Fusion’s in-house cyber ninja, [name of the Government’s expected Fusion GPS trial witness], was asked to analyze the DC Leaks site. Her assessment came back quickly. ‘The poor English and amateurish site architecture — no SSL encryption, open downloads folder — screams ‘Russian hackers’ to me,’ she said.
Durham's bracketed phrase indicates that Durham plans to indict Fusion GPS on criminal charges and that the woman employee will testify against the company.
(I have not seen the book itself, and so I have not been able to read the woman's name in that quotation. The book is not in stock in my local bookstores, and so I have special-ordered it. When I learn the woman's name, I will provide it here.)
 |
| Cover of the book Crime in Progress, written by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch |
Durham's court filing does not specify the illegal acts allegedly committed by Fusion GPS. Here in this blog article, I speculate that Fusion GPS committed those acts by briefing some journalists about alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia's Alfa Bank. Normally, briefing journalists is not a crime, but in this case Fusion GPS was participating in a conspiracy to fraudulently cause the US Government to launch an investigation of those alleged Trump-Alfa links. The conspirators intended to reveal the investigation to the US electorate in order to affect the Presidential election scheduled for November 8, 2016.
=======
Durham's court filing included a separate file of some e-mails that Fusion GPS sent and received during the months May-September 2016. That separate file was supposed to be sealed from the public's reading, but was accidentally unsealed and readable for a while. Fortuitously, I downloaded it to my own computer, and so I am able to quote and discuss some of those e-mails here.
From several of those e-mails, I deduce that Fusion GPS briefed several journalists about Internet data that Rodney Joffe and his fellows were collecting about alleged computer communications between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank. I speculate further that the company's "cyber ninja" is supposed to testify about such briefings in the "expected Fusion GPS trial" that Durham mentioned in his court filing.
=======
On Friday, September 23, Fritsch met with several journalists, who included 1) Eric Lichtblau, a reporter at the Washington Bureau of The New York Times newspaper and 2) Mark Hosenball, a reporter at the Reuters news agency. Then in the following days, Fritsch exchanged e-mails separately with Lichtbau and Hosenball. In his sealed file, Durham provided the case judge with some (not all) of those e-mails in order to support some of Durham's legal arguments.
Specifically, some of the e-mails might indicate that, at that Friday meeting, Fritsch briefed the journalists about some Internet information that was being provided to Fusion GPS by Joffe and his fellows. More specifically, some e-mails mentioned "the outside computer experts", which might be Joffe and his fellows.
=======
On Saturday, September 24 -- the day after Fritsch briefed the journalists -- Fritsch sent the journalists an e-mail that comprised the following uncapitalized phrases. (The e-mail was a single paragraph, which I have separated below into five paragraphs.)
gents. good to see you yesterday. sounded like you might be interested in some of the attached russia-related material. these are internal, open source research drafts, as agreed. pls treat this as background / not for attribution. as you'll see, it's all easily replicated anyway.
can also send you a shnaider / toronto memo once i dig it out.
I'm skipping over felix sater and bayrock. believe your guys have done that up ... leave it to you to distribute internally, or not, as you see fit.
don't believe sunny isles / hollywood or panama or toronto have been touched by brands xy or z. amazingly.
don't think anyone has done up the trump tower poker ring story either. pretty vivid color there.
In this blog article, I will not discuss that e-mail's references (shnaider, toronto memo, felix sater, etc.). I quote that entire e-mail in order to show that Fritsch briefed the journalists about a variety of topics that might incriminate Trump. Fritsch urged the journalists to investigate and report to the public those topics.
Durham's court filing does not include the files that Fritsch attached to this e-mail, but the e-mail's text provides the following clues about those attachments:
At least some of the attached files were related to Russia.
All of the attached files were "internal, open source", meaning that they were created by Fusion GPS based on information sources that were available to the public.
The attached files did not include a so-called "shnaider / toronto memo" and also did not include information about "felix sater and bayrock".
The attached files did include some information about "sunny isles / hollywood and panama and toronto" and about "the trump tower poker ring story".
The e-mail's text does not mention the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). Perhaps that text did not mention the DNS simply because Fritsch did not discuss the DNS in that Friday meeting. Or else, perhaps that text did not mention the DNS, because Fritsch deliberately avoided writing about that topic because of secret precautions.
=======
The DNS topic did arise, however, during a subsequent exchange of e-mails between Fritsch and NYT journalist Lichtblau. On Tuesday, September 27, Lichtblau sent Fritsch an e-mail comprising just the following question:
Did you say that Millian had an alfa email address. or was that someone else?
(Sergey Millian was the Chairman of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. He was an acquaintance -- perhaps an associate -- of Donald Trump.)
It seems that Lichtblau's question was about a topic that Fritsch had briefed to the journalists during the Friday meeting but had not mentioned in his Saturday e-mail or explained in that e-mail's attachments.
Responding on that same Tuesday to Lichtblau's question about Millian's e-mail address, Fritsch sent him a print-out from the IPTracker.org website. The print-out indicated that the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce had been using a Russia-based server until August 23, 2016, and then a US-based server afterwards.
If you try to go to IPTracker.org, you are transferred automatically to http://www.ipdatabase.com/. I do not know the significance of that change. In any case, this search tool is publicly available, but I assume that Fusion GPS's staff -- even its "cyber ninja" -- did not know how to use it effectively. I speculate that this service was used by "the outside computer experts" to inform Fusion GPS. (Click on the images to enlarge them).
I do not recognize any reference to Alfa Bank in this print-out. I think that only a DNS expert would recognize any such reference.
=======
On October 5, Fritsch sent, separately, to the journalists a 14-page "Overview" of the Russian company Alfa Group.
On that same October 5, Reuters journalist Hosenball responded with an e-mail that said (emphasis added):
yep got it. but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?
On that same October 5, Fritsch responded to Hosenball (emphasis added):
the DNS stuff? not us at all. outside computer experts. we did up an alfa memo unrelated to all this.
The 14-page "Overview" is not "DNS stuff", so this exchange of e-mails between Hosenball and Fritsch is puzzling. However, I presume that Fritsch and Hosenball are talking about Joffe and his fellows.
I assume that Fritsch's concluding remark -- "we did up an alfa memo unrelated to all this" -- refers to Christopher Steele's Dossier report about Alfa Bank.
=======
Later on that same October 5, Fritsch sent Hosenball yet another e-mail that says:
alfa was something we did unrelated to this. I sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions.
1) Leave questions at: tea.leaves@tuta.io
This e-mail indicates that Fritsch previously had instructed the journalists how to contact and question "Tea Leaves", the pseudonym of April D. Lorenzen, a fellow of Rodney Joffe.
=======
In general, Durham's legal filing, along with its attached sealed file, indicates that Durham plans to try Fusion GPS for collaborating with Joffe and his fellows to defraud the US Government into a devious investigation of allegations about Trump and Alfa Bank. A key witness in this trial will be a "cyber ninja" who worked for Fusion GPS.
No comments:
Post a Comment