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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Sep 16, 2021 • 46 tweets • 15 min read • Read on X

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Sussmann of Perkins Coie indicted for lying to FBI.
Indictment contains fascinating details on (long-denied) role of Clinton campaign and Democrats in perpetrating this fraud.context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/def…

2/ Sussmann's work in pushing and disseminating the fraudulent "Alfa" logs was billed to Clinton campaign, contradicting prior claims that he represented some anonymous public-spirited client.

3/ Durham's characterization of July 29, 2016 meeting leaves out one of most important facts: in addition to Fusion personnel (US Investigative Firm) attending this meeting, Christopher Steele of Orbis was in attendance. Why omit this?

4/ Sussmann, Elias and Fusion were coordinating in August 2016, with time charged to Clinton campaign

5/ Tech-Executive 1 (Max, who, prior to indictment, was plausibly identified by @Fool_Nelson as Rodney Joffe of Neustar) also communicated directly with Fusion GPS. Questoin: are these communications disclosed in Communications Log provided to Alfa?

I'm a bit slow with this thread as I'm digesting it in real time. Each page has fresh surprises and hard to do justice to it. I encourage everyone to read it.

6/ I'm going to walk through chronology of events, adding commentary. Durham observes that Tea Leaves/Originator 1 had "assembled purported DNS data" by "in or around late July 2016" spanning time period from May 4, 2016 to July 29, 2016.

7/ the July 29 date matches, by coincidence or not, the date of a meeting between Sussmann, Elias, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele at Perkins Coie office. This was in the immediate wake of Wikileaks publishing DNC emails. Also date that Crossfire Hurricane opened.

8/ the latest timestamp in Tea Leaves' purported DNS log was July 19, 2016 11:33 AM (EDT). So it was finalized only minutes before the Perkins Coie meeting.

9/ by coincidence (or not), the earliest timestamp in the purported DNS logs was on May 4, 2016 6:48 AM (EDT), the very day that Crowdstrike's engagement began and, within minutes, purported to identify Russian state hackers.

9/ Durham says that Originator-1 (Tea Leaves) was "a business associate of Tech Executive 1 [Joffe]". WeaponizedAutism convincingly identified Tea Leaves some time ago as April Lorenzen. Detail in Indictment consistent with this identification.

10/ at almost exactly the same time, Steele and Danchenko published Report 95 (undated but within a day or two of July 27, 2016), which broke the most detailed and damning fabrications of Trump-Russia collusion, claiming that Wikileaks hack and drop a product of this collusion

11/ the fraudulent Steele Report 95 would almost certainly have been on the agenda of Fusion, Steele, Elias and Sussmann at their July 29 summit meeting - in addition to the incipient fraud related to "Alfa Bank" communications

12/ the Indictment itemizes contacts between Sussmann, [Joffe] and Elias in August, all billed to Clinton campaign.

13/ the next section of Indictment describes efforts by Tech Executive 1 to "use his access at multiple organizations" to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia with the "goal of creating a 'narrative'" regarding Trump-Russia. If nothing else, this sounds like FARA in-kind contribution.

14/ Tech Executive 1 used his authority at two companies to direct employees to search "public and non-public" data for "derogatory" information on Trump. Some of this data appears to have been held by companies in supposed confidence, but such duties ignored.

15/ employees appear to have told FBI that they were "uncomfortable" with such an assignment, but Tech Executive 1 was a "powerful figure"

15/ on orders from Tech Executive 1, employees carried out a monumental search of "non-public Internet data" held in confidence for contacts of Trump associates. (Keep in mind that the Tea Leaves "data" was already in hand and has nothing to do with this August research.)

16/ employees of Internet Company 3 appear to have drafted a "written paper" for Tech Executive 1 containing "some of the same technical observations". I presume that these were comments on the Tea Leaves data, as hard to understand otherwise.

16/ concurrently, Tech Exec 1 commissioned Tea Leaves [Lorenzen] and two researchers at University-1 (plausibly identified as Georgia Tech) to research Trump ties to Russia to "please certain 'VIPS'". Another in kind contribution not declared to FEC.

