Thread by @ClimateAudit

The exhibits to Sussmann are, in many ways, as interesting or more interesting than transcripts, which often are longwinded acknowledgement of email and text documents. Here are some interesting details that caught my eye.

Exhibits are surprisingly hard to find. Marcy Wheeler is main source - see emptywheel.net/2022/05/24/tec… but not all linked there. I've collected these and a few others here: climateaudit.info/russiagate/alf…

on Sep 21, 2016 (two days later), Sussmann contacted Baker again, to say that he was working on Baker's request and hoped to have "positive response" by the next day, which he had. What was Baker's request? Why didn't Durham ask about it?

another interesting Sussman-Baker text on Jun 10, 2019. Sussmann wrote Baker "heard you saw Rodney yesterday". Presumably Joffe. Tight little circle. Baker sees Joffe on Jun 9; Joffe tells Sussmann; Sussmann contacts Baker. Did we know about Joffe-Baker connection previously?

then in 2020, Sussmann and Baker rejoice at news that Baker will be uniting with Sussmann on behalf of Twitter. As it turned out, just in time to ratchet up Twitter policies to suppress Hunter Biden laptop and other information that might be in Trump's favor.

Exhibit DX-513 climateaudit.info/russiagate/alf… (texts from SA Hellman and others) contains this fascinating vignette from Sep 23, 2016 between Agent S.M. Newell (anyone have info?) and Adrian Hawkins about how to handle "Pelosi" emails when they meet Sussman on Sep 24- 5 days after Baker

This reference to "Pelosi" email chain (almost certainly) refers to Guccifer 2 August 31, 2016 blog with (over-egged) title of "DCCC Docs from Pelosi's PC". guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/pel…

Guccifer 2 wasn't really inside Nancy Pelosi's computer, but he was clearly inside the computer of Melissa (Missy) Kurek, Pelosi's Deputy Executive Director of Finance

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1466836568711344133

. On Oct 5, Guccifer dropped more (uninteresting) DCCC docs, including from Kurek.

Two months later, SA Adrian Hawkins, the recipient of SA Newell's Sep 23, 2016 tweet, was immortalized in a NYT article that was important in embellishing the Crowdstrike and DNC legend that archive.ph/48dYq FBI let DNC down by not properly notifying DNC about hack

Crowdstrike and DNC promulgated this legend to distract from fact that DNC emails were exfiltrated AFTER Crowdstike had installed its super-duper anti-hacking software and that emails were exfiltrated on May 23 and 25 without their exit being logged or observed by Crowdstrike

the FBI (e.g. Strzok in particular) eagerly adopted this false legend in order to rationalize the predicate of Crossfire Hurricane - that Papadopoulos had knowledge of DNC hack already on May 6 or May 10. This was impossible since DNC emails were not hacked until 2 weeks later.

there is no evidence that FBI informed DOJ of the falseness of this original predicate. Either because FBI concealed this information from DOJ or because doofuses running Crossfire Hurricane (supposedly the best of the best in FBI Counterintelligence) never figured it out.

also interesting as a sidelight into FBI priorities: on Sep 1, 2016, ONE DAY AFTER Guccifer 2 August 31 blogpost mentioning Pelosi emails, FBI San Francisco opened an investigation into Guccifer 2 hack of Pelosi computer, citing G2 article the previous day. ONE DAY!!

the connection of this investigation to Crossfire investigation is unclear. FBI San Francisco investigation into Guccifer 2 was ongoing at least up to Mueller: they got documents from Perkins Coie on Seth Rich and the Robbin Young 302.

but right now, we know nothing more about Adrian Hawkins, S.M. Newell and their meeting with Sussmann on Sep 24, 2016 about the Pelosi emails (of Guccifer 2). Too bad.

But there's more interesting and undiscussed information in the DX-513 texts. Here's an exchange from Oct 5, 2016. Which becomes a LOT more interesting when you learn the context. It's an exchange among agents P.R. Rich, H.M. Nam (who I can't find) and E.M. Elvis Chan, now ASAC

in this Oct 5, 2017 exchange, the FBI agents are discussing the just released second Guccifer2 zip archive "cf.7z". It purported to contain salacious details on Clinton Foundation, but was almost entirely uninteresting dreck from DCCC of Virginia.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the metadata of this zip archive. google.com/search?q=cf.7z…

There had been a LOT of publicity on first G2 zip archive (ngpvan.7z), mostly arising from VIPS theory that it showed fast exfiltration (and thus thumbdrive). As due diligence, I thought it prudent to also study metadata of the second zip archive and do not agree with VIPS theory

there are some interesting metadata results that, except for Forensicator, Adam Carter and myself, have attracted little attention or interest, but which are data points for attribution of G2

perhaps the most interesting was this: ngpvan.7z documents analysed by VIPS all had July 5, 2016 last-modified timestamps. cf.7z documents were more "interesting". Some had July 5 last-mod timestamps, but there were multiple other dates. See climateaudit.org/2017/09/18/guc…

I found one cf.7z document that corresponded to a ngpvan.7z document: its timestamp matched but was exactly one hour displaced. When the cf.7z documents were all displaced one hour, they interwove with ngpvan.7z documents.

