50 years from now when many of us are long gone, I think it’s a sure thing that the mainstream media are still going to be obsessing about former President Donald Trump and how he in their view tried to “steal” the 2020 election and was allegedly involved in instigating the January 2020 Capitol riot, which The Usual Suspects frequently (and wrongly) refer to as the “insurrection.”
It’s a topic that “Meet the Press” anchor and noted Democrat apologist Chuck Todd often revisits, which was the case when former Attorney General under Trump Bill Barr stopped by for an interview to talk about, among other things, his new book and his time serving as Trump’s AG.
Barr, as most people reading this already know, hasn’t always had the nicest things to say about Trump during his public appearances over the last year or so. Trump in turns has responded in kind.
But Barr has also raised eyebrows on the left and in the media in recent weeks regarding his comments about whether or not he’d support Trump in 2024. Barr told the TODAY Show’s Savannah Guthrie in a recent interview that though he would be supporting someone else in the primaries he didn’t envision a scenario where he wouldn’t support Trump should he become the GOP nominee again.
While that seemed to surprise Guthrie, when the same question was raised by Todd to Barr on Sunday, Barr’s answer generated an unintentionally revealing reaction from Todd:
CHUCK TODD: But I’m talking about you, you’ve had firsthand account [of Trump’s “temperament” and alleged “need to be surrounded by ‘yes’ men”]. You saw it up close.
WILLIAM BARR: Right, well, I think elections are a binary choice, and unfortunately sometimes it’s choosing the lesser of two evils. I believe that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is dangerous for the United States.
CHUCK TODD: You’ve said this quite a bit. It’s an uncomfortable thing to hear from somebody who was needing to provide equal justice under the law as Attorney General, because you said it while you were Attorney General. You really think the left in this country is somehow more dangerous than some issues around the world? I mean, you feel like —
WILLIAM BARR: No, I just said in terms of the leadership of the country, I think they would be a dangerous choice for the United States. Our system, the person who’s in charge of the administration of the criminal law, is a politically accountable official, and an official has to be politically accountable. But at the same time dedicated to providing equal justice based on law and facts with no favoritism or partisanship, which I did.
Watch:
One of the more hilarious aspects of Todd’s “OMG you said this about the left and you’re supposed to be an ‘equal justice attorney general’?!?” response was in how he took exactly the opposite approach when it came to former President Barack Obama’s AG Eric Holder, as Newsbusters noted here:
That’s quite a change from Todd’s attitude toward Barack Obama’s wildly partisan Attorney General Eric Holder. After Holder announced he was leaving the Justice Department in 2014, Todd laughably hailed: “…he’s a very non-political person….Eric Holder wasn’t thinking about the politics of an issue….The guy wasn’t political at all…”
And you can best believe that if Holder was a guest of Todd’s in the near future, the fact that Holder has become even more wildly partisan in his post-AG actions would not be an issue that came up at all, because in Todd’s view it’s not an issue at all – since Holder is a leftist.
But what was even funnier was Todd’s insinuation that the progressives left could not possibly be worse than Trump, because in Todd’s view Trump had done a very dangerous thing in claiming the election was stolen and was also “temperamental” to boot. The problem with Todd taking issue with the claim is that he conveniently ignores that it’s the left that have been perpetuating an epic “Big Lie” since 2016 about that presidential election – even launching impeachment investigations over it, and have also dug their heels into the ground on the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election being “stolen.”
In fact, Democrat icons like Hillary Clinton – the 2016 loser, and Stacey Abrams – the 2018 loser, have been the loudest voices among them making such claims, and they’ve been treated with reverence by the same media types, including Todd, who have said since 2020 that questioning election results is dangerous for our democracy or something (but only when Republicans do it).
The ringleader of the Russia collusion lie – Hillary Clinton – could very well run for president again in 2024 if Biden decides to bow out. Stacey Abrams, who has yet to concede her 2018 loss, has already declared she’s running for governor in this year’s race. You think Chuck Todd would call them out for their repeated claims about their elections being “rigged”? Think he’d find it alarming and dangerous for guests to come on his show and express support for them?
Nope, because, again, the media are as always very selective in how they condemn people on these matters, which is why very few Republicans take them seriously in their accusations against Trump. And if you’re one of the Republicans who do take Todd and his ilk seriously on this stuff, you’re doing it wrong.