17/ Durham observed that University-1 and Agency-1 were then finalizing a major contract. Walkafyre has convincingly identified this as the DoD-Georgia Tech contract announced on Nov 29, 2016. PI was Manos Antonakkis. Michael Farrell was Chief Scientist news.gatech.edu/news/2016/11/2…

18/ Durham says that TeaLeaves/Originator 1 was "founder of a company that [Georgia Tech] researchers were considering as a potential data provider". Slight support for identification of Lorenzen as putative Tea Leaves, as she was founder of Dissect Cyber.

19/ TechExec1 and InternetCompany1 provided [Georgia Tech] with confidential data, including DNS data of an Executive Branch office which [Neustar] held confidentially as a "sub-contractor in a sensitive relationship between USG and another company". By what authority I wonder?

20/ the ostensible purpose of Company 1 supplying confidential data to [Georgia Tech] was for research "to protect US from cyberattacks". However, TeaLeaves and the GT researchers "exploited" data to research alleged Trump-Russia ties

21/ but while the researchers were carrying out oppo research on all sorts of confidential data that they had for other purpose, this research not only doesn't appear to have turned up any derogatory information, but to have raised questions about Tea Leaves' original file

21/ Researcher 1 queried the DNS datafiles on domain (the domain in later controversy) and was unable to locate any communications linked to Russia, reporting that list "does not make much sense with the storyline you have". mail1.trump-email.com

21/ Originator 1 sent an email to [Joffe] and the other researchers on Aug 20, 2016, pointing out that it would be easy to fill out sales forms on two websites with a fake email address, and thereby cause them "to appear to communicate in DNS".

22/ [Joffe] then sent an email to [Lorenzen] and the researchers saying that "VIPs would be happy" with "evidence of *anything* that shows an attempt [by Trump] to behave badly". Very clear that [Joffe] complying with requests from Perkins Coie and Democrats.

23/ on August 21, 2016, [Joffe] concurred with researchers that DNS traffic "was not a secret communications channel" with Alfa Bank, noting that host was "legitimate cusomter relationship company" and that they could "ignore it", but urged researchers to press on in search.

24/ on August 22, Researcher 1 totally backed off allegations, saying that they could not credibly defend against criticism that traffic was "spoofed", that they would need to use "every trick" to make "even weak association" and claims could not "fly public scrutiny"

25/ so, at this point in Indictment, the tech specialists, including Tech Executive 1 (Max) have concluded that DNS logs did not provide defensible evidence of backchannel communications via Alfa Bank. Yet Sussmann and Perkins Coie proceeded anyway. On to balance of Indictment

26/ on September 5, Sussmann "began billing work for drafting" white paper summarizing the Alfa allegations, allegedly working on this with [Joffe], [Lorenzen] and the [Georgia Tech] researchers. One presumes that a lawyer acting as a lawyer would be obliged to include negatives

27/ on Sept 6, Sussmann (billing Clinton campaign) met with Fusion representatives, media, "consultant" (Tech Exec 1?) and Elias. Probably Eric Lichtblau of NYT was being pitched.

28/ on Sept 7, Sussmann (billing Clinton campaign) continued work on White Paper (which thus appears to be primarily work of Sussmann and Perkins Coie, as opposed to Max, Tea Leaves, Fusion or the Georgia Tech researchers)

29/ next paragraph interesting. Om Sept 14, Sussmann "continued work" on White Paper and met with [Joffe]. This time he billed time to both Clinton campaign and Internet Company 1 [Neustar?]. Did InternetCo1 file this contribution with FEC? How much was it?

30/ also on Sept 14, [Joffe] sought comments from [Lorenzen] and the [Georgia Tech] researchers on whether Sussmann's White Paper would be "plausible" to "security experts" (not as "dns experts"), at least enough to throw mud.

30/ the cynicism of the conspirators is breathtaking. Researcher 1 commended White Paper for avoiding the caveats and thought that it would fool "non-DNS" security professionals. "Nice!"

31/ On Sept 15, Tea Leaves also agreed that Sussmann's White Paper managed to be "plausible" within the "narrow scope". (By concealing and evading the caveats and question-marks which they were all aware of.)

32/ on Sept 16, Researcher-2 was also on board and suggested that Sussmann's White Paper was ready to "be shared with government officials". This is three days prior to Sussmann's meeting with FBI.

