^^^^^^^^
Extraordinarily interesting! Gives me hope.

"Given that Marc Elias departed Perkins Coie in a very public manner on August 22, 2021, to open his own law firm, with approximately 10 other Perkins Coie attorneys going with him, and that Michael Sussmann was on leave from the firm until offering his resignation on the day of his indictment, it seems an acceptable inference would be that Perkins Coie did engage in “replacing responsible management, and disciplining or terminating wrongdoers.”"

I believe that Perkins Coie is merely giving themselves an "out", which enables Durham to end his investigation/prosecution without really holding the higher ups in this conspiracy accountable. I'd love to be wrong, in so many cases like this, the "usual suspects" just go on doing business as usual under different titles. If the Clintons and their most trusted allies were in direct contact with Perkins Coie (and there's no reason to believe they weren't), why wouldn't there be a record of it? If for no reason other than to protect Perkins Coie from just such an investigation?

Beware – this is a Politico article. But interesting data point about Sidney Powell. Maybe wrong, but I’m thinking that she’s on Durham’s staff.

“Sidney Powell, the embattled lawyer who launched a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits last fall advancing President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims, has established a beachhead in the Washington area by purchasing a century-old building in Alexandria’s historic Old Town neighborhood — in a cash deal. …”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...ll-washington-507879

I'm going to ramble a bit here. But first want to say the situation w Durham is a very cloudy picture. Lots of smoke on the battlefield.

Michael Sussmann was a Perkins Coie heavyweight. He has resigned from Perkins Coie. From all the previous reporting, we know Durham got Sussmann right. The charges match up w the reports from the last couple years.

on page 153, there is a June 22 post where I wrote how Sussmann's visit to James Baker (FBI) in Sep 2016 had all the appearances of a coordinated operation with Christopher Steele.

Marc Elias was an even bigger Perkins Coie heavyweight. Elias was the lead DEM lawyer in all the nationwide recounts where the DEMs kept couniting and counting till they won. Elias was also the lead on getting so many states to change their voting procedures for Nov 2020. Changes that enabled election cheating to be much easier. Changes that should have been done only by state legislatures and not by state officials.

Elias was the Clinton campaign lawyer.

So now that Elias has left Perkins Coie, who is the DNC lead lawyer ? Is it still Elias ? or someone else at Perkins Coie ?

If Elias is discredited and taken off the DEM team, that is a big loss for the DEM party nationwide.

I think Perkins Coie is shaken up by all this too.

And remember that when the DNC was hacked, it was Sussmann who brought in Crowdstrike. As soon as Crowdstrike was on the scene, they immediately declared the Russians were behind the hack.

In a recent tweet from "Mccabe's Porsche on Blocks", it was pointed out that Guccifer 2.0 was linked to the GRU in Moscow by info from Twitter. Sussmann and other Perkins Coie lawyers have represented Twitter. small world isn't it ?

While numerous people are guessing at the identity of Technical Executive-1, the best internet sleuths (IMHO) are still thinking it is Rodney Joffe.
Joffe is a cybersecurity heavyweight.

Is this was poker, I don't think Durham is bluffing and I think he has a number of cards left to play. Will Merrick Garland try to put a lid on Durham ? Remains to be seen.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Beware – this is a Politico article. But interesting data point about Sidney Powell. Maybe wrong, but I’m thinking that she’s on Durham’s staff.

“Sidney Powell, the embattled lawyer who launched a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits last fall advancing President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims, has established a beachhead in the Washington area by purchasing a century-old building in Alexandria’s historic Old Town neighborhood — in a cash deal. …”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...ll-washington-507879

What's the point of the Politico article other than to identify where Powell's office will be and allow it/her to be targeted?

Josh Gerstein tweets:

Sussmann hearing today

Asst Special Counsel DeFilippis says some discovery will be classified and they’re working on getting security clearances for defense counsel.

Def Atty Berkowitz says Sussmann 'is not working currently’ and he wants a trial as expeditiously as possible, but obviously the classified issues will lead to some delay….

sdy has already told us of this, but now the rest of the world finds out. From Yahoo news:

“The judge presiding over the case against Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann said he was “professional acquaintances” at the Department of Justice with Sussmann in the 1990s, and the judge’s wife represents former FBI lawyer Lisa Page — issues special counsel John Durham’s team has not raised to push for recusal. …”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/n...ances-174200209.html

what could possibly be classified about being a participant in a coup?

more smoke and mirrors

classified my ass

quote:

what could possibly be classified about being a participant in a coup?