Both 7z archives therefore derived from a larger original archive from which excerpts had been extracted. One of the copies had apparently been transported from one time zone to another in a form where the absolute timestamp had not been preserved.

Forensicator hypothesized that the documents had been transported from one time zone to another in a thumb drive. Bruce Leidl said that the same effect could arise in some zip operations. Be that as it may, there were clearly post-exfiltration operations by G2.

This clear evidence of post-exfiltration operations by G2 is enough that I place no credence on VIPS theory that July 5 copying speeds related to an exfiltration operation (as opposed to post-exfiltration re-organization or copying) and thus irrelevant to hack/leak attribution

Be that as it may, FBI agents, who examined the cf.7z archive on Oct 5, quickly noticed that archive contained DCCC bank account and wire transfer information - a topic that none of us (to our discredit) had paid much attention to. They forwarded to SA Newell to tell.... Sussman

SA Newell (as noted above) was the agent who had consulted SA Adrian Hawkins about how to brief Sussmann about the "Pelosi" emails.

Which accentuates question of why Sussmann chose to inform his pal (and later Twitter colleague) James Baker about Alfa (hoax), not the agents

It's too bad that Durham didn't ask Baker these questions.

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1531284566861918208

BTW if any readers can find an independent reference to SA Newell, I'd appreciate it.

DX-511 contains a Sep 20 text from Somma (Case Agent 1) to Gessford (Case Agent 2) asking for something to do as he was reduced to "just twiddling [his] thumbs up here".
But just one day earlier, Steele dossier arrived at Crossfire Hurricane and things would change.

Re whether [e-mail] is DOJ's Sean M. Newell using FBI email address, a reader writes "not uncommon for partner agency employees, with parallel or directly connected investigative interests, to be assigned an email account on the partner agency's classified server."

He adds: "All DOJ prosecutors working with classified info would likely have an FBI SGOV account."
On that basis, I think that base case is now that it was Sean Newell of DOJ (one of Laufman's deputies) who contacted Adrian Hawkins on Sep 23 about Sussmann and "Pelosi" emails.

the (apparent) appearance of Laufman's DOJ deputy in emails in connection with both Pelosi and Sussmann is interesting, to say the least. "Candyman" Laufman was responsible for sweetheart deals with Hillary aides in Clinton email investigation.

Candyman Laufman also appears to have been responsible for the sweetheart deal with Danchenko, a deal that effectively sabotaged the possibility of charging either Danchenko or Steele with the actual crimes that they had committed. (HansMahncke has talked about this a lot.)

while Durham charged Danchenko with lying, charges are not for the serious things that Danchenko and Steele actually did, but for a couple of fairly irrelevant statements. In a way, the charges are sour grapes, doing something because Laufman gave away possibility of real charges

So now we see that Laufman's deputy (Sean Newell) was apparently in direct with Sussmann (on a different matter) in the period immediately prior to Laufman negotiating a sweetheart deal for Danchenko (after D identified as Steele PSS in late 2016).

also, FWIW, Sean Newell was listed as one of the subpoena targets in Lindsay Graham's list of May 18, 2020. To my knowledge, we don't currently know why Newell was asked for. (But someone may remember something that I don't recall.) judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/rele…

Laufman attended the first day of Danchenko's interview, and another Laufman deputy, Richard Scott, attended the other days. (Early on, we wondered whether it might have been Newell, but it was Scott.)

thanks to @IvanPentchoukov, we now KNOW that smnewell with fbi email address is Sean Newell of DOJ. DX-165 is email from Perkins Coie associate (cc Sussmann) to Newell (NSD), Adrian Hawkins, Elvis Chan (SF), Patricia Rich (SF).

report is interesting: (a) it included an exercise also done by open source rsearchers: comparison of the version of Trump report in original Guccifer2 drop to Wikileaks version

(b) Perkins Coie says that G2 documents from 6/21/2016 most likely came desktop of a member of DNC research team. Mueller didn't interview DNC/DCCC staff until May 2018 !?!