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Buried within the latest batch of Mueller Indictments, is a reserved-pick “to be named later” ...
But buried within the indictment is another explosive charge: an unnamed congressional candidate explicitly reached out to the Russian hackers seeking damaging information about his or her political opponent.
“The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress,” reads the indictment. “The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.”
thinkprogress.org — July 13, 2018
So which 2016 Congressional Candidate was so desperate to win, that they eagerly chose to use stolen documents, suspected to have been posted by Russian Hackers at the time? Here’s one who actually bragged about it at the time:
Miami-based political consultant Anthony Bustamante told The Wall Street Journal in 2017 that he used some of the leaked data to help the 2016 general election campaign of Republican Brian Mast, who went on to win a Palm Beach-Treasure Coast U.S. House seat. But a Mast spokesman said at the time, and repeated Friday, that Bustamante had no involvement with the campaign after the Aug. 30, 2016 GOP primary.
www.mypalmbeachpost.com — July 13, 2018
I doubt Brian Mast was the only one, to take up the Russian-offer of free “insider information” on your opponents. Afterall there was a GOP “campaign consultant” actively promoting and facilitating the exchange of said “secrets” ...
A Florida GOP campaign consultant who runs a blog under a pseudonym directly contacted the hackers behind the breach of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and he solicited material from them. The Wall Street Journal reports that Aaron Nevins set up a Dropbox account specifically for “Guccifer 2.0” to drop files into, and he received 2.5 GB of data from the Democratic Party breaches—including the “get out the vote” strategy for congressional candidates in Florida.
Nevins analyzed the data and posted his analysis on his blog, HelloFLA.com. Guccifer 2.0 sent a link to the blog to Trump backer Roger Stone, who told the paper he was also in communication with the hackers. Nevins told the Journal that the hackers didn't understand what they had until he explained the data's value.
Some of the most valuable data, Nevins said, was the Democratic Party's voter turnout models. “Basically, if this was a war, this is the map to where all the troops are deployed,” Nevins told the person or persons behind the Guccifer 2.0 account via Twitter. He also told them, “This is probably worth millions of dollars."
arstechnica.com — May 25, 2017
Aaron Nevins has supposedly been ‘cleared’ by the Mueller Investigation [according to Nevins]. Although it is hard to understand why, given his pivotal roles in helping the Russian Hackers, exploit (and actually understand) their stolen data — for all that it was politically worth:
“There was data for our campaign available, so I used it,” Bustamante told POLITICO last year after The Wall Street Journal first reported his involvement. He told the Journal that “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks [while working on the Brian Mast Campaign].”
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“Basically if this was a war, this is the map to where all the troops are deployed,” Nevins wrote Guccifer 2.0. “This is probably worth millions of dollars.”
Nevins told POLITICO on Friday that the sheer size of the information was daunting. “I was like, holy s---, this is a lot of information, and I tried to farm it out to reporters. So District 18 [the Mast race], I sent information to TC Palm.” TC Palm is a local newspaper in the district that covers Florida’s Treasure Coast.
He also reached out to POLITICO, which wrote a story concerning the internal vetting of Democratic candidates by the DCCC.
www.politico.com — July 13, 2018
… “If this was war” — the Guccifer 2.0 [ie. the Russian-hacked] data were their ‘tactical plans’ for winning the battle. The Putin-led forces might as well have released the inner workings of the Democratic Party — because as a practical matter that is exactly what they did:
Don’t blame Republicans for talking all this trash about these Florida Democratic congressional candidates. These hits were all contained in a series of background reports and strategy memos amassed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Both political parties put these kinds of dossiers and battle plans together on candidates but never share them because of the scandalous nature of the attacks and brutally frank nature of their tactics.
But the documents became public Monday after a hacker believed to be tied to Russian intelligence services, going by the name Guccifer 2.0, released them as part of the ongoing compromise of Washington Democrats’ networks this political season.
"Here are the DCCC docs on Florida: reports, memos, briefings, dossiers, etc.," Guccifer 2.0 wrote on the WordPress site that has publicized other leaked documents from the DCCC and Democratic National Committee. "You can have a look at who you are going to elect now. It may seem the congressional primaries are also becoming a farce."
www.politico.com — Aug 16, 2016
I seriously doubt that Brain Mast was the only Republican, who took advantage of this “treasonous” data — they are Republicans afterall, with a pulse — and insatiable quest for unearned power ...
Who might the secret candidate be? On Twitter and among groups attempting to connect the dots between Russian hacking and the Trump campaign, speculation centers on Florida Reps. Brian Mast, Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis, a notion a DeSantis spokeswoman attempted to knock down on Friday.
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On his Hello FLA website, Nevins – under the pseudonym “Mark Miewurd” – posted what he called “The Pappas Papers.”
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“Republicans were very worried about a Democratic wave. At that point, races like DeSantis’ and Mast’s could well have been in the danger zone,” Finkelstein said. “These people won their races by a landslide, but at the time they didn’t know if it was going to be a landslide.”
Another factor contributing to the DeSantis speculation is his leading role among Congressional Republicans in calling for an end to the Mueller probe, Finkelstein said.
www.news-journalonline.com — July 14, 2018
Given the foreign-assisted events that transpired in 2016 Election Campaigns for the GOP, and given their on-going attempts to prevent those traitorous events, from ever seeing the light of day — isn’t it long past time that the GOP updated their Party’s motto, to something along the lines of:
“Anything for a Win!” — no law is too small, no principle too sacred, not to be cast aside, if it means Victory over Democrats.
… If the shoe “war-boots” fit ...
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