Beware: Mexico To Unleash Massive Wave of 70,000 Migrants Toward U.S. Border in Unnoticeable ‘Ant Operation’
AUSTIN, Texas – Russia’s war on Ukraine has seized America’s attention from the mass migration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, where more than two completely full Superbowl Stadiums worth of foreign nationals (150,000) are still crossing each month.
But worse news closer to home is coming.
In the far south of Mexico, the central government is about to release a sea of U.S.-bound migrants it has dammed up behind the bureaucratic barrier in the southernmost city of Tapachula. The coming swell has risen to more than 73,000 angry, mobbing, rioting migrants from January 1 through March 8, according to the Americas edition of EFE.
Mexico has been blocking migrant forward movement under an agreement with the Biden administration as a kind of artifice that makes mass migration numbers at the American Southwest Border seem less than if Mexican just waved them all through. But instead, the agreement with Biden has Mexico using its National Guard to block roads out of Tapachula while requiring migrants to apply for Mexican humanitarian visas necessary to proceed unchecked north to the American border. The Mexicans slow-roll processing as the migrant population grows and agitates for release from what they call an “open prison city.”
But if very recent history is any indication, the Mexican government is just about to open the floodgates and let all 70+ thousand rush north without the permission papers, the quickest way to relieve their own domestic political problem. Those tens of thousands of migrants it blocked for Biden are rioting almost daily, demonstrating for “free passage” by sewing lips shut for dramatic protest effect, occupying Mexican immigration offices, battling one another, blocking city commerce – and constantly growing inside the pressure cooker.
This has happened before, just like this, and always led to mass release. But if Americans aren’t paying close enough attention, the Mexicans will trick them into missing that it even happened.
The last time this brawling, violent, disrupting migrant population built to an intolerable threshold, 50,000 of them in December, the government of Mexico released them all north employing a tactic known as an “ant operation.” The term connotes a tactic usually attributed to criminal organizations that ship large volumes of drugs using small distributed parties and individuals in many single-file lines so that most avoid public notice or politically unwanted media attention.
That’s what happened in December last year. Tapachula was experiencing much migrant indigestion as it is right now: 50,000 blocked and angry migrants brawling, fighting, demonstrating, and disrupting city life every day. Mexico’s central government ordered that special “QR Code Visas” be made available to all 50,000. The QR Code Visas required migrants to board hundreds of government-arranged buses that were heading to 14 different designated Mexican cities in the north.
When it was all over, no one noticed that tens of thousands headed for the border in an “ant operation” exodus over about a week’s time between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
“The whole city [of Tapachula] was collapsing because there were so many here in town and they were blocking the roads and causing disruptions ... so that’s why they were moved out,” Clemente Miguel, director of the local newspaper Noticias de Chiapas told me when I was in Tapachula in January. “There’s no infrastructure to hold them all in one area, and no other Mexican state wants them, so they’re intentionally spreading them all out.”
The ant operation served everyone’s political and diplomatic interests well, just about, anyway. It worked for the Mexican government for not having to withstand the public outing as failing its end of the migrant block-and-hold bargain with Biden.
And the ant operation worked well for the Biden government, which abhorred potential media coverage of thousands more migrants tallied in the already terribly polling monthly Customs and Border Protection apprehension reports.
Both governments win big with ant operations because their stealth ensures that no huge caravan or Del Rio migrant camp could form that would draw media attention and cause political damage to either the Mexican or American government, or open diplomatic rifts. (A first early Mexican government ant operation in September went awry for lack of sufficient diffusion and caused the infamous Del Rio migrant camp.)
Almost certainly, the ant operations work wonders for migrant morale since most likely ended up inside the United States. None among the migrants really bother to pretend the QR Code Visas are anything but a free pass to cross the American border. The QR Code Visa cover pretense was that each migrant had to voluntarily report to Mexican immigration in the various cities. But the documents have been found crumpled and discarded all over the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
The popular Mexican podcaster and journalist Carmen Aristegui wrote on December 31 that the Mexican government accelerated the transfers of “tens of thousands” of migrants seeking to reach the United States “to various other Mexican regions” and quoted some of them admitting they’d use their new freedom to break for the American border right away. One Cuban woman, for instance, “confessed” that she would use her QR Code Visa to continue to the United States.
