Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

What is it with CrowdStrike?

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CrowdStrike, The DNC's Security Firm, Was Under Contract ... CrowdStrike was working on behalf of the DNC, the company was also under contract with the FBI for unspecified technical services. According to a US federal government spending database, CrowdStrike’s “period of performance” on behalf of the FBI was between July 2015 and July 2016. CrowdStrike’s findings regarding the DNC server breach — which continue to this day to be cited as authoritative by everyone from former FBI Director James Comey, to NBC anchor Megyn Kelly — were issued in June 2016, when the contract was still active. source

Some may believe this is all old news. It maybe years old, however it is remains unsolved. With a new Biden administration, it is important that many, many of those old players are now part of the Biden presidential operation, especially Susan Rice and the others that did unmasking. Beware of what comes.

Meanwhile…..when governments collude…especially intelligence agencies and operatives….

Real Clear Politics published in May of 2020 the following:
CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, privately acknowledged more than two years ago that it had no evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server.

CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry’s admission under oath, in a recently declassified December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public. The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI’s probe into now debunked claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.

And the Crowdstrike CEO is proud of the work his company does with the FBI. Going back further, it is noted: Attorney Andrew Bagley has been employed by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike since January 2015; this company was involved deeply in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacking debacle. In 2010, Bagley served as a visiting researcher at the Link Campus University in Rome; while there, his résumé notes that Bagley, “Conducted research and held discussions with Italian and American prosecutors, special agents, and intelligence officials about intelligence analysis, national security, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism policy.”

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According to Bagley’s online résumé, he served as the E-Discovery Technical Advisor to the FBI, conducting legal research, advising on technical issues, and drafting policy for the Discovery Coordination and Policy Unit within the FBI, from 2012 to 2015.

In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked.

Interesting: Despite the patent importance of the physical server system to the FBI and Intelligence-Community investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Bureau never examined the DNC servers. Evidently, the DNC declined to cooperate to that degree, and the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue a subpoena to demand that the servers be turned over (just like the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue subpoenas to demand the surrender of critical physical evidence in the Clinton e-mails investigation).

Instead, the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike. Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers.

Link International - Link Campus University of Rome Link University, Rome

As Senator Lindsey Graham published the now declassified documents/testimonies on RussiaGate, CrowdStrike comes into view again. Why? Well, the FBI has a long and comprehensive history with the Link Campus in Rome and now we learn more about Joseph Mifsud. He was on staff at the Link Campus in Italy. Remember how, AG Barr flew to Italy for some one on one interviews? Those he interviewed remain unknown.Could AG Barr have met with Vincenzo Scotti or maybe even Mifsud himself? As for Link Campus University, Italy: Mifsud, Scotti, and Frattini were all employed by this Italian university. ‘Enzo’ Scotti is Scotti is an Italian politician and member of Christian Democracy. He was Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. And it could be that Mifsud is hiding in Russia….just a suggestion.

As intelligence expert Chris Blackburn notes on Twitter, leafing through the minutes, “the FBI knew that Joseph Mifsud was working with Italian intelligence figures-trainers at the Link Campus in Rome. Because the FBI worked there, too. Of course Mueller didn’t want to include it in his report.” Nothing but “Russian agent”, then. As RealClearInvestigations points out, after Mifsud was identified as the man who would talk to Papadopoulos, Mueller’s team described him as someone with important Russian contacts. This description of the Maltese lecturer, however, ignored Mifsud’s own ties to Western governments, politicians and institutions, including the CIA, FBI and British intelligence services. It’s really curious that, despite Mifsud’s central role in the investigation, the FBI conducted only a brief interview with him in an atrium of a Washington, D.C., hotel in February 2017. Mueller’s team later claimed that Mifsud provided false statements to FBI agents but did not charge him as happened with Papadopoulos. How could he be a Russian agent? And if he did, why wasn’t he questioned?
Then there is CrowdStrike and Ukraine, or is there?

FILE – CrowdStrike co-founder and CTO Dmitri Alperovitch speaks during the Reuters Media and Technology Summit in New York, June 11, 2012.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by “Fancy Bear,” a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

CrowdStrike’s claims of heavy Ukrainian artillery losses were widely circulated in U.S. media.

On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.

