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Obama and OFA, Have Their Army on the Move

Obama is back in the game…this game is an old one but a terrifying one. It is called ‘gerrymandering’. It is Obama’s forever version of community organizing. He has big help too.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) and Organizing for Action (OFA) are launching an exciting new partnership that will channel the energy of grassroots activists into efforts to restore fair representation to Congress and state legislatures.

With this new partnership, OFA and NDRC will join forces to reform the practice of allowing politicians to redraw our congressional and state legislative districts in ways that cater to political extremes and leave too many voters feeling as if they don’t have a voice. As former President Obama has said, “Politicians shouldn’t pick their voters; voters should pick their politicians.”

OFA will use its vast grassroots infrastructure to organize, educate, and engage supporters both in the digital space and on the ground to help support NDRC’s mission. In the coming months, OFA will be organizing house parties to educate people around redistricting issues and outline future plans for how this program will make an impact on a state-by-state basis.

Is the Sessions’ Justice Department ready for this fight? Are you? The first target state is Virginia.

Obama’s army enlists in redistricting fight

Politico: Organizing for Action, the progressive group born out of Barack Obama’s old campaign apparatus, is joining the redistricting effort that Obama has made a central cause of his post-presidency.

On Monday, OFA officially launched a partnership with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder.

OFA officially runs independently from Obama, though the former president made the announcement himself.

“OFA volunteers and supporters will provide the grassroots organizing capacity and mobilization that we’ll need to win state-level elections and move other initiatives forward ahead of the 2021 redistricting process, making sure that states are in the best position to draw fair maps,” Obama wrote in an email sent to the OFA’s list, which he called “Our Next Fight.”

The conversations have been underway for several months, but the announcement came as Obama is slated to appear at an OFA event in Chicago on Nov. 8, the anniversary of last year’s election, that will bring him together for a conversation with organizers and big donors for the group.

The NDRC has spent the past year fundraising and putting the pieces together in preparation for what it’s hoping will be a very active presence in the courts and on the campaign trail in 2018 and beyond — with some action in Virginia and New Jersey races this year — with the goal of changing the redistricting process to reverse the existing Republican tilt of maps in many states.

The results could significantly reshape the makeup of the House, as well as state legislatures.

“There is no better infrastructure out there to build in order to unleash the power of the people onto redistricting,” said NDRC Executive Director Kelly Ward, calling this “an awesome, seamless partnership.”

“It’s the support of President Obama’s network and the shared values that come with that that make it so seamless,” Ward said. “We are all in this together still.”

Obama and Holder have both campaigned in New Jersey and Virginia, and the NDRC put $750,000 into the Virginia governor’s race last month.

OFA, meanwhile, will start holding house parties, community meetings and conference calls geared to helping its organizers understand and internalize what gerrymandering is, and what the processes are for changing district maps in each state.

Katie Hogan, executive director of OFA, said some of their organizers had already started talking about redistricting and collecting ballot initiative signatures on their own.

“It’s really familiar work to us and not at all deviating to what we’ve done for years,” Hogan said.

Though OFA was very active in helping mobilize turnouts to town halls and other events as part of the resistance to Obamacare repeal efforts, this brings the group closer to direct political campaigns than it’s been since reconstituting after the 2012 election. As a 501(c)(4), the group has the ability to get involved in politics if it chooses to.

“We don’t have every single part of this mapped out,” Hogan said. “We do know that we are the best suited to play that public education role right now, and we’ll see where that takes us.”

Tech Companies Regulate Free Speech, are they a Utility?

When social media sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter terminate accounts over  subjective decisions due to ‘offensive’ material, there is very little the user can do to fight back. Most users complain among themselves and give up the fight immediately. Others file a challenge and the success rate is slim.

So, social media tech companies are privately owned except for Google and Google should be made to answer when it comes to videos that are moved from YouTube.

Related reading: How to Break Silicon Valley’s Anti-Free-Speech Monopoly

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The left, the liberals and the Marxists launched a 1st Amendment battle that few are set to confront to our own peril.Frankly there should be congressional hearings where these tech company officials should be required to answer on the record just how and why these random decisions are made. Further, if a tech company regulates free speech and content, they are self described as utility companies….agree?

***

There are some reasonably strong arguments that the biggest online services today are similar to traditional public utilities due to their high market share, network effects, and difficulty for consumers to live without the service.  On the other hand, the old public utility approach to regulation had numerous flaws, and does not adapt readily to high-innovation markets where competition is typically based on factors other than price.