32/ this next paragraph suggest's that what I've been calling Sussmann's White Paper was more properly a joint product of Sussmann and TechExec1 [Joffe]. [Lorenzen] said that [TechExec1] had "carefully crafted message that could work to accomplish goals". Seems like a conspiracy

32/ concurrently, Sussmann was personally acting as agent for Clinton campaign with media. On Sept 1, he met with Franklin Foer (Reporter 1) who had previously authored article on Trump as Putin's bitch and would later break fraudulent Alfa communications story.

33/ on Sept 12, Sussmann and Elias talked to one another about Sussmann's efforts to place story with [New York Times]. Both Elias and Sussmann billed Clinton campaign for call.

34/ on Sept 15, Elias corresponded with 3 Clinton campaign officials about "Alfa" allegations that were subject of Sussmann-[Joffe] White Paper: campaign manager Robbie Mook, communications director Jen Palmieri and foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan (now Biden Nat Sec Advisor)

35/ for readers new to this story, several of the key names in this narrative (Rodney Joffe, April Lorenzen, Georgia Tech researcher David Dagon) are listed in Alfa Bank subpoenas (located by Walkafyre at Search 2020ca006304). My collation below. appsgp.mypalmbeachclerk.com/eCaseView/land…

typo here. This should be July 29, 2016. Arggh.

36/ by coincidence, Rodney Joffe visited White House on Mar 23, 2016, 4 days after Podesta hack. Accompanied by Ilona Johnson of Neustar linkedin.com/in/ilana-johns… and Martin Lindner, soon to join SecureWorks, which endorsed Crowdstrike's ID of Fancy Bear linkedin.com/in/martin-lind…

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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Aug 12

Here's a listing of Minority HPSCI Staff in early 2017. Most of the redactions in yesterday's release can be identified here.

In two of the 302s, WHISTLEB described the HPSCI Democrat system for exfiltrating secret information from a secure room in a three letter agency: presumably FBI, from which copies and notes were prohibited.

As a work-around, three HPSCI Democrat staffers would attend the Secure Room and, after each visit, "would immediately compose summaries" on a standalone computer set up in a back room by "committee's network administrator" for exclusive use by "Russian team" members. After the three Russian team members had completed their visit summaries, they briefed certain other staffers.

All of the names underneath the redactions can be plausibly identified from contemporary HPSCI Democrat staff rosters as shown below.

Here is a transcription of each of the two descriptions of the Russian team and secondary briefees, showing character counts.

The Russian Team had two 16s (at least one with LN8) and an 11. (number denotes character count of full name.)

The secondary briefees were a 6+5 (12), two 13s (one a 5+7), an 11, and the communications director (a 14). One of the 13s was a new hire.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 31

Durham Classified Appendix is almost entirely about "Clinton Plan". Unsurprisingly, nothing about the post-election events during which Russiagate collusion hoax actually metastasized under FBI and CIA into a national flesh-eating disease.
Emails from Lenny Benardo of Soros' Open Society Foundation feature prominently. Note that Benardo was mentioned in a Washington Post article by Demirjan and Devlin Barrett on May 24, 2017 (a few days after Mueller appointment) - archive archive.is/w43O2 reporting that the email had been dismissed by FBI as "unreliable". DWS, Benardo and Renteria said at the time that they had never been interviewed by FBI.

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Fool_Nelson proposed Julie Smith as Foreign Policy Advisor-2 in Durham report at the time:

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Here's a July 27, 2016 email (attributed to Benardo) which contains a detail relevant to the argument against @DNIGabbard's first drop, claiming that Russian interference concern was NEVER about election infrastructure, but always about DNC hack and Buff Bernie memes. Here Benardo talks about how to make Russia "a domestic issue" by raising the spectre of a "critical infrastructure threat for the election". Brennan subsequently did just that: raised concern about "infrastructure threat". ODNI played down that threat in their briefings and ultimately in the proposed post-election PDB of December 8, 2016 which was cancelled by Obama intervention.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 22

the ICA version in the recent DNI documents is a different version (dated January 5, 2017) than the released version (dated January 6, 2017). There were many changes overnight - some substantive.

Before editorializing, I'll laboriously go through comparisons - final version on left, previous day version on right. (I apologize for not marking this on each of the following slides.)

The Jan 6, 2017 version contained a preface entitled "Background... The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution", not present in the Jan 5 version (as shown). It has two sections.

The first section entitled "The Analytic Process" stated that these assessments "adhere to tradecraft standards".