The company removed language that said Ukraine’s artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.

The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.

The company also removed language saying Ukraine’s howitzers suffered “the highest percentage of loss of any … artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”
***
Just a few months ago, in fact June of 2020, CrowdStrike on their website apparently felt compelled to put forth the following detail for reasons that may be coming clear.
June 5, 2020 UPDATE

Blog update following the release of the testimony by Shawn Henry, CSO and President of CrowdStrike Services, before the House Intelligence Committee that was recently declassified.

What was CrowdStrike’s role in investigating the hack of the DNC?

CrowdStrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach. We began our work with the DNC on May 1, 2016, collecting intelligence and analyzing the breach. After conducting this analysis and identifying the adversaries on the network, on June 10, 2016 we initiated a coordinated remediation event to ensure the intruders were removed and could not regain access. That remediation process lasted approximately 2-3 days and was completed on June 13, 2016.

Why did the DNC contact CrowdStrike?

The DNC contacted CrowdStrike to respond to a suspected cyber attack impacting its network. The DNC was first alerted to the hack by the FBI in September 2015. According to testimony by DNC IT contractor Yared Tamene Wolde-Yohannes, the FBI attributed the breach to the Russian Government in September 2015 (page 7).

Why did the DNC hire CrowdStrike instead of just working with the FBI to investigate the hack?

The FBI doesn’t perform incident response or network remediation services when organizations need to get back to business after a breach.

CrowdStrike is a leader in protecting customers around the world from cyber threats. It is common for organizations to hire third-party industry experts, like CrowdStrike, to investigate and remediate cyber attacks when they suspect a breach even if they are collaborating with law enforcement. As John Carlin, former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division at The Department of Justice, testified before the House Intelligence Committee (cited from page 21 of his testimony):

“A lot of — outside of any political organization, companies, most corporations, they often would use these third party contractors, who they hired through their own counsel, and maximize the control from the point of view of the victim.”
What the heck is going on here for real? Outside of this little website of mine, is anyone else going deeper and seeking truths when it comes to CrowdStrike, Perkins Coie, Link University and the FBI…much less the all things DNC?
Other key citations for reference include:

https://www.voanews.com/usa/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-russian-hacking-report

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/scandals-collide-dossier-dnc-server-perkins-coie/

https://www.torial.com/satoshi.nakamoto/portfolio/355396

 

#BigTech #BigCorporations Decides who is not Welcomed

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By now we all know the fact that Amazon Web Services canceled Parler and Parler remains dark until the judge decides on the case. We are also learning that other tech companies are cancelling people en masse for violations of terms of service which is selectively applied. Not only are large corporations like Citibank, Blue Cross, Marriott and JP Morgan in the cancel mix but there are others including well known universities like Harvard. How about American Express, Dow, AT&T, Comcast, Disney, 3M, Bank of America, GoDaddy, Hilton, Microsoft, Target, UPS, Tyson and Ford? This is because of few Republicans think independently and ask hard questions. Frankly this is called dissent and oddly enough, even those jurists on the Supreme Court write dissenting opinions. Yeesh.

This is another dimension to cyber war.

Big Tech Censorship: Part 1 | Full Measure photo

Exactly what dissent is not welcomed in the public square? As the cancel-culture manifests, there is no end just yet.

So, now we add Mail Chimp and Loews Hotels to the mix.  Loews Hotels just canceled Senator Hawley’s (R-MO) fundraising event in Orlando. As for Mail Chimp, they canceled Virginia Citizens Defense League and changed their terms of service.

Mailchimp, a US based marketing automation service, has updated its Terms of Use regarding types of content that are prohibited for distribution on the platform. In particular, the service now “does not allow the distribution of content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading, in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances.”

You have to wonder what BigTech is really fact-checking and just what some members of Congress really know for fact. The election scandal is not so much about Dominion as it really could be about SmartMatic. So, let’s examine a few things shall we?

SmartMatic has U.S. patents.