Rather than fitting public utility models for electricity or airline pricing, the emerging calls for regulation bear a closer resemblance to some of the Federal Communications Commission’s past efforts to use its public utility authority to regulate television content. The growing calls for online services to take down ISIS and other terrorist communications can be seen as an update to the FCC’s prohibitions on profanity (George Carlin’s “seven dirty words”) and broader historical efforts to prohibit indecent content.  The calls for limits on fake news can similarly start to resemble a modern-day Fairness Doctrine, where “fake news” is unfair and blocked, while “real news” is fair and goes out to viewers.    Read more here from Lawfare.

We do have a champion on this argument…..

PragerU — the educational video outfit founded by conservative commentator Dennis Prager in 2011 — is suing YouTube and its parent company Google for unlawful censorship and free speech discrimination.

Prager said in a statement that his company believes the internet giants are trying to squelch “conservative political thought” by restricting access to or demonetizing PragerU videos.

How did this all start?

  • PragerU CEO Marissa Streit told TheBlaze that college students began contacting PragerU in the summer of 2016 saying they couldn’t view some of the outfit’s videos on campus browsers.
  • That’s when PragerU discovered that YouTube subjected the videos to “restricted mode” filtering.
  • Streit said at first YouTube didn’t respond to PragerU’s information requests — but after a ton of people signed a petition and the issue began hitting the news cycle, YouTube finally started answering.
  • This summer, she said, YouTube indicated it had reviewed the videos in question and determined they should be restricted as “inappropriate” for younger viewers or demonetized — which means PragerU loses advertising revenue.
  • The explanations for the decision were vague and included continued referrals to YouTube’s community guidelines, which Streit said are so broad that they amount to “we can do whatever we want.”

How about an example?

  • The suit said Google/YouTube told PragerU the videos “Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism?” and “What’s Holding the Arab World Back?” were placed in Restricted Mode because they purportedly discussed “hate and genocide” and “terrorism and genocide,” respectively.
  • “No further explanation as to what language constituted an inappropriate discussion of ‘hate and genocide’ or ‘terrorism and genocide’ was given,” the suit read.
  • Following rebuff after rebuff, PragerU brought the suit Monday in U.S. District Court, asking for monetary damages and an end to the censorship.

What did YouTube/Google have to say?

  • Google on Tuesday didn’t immediately reply to TheBlaze’s request for comment on the matter.

Which PragerU videos have been affected?

  • PragerU made a list of nearly 40 videos that YouTube restricted — and many of them also have been demonetized, the suit says. The total number of videos that have been restricted or demonetized is about 50, Streit said.
  • Among the restricted videos are “Why America Must Lead,” “The Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder,” “Why Did America Fight the Korean War,” and “The World’s Most Persecuted Minority: Christians.”

 

  • Of course, less controversial videos like the clip on forgiveness have been left alone, she said:

 

  • “It looks like it’s the videos they don’t agree with ideologically,” Streit told TheBlaze.
  • And since PragerU’s charter includes a commitment to reach young people with its conservative message, the censorship hurts all the more, she added.
  • For noted Harvard Law Professor Alan Derschowitz — who spoke on a PragerU video on the legal founding of Israel — the fact that YouTube restricted his clip was unsettling.
  • Streit recalled getting a phone call from Dershowitz in which he asked, “Does YouTube think our content is pornographic?”

  • In fact, she said, there’s “no profanity, nudity or otherwise inappropriate ‘mature’ content” in PragerU videos, which “fully comply with YouTube’s user guidelines.”

How has PragerU been impacted?

  • Streit told TheBlaze it isn’t as though PragerU has tens of thousands of videos in its library — there are only about 250, she said.
  • Therefore when 50 or so are restricted or demonetized — a fifth of its total catalogue — that’s a significant portion.
  • Streit added to TheBlaze that PragerU is in the process of determining how much ad revenue it has lost due to demonetization — but she mentioned a couple of other disturbing revelations found along the way.
  • She said YouTube “copycats” have taken videos restricted on PragerU’s YouTube page, uploaded them on their personal pages — and voila: the videos weren’t restricted anymore.
  • Streit told TheBlaze that means the issue isn’t a global algorithm but a concerted effort by YouTube to “specifically” target PragerU videos.
  • What’s more, she said those “copycats” also are making ad money from PragerU clips.
  • Streit added that new PragerU videos are added Monday mornings and “within an hour they’re restricted.”

What does PragerU want?