Which makes the only real loser the American taxpayers, who had no say in allowing city-sized populations of foreign nationals every month into their schools and emergency rooms, for starters.
From everything I’m seeing in Tapachula right now – the huge numbers of migrants rioting, demonstrating, and agitating to Let My People Go – I expect the next ant operation any day.
The significance of more public understanding about Mexico’s quarterly “ant operation” is that it be seen in its proper context as a useless ruse, a bilateral agreement between two countries that contributes nothing real. Mexico’s big enforcement and blockade show on its own southern border is just phony, and kind of stupid once you know what’s happening.
Everyone in government and media on both sides of the border ought to just admit the pretense, smile together knowingly and try something else.
But, if that doesn’t happen, Americans should watch for the signs of the next ant operation: the short-lived return of tranquility to Tapachula, QR Code Visas turning up on the Rio Grande, a spike in CPB apprehension numbers soon after, and then news once again of riots and demonstrations in Tapachula. It’ll be rinse, wash, and repeat from here on out.
Thomas Renz is the attorney representing the DoD whistleblowers who exposed the alarming increase in vaccine-related injuries and deaths numbers leaked from the DMED database. {Backstory Here}
In this new video {Direct Rumble Link} Thomas Renz explains the material that has been assembled as part of the ongoing lawsuits.
'Have We Learned Nothing?' Netanyahu Urges American Opposition to New Iran Deal
Former Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu released a video message directed at Americans over the weekend that appealed to U.S. citizens to oppose the Biden administration's attempt to rush into a revived version of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that flooded the Iranian regime with cash and new power to ramp up its terror-sponsoring activities.
"The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it's downright dangerous," Netanyahu said in the video. "Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the U.S. continues to charge ahead along with the other powers to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the Ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal," he said emphasizing the latest aggression from Iran's regime.
"It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage everyday throughout the middle east and the world," Netanyahu added before saying President Biden's attempted agreement "is even worse than its predecessor because in three years' time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state it will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs to deliver them to any place in the United States," he warned. "That is... unbelievable. It's not merely unacceptable, it endangers not only my country Israel, but your country the United States, and the entire world."
"We should not let an aggressive, rogue terrorist regime like Iran have nuclear weapons," Netanyahu reiterated. "Have we learned nothing?"
Netanyahu's appeal comes as the Biden administration continues to apparently ignore Iran's long-running sponsorship of other terrorist groups and its own aggression in the region even after Iran launched an attack that came close to an American diplomatic complex in Irbil, Iraq.
According to State Department Spokesman Ned Price, "The strikes were an outrageous violation of Iraq’s sovereignty" but "No U.S. facilities were damaged or personnel injured, and we have no indications the attack was directed at the United States."
Price added a feeble plea that "Iran must immediately cease its attacks, respect Iraqi sovereignty, and halt its interference in Iraq’s internal affairs," though it's unclear what negotiating power Price, the State Department, or Biden administration thinks it has to make such a demand as the United States continues to seek a return to a nuclear deal with Iran that would prove lucrative and emboldening to the Ayatollahs.
As Guy has been covering, the Biden administration's attempt at a Kremlin-negotiated deal with Iran have been plagued with flaws from the start, issues that have only gotten worse amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
If you're just joining this controversy, feel free to go back and read our previous posts about it. This isn't some minor partisan squabble; it's a serious affront to the national security of the United States and her allies. It's so egregious, in fact, that three members of President Biden's own negotiating team have walked away in protest. The scope of the would-be giveaway is that vast and indefensible. And in an election year, with Democrats' collective fate heavily tied to the president's popularity, even some congressional Democrats are sounding the alarm.
Even if, against mounting odds, the Biden administration is somehow successful in its attempts to revive a nuclear deal with Iran, Republican lawmakers poised to regain control in Congress after the midterms have warned Iran and the world that a nuclear agreement would not survivetheir oversight.
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As with all things Ukraine, when the initial reports of the Russian cruise missile attack against the military training facility located near the border with Poland, we said to be cautious about western reporting of no NATO military personnel present, killed or injured.
The reason is for the warning was simple – if NATO is providing weapons and training, they’ve got to be doing the distribution and training somewhere in Ukraine near the NATO border. Conduct war operations in a war zone, and you run the risk of war outcomes.
Now the Daily Mail is beginning to report on ‘missing, feared dead’ former British special forces operators likely killed in the blast. As the story evolves, how long will it be before U.S. headlines carry similar missing U.S. “contractor” stories?