Latest SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION Patents:

In 2013, there was an interesting lawsuit. In part:

There are two sets of defendants. The first set includes: Dominion Voting Systems International Corporation, a Barbados corporation; Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., a Delaware corporation; and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation, a Canadian corporation(collectively, ―Dominion‖or ―Defendants‖). The remaining defendant, Iron Mountain Intellectual Property Management, Inc.,a Delaware corporation,did not brief the motion before me. In their Answer, Verified Counterclaim, and Third-Party Complaint, Defendants asserted claims against a third-party defendant,Smartmatic TIM Corporation, a Philippines corporation.B.Facts In October 2009, Dominion granted Smartmatic a worldwide (except for the United States and Canada) nonexclusive license to certain precinct count optical scan(―PCOS‖) voting systems that Dominion had developed (the ―License Agreement‖or the ―Agreement‖). The License Agreement granted Smartmatic rights to certain patents and patent applications that Dominion owned or controlled (the ―Licensed Patent Rights‖) and to ―all know-how, trade secrets, methodologies and other technical information owned or possessed by Dominion‖ (the ―Licensed Technology‖).1The License Agreement contains a non-competition provision.

As for the Venezuelan connection, per the SmartMatic website published in 2018: (After Maduro remained in power)

Smartmatic announces cease of operations in Venezuela

United Kingdom, London – March 6, 2018 – After 15 years of service and 14 elections assisted providing a secure and auditable voting system, Smartmatic closed its offices and ceased operations in Venezuela.

The reasons for the closure are widely known. In August of 2017, after the elections to the National Constituency Assembly, Smartmatic publicly stated that the National Elections Council had announced results that were different from those reflected by the voting system. This episode lead to an immediate rupture of the client-provider relationship.

Smartmatic did not participate in the last two elections (Regional Elections of October 15, 2017 and Municipal Elections of December 10, 2017), a fact that was timely informed. Since the company was not involved in these processes, and given the fact that the company’s products are not under warranty and were not certified for those elections, Smartmatic cannot guarantee the integrity of the system, nor can it attest to the accuracy of the results.

Smartmatic is currently operating in some 40 countries around the world, partnering with governments, election commissions and citizens seeking to conduct secure, clean and transparent elections.

 

 

Stands to reason that not only should American citizens question known facts but find the unknown facts and the same holds true for members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. So digging deeper, doing an examination of the Congressional record is worthy of time. If those in the Senate are questioning elections and they have more intelligence reports than we outside the Beltway do, perhaps #BigTech should judge slowly and do their own work as well as #BigCorporations before all this cancelling continues. But read on.

On the Senate side, as recently as October, 19, 2020, 7 Senators challenged the election results in Venezuela, 3 were Republicans and 4 were Democrats. Note this was after the Maduro stolen election. There was a Senate Resolution #749. In part:

Whereas the regime of Nicolas Maduro is undertaking efforts
to hold fraudulent legislative elections for Venezuela’s
National Assembly in December 2020 that will not comply with
international standards for free, fair, and transparent
electoral processes;
Whereas the Maduro regime is seeking to use fraudulent
legislative elections to undermine Venezuela’s sitting
democratically elected National Assembly;
Whereas, as codified under section 112 of the VERDAD Act of
2019 (22 U.S.C. 9702), it is the policy of the United States
to recognize the democratically elected National Assembly of
Venezuela, elected in December 2015 and sworn in on January
2016, as the only legitimate national legislative body in
Venezuela;
Whereas the United States Government and members of the
international community have rightly denounced the Maduro
regime’s efforts to hold fraudulent legislative elections in
December 2020;
Whereas, on October 13, 2020, members of the Lima Group–
including Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and
Venezuela–issued a joint declaration on the Maduro regime’s
efforts to hold legislative elections in December 2020 that
expressed “firm rejection of the continuing of the
illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro in holding
parliamentary elections without the minimum democratic
guarantees and without the participation of all political
forces”;
Whereas, on September 17, 2020, the International Contact
Group on Venezuela–whose members include Argentina, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy,
the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United
Kingdom, and Uruguay–issued a joint declaration on the
Maduro regime’s efforts to hold legislative elections in
December 2020 that stated that “conditions are not met, at
the moment, for a transparent, inclusive, free and fair
electoral process”;

We report you decide…thousands of moving parts here.

Chinese Communist Party is “inside the gates”

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In part from Breitbart:

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo warned lawmakers that the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is “inside the gates” during a meeting with House Republican lawmakers on Friday.

