russia. Hasn’t been heard from in over 2+years.
Another detail: Crowdstrike was inside the DNC computer network before the putative Russian Hack in late April. There was some sort of earlier incident for which Crowdstrike had been called in (likely by Sussmann again, though I'm not certain) -- it may have related to the claim that Bernie's campaign improperly "accessed" Hillary's data (because of -- wait for it -- a misconfiguration of the DNC network.) This was used as the excuse by DNC (at that point a whole-owned subsidiary of Hillary's campaign) to punish Bernie by denying him access to critical DNC data files for reaching out to likely DNC primary voters. I vaguely recall Crowdstrike was responsible for the "attribution" of the access to Hillary's data to Bernie's campaign workers, though Bernie denied it vigorously. (Does this sound familiar?)
I have long hypothesized that while Crowdstrike was inside the DNC network looking for/fabricating evidence that Bernie's people accessed Hillary's data, they were busy planting the malware they would later claim was "proof" that the Russian hacking crews "Fancy Bear" and "Cozy Bear" were responsible, and had copied emails in the April, May, June time frame.
I further hypothesize that as they were setting up the fake hack of the DNC to blame the Russians, and then accuse Trump of being Putin's bitch and communicating secretly with the Russians via the double-secret probation Alfa Bank server back channel, (notice how all the pieces fit together as though they were part of a pre-conceived jig-saw puzzle?) something the DNC/Hillary campaign didn't plan on occurred: Seth Rich filched a bunch of emails, because he was a Bernie bro, and was pissed his guy got cheated by the DNC so Hillary could win the nomination, and he passed the emails along to wikileaks to expose the truth that Hillary's campaign was colluding with the DNC to cheat Bernie.
I think this is what Crowdstrike discovered in late May, and precipitated an order for all DNC personnel to leave their laptops behind over a weekend to be "disinfected." The real purpose: for Crowdstrike to do forensic examinations of the suspected laptops to see who stole the emails, and which ones. That's how they got onto Seth Rich.
IOW, the stolen emails were supposed to a fake op, blamed on the Russians, all part of the multi-tentacled "smear Trump to take the heat off of Hillary's email scandal" plan. Guccifer 2.0 was supposed to be the make-believe thinly veiled Russian face of the DNC hack -- replete with dummied up Cyrillic metadata in the email attachments -- but rogue employee Seth Rich jeopardized the entire operation, and they had to improvise.
This is one of many potential reasons why they could never give the FBI full forensic access to the DNC network and equipment -- they could have stumbled on Rich filching the emails, blowing up the Russian hack story that was integral to the entire Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax they were fabricating.
I fully agree with your and Parry's take in the significance of the quoted passage in the indictment. It's not like Durham had a word count minimum to fulfill to get an indictment from the GJ, and, as you pointed out, it goes beyond demonstrating a preexisting working relationship with top FBI CI officials.
I also appreciate you correcting the record on the Brennan referral to FBI of Hillary approving Sullivan's scheme. If that characterization was not what Brennan wrote, you know Adam "Camera-ready" Schiff and his sidekick, Eric "Renfield" Swalwell would have been screaming to the rafters about it; yet they didn't.
>>" The details would be covered by attorney - client privilege—Crowdstrike being the client and Sussmann the attorney." <<
I assume you meant to write that the DNC was the client; Crowdstrike was a contractor to PC, not a client. Crowdstrike's communications with Sussmann would, would, however, fall under Attorney work product privilege?
Prompted by a friend--if Durham got past Sussmann's claims of att/client privilege, as we know he did, is it possible that he's been talking to Crowdstrike?
The VIPS analysis doesn't prove its point. It is NOT known that the July 5 copying operation was exfiltration from DNC. Indeed, it is very unlikely that it was. Adam Carter, Forensicator and myself have all looked at Guccifer 2 metadata in microscopic detail and our opinion is that it is probably/almost certainly a copying operation that took place AFTER prior exfiltration. In the cf.7z dossier, there is evidence of exfiltration at expected rates on other earlier dates.
Also, it is correct that the seemingly pointless opening and closing of five documents in the first G2 drop, which had effect of inserting metadata with name of Russian equivalent of J Edgar Hoover, cannot be plausibly explained as an "opsec error". This was pointed out long before VIPS. Precisely what it means is impossible to say right now.
On balance, I think that the VIPS article has been unhelpful to objective analysis, since its over-egged certainty on copying speeds has tended to distract skeptics towards an almost certainly irrelevant scenario and away from better leads.
More Sussmann indictment stuff:
>> https://twitter.com/shipwreckedcrew/status/1445992275943645192 <<
I would parenthetically add: it's also seems like the sort of thing you'd have your attorneys file while negotiating a plea/cooperation agreement with Durham, so as to minimize the chances of taking an inadvertent self-induced dirt nap in Ft. Marcy Park. If Sussmann wants a deal, the last thing he needs is for co-conspirators to get wind of it before he spills the beans to Durham.
Another observation I have not seen anywhere else: note that the judge has granted a protective order on all non-classified material that the prosecution provides to the defense. The order forbids the defense from sharing the information it gets from prosecutors with anyone outside of the defense team for any purpose other than the defense on THIS specific charge.
If Durham doesn't plan on indicting anyone else, why would it be necessary to obtain such an order?
Hence, this is further independent circumstantial evidence he is planning on indicting others, in relation to what he has described in this indictment.
Some interesting developments re: Sussmann prosecution:
>> https://twitter.com/Larry_Beech/status/1445836949705707524 <<
>> "But it could also be that Durham is running a conspiracy case out of edny where the Clinton campaign HQs were. Also of note was that Barr made EDNY the clearing house for Ukraine stuff, and inserted Seth Ducharme there in July of 2020." <<
Brennan was pretty busy in the Russian Hoax LLC. His handwritten note has the air of a preemptive CYA if the SHTF.