Can't provide a definitive answer, but there are some hints

Georgia Tech had DoD contracts to examine DNS data and develop techniques to rapidly detect and attribute infections of computer networks.

"Among the signs of trouble are communications with network locations known to house malicious activity. Such communication is necessary for malicious groups to control computers that have been compromised, and to move data stolen from them."

Speculation:

- the data provided by DoD could have been classified
- the techniques might require knowledge of what specific network locations are considered "malicious"
- the inputs to the study might identify known features of specific bad actors who infect networks

The indictment appears to say that the information provided to the university (Georgia Tech ?) was misused to look for Trump's potential ties to Russia.

Such "inferences" would "please certain "VIPs" "

There is a possible misuse of classified data in this case.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Techno Fog:

There lurks potential charges against the Alfa Bank research group for using classified gov't data for their own political operation.

Durham sets the background by discussing a gov't contract where the researchers would receive classified data -

"in order to identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security."

the researchers "exploited" this data - which was provided to enable them to "protect U.S. networks" - to conduct their own political research.

When Marc Elias testified to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in Dec 2017, his lawyer was Nick McQuaid of Latham & Watkins

When Michael Sussmann testified to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in Dec 2017, his lawyer was Nick McQuaid of Latham & Watkins

For Susan Rice's testimony, she used Nick McQuaid as her attorney.

McQuaid worked w Christopher Clark of Latham & Watkins. Clark was was hired by Hunter Biden when he was under federal investigation.


On Inauguration Day, DoJ announced that McQuaid was named acting head of DoJ Criminal Division


Elections have consequences



originally seen as a tweet from Titania977

For quite a while we have sort of known who the actors were and what they did. Steele, Fusion, Ohr, Strzok, Comey, etc

But now w the Durham indictment of Sussmann, we have a whole new set of people and organizations that we don't understand.
Who are they ? what did they do ?

There is a lot of speculating going on, and it will be a while before we can see the new big picture w confidence.

I think Durham got a lot of info from the court cases that Russian Alfa Bank officials brought against Steele and Fusion GPS.

Here is an example:

Daniel Jones runs Democracy Integrity Project (don’t you like the names?) which is funded by Soros.
Daniel Jones had to give testimony when the Alfa Bank owners sued Steele and Fusion GPS for defamation. Jones is fighting to keep his testimony under seal.

We can view a copy of Jones’ filing with Superior court of DC Civil Division to try to keep his testimony confidential.

Keep in mind that in 2017 John McCain was chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
From the court filing:

Plaintiffs being Dan Jones group

After Alfa Bank got the Jones deposition, they issued requests for many more depositions. I will try to track down that additional list.

Why is the additional list important?

Some of those new names appear to match the Best guesses about Technical Executive-1 and others in the Sussmann indictment.

Don't have time for a long post, but things are coming together re Rodney Joffe (pronounced jawf) being Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment.

It's not fair to say so since this is obviously developing on its own schedule, but - indictments! indictments! I wanna see and read indictments!

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
It's not fair to say so since this is obviously developing on its own schedule, but - indictments! indictments! I wanna see and read indictments!

No one will be indicted until the prosecution is ready to proceed to trial. It’s not like the movies where someone gets charged and during the trial stuff is still being investigated and the defendant barely escapes due to some perry mason move.

from Chuck Ross twitter

Federal judge Richard Leon approved request from Alfa Bank to ask the British courts to force Christopher Steele and several of his comrades to sit for depositions for the bank's lawsuit against Fusion GPS. Leon anticipates a trial in late-'21/early-'22




The Alfa Bank defamation suits against Steele and Fusion GPS have been very revealing.

Bean LLC is a business name for Fusion GPS

Fridman, Aven, and Khan are named in Steele report 112 of 14 Sep 2016
They are the leaders of Russian Alfa Group

Of course now the suits help the Durham investigation

Surprise. I didn't expect to see confirmation on some of the names in the indictment so fast.

A NYT article defending the people in the indictment:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0...bank-indictment.html


Emails obtained by The New York Times and interviews with people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss issues being investigated by federal authorities, provide a fuller and more complex account of how a group of cyberexperts discovered the odd internet data and developed their hypothesis about what could explain it.