Most of the U.S. and NATO warfighting is carried out by independent contractors or mercenary groups now. Ukraine is the perfect battlespace for that unofficial type of war fighter engagement.
(Daily Mail) – Three British former special forces soldiers are feared to have been killed in a Russian airstrike near the Polish border. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the Yavoriv base yesterday, killing as many as 180 people.
Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s ministry of defence, said the base was struck by ‘long-range, high-precision’ weapons because it was hosting ‘foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons’.
He added: ‘The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.’
Konashenkov said up to 180 people had been killed in the strike, though Ukraine initially said 35 people died and another 134 were wounded.
But a source told The Mirror today: ‘There were many more killed within the site than has been claimed and bodies are still being found.
[…] ‘This is extremely sensitive as there are believed to be no serving British military personnel inside Ukraine as politically that would be extremely controversial.’
[…] A Ukrainian officer said there were around 1,000 foreigners at the camp – officially known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security – at the time. (read more)
“1,000 foreigners” at the military camp, and we are supposed to believe none of them were American?
There’s a big motive to keep any American or British death quiet, because it would undermine the official narrative being broadcast by western media. All of these mercenary soldiers know they are operating in an unofficial capacity in order to provide western government with plausible deniability. That is the risk that “contracted” war fighters assume when they take the very generous money offered. It’s a mess.
Keep watching.
A Georgia Tech researcher says he tried to politely throw cold water on a key part of the Russia collusion hoax before the Alfa Bank lie was eventually shopped to the media and government agencies, according to a newly obtained document. This new detail was one of several revealed in a document drafted by George Tech’s Manos Antonakakis—the man branded “Researcher-1” in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann on one count of lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker.
As I explained previously, “that indictment alleged that when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, to provide the FBI attorney with data and ‘white papers’ that purported to establish a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russia-connected Alfa Bank, Sussmann falsely claimed he was not acting on behalf of a client, when in reality Sussmann was working both for the Clinton campaign and an unnamed ‘U.S. technology industry executive’ since confirmed to be Rodney Joffe.”
After the Sussmann indictment dropped, Antonakakis emailed his private lawyers and an attorney and higher-ups at Georgia Tech a document entitled “fallacies” that purported to identify several portions of the indictment he claimed are false or misleading. Last week, The Federalist reported on several details contained in an abbreviated version of the “fallacies” document obtained from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-to-Know request.
On Thursday, The Federalist received a more complete version of the summary drafted by Antonakakis two days after news broke of Sussmann’s indictment. That version included Antonakakis’s synopsis of what he told Durham’s team about the Alfa Bank hoax.
“This part has been taken out of context,” Antonakakis wrote of the indictment’s excerpt from an email he had sent to Joffe after reviewing a draft white paper laying out the Alfa Bank-Trump theory. That excerpt to Joffe read: “A DNS expert would poke several holes to this hypothesis (primarily around visibility, about which very smartly you do not talk about). That being said, I do not think even the top security (non-DNS) researcher can refute your statements. Nice!”
Antonakakis initially countered that he was asked “to review it as a non-DNS expert and that is what I did,” before explaining what he had told the special counsel.
“If my memory serves me right,” Antonakakis wrote, “I was explicit when I told them that I was not the creator or even an editor of this document.” “I told them that I said what I said in my review of this document,” Antonakakis continued, “because this IMHO [was] the best and most polite way I can tell [Joffe] that this analysis is not great.”
So, according to Antonakakis, it was manners that caused him to tell Joffe he “very smartly” did not discuss the main “hole” in the Alfa Bank analysis. It was also proper deportment that compelled the Georgia Tech expert to exclaim “Nice!” to the fact that “even the top security (non-DNS) researchers” would be unable to refute Joffe’s statements.
Last week’s cache of documents is not the first to confirm that Antonakakis had rejected the Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication network theory posited in the white paper Sussmann later presented to the FBI’s general counsel. In an earlier email obtained from Georgia Tech, Antonakakis wrote that “Researcher 1,” as Antonakakis called himself, “never supported the article.”
The tone and tenor of these emails mimic those excerpted in the Sussmann indictment that likewise show Antonakakis found the Alfa Bank theory half-baked. For instance, after Antonakakis found no connections between the trump-email.com domain and Russia when he ran a search for the domain, he provided his frank feedback that the results do “not make much sense with the storyline you have.”