Pompeo told members of the conservative Republican Study Committee that as a former lawmaker, he is aware of the threat posed by China but that he did not appreciate “the scope and the scale and the nature” of how close the threat is until he became Central Intelligence Agency director.

This CCP infection inside the United States goes beyond Senator Feinstein, Congressman Eric Swalwell, former California Senator, Barbara Boxer or even closing the Chinese embassy in Houston. There is the Thousand Talents Program that has wormed it's way through academia and the Confucius Institutes.

How about a little known Florida congresswoman, Stephanie Murphy (D-FL)? She is quite dedicated to China due in part to her husband Sean and his manufacturing company, 3N2. His company produces sports equipment/apparel in China. Further, she advocates for all the democrat policy points including open-border policies and more studies into “gun-violence”. Crazy enough, Murphy actually joined a small group of Democrats in calling to remove tariffs on the Chinese government.

None of this is actually new when it comes to Stephanie Murphy, in fact it goes back as far as 2017. Did anyone notice?

When you are on social media, do you actually work hard to determine if you are being trolled by some foreign entity? We are quite aware of Russian disinformation but going back years, at least to 2016 (interesting year), China's own troll farm has been just as successful in the social media sphere and you are likely a victim. DC politicians are just as likely to be willing accomplices.

There is or was a Chinese operation called the 50-centers and you probably clicked on a lot of their social media posts.

The Left-leaning policy organization Foreign Policy published the following in 2016.

A May 17 paper written by professors at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, San Diego provides the most detailed and ambitious description of China’s 50-centers available to date. It confirms the existence of a “massive secret operation” in China pumping out an estimated 488 million fabricated social media posts per year, part of an effort to “regularly distract the public and change the subject” from any policy-related issues that threaten to anger citizens enough to turn them out onto the streets. But the research finds no evidence these 50-centers are, in fact, paid 50 cents, nor does it find they engage in direct and angry argument with their opponents. Instead, they are mostly bureaucrats already on the public payroll, responding to government directives at a time of heightened tension to flood social media with pro-government cheerleading.

Opinion: How Chinese paid cyber-troll farms are upending ... photo

Understanding the behavior of pro-government netizens is important, given the stakes. In the past two and a half years, the Chinese government has used a combination of muscle and guile to cow online opinion leaders into submission, muzzling social media as a political force, and leaching public dialogue of much of its independence. But beneath the peppy, pablum-filled surface that has resulted, Chinese social media remains a contested space. In countless online chat rooms, bulletin boards, and Weibo threads, Chinese social media roils with the same ideological debates that also increasingly consume Chinese academics and elites.

Broadly speaking, the clash pits so-called leftists — that is, conservatives and neo-Confucianists who marry stout Chinese nationalism, a yearning for reconstructed socialism, and the quest for a reversion to hierarchy and filial piety — against rightists, or reformists, who continue to espouse what a Westerner would recognize as universal values, such as civil and human rights, government transparency, and democracy and constitutionalism. It’s more common for the two camps to exchange barbs than ideas. The leftists label the rightists sellouts, turncoats, and “public intellectuals,” the latter delivered with an implicit sneer. The rightists often call the leftists “50-centers,” regardless of who really pays their bills.

What is worse is a separate issue known as the Chinese cyber-attacks. A for instance however:

More than two dozen universities in the United States and around the world were targeted as part of an effort by the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, to build up its naval and submarine forces.

iDefense, one security firm, tracked the Chinese cyberattacks to a hacking group known variously as Temp.Periscope, Leviathan or Mudcarp. A second firm, FireEye, calls the hacking group APT40 or Temp.Periscope.

FireEye said the operations appear linked to Chinese activities in the South China Sea, where Beijing has built disputed islands and deployed advanced missiles on them beginning a year ago. The Chinese military hacker unit in charge of that region is the Chengdu-based Unit 78020.

The 27 universities included the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Take caution, judge slowly. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is right.

 

 

 

Impeach the Lot of Them

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Primer: George Washington University has a database on the Capitol Hill Siege, that is searchable. Gotta ask, did they do the same for all the violence and arrests from the militant protests and destruction from 2020?

In keeping with our tradition of providing primary source documents to the research community and the public at large, The Program on Extremism has launched a project to create a central database of court records related to the events of January 6, 2021. This page will be updated as additional individuals are charged with criminal activities and new records are introduced into the criminal justice system.

