Since Bill Barr’s initial “summary” of the Mueller report was released which argued that “no member of the Trump campaign cooperated and coordinated with the Russian government” Trump has triumphantly bellowed “No Collusion, No Obstruction” — however we now discover that this simply isn’t the case with the release of the redacted version of that same report.
Several persons — who were not technically members of the Trump campaign — did in fact communicate directly with members of Russian Military intelligence (GRU) where they obtained copies of emails which has been exfiltrated from the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
The first of these persons was Julian Assange, and the second key member was Roger Stone along with his two accomplices Jerome Corsi and Ted Malloch.
There were in fact three conspiracies at the same time, first was the conspiracy by the GRU to illegally hack and steal information harmful to the Clinton campaign and beneficial to Trump then disseminate that information as well as directly infiltrate election systems, second was the conspiracy by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to provide disruptive and false-flag information through social media trolls and bots to sow electoral discord which would be similarly harmful to Clinton by splitting the Democratic vote with disaffected Bernie and Jill Stein supporters — also to the benefit of Trump — and lastly there was an informal conspiracy to gain every possible advantage of the GRU's efforts as they were ultimately released by WikiLeaks and to then to coverup those efforts by lying about them and obstructing the investigation into these efforts.
The report in no uncertain terms identifies that the GRU is specifically responsible for the data breaches suffered by the DNC, DCCC and Podesta, and also that the Trump campaign was highly interested in accessing the information they recovered.
It documents exactly how false GRU personas Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks after publishing the first of the documents and emails on their own via WordPress blog pages, Facebook and Twitter were ultimately contacted by Wikileaks who argued they could provide the information to a wider audience and ultimately were provided access to two giant archives of information, one from from the DNC & DCCC from Guccifer and another on John Podesta by DCLeaks.
Guccifer 2.0 provided a 1GB archive file to Wikileaks including data stolen from the DNC and DCCC.
DCLeaks provided a second archive of Podesta emails to Wikileaks.
The report then goes on describe how WIkileaks ultimately began releasing the DNC and then later the Podesta emails — while dropping hints that the source of the information may have been someone inside the DNC, even going so far as to suggest it may have been former DNC employee Seth Rich who had apparently been mysteriously murdered in DC.
The problem with this conspiracy theory is the fact that before either of these archives were provided to WikiLeaks, on July 14th and September 22nd respectively, Seth Rich was already dead as he had been killed on July 10, 2016.
“After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking,” the report reads. “According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”
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By then, it was no secret where the documents came from. The computer security firm CrowdStrike had already published its technical report on the DNC breach, which laid out a trail leading directly to Moscow and the GRU. Analysts at ThreatConnect independently presented evidence that Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks were fictional creations of that agency.
But rather than refuse to comment on his sources, as he’s done in other cases, Assange used his platform to deny that he got the material from Russians, and make statements at an alternative theory. On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed announced a $20,000 reward for “information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.”
Assange fanned the flames even higher on August 25, 2016, when he was asked in a television interview, "Why are you so interested in Seth Rich's killer?"
"We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wikileaks sources,” Assange answered. “If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter .. that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us."
Besides the fact that both Crowdstrike and the Special Counsel were able to confirm the provenence of the archive files provided to WikiLeaks as having travelled through GRU controlled servers based on their metadata — Mr. Rich was dead before this data was provided to WikLeaks. So who was sending them emalls under the personas of Guccifer and DCLeaks?
The Trump campaign was extremely interested in the Clinton emails and the report documents that Trump himself asked Michael Flynn to try and find them if possible. He, in turn, reached out to his associate Peter W. Smith and Barbara Ledeen, neither of whom managed to produce anything.
Another person who was concerned with Hillary's emails and also in direct contact with Guccifer was former Trump campaign member Roger Stone.
Stone's name is redacted here, but there can be no mistake that he is the person here whom Guccifer provided a section of stolen DCCC information to and asked for his input and feedback about. This puts Stone in direct contact with members of Russian Intelligence who hacked and stole the documents literally discussing one of those documents.
For those who claim there was "No Collusion"- this right here is collusion, however technically it's not with a member of the Trump campaign as Stone had left the campaign in protest over their treatment of his protege, Sam Nunberg. But that didn't mean that he was no longer a supporter of the campaign, and that he wasn't still a close personal friend of Trump's, clearly he was both.
The report indicates that Stone's efforts to reach out for the stolen Hillary info through WikiLeaks once they began dumping what they had received from Guccifer was extensive.
Although there are heavy redactions — because the Roger Stone case is ongoing — it appears that the Trump campaign’s internal press strategy was at least partially based on WikiLeaks as it was discussed by Rick Gates and Trump.
Various press reports, many of whom have been confirmed as 100% true by the Mueller report, as well as Roger Stone's indictment indicate that a "senior member"of the Trump campaign was asked to reach out to Roger Stone and find out what else Assange was going to release.