"On these issues of great importance to US national security, the goal of intelligence analysis is to provide assessments to decisionmakers that are intellectually rigorous, objective, timely, and useful, and that adhere to tradecraft standards."

Now recall the dispute over inclusion of Steele dossier information in the ICA as an appendix and, as we recently learned, as a bullet supporting the assessment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump. Some IC professionals objected to the inclusion of Steele dossier information on the grounds that it did not meet tradecraft standards for inclusion in an ICA. Comey, McCabe and FBI insisted on its inclusion on the grounds that Obama had said to include "everything" - which they interpreted as mandating inclusion of Steele dossier information even though it didn't meet tradecraft standards.

Reasonable people can perhaps disagree on whether this was justified or not. What was not justified was the claim that the inclusion decision complied with "tradecraft standards". It was bad enough to include non-compliant material, but the claim that the included material "adhered to tradecraft standards" was miserably false. The recent Tradecraft Review should have addressed this fault.

The preface also included the following assertion:
"The tradecraft standards for analytic products have been refined over the past ten years. These standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide), clearly expressing uncertainty, distinguishing between underlying information and analysts’ judgments and assumptions, exploring alternatives, demonstrating relevance to the customer, using strong and transparent logic, and explaining change or consistency in judgments over time."

The "past ten years" here refers to the period of time since the savage tradecraft review by the WMD Commission, an excellent repot on a previous intelligence failure of similar scale to the Russia collusion hoax as an //intelligence failure// - which it was (even if non-criminal).

They state that "standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide)". Now apply that to the description of the Steele network in the classified appendix (declassified and released in 2020) shown below and transcribed as follows:
"the source is an executive of a private business intelligence firm and a former employee of a friendly foreign intelligence service who has been compensated for previous reporting over the past three years. The source maintains and collects information from a layered network of identified and unidentified subsources, some of which has been corroborated in the past. The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI".

This description does not remotely comply with the warranty in the Preface. We know that Steele (the "source") had told the FBI that his information was funneled through a "Russian-based sub-source" who Steele refused to identify. Steele did however tell the FBI that Sergei Millian was one of the sub-subsources to the "Russian-based sub-source". By mid-December 2016, the FBI had figured out that Steele's "Russian-based sub-source" was Igor Danchenko, an alumnus of U of Louisville, Georgetown and Brookings Institute, who lived in northern Virginia and had an American-born daughter. A fulsome description of sources IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WARRANTY IN THE PREFACE would have included these details and more.

It would have also stated that the FBI planned to interview the Primary Sub-Source as soon as possible. Given the importance of the document, the obvious question from any sane reviewer of the draft ICA would be: "uh, why don't you interview Steele's Primary Sub-Source right now? Today? " "And, by the way, why are you saying that he is 'Russian-based' when he lives in northern Virginia?"

If the reviewers had known that Steele's Primary Sub-Source had lived in northern Virginia and was available for interview, maybe they would have said: "uh, maybe we should hold off this ICA until we talk to Danchenko. This is a big document, maybe we should do some due diligence". But they weren't given that option, because Danchenko's location in northern Virginia was concealed from them. The warranty in the prefatory Background was false.

Subsequently, a few weeks later, when the FBI interviewed Danchenko and he revealed that there wasn't any "layered network" and that the key allegations were based (at best) on an anonymous phone call and that many of the sourcing claims in the dossier were untrue, the intelligence community had an obligation to fess up. To retract their claims about the Steele dossier, which, by the end of January, had emerged in public consciousness as the driving predicate of the Russia collusion investigation. Once the FBI knew that the sourcing claims were fraudulent, they had an obligation to disclose that to the rest of the IC and to publicly disown the Steele dossier, which had become important to the public precisely because of its endorsement in the ICA.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 14

Trump's latest tariff venture is a 50% tariff on copper, ostensibly for national security reasons. Copper markets are something that I analysed in the 1970s; so I know the structure of the markets and statistics. I was even been involved as a junior analyst in a trade case about US copper tariffs.

Under the US Defense Production Act, Canada is considered "domestic production" for the purposes of national security, but neither Trump nor the Canadian government seem to have had any interest in this legislation.