  • “As the person who runs this organization, I want fair treatment,” Streit said. “I don’t want to be discriminated against. … Our hope is to make a correction that will lead to goodness.”
  • But in the end, the lawsuit isn’t about recouping lost ad revenue — it’s about taking a stand for freedom of speech and “for America.”
  • “Can you imagine what the wold would look like if Google is allowed to continue to arbitrarily censor ideas they simply don’t agree with?” Streit asked.
  • And right now Google/YouTube is “controlling one of the largest vehicles of information of all time,” she told TheBlaze — and their video censorship is “one of the most un-American things you can do.”
  • “We feel like this is an important cause to take on,” Streit added, knowing full well that comparatively tiny PragerU taking on behemoths like Google and YouTube is akin to David challenging Goliath.
  • But she said, “somebody has to fight Goliath.”

Here’s a look at another restricted PragerU clip:

Trump Dossier Courtesy of Marc Elias and Perkins and Coie

Oh Hillary…do tell…

Marc Elias is a partner in the law firm Perkins and Coie. Beyond that he was the general counsel for the Hillary presidential campaign. Previously to that, he did the same for the John Kerry presidential campaign….sheesh….oh yeah…he did the same for Al Franken.

Keep a large supply of popcorn handy….week by week this has the makings of good theater. Opposition research on candidates is nothing new, but this creates a new definition to research, to Clinton and fraud.

What is remarkable is that the Hillary campaign and the DNC punked the intelligence agencies that spent months and huge investigative resources on tracking down people and facts in the dossier. Further, while parts of the dossier are accurate and others not at all, it also proves that someone had a direct point of contact with people inside the Kremlin.

Let that sink in….

Related reading: Fusion GPS partners plead Fifth before House Intel

According to The Hill, the FBI, “obtained an eyewitness account -backed by documents- indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation… during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow.”

***

Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

WaPo: The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

Marc E. Elias of Perkins Coie represented the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

Fusion GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and DNC, and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not informed of Fusion GPS’s role by the law firm.

The dossier has become a lightning rod amid the intensifying investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible connections to Russia. Some congressional Republican leaders have spent months trying to discredit Fusion GPS and Steele, and tried to determine the identity of the Democrat or organization that paid for it.

Trump tweeted as recently as Saturday that the Justice Department and FBI should “immediately release who paid for it.”

Elias and Fusion GPS declined to comment on the arrangement. Spokespersons for the Clinton campaign and the DNC had no immediate comment.

Some of the details are included in an Oct. 24 letter sent by Perkins Coie to a lawyer representing Fusion GPS, telling the research firm that it was released from a client-confidentiality obligation. The letter was prompted by a legal fight over a subpoena for Fusion GPS’s bank records.

People involved in the matter said that they would not disclose the dollar amounts paid to FusionGPS, but said that the campaign and the DNC shared the cost.

Steele previously worked in Russia for British intelligence. The dossier is a compilation of reports he prepared for Fusion. The dossier alleged that the Russian government collected compromising information about Trump and the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist his campaign for president.

Washington Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman explain the story behind a controversial dossier on President Trump. (Jason Aldag,Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

U.S. intelligence agencies later released a public assessment which asserted that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to aid Trump. The FBI has been investigating whether any Trump associates helped the Russians in that effort.

Trump has adamantly denied the allegations in the dossier and has dismissed the FBI probe as a witch hunt.

Fusion GPS’s work researching Trump began during the Republican presidential primaries, when the GOP donor paid for the firm to investigate the real estate tycoon’s background.

Fusion GPS did not start off looking at Trump’s Russia ties, but quickly realized that those relationships were extensive, according to the people familiar with the matter.

When the Republican donor stopped paying for the research, Elias, acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, agreed to pay for the work to continue.

The Democrats paid for research, including by Fusion GPS, because of concerns that little was known about Trump and his business interests, according to the people familiar with the matter.

These people said that it is standard practice for political campaigns to use law firms to hire outside researchers to ensure their work is protected by attorney-client and work-product privileges.

The Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since Nov. 2015 — though it’s impossible to tell from the filings how much of that work was for other legal matters and how much of it related to Fusion GPS.

At no point, these people said, did the Clinton campaign or the DNC direct Steele’s activities. They described him as a Fusion GPS subcontractor.

Some of Steele’s allegations began circulating in Washington in the summer of 2016 as the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation into possible connections between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Around that time, Steele shared some of his findings with the FBI.

After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports.