An excerpt from Perry's article:
[quote]
.... the March 5, 2018 edition of the New Yorker ... featured a lengthy and sympathetic portrayal of Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who was employed by Fusion GPS — yet another entity retained by Perkins Coie — to investigate possible connections between Donald Trump and Russia.
Buried toward the end of the article comes the revelation that, on July 26, 2016 (four days after WikiLeaks published the DNC emails), “Steele filed yet another memo” in which “Steele’s sources claimed that the [DNC] digital attack involved agents ‘within the Democratic Party structure itself…’”
[end quote]
The list of Dossier reports available to the public does not include a report dated July 26, 2016.
The complete list is at
http://people-who-did-not-see.blogspot.com/2020/07/michael-gaeta-and-fbi.html
The relevant part of the list is:
------------------------------------
3) Report 94, dated July 19, 2016
4) Report 95, undated, but apparently written in late-July 2016
5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016
--------------------------------------
So, Report 96 must be dated July 26, 2016, and it must indicate that " the [DNC] digital attack involved agents ‘within the Democratic Party structure itself".
The public has not seen Report 96, but the FBI did receive Report 96.
Parry's latest episode on this series of articles on the indictment just dropped:
>> https://spectator.org/john-durham-and-the-mysterious-dnc-email-hack/ <<
Good read Mark. I believe it may go as far back as the Uranium one sale.
Two thoughts come to mind.
1) i smell the influence of Loretta Lynch
2) Guccifer 2.0 came on the scene via Twitter at the same time DNC server hacked. Alleged Ukraine connection/communications of Russia. Hasn’t been heard from in over 2+years.
Seth Rich leaked the emails.
I think the DNC server was hacked by a Sanders-supporter who worked in NGP VAN, a company that maintained some databases on the DNC computers.
http://people-who-did-not-see.blogspot.com/2020/11/michael-gaeta-and-fbi.html
and
https://people-who-did-not-see.blogspot.com/2021/03/michael-gaeta-and-fbi.html
Another detail: Crowdstrike was inside the DNC computer network before the putative Russian Hack in late April. There was some sort of earlier incident for which Crowdstrike had been called in (likely by Sussmann again, though I'm not certain) -- it may have related to the claim that Bernie's campaign improperly "accessed" Hillary's data (because of -- wait for it -- a misconfiguration of the DNC network.) This was used as the excuse by DNC (at that point a whole-owned subsidiary of Hillary's campaign) to punish Bernie by denying him access to critical DNC data files for reaching out to likely DNC primary voters. I vaguely recall Crowdstrike was responsible for the "attribution" of the access to Hillary's data to Bernie's campaign workers, though Bernie denied it vigorously. (Does this sound familiar?)
I have long hypothesized that while Crowdstrike was inside the DNC network looking for/fabricating evidence that Bernie's people accessed Hillary's data, they were busy planting the malware they would later claim was "proof" that the Russian hacking crews "Fancy Bear" and "Cozy Bear" were responsible, and had copied emails in the April, May, June time frame.
I further hypothesize that as they were setting up the fake hack of the DNC to blame the Russians, and then accuse Trump of being Putin's bitch and communicating secretly with the Russians via the double-secret probation Alfa Bank server back channel, (notice how all the pieces fit together as though they were part of a pre-conceived jig-saw puzzle?) something the DNC/Hillary campaign didn't plan on occurred: Seth Rich filched a bunch of emails, because he was a Bernie bro, and was pissed his guy got cheated by the DNC so Hillary could win the nomination, and he passed the emails along to wikileaks to expose the truth that Hillary's campaign was colluding with the DNC to cheat Bernie.
I think this is what Crowdstrike discovered in late May, and precipitated an order for all DNC personnel to leave their laptops behind over a weekend to be "disinfected." The real purpose: for Crowdstrike to do forensic examinations of the suspected laptops to see who stole the emails, and which ones. That's how they got onto Seth Rich.
IOW, the stolen emails were supposed to a fake op, blamed on the Russians, all part of the multi-tentacled "smear Trump to take the heat off of Hillary's email scandal" plan. Guccifer 2.0 was supposed to be the make-believe thinly veiled Russian face of the DNC hack -- replete with dummied up Cyrillic metadata in the email attachments -- but rogue employee Seth Rich jeopardized the entire operation, and they had to improvise.
This is one of many potential reasons why they could never give the FBI full forensic access to the DNC network and equipment -- they could have stumbled on Rich filching the emails, blowing up the Russian hack story that was integral to the entire Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax they were fabricating.
I fully agree with your and Parry's take in the significance of the quoted passage in the indictment. It's not like Durham had a word count minimum to fulfill to get an indictment from the GJ, and, as you pointed out, it goes beyond demonstrating a preexisting working relationship with top FBI CI officials.
I also appreciate you correcting the record on the Brennan referral to FBI of Hillary approving Sullivan's scheme. If that characterization was not what Brennan wrote, you know Adam "Camera-ready" Schiff and his sidekick, Eric "Renfield" Swalwell would have been screaming to the rafters about it; yet they didn't.
>>" The details would be covered by attorney - client privilege—Crowdstrike being the client and Sussmann the attorney." <<
I assume you meant to write that the DNC was the client; Crowdstrike was a contractor to PC, not a client. Crowdstrike's communications with Sussmann would, would, however, fall under Attorney work product privilege?
Prompted by a friend--if Durham got past Sussmann's claims of att/client privilege, as we know he did, is it possible that he's been talking to Crowdstrike?