At the same time, defense lawyers for the scientists say it is Mr. Durham’s indictment that is misleading. Their clients, they say, believed their hypothesis was a plausible explanation for the odd data they had uncovered — and still do.


using the NYT to attack the indictment. NYT is a deep state propaganda rag

The Alfa Bank results “have been validated and are reproducible. The findings of the researchers were true then and remain true today; reports that these findings were innocuous or a hoax are simply wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist and one of the researchers whom the indictment discussed but did not name.

Mr. Sussmann has denied lying to the F.B.I. about who he was representing in coming forward with the Alfa Bank data, while saying he was representing only Mr. Joffe and not the campaign.

trying to protect the Clinton campaign and those top campaign aids, including Jake Sullivan

Steven A. Tyrrell, a lawyer for Rodney Joffe , an internet entrepreneur and another of the four data experts, said his client had a duty to share the information with the F.B.I. and that the indictment “gratuitously presents an incomplete and misleading picture” of his role.

In the heat of the presidential race, Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on the research. On Sept. 15, four days before Mr. Sussmann met with the F.B.I. about the findings, Mr. Elias sent an email to the Clinton campaign manager, Robbie Mook , its communications director, Jennifer Palmieri , and its national security adviser, Jake Sullivan , whose subject line referred to an Alfa Bank article, the indictment said.

The data remains a mystery

they are going to argue what they said could be true

Whatever caused the odd data, at issue in the wake of the indictment is whether Mr. Joffe and the other three computer scientists considered their own theory dubious and yet cynically went forward anyway, as Mr. Durham suggests, or whether they truly believed the data was alarming and put forward their hypothesis in good faith.

But three of their names have appeared among a list of data experts in a lawsuit brought by Alfa Bank, and Trump supporters have speculated online about their identities.

The Times has confirmed them, and their lawyers provided statements defending their actions.

The indictment’s “Originator-1” is April Lorenzen , chief data scientist at the information services firm Zetalytics. Her lawyer, Michael J. Connolly, said she has “dedicated her life to the critical work of thwarting dangerous cyberattacks on our country,” adding: “Any suggestion that she engaged in wrongdoing is unequivocally false.”

The indictment’s “Researcher-1” is another computer scientist at Georgia Tech, Manos Antonakakis . “Researcher-2” is Mr. Dagon. And “Tech Executive-1” is Mr. Joffe, who in 2013 received the F.B.I. Director’s Award for helping crack a cybercrime case, and retired this month from Neustar, another information services company.

In addition, the Alfa Bank suspicions were only half of what the researchers sought to bring to the government’s attention, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Their other set of concerns centered on data suggesting that a YotaPhone — a Russian-made smartphone rarely seen in the United States — had been used from networks serving the White House, Trump Tower and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company whose server had also interacted with the Trump server.

Mr. Sussmann relayed their YotaPhone findings to counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. in February 2017, the people said. It is not clear whether the government ever investigated them.

The involvement of the researchers traces back to the spring of 2016. Darpa, the Pentagon’s research funding agency, wanted to commission data scientists to develop the use of so-called DNS logs, records of when servers have prepared to communicate with other servers over the internet, as a tool for hacking investigations.

Darpa identified Georgia Tech as a potential recipient of funding and encouraged researchers there to develop examples. Mr. Antonakakis and Mr. Dagon reached out to Mr. Joffe to gain access to Neustar’s repository of DNS logs, people familiar with the matter said, and began sifting them.

Separately, when the news broke in June 2016 that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers, Mr. Dagon and Ms. Lorenzen began talking at a conference about whether such data might uncover other election-related hacking.

Ms. Lorenzen eventually noticed an odd pattern: a server called mail1.trump-email.com appeared to be communicating almost exclusively with servers at Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health. She shared her findings with Mr. Dagon, the people said, and they both discussed it with Mr. Joffe.

“Half the time I stop myself and wonder: am I really seeing evidence of espionage on behalf of a presidential candidate?” Mr. Dagon wrote in an email to Mr. Joffe on July 29, after WikiLeaks made public stolen Democratic emails timed to disrupt the party’s convention and Mr. Trump urged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.

By early August, the researchers had combined forces and were increasingly focusing on the Alfa Bank data, the people said. Mr. Joffe reached out to his lawyer, Mr. Sussmann, who would take the researchers’ data and hypothesis to the F.B.I. on Sept. 19, 2016.

Defense lawyers contend the indictment presented a skewed portrait of their clients’ thinking by selectively quoting from their emails.