5. During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1.
6. By in or around early August 2016, STONE was claiming both publicly and privately to have communicated with Organization 1. By in or around mid-August 2016, Organization 1 made a public statement denying direct communication with STONE. Thereafter, STONE said that his communication with Organization 1 had occurred through a person STONE described as a “mutual friend,” “go-between,” and “intermediary.” STONE also continued to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign about Organization 1 and its intended future releases.t
Those "mutual friends"and "go-betweens"appear according to reports, to be Stone's friend Jerome Corsi and his friend, London based Trump supporter Ted Malloch.
The report states that Ted Malloch, a London-based American academic linked to Brexit’s Nigel Farage and who has described himself as a “policy wonk and defender of Trump,” has been asked about his frequent appearances on RT, which has been called a Russian propaganda outlet by U.S. intelligence officials.
According to conservative gadfly Jerome Corsi, who has his own legal problems with Mueller’s probe, Mallach confided in him that he has been questioned by investigator’s looking into Russian collusion in the 2016 election. The report states that discussions with Malloch are potentially linked to RT’s involvement — including visits — with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
The Guardian reports, ” RT staff met and interviewed Assange on the same day – 2 August 2016 – that Roger Stone, the self-described ‘dirty trickster’ and longtime Trump associate who had previously bragged about having special access to WikiLeaks, was passed information about Assange’s plans,” before noting the timing could be coincidental.
According to the report timeline, “Stone emailed Corsi on 31 July 2016 to say Malloch, a mutual friend of theirs who was in London, ‘should see Assange.’ Corsi has said that he forwarded Malloch a message from Stone explaining that Stone wanted to ‘get the pending WikiLeaks emails’.”
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“Assange told an RT reporter during an interview at the embassy that he would be releasing emails that contained information relating to the Clinton Foundation. Assange’s interview with the RT reporter Afshin Rattansi was not broadcast publicly until several days later, on 6 August,” The Guardian reports.
Apparently using his RT connection to Assange, Malloch told Corsi who then told Stone that the next set of Assange releases would involve John Podesta and the Clinton Foundation and would be released in staged batches, one per day.
Malloch reached Assange and reports back to Corsi about the Podesta emails.
Eventually Stone was able to get this information back to Steve Bannon after using yet another go-between, an editor at Bannon's former publication Brietbart. As I've noted in 1st Entry of my Master Trump Russia Timeline:
October 3rd, 2016 —
- Brietbart Editor Matthew Boyle emails Stone to ask about the upcoming Wikileaks dump, about which Assange has a press conference scheduled for Wednesday (Oct 5th). “Assange — what’s he got? Hope it’s good”. Stone replies that “It is. I’d tell Bannon but he doesn’t call me back.” Boyle forwards this to Bannon with “You should call Roger. See below. You didn’t get from me.”
October 4, 2016 —
- Guccifer 2.0 Post documents stolen from the Clinton Foundation.
- Bannon emails back to Boyle “I've got important stuff to worry about.” And Boyle responds “Well clearly he knows what Assange has. I’d say that’s important.”
October 5, 2016 —
- Assange does a press teleconference with reporters in Berlin and claims that he has more material that will impact the U.S. elections, but he doesn’t actually release the information like he had promised.
- Bannon emails Stone “What was that this morning???” and asks if Assange cut a deal with the Clintons. Stones responds that Assange is afraid that he’s going to be killed, but that he’ll be releasing “a load every week going forward.” Then Stone says he’s raised $140k for a “black digital campaign” through a 501(c4) and asks Bannon for contributions from Breitbart owner Rebecca Mercer essentially in exchange for insider info he’s providing on Assange.
Much of this section of the report is obviously redacted, but what we've learned from other reports indicates some of these redacted sections indicate that on the day that the Access Hollywood Tape was released on October 7th, Roger Stone — who presumably was contacted by someone in the White House — reached out to Corsi in order to get a message to WIkileaks to dump their Podesta emails immediately in order to create a distraction from what the Washington Post was about to release about Trump.
Indications are that some of these redacted section refer to Stone as it appears he was frantically on the phone with Corsi trying to get him to reach Wikileaks and Assange that day.
According to Corsi’s account, Stone frantically called him in the hours before the now-infamous video dropped, demanding that he push Wikileaks into publishing the Podesta emails as a way of diverting attention from the impending story.
Stone’s indictment records an associate of Trump campaign chair Stephen K. Bannon texting Stone “well done” after the release, and states that Stone went on to claim credit for the leak in the days after Wikileaks began the dump.
If Corsi’s account is true, Stone would have known before nearly anyone the Access Hollywood tape was about to be made public. That raises fascinating questions about how Stone would have learned that the tape was coming. It also raises separate questions of whether – and how – he managed to contact Wikileaks, and why at least one Trumpworld figure in the indictment appeared to attribute the document release to Stone.