Antonakakis would later tell Joffe, Lorenzen, and Researcher 2, who was his Georgia Tech colleague David Dagon, that they needed to regroup because their dislike for Trump was giving them “tunnel vision” and their theory would not withstand public scrutiny.
While in private and when questioned by a federal prosecutor Antonakakis presented a dim assessment of the Alfa Bank-Trump theory, an attorney representing the Georgia Tech researcher framed “their hypothesis” as remaining, “to this day,” “a plausible working theory.” Antonakakis has also remained mum since the indictment dropped, even as other supposed experts continue to push the Alfa Bank theory. But why?
The indictment, when read in light of the numerous documents obtained from Georgia Tech, indicates the Alfa Bank data presented to Baker (and later the CIA) came from outside of Georgia Tech. It shows Antonakakis saying “these datasets apparently have originated from April,” an apparent reference to April Lorenzen, whom the Sussmann indictment called the “Originator.” Georgia Tech “did not pay or use these data in any of our programs,” Antonakakis would write, which is also consistent with the allegations in the Sussmann indictment.
Antonakakis also appears to have had no role in compiling the data, conceptualizing the Alfa Bank theory, writing the report, or editing it. Rather, Antonakakis’s involvement seems limited to “querying” internet data maintained by Joffe’s internet company on August 19, 2016, which led him to believe the “storyline” “does not make much sense,” and reviewing Joffe’s draft report and providing feedback to Joffe, albeit while seemingly cheering on Joffe’s ability to hide the holes in the report.
Nor is there any indication that Antonakakis knew that Joffe, with Sussmann’s help, intended to present the report to the FBI, CIA, and media. In contrast, the Sussmann indictment alleged that Dagon, after reviewing Joffe’s draft paper, noted that while questions remained, “in substance and in part, that the paper should be shared with government officials.”
The Sussmann indictment also alleged that Dagon, identified as Researcher-2 in the indictment, had also drafted a white paper apparently related to the Alfa Bank allegations Sussmann provided to the FBI. Additionally, Sussmann asked Dagon to “speak on background with members of the media” regarding the Alfa Bank allegation, which Dagon did, the indictment alleged.
The special counsel’s office made no similar allegations about Antonakakis. So why doesn’t Antonakakis go public with his expert analysis that the Alfa Bank-Trump research was “not great”? Why not “poke holes” in the white paper, as he said a DNS expert could easily do?
Is it a misplaced loyalty to his colleagues and a fear that frankness will create more problems for Joffe, Dagon, and Lorenzen? Or is his attorney, who previously represented Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-Source, Igor Danchenko, driving the “Alfa Bank-Trump theory remains plausible” strategy?
No matter the answer, we know the Alfa Bank paper was bunk, and the foremost expert in DNS analysis knows it too.
A Georgia Tech researcher’s candid reaction to the indictment of a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer hints at an intriguing development in the Russia collusion scandal. Two days after the indictment dropped, the researcher told a university lawyer and other higher-ups that the special counsel had lied in the indictment about the Alfa Bank hoax, according to a document first obtained by The Federalist on Thursday.
But the details the Georgia Tech researcher explained instead reveal a more damning scenario concerning his peers’ potential access to data from the Executive Office of the President, or EOP, during the Trump transition period. These new revelations come six months after Special Counsel John Durham indicted Michael Sussmann on one count of lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker.
That indictment, as I previously explained, “alleged that when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, to provide the FBI attorney with data and ‘white papers’ that purported to establish a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russia-connected Alfa Bank, Sussmann falsely claimed he was not acting on behalf of a client, when in reality Sussmann was working both for the Clinton campaign and an unnamed ‘U.S. technology industry executive’ since confirmed to be Rodney Joffe.”
While Durham’s team charged Sussmann with a single count of lying to the FBI, the special counsel’s speaking indictment added great texture to the origins of the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. According to the indictment, by late July 2016, a computer researcher operating under the moniker “Tea Leaves” and branded “Originator-1” by the special counsel’s office had assembled data purporting to show communications between Alfa Bank and the email domain “mail.1.trump-email.com.”
“Originator-1,” since identified as April Lorenzen, then shared that data with Joffe and two university researchers called simply Researcher-1 and Researcher-2 in the indictment, but now known to be Georgia Tech’s Manos Antonakakis and David Dagon, respectively.