I remember the difficulties of trying to make long-term forecasts of copper supply and demand. Copper is also a market with voluminous statistics maintained consistently for a very long period. US Geological Survey for US consumption and primary production of refined copper for 1950-2024 are shown below. As someone who, in the 1970s, actually thought about what this chart would look like, it was interesting to re-visit.

In the 1920s and 1930s, US copper company were industrial behemoths: Anaconda, Kennecott, Phelps Dodge and Asarco, all now forgotten, were among the top 20 or top 50 US stocks back in the day. In the 1970s, they were still major companies. US accounted for about 25% of world production and consumption.

But, as you can see, since 2000, both US primary production and US refined consumption have declined precipitously. US refined consumption is now at lower levels than in the 1970s and US primary production is less than the early 1950s.

What will be the impact of a 50% tariff on copper imports? In the next post, I'll show how the changes in US market compare to world production.

although US copper production has declined since the 1970s, world copper production has almost quadrupled. US share of world copper refined production (here primary plus secondary scrap) has decreased from about 25% to 3%.

US copper production and consumption no longer dominate world markets - despite what the Beltway may imagine. An approximate 3% share doesn't get to dictate prices.

That means that the 50% copper tariff will be borne entirely by US copper consumers (i.e. manufacturers using copper). US producers will almost certainly increase their price to match the price of imports. So the tariff will be a bonanza for US domestic producers (e.g. Freeport McMoran) and a burden for US manufacturers.

the copper data also shows a vignette into the remarkable change in world economic geography since 9/11. In 2001, US still produced more copper than China. In 2024, China produced more than 13(!) times as much copper as USA. This isn't just production, but also consumption. Chinese manufacturers consume most of their copper production; their copper consumption is accordingly an order of magnitude greater than US copper consumption.

So when Trump puffs about the importance of USA as a market, this is simply not true of a basic commodity like copper. And I'm skeptical that it is true for other basic commodities.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 9

on first page: Brennan's lawyer, Robert Litt, was General Counsel at ODNI in 2016 and involved in some key events. Litt published an article in October 2017 lawfaremedia.org/article/irrele… which claimed that "The dossier itself played absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election." The recent Tradecraft Review, abysmal as it was, admitted that the dossier was cited in the classified ICA as a bullet support for the claim that Putin "aspired" to help Trump get elected.

@15poundstogo very Clintonian here

Brennan refers here to two press releases issued by William Evanina in July and August 2020. The Evanina statements were prompted in large part by the release of Biden-Poroshenko tapes by Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach (who had previously in October 2016 published receipts showing that Hunter Biden was getting paid $1 million per year by Burisma). Shortly after Evanina's statements, "Trump" administration sanctioned Derkach. As a result of these sanctions, Derkach was de-platformed and the Biden-Poroshenko tapes were deleted from nearly all locations. One of the tapes showed that Poroshenko and Biden gloated in August 2016 about the removal of Manafort as Trump campaign chair as a result of Ukrainian interference (Black Ledger announcement.)

Read 11 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Apr 13

New thread on new information from redactions.

I just noticed that the information in Binder on Trump briefing in Aug 2016 was previously published by Grassley in July 2020, a few days after identification of Steele Primary Sub-source (and thus we, in this corner, were otherwise preoccupied).
grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

The new version sheds light on a previous redaction. Katrina, Norm, Ted, John and Amir were mentioned. Just noting this for future reference.

something else that I'm noticing in the less redacted documents: Kevin Clinesmith was much more prominent in Crossfire Hurricane operation than we previously realized.

In real time, Hans, myself and others had vehemently and savagely criticized Durham's useless plea agreement with Clinesmith that had failed to use their leverage over Clinesmith to obtain a road map of the Russiagate hoax operation. Compare for example Mueller's use of leverage over Rick Gates to interview him about 20 times, If anything, there was more leverage over Clinesmith.

Durham's failure to lever Clinesmith looks worse and worse as we now see Clinesmith's name in multiple Crossfire documents that had previously been redacted.

For example, here is Clinesmith on August 30, 2016 - early days of Russiagate hoax - approving the reporting of FBI surveillance of Trump and Flynn while they were supposedly providing a counterintelligence briefing.

In this briefing, they failed to give Trump and Flynn the same warning about Turkey that they had previously given Clinton's lawyers.

here's an example where the "declassified" Binder contains a redaction not made in the version published by Grassley almost five years ago. the name of Edward (Ted) Gistaro of ODNI

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