If you’d like to contribute to offset the costs associated with court record fees and research on this and other projects, you can support the Program’s research here.

'Violence' Becomes 'Unruliness' When It's Sports Fans, Not ...

In part from the Washington Post:

June 1, Harris (who was not yet chosen as Biden’s running mate) tweeted a link to an MFF donation page on ActBlue:

Reuters posted their explanation here of alleged clarity on Kamala Harris.

18 U.S. Code § 2331

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—

(A)

involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i)

to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii)

to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii)

to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C)

occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and

(6) the term “military force” does not include any person that—

(A) has been designated as a—

(i)

foreign terrorist organization by the Secretary of State under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189); or

(ii)

specially designated global terrorist (as such term is defined in section 594.310 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations) by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury; or

(B)

has been determined by the court to not be a “military force”.
(Added Pub. L. 102–572, title X, § 1003(a)(3), Oct. 29, 1992, 106 Stat. 4521; amended Pub. L. 107–56, title VIII, § 802(a), Oct. 26, 2001, 115 Stat. 376; Pub. L. 115–253, § 2(a), Oct. 3, 2018, 132 Stat. 3183.)

From RedState in part: A young woman suffering from white guilt called a friend of mine to ask what “ActBlue” was? Planning to contribute to Black Lives Matter, she went to their website and clicked on the bright blue “donate” button. She was immediately redirected to ActBlue, which is the activist arm of the Democrat Party.

At the bottom of the page, it clearly states: “ActBlue Charities is a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and donations are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed under the law.”

Its website says: “There’s just a 3.95% processing fee on all transactions. That’s the only fee you’ll ever be charged when you use AB Charities.”

In “The Fine Print” section, it states that if a campaign or a committee doesn’t cash an ActBlue check within 60 days or a contribution is refused, the donation “will be re-designated as a contribution to ActBlue.” Those contributions “will be kept by ActBlue and used generally to support its social welfare activities.”

Does this fit the definition of domestic terrorism or getting in their face, confronting them, you don’t belong here? We have not covered ANTIFA, but it fits the definition. What U.S. representatives, mayors or governors that have not aggressively stopped the violence and protected civil society? They are few.

After 'antifa' violence, Berkeley debates whether Milo ...

Cuba Re-designated as State Sponsor of Terror

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President Obama removed Cuba from the designation and it is expected early into the Biden administration, this action will again be reversed.

The United States has once again designated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, accusing it of granting safe haven to terrorists and also providing support for acts of “international terrorism”. The move by the Trump administration comes days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, who would have liked to start where he and Obama left the US-Cuba relations in 2016. Former President Barack Obama had delisted Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 2015, seeking normalisation of ties with the Communist State.

State Department officials say the decision is not politically motivated and argue Cuba has not met the standards to remain off the list during the Trump administration.

American Enterprise Institute research fellow Ryan Berg affirmed the basis of the Trump administration’s decision.Cuba sees Obama terror promise as healing of historic wound

“Cuba has provided unequivocal support to terrorist and insurgent groups throughout Latin America for many decades, such as Colombia’s ELN and the FARC, to name just a few,” Berg told the Washington Free Beacon. “Today, it also continues to support the consolidated dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, aiding and abetting what the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has declared to be ‘crimes against humanity.'”

Havana has also played a role in helping China expand its influence in the Caribbean. In November, Cuba followed the lead of China in echoing far-left talking points regarding race relations in America at the United Nations, and China covered for Cuba on its record of harboring terrorism. China, meanwhile, has reportedly expanded its surveillance capabilities in the Caribbean, using telecommunications networks to spy on American mobile phones in the region.

The move could affect President-elect Joe Biden’s approach to reengaging with the communist country, a policy out of the Obama administration’s playbook. Biden’s transition team for the Department of Defense included Frank Mora, an Obama administration holdover who advocated lifting sanctions on Havana.

Berg said the Cuba policy favored by Mora and Biden would probably require a reversal of the decision to return Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“A diplomatic opening with a country designated as a ‘state sponsor of terror’ is a difficult lift,” Berg said. “Therefore, one of the first steps to any Cuba opening would likely require a reversal of this decision.” source