According to the indictment, Joffe also “used his access at multiple organizations to gather and mine public and non-public Internet data regarding Trump and his associates, with the goal of creating a ‘narrative’ regarding the candidate’s ties to Russia.” For instance, Joffe allegedly directed employees at two tech companies in which he had an ownership interest “to search and analyze their holdings of public and non-public internet data for derogatory information on Trump.” He also allegedly tasked Lorenzen, Antonakakis, and Dagon with searching “broadly through Internet data for any information about Trump’s potential ties to Russia.”
Soon after the indictment dropped, Antonakakis surmised he was the unnamed Researcher-1 and, after sending a flurry of emails to his attorney, he penned a document entitled “fallacies” that purported to identify inaccuracies in the indictment. Antonakakis then emailed that document to his private lawyers, a Georgia Tech lawyer, and other higher-ups at the university.
Last week, The Federalist reported on several details contained in an abbreviated version of the “fallacies” document obtained from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-to-Know request. On Thursday, The Federalist received a more complete version of the summary drafted by Antonakakis two days after news broke of Sussmann’s indictment. The expanded version includes Antonakakis’ synopsis of what he told the special counsel’s team about the Alfa Bank hoax.
Initially, Antonakakis took issue with the special counsel’s office’s claim that he was “tasked” to do anything.
While claiming Joffe did not task him to do anything, Antonakakis noted that when asked by the federal prosecutor if he felt pressured by Joffe, he “told him that nobody had a gun on my head,” but that Joffe “was a key part of my recently accepted proposal, so I had to maintain a good professional relationship with him.”
Antonakakis was also trying to convince Joffe’s company “to create an innovation program out of [Georgia Tech].” As a result, Antonakakis explained to Durham’s team, that he would “of course” spend some time investigating the validity of a hypothesis.
Two other aspects of Antonakakis’ summary of his conversation with the special counsel’s team, however, proved much more significant. First, as explained here, Antonakakis told the special counsel that he had concluded Joffe’s Alfa Bank analysis was “not great.”
Second, Antonakakis’ “fallacies” document elaborated on how he had used EOP data for his proposal to the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and his contention that the special counsel’s office had lied in the indictment by purportedly claiming the data used to formulate the Alfa Bank hypothesis came from Georgia Tech.
Antonakakis’ discussion on this second inter-connected point, however, proves revealing because it shows not only that the special counsel did not lie in the indictment, but that Durham’s team is focusing on the alleged exploitation of the EOP data by Joffe, Lorenzen, and Dagon, separate and apart from the Alfa Bank hoax.
Here, it is important to remember Sussmann allegedly pushed two separate theories on behalf of Joffe: 1) the Alfa Bank theory (also allegedly peddled by Sussmann for the Clinton campaign) that claimed the Trump organization had a secret communication channel with the Russian bank; and 2) the YotaPhone thesis that Sussmann presented to CIA officials on February 9, 2017, when he provided the agency “data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by Trump Tower, Trump’s residential apartment building, the EOP, and a healthcare provider, of internet protocol or IP addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider.”
When the indictment against Sussmann went public last fall, the special counsel’s office had only explicitly referenced the Alfa Bank theory Sussmann pushed to the FBI in September 2016. While the indictment made broader generic references to “research concerning Trump’s potential ties to Russia,” in his “fallacies” document, Antonakasis apparently interpreted the indictment as solely concerning the Alfa Bank research.
Referring to the special counsel’s office, Antonakasis wrote that he “told them that none of the data [he] had in the [Georgia Tech] cluster could possibly be used to create the report they care about.” To prove his point, Antonakakis noted that the “AlfaBank article contained data from June and July of 2016,” but that internal emails showed the data Georgia Tech had from Neustar spanned from August 1, 2016 until April 21, 2017. This proved, Antonakakis explained, that Georgia Tech “could not have been used to produce the Trump-AlfaBank story article because [Georgia Tech] lacked the relevant historic data.”
Antonakasis then stressed that he told the special counsel’s office “two or three times” that Georgia Tech did not pay for or use any of the data contained in the Alfa Bank research and that instead that data had been sent to him. Thus, the special counsel “lied,” Antonakasis claimed, when it charged in the indictment that Joffe’s internet company “data and other data” were exploited to conduct research that was later conveyed to the FBI.