The dossier was published by BuzzFeed News in January. Fusion GPS has said in court filings that it did not give BuzzFeed the document.

Officials have said that the FBI has confirmed some of the information in the dossier. Other details, including the most sensational accusations, have yet to be verified and may never be.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that Steele was respected by the FBI and the State Department for earlier work he performed on a global corruption probe.

In early January, then-FBI Director James B. Comey presented a two-page summary of Steele’s dossier to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump.

In May, Trump fired Comey, which led to the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel investigating the Trump-Russia matter.

Congressional Republicans have tried to force Fusion GPS to identify the Democrat or group behind Steele’s work, but the firm has said that it would not do so, citing confidentiality agreements with its clients.

Last week, Fusion GPS executives invoked their constitutional right not to answer questions from the House Intelligence Committee. The firm’s founder, Glenn Simpson, had previously given a 10-hour interview to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Over objections from Democrats, the Republican leader of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), subpoenaed Fusion GPS’s bank records to try to identify the mystery client.

Fusion GPS has been fighting the release of its bank records. A judge on Tuesday extended a deadline for Fusion GPS’s bank to respond to the subpoena until Friday while the company attempts to negotiate a resolution with Nunes.

 

UN/Harvard Comprehensive WMD Programs in N Korea/ISIS

Primer:

A North Korean mining firm, reputed to be a front for Pyongyang’s weapons development programs, attempted to ship materiel to Syrian officials tied to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to a confidential United Nations assessment of international sanctions against the North.

Details of the U.N. findings, first reported by Reuters, found officials from Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation {KOMID) had sent a pair of shipments of unknown contents to members of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre or SSRC. The Syrian government organization has been responsible for developing chemical and biological weapons for regime in Damascus since the 1970’s.

The shipments never arrived in Syria after being intercepted by international authorities from U.N. partner nations, Reuters reports. “Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” the U.N. review states.

KOMID has repeatedly trafficked in materials associated with ballistic missile development and other conventional arms programs, and was blacklisted by the U.N. security council as a result of those activities, Reuters reports.

As a result, the U.N. “is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and [North Korea],” the report states. More here.

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Quoting the South Korean Defense Ministry, it said: ‘North Korea has 13 types of biological weapons agents which it can weaponize within ten days, and anthrax and smallpox are the likely agents it would deploy.’

***

Harvard produced a report with the summary in part that reads:

Amidst the growing threat of North Korea’s nuclear program, the assas-
sination of Kim Jong-Un’s half-brother via VX nerve agent in February
2017 brought renewed interest in North Korea’s other weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) programs—chemical and biological weap-
ons. If used on a large scale, these weapons can cause not only tens of
thousands of deaths, but also create panic and paralyze societies. Nev-
ertheless, the vividness of the nuclear threat has overshadowed other
weapons programs, limiting the attention and policy input that they
deserve. This paper focuses on North Korea’s biological weapons (BW).
Accurately assessing the threat from North Korea’s biological weapons
is challenging. Whereas North Korea has publicly declared its will to
become a nuclear power many times, it has been less overt about its
intention or capability for biological weapons. BW capabilities are
inherently hard to detect and measure. While nuclear programs can
be monitored by the number of nuclear tests and the success of missile
tests, weaponizing and cultivating pathogens can stay invisible behind
closed doors. Moreover, equipment used for BW production are often
dual-use for agriculture, making external monitoring and verification
virtually impossible. Limited information on North Korea’s BW pro-
gram leads to a low threat perception that may undermine preparation
and response efforts. The full 46 page report is here.

A German newspaper reported last week that at least one European intelligence agency has already warned that the Islamic State is exploring the use of chemicals for attacks in Europe. Such an eventuality would be a radical departure from prior attacks by the Islamic State in the West. In the past, the militant group has shown a strong preference for low-tech means of dispensing violence, such as firearms, vehicles and knives. But it has utilized chemical substances in Iraq and Syria, and its technical experts have amassed significant knowledge about weaponized chemicals.

Last week, several European and American counter-terrorism experts participated in a bioterrorism preparedness exercise in Berlin. Codenamed WUNDERBAUM, the exercise was one of several anti-terrorism drills that have taken place in the German capital this year alone. But last week’s drill was the first with an exclusive focus on preparing for a bioterrorist attack. German authorities insisted that the drill was not sparked by concrete intelligence of a pending biological or chemical attack. But the Berlin-based national newspaper Die Welt claimed on Friday that it had information about at least one such warning by a European intelligence agency. The paper did not name the agency, but said that “a foreign intelligence agency” had warned European security authorities of a possible terrorist attack by the Islamic State using chemical weapons. According to Die Welt, the warning was “explicit” and cautioned that the Sunni militant group may be preparing to use improvised bombs utilizing chemicals, including toxic gasses. The warning was communicated to European intelligence agencies, including Germany’s said Die Welt.