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“I recall Roger telling me that the Billy Bush tape was going to be that day and Roger was saying to me, ‘if you have any way to get Assange to start dropping, tell him to start dumping,'” Corsi said
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Before the tape was published and Wikileaks started dumping, Corsi spoke with London-based conservative writer Ted Malloch on a conference call. Corsi, a 72-year old conspiracy theorist, told TPM that other “granular” details had since slipped his mind.
Some of this is confirmed in the Mueller report, although it seems that Corsi was somewhat more vague to them and/or unwilling to name Malloch as his linchpin to communicating with Assange.
This discrepancy between what Mueller reports on Corsi's attempts to reach Assange on that fateful day and what he told TPM about these same events may indicate that he LIED TO THE SPECIAL COUNSEL — even though he had limited use immunity at the time — in order to cover his tracks by misdirecting them to a WND conference call and away from his actual contact — Ted Malloch. Previously, Corsi and Stone had concocted and implemented a similar plot to use radio host Randy Credico as a scapegoat for providing a link for Stone to Assange when that simply wasn’t the case.
On top of the various contacts to Russia including Papadopoulos who was the first informed about Russia having email "dirt" on Hillary months before the first dump of data by either Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks on their Wordpress pages, Michael Cohen covertly attempting to setup the Trump Tower Moscow project, Don Jr. secretly met with a former Russian prosecutor and GRU asset inside Trump Tower, Paul Manafort attempt to make deals with Russia Oligarch Oleg Deripaska using yet another GRU asset Konstantin Kilimnick including providing him with internal polling info and offering to provide a personal briefing on tbe campaign and Michael Flynn made various outreaches to Russia before before and after the election and then nearly all of these individuals lied about these contacts — we can see that it was Stone who was uniquely successful, through Corsi, Malloch and Assange at providing Steve Bannon advanced inside knowledge about the upcoming releases of hacked materials, which in and of itself gave Trump a significant competitive advantage, it was again Stone, Corsi and Malloch who also reached back the other way and strategically used WikiLeaks to cauterize the wound that was created by the Access Hollywood "Pussy Grab" tape which very nearly took Trump completely out of the race.
Please remember that it was Steve Bannon who when that tape was releasef stood strong with Trump and told him not to follow the advice of Reince Preibus to drop out, and said instead "We can win this!".
Some Trump advisers are dismayed by Priebus’s influence because they question the Washington insider’s loyalty to the president-elect. Three sources told me that shortly after the Access Hollywood tape leaked in early October, Priebus went to Trump’s penthouse and advised the candidate to get out of the race. Priebus told Trump that if he didn’t, he “will go down with a worse election loss than Barry Goldwater’s,” a person briefed on the conversation said.
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Trump went around the room and asked people the percentages he thought of -- of still winning and what the recommendation. And Reince started off and Reince said, 'You have -- you have two choices. You either drop out right now, or you lose by the biggest landslide in American political history.' And Trump, with his humor goes, 'That's a great way -- that's a great way to start our -- start our conversation.'"
Bannon goes on to add that he spoke last and told Trump he had a "100 percent" chance of winning as long as he stuck to his core message and ignored the "Access Hollywood" stuff as much as possible.
And it's possible that Bannon was so confident because reports are that after the Podesta email dumps began just one hour after the Access Hollywood tape was released — it was a Bannon associate who sent a personal text to Roger Stone.
The Stone indictment records a Bannon associate as texting the longtime GOP operative “well done” after the Wikileaks release.
If we needed evidence to indicate whether the Trump campaign was working ïn coordination" with the leaking of the Russia stolen emails — that text would be it.
However under the law, that isn't technically a crime — because the hacking itself was the primary crime — but it's not exactly the "no collusion" claim that Trump has been making all this time. This is collusion, it’s just not all part of the same conspiracy, each was separate. More importantly the collusion claim itself has been part of the 3rd conspiracy to cover actions like this up and ultimately led to Mueller arguing that since the DOJ rules prevent a sitting WH Resident from being indicted and prosecuted Congress or perhaps a future Attorney General after Trump leaves office need to take the next steps.
In his report, Mueller acknowledges that the case “presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” If he believed the evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction, Mueller certainly could have proceeded as he did with the conspiracy issue and concluded that the investigation did not establish obstruction. But instead, Mueller said that while his report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
The report contains no indication that Mueller expected Barr to swoop in and make the decision for him. Instead, it appears that Mueller was providing the proverbial road map for members of Congress to take up the matter of obstruction in impeachment proceedings if they so choose, taking steps to “preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available.”
That would leave it to a future attorney general to decide whether to file charges when Trump is no longer president, and no longer has the shield of office to protect him. The five-year statute of limitations on obstruction of justice will not expire until at least January 2022.
Mueller made his case quite explicit when he said Trump is “Not exonerated” and detailed how current DOJ rules prevented him from taking action against Trump, but he did lay out an amazingly detailed case of exactly why action should be taken, it's just a matter of “who and when”.