The indictment quotes August emails from Ms. Lorenzen and Mr. Antonakakis worrying that they might not know if someone had faked the DNS data. But people familiar with the matter said the indictment omitted later discussion of reasons to doubt any attempt to spoof the overall pattern could go undetected.

The indictment says Mr. Joffe sent an email on Aug. 21 urging more research about Mr. Trump, which he stated could “give the base of a very useful narrative,” while also expressing a belief that the Trump server at issue was “a red herring” and they should ignore it because it had been used by the mass-marketing company.

He wrote: “If we can show possible email communication between” any Trump server and an Alfa Bank server “that has occurred in the last few weeks, we have the beginning of a narrative,” adding that such communications with any “Russian or Ukrainian financial institutions would give the base of a very useful narrative.”

Mr. Tyrrell, his lawyer, said that research in the weeks that followed, omitted by the indictment, had yielded evidence that the specific subsidiary server in apparent contact with Alfa Bank had not been used to send bulk marketing emails. That further discussion, he said, changed his client’s mind about whether it was a red herring.

“The quotation of the ‘red herring’ email is deeply misleading,” he said, adding: “The research process is iterative and this is exactly how it should work. Their efforts culminated in the well-supported conclusions that were ultimately delivered to the F.B.I.”

The indictment also quoted from emails in mid-September, when the researchers were discussing a paper on their suspicions that Mr. Sussmann would soon take to the F.B.I. It says Mr. Joffe asked if the paper’s hypothesis would strike security experts as a “plausible explanation.”

The paper’s conclusion was somewhat qualified, an email shows, saying “there were other possible explanations,” but the only “plausible” one was that Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization had taken steps “to obfuscate their communications.”

The indictment suggested Ms. Lorenzen’s reaction to the paper was guarded, describing an email from her as “stating, in part, that it was ‘plausible’ in the ‘narrow scope’ defined by” Mr. Joffe. But the text of her email displays enthusiasm.

“In the narrow scope of what you have defined above, I agree wholeheartedly that it is plausible,” she wrote, adding: “If the white paper intends to say that there are communications between at least Alfa and Trump, which are being intentionally hidden by Alfa and Trump I absolutely believe that is the case,” her email said.

The indictment cited emails by Mr. Antonakakis in August in which he flagged holes and noted they disliked Mr. Trump, and in September in which he approvingly noted that the paper did not get into a technical issue that specialists would raise.

Mr. Antonakakis’ lawyer, Mark E. Schamel, said his client had provided “feedback on an early draft of data that was cause for additional investigation.” And, he said, their hypothesis “to this day, remains a plausible working theory.”

The indictment also suggests Mr. Dagon’s support for the paper’s hypothesis was qualified, describing his email response as “acknowledging that questions remained, but stating, in substance and in part, that the paper should be shared with government officials.”

The text of that email shows Mr. Dagon was forcefully supportive. He proposed editing the paper to declare as “fact” that it was clear “that there are hidden communications between Trump and Alfa Bank,” and said he believed the findings met the probable cause standard to open a criminal investigation.

“Hopefully the intended audience are officials with subpoena powers, who can investigate the purpose” of the apparent Alfa Bank connection, Mr. Dagon wrote.

In the end, Mr. Durham came to investigate them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Durham has caught them. They have banded together and will make this an argument on a bunch of complex technical BS that is hard to understand.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Mook

If ever there was a fitting name for a person...

I like to identify "watch items" as things that are not yet proven, but have some basis to think they could be true.

As more info is gathered, a watch item is either confirmed or shown to be false.

Three watch items:

1 Did Perkins Coie law firm drop Marc Elias because they know he did something wrong ?
2 Did Perkins Coie law firm drop Michael Sussmann because they know he did something wrong?
3 Did Neustar drop Rodney Joffe because they know he did something wrong ?

Basis:

All 3 are identified in the Sussmann indictment
All 3 have recently left their company. Were they forced out ?

shipwreckedcrew (former federal prosecutor) explains that when a company is accused of doing something illegal, there is a DoJ policy on corporate criminal liability

The corporation is given a chance to clean house and produce to DOJ the evidence of the illegal conduct of individuals. Taking remedial steps--like firing malfeasors--is a necessary step.

These corporations might be cooperating w John Durham.

Perkins Coie turning on Sussman and Elias would be very helpful to Durham.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Mook

If ever there was a fitting name for a person...

The way the Clinton campaign and the establishment ran this crazy charade, it might only be more appropriate if his first name started with an A rather than an R.