How likely is such a scenario? Terrorist groups tend to be conservative in their use of lethal technologies. They typically opt for time-tested methods using explosives or firearms, because these have a higher of success in comparison to more sophisticated, hi-tech weapons. The latter are also more expensive to build and require scientific and technical capabilities that are not typically available to terrorist organizations. Militants are usually strapped for cash, and are not science-savvy, so exceptions to this general trend are rare. But the Islamic State is different. Ever since it made its eventful appearance in 2013, the group has experimented with a variety of chemicals, including nerve agents. It is known that it initiated a modest chemical weapons program, headed by Iraqi engineers who were trained under Iraq’s late ruler, Saddam Hussein. One of them, Abu Malik, was killed in an American airstrike in early 2015. Another, Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who headed the Islamic State’s chemical weapons program, was captured by US Special Forces in northern Iraq in March of last year.

The Islamic State’s rapid loss of territory in the past year has delivered serious blows to the group’s military infrastructure. Its chemical weapons program, which was targeted early on by the US, Iran and other belligerents, is now almost certainly defunct. But many of its engineers and technical experts are still at large, as are those who were trained by them during the group’s heyday in Iraq and Syria. Despite its continuing retreat, the Islamic State is still capable of employing chemicals that are relatively easy to procure, such as chlorine, hydrogen sulfide, or even various fertilizers, to construct explosives or nerve agents. Last summer, members of a terrorist cell with connections to the Islamic State were arrested in Sydney, Australia. By the time they were arrested, they had already procured significant quantities of hydrogen sulfide and had even tested the chemical, in an apparent preparation for a large-scale attack.

The Australian case shows that the Islamic State is not averse to the tactical use of chemical weapons in terrorist attacks. As the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate is disintegrating, and its leaders feel like they have nothing left to lose, the deployment of unconventional terrorist technologies should not be excluded as a tactical option for the organization. Western counter-terrorism officials should actively and immediately prepare for such an eventuality.

***

FBI Watched the Spy Ring Inside the Hillary Inner Circle

Ah, she was posing as an accountant..

FBI hidden camera surveillance videos of the spies’ operations give a fascinating look into Russian spy tradecraft as employed by Chapman and the other Russian agents. The videos show, among other things, the Russian infiltrators hiding messages under bridges, secretly trading information, money and contact information via “brush passes,” and digging for buried payoff money in the woods.

While Chapman and her fellow spies seemed to live routine, middle-class lives, the videos reveal both traditional and hi-tech spy techniques, including Chapman sending encrypted messages to her handler with a specially equipped laptop. In one of the FBI surveillance tapes, Chapman is in a department store, transmitting messages to her contact standing outside the store.

“We were able to capture wirelessly the communications between her and her handler,” Figliuzzi said. “There were six locations throughout New York,” that Chapman used, he said. “She transmits and receives messages from the official who is in close proximity but not anywhere near visibly close to her … she is transmitting encrypted code that the FBI was able to break.” More here.

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The 97 page criminal complaint is here.

As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records.

Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal.

A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of gaining intelligence on Hillary Clinton’s department, records show. The spy was arrested and deported as she moved closer to getting inside the secretary’s department, agents said.

Other activities were perfectly legal and sitting in plain view, such as when a subsidiary of Russia’s state-controlled nuclear energy company hired a Washington firm to lobby the Obama administration. At the time it was hired, the firm was providing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in pro bono support to Bill Clinton’s global charitable initiative, and it legally helped the Russian company secure federal decisions that led to billions in new U.S. commercial nuclear business, records show.

Agents were surprised by the timing and size of a $500,000 check that a Kremlin-linked bank provided Bill Clinton with for a single speech in the summer of 2010. The payday came just weeks after Hillary Clinton helped arrange for American executives to travel to Moscow to support Putin’s efforts to build his own country’s version of Silicon Valley, agents said.

There is no evidence in any of the public records that the FBI believed that the Clintons or anyone close to them did anything illegal. But there’s definitive evidence the Russians were seeking their influence with a specific eye on the State Department.