The indictment, however, was not so narrowly worded. Rather, the indictment alleged that data from Joffe’s internet company, and other data, was exploited “to conduct research concerning Trump’s potential ties to Russia.” The Alfa Bank research was only one aspect of that research, however, as the special counsel’s office made clear in a subsequent filing discussing potential conflicts of interest by Sussmann’s criminal defense attorney.
In a “Motion to Inquire on Potential Conflicts” filed by the government last month in the Sussmann case, the special counsel’s office revealed the existence of the YotaPhone hoax allegedly peddled by a former Clinton campaign attorney to the CIA. According to that motion, Joffe “and his associates” also exploited the “domain name system,” or DNS Internet traffic, connected to the Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
As Durham’s team had previously explained in the Sussmann indictment, Joffe “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP.” According to the motion, Joffe and “his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data” to obtain derogatory information about Trump.
Sussmann then provided the CIA the alleged culmination of some of that research, claiming the data “reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by Trump Tower, Trump’s residential apartment building, the EOP, and a healthcare provider, of internet protocol or IP addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provided.” Those lookups, Sussmann would tell the CIA, “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”
While the indictment and the “Motion to Inquire on Potential Conflict of Interest” both spoke of an exploitation of Joffe’s access to the EOP data, it was the latter motion that made clear that data was then used to push the YotaPhone conspiracy theory to the CIA. Here, Antonakakis’ comments in the “fallacies” document prove insightful.
“What I told the prosecutor,” Antonakasis wrote about the EOP data “was that I gained limited access to these data in 2016,” which he used to effectively find an infection in the EOP. Antonakasis then included details on the EOP infection in his proposal to DARPA. But Georgia Tech lost access to the EOP data in January/February 2017, Antonakasis added. Given these facts, Antonakasis believed the Sussmann indictment’s claim that the EOP data was exploited was misleading.
What Antonakasis did not know then, however—and maybe still does not realize—is that the special counsel’s office apparently believes Joffe, Lorenzen, and Dagon had exploited Joffe’s access to the EOP data to craft the YotaPhone conspiracy theory. Re-visiting the Sussmann indictment seemingly confirms that reality.
In late 2016 or early 2017, the indictment read, Joffe, Lorenzen, and Dagon, “continued to compile additional information and data regarding the [Alfa Bank] allegations, and gathered other purported data allegedly involving Trump-related computer networks and Russia” (emphasis added). “Sussmann would later convey these allegations to another U.S. government agency,” the indictment continued.
In its “Motion to Inquire on Potential Conflicts,” the special counsel’s office revealed that the “other purported data” involved the YotaPhone and its supposed connection to the EOP, as well as the Trump Tower and Trump residential building. Sussmann then allegedly passed on this “intel” to the CIA.
But if Antonakasis’ denials are to be believed—and I think they should be because they are completely consistent with the special counsel’s allegations and Antonakakis’s private correspondence—Antonakasis only reviewed data in July and August 2016, and thus had nothing to do with the EOP data connected to the YotaPhones.
Here, then the special counsel’s allegations concerning Georgia Tech’s access to the EOP data as part of the proof-of-concept stage of its DARPA contract prove significant. That appears precisely why Antonakasis accessed the EOP data, but as the indictment made clear, Lorenzen was not part of that contract proposal, yet the special counsel alleged Lorenzen and Dagon both exploited the EOP data. So the real question is: how?
How did Lorenzen and Dagon obtain access to the EOP data to mine it to craft the YotaPhone conspiracy theory? Did Joffe provide them access to the data separate and apart from Georgia Tech? Or did Dagon access the EOP data at the Georgia Tech lab?
The Federalist asked Georgia Tech’s general counsel and other top lawyers at the university if Dagon had used Georgia Tech data or resources to mine the EOP data, but did not receive a response. It may well be that Joffe had instead provided Lorenzen and Dagon access to the EOP data, which then raises other questions concerning the legality of that move.
Two things are certain, however, from Antonakasis’s commentary. First, access to EOP data is extremely limited, with him only obtaining a few months of access before it was pulled from his work. Second, Antonakasis seems oblivious to the extent of the scandal in which his peers are apparently embroiled, and because of his ignorance he sees the special counsel as the bad guy.
But it was not Durham who was lying in the indictment.