“There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that the Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton’s circle, because she was the quarterback of the Obama-Russian reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as president,” said a source familiar with the FBI’s evidence at the time, speaking only on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

That source pointed to an October 2009 communication intercepted by the FBI in which Russian handlers instructed two of their spies specifically to gather nonpublic information on the State Department.

“Send more info on current international affairs vital for R., highlight US approach,” part of the message to the spies read, using the country’s first initial to refer to Russia. “… Try to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources closer to State department, government, major think tanks.”

The Clintons, by that time, had set up several new vehicles that included a multimillion dollar speech-making business, the family foundation and a global charitable initiative, all which proved attractive to the Russians as Hillary Clinton took over State.

“In the end, some of this just comes down to what it always does in Washington: donations, lobbying, contracts and influence – even for Russia,” said Frank Figliuzzi, the former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.

The sleeper ring

Figliuzzi supervised the post-arrest declassification and release of records from a 10-year operation that unmasked a major Russian spy ring in 2010. It was one of the most important U.S. counterintelligence victories against Russia in history, and famous for nabbing the glamorous spy-turned-model Anna Chapman.

While Chapman dominated the headlines surrounding that spy ring, another Russian woman posing as a mundane New Jersey accountant named Cynthia Murphy was closing in on accessing Secretary Clinton’s department, according to records and interviews.

For most of the 10 years, the ring of Russian spies that included Chapman and Murray acted as sleepers, spending a “great deal of time collecting information and passing it on” to their handlers inside Russia’s SVR spy agency, FBI records state.

Murphy, living with her husband and kids in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, reported a major breakthrough in February 2009 in an electronic message sent to her handlers: she had scored access to a major Democrat, FBI records state.

“Murphy had several work-related personal meetings with [a prominent New York-based financier, name omitted] and was assigned his account,” one FBI record from the case read. “The message accurately described the financier as  ‘prominent in politics,’ ‘an active fund-raiser’ for [a major political party, name omitted] and a ‘personal friend’ of [a current Cabinet official, name redacted].”

Multiple current and former officials confirmed to The Hill that the Cabinet officer was Hillary Clinton, the fundraiser was New York financier Alan Patricof and the political party was the Democratic National Committee. None of the Americans were ever suspected of illegalities, but the episode made clear the Russian spies were stepping up their operations against the new administration after years of working in a “sleeper” capacity, officials said.

Patricof did not return a call to his office Friday seeking comment. But in 2010 he told The Washington Post after the spy case broke he believed he had been a victim of the spy ring, saying Murphy had worked for him but that he only talked accounting and not government or politics with her.

“It’s just staggering,” he told the Post about the idea of being targeted by Russia. “It’s off the charts.”

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill declined Saturday to say if the secretary was ever alerted or briefed to the Russian spy effort, instead suggesting that any focus on the spy case was a partisan effort to distract from the controversy around Moscow and President Trump.

“Nothing has changed since the last time this was addressed, including the right’s transparent attempts to distract from their own Russia problems, which are real and a grave threat to our national security,” he wrote in an email to The Hill.

Back in 2010, when the spy story broke, Hillary Clinton’s office issued a statement that there was “no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring.”

Court documents and agents who worked the case suggest otherwise, saying the Russians were specifically targeting her department and any intelligence they could get on the new administration’s emerging foreign policy.

Trying to get inside State

The FBI documents show exactly what Murphy’s Russian handlers wanted her to get from a Clinton-tied donor she had befriended. “Maybe he can provide Murphy with remarks re US foreign policy, roumors (sic) about White House internal kitchen, invite her to major venues,” one FBI document quoted the Russians as saying.

By 2010, the Russian SVR urged Murphy to consider taking a job with a lobbying firm because “this position would expose her to prospective contacts and potential sources in U.S. government,” the FBI affidavit read.

Figliuzzi said it was the FBI’s belief that Murphy wasn’t going to risk taking a job inside the State Department, where the vetting process might unmask her true identity. So she aimed for a private sector job where “she could get next to people who had the jobs who could get the information she wanted from State,” he said.

The retired FBI executive said that by early summer 2010, agents feared Chapman might flee the country and Murphy was getting too close to posing a security concern to Hillary Clinton. As a result, they arrested the entire ring of 10 spies, and quickly expelled them.

“In regards to the woman known as Cynthia Murphy, she was getting close to Alan, and the lobbying job. And we thought this was too close to Hillary Clinton. So when you have the totality of the circumstance, and we were confident we had the whole cell identified, we decided it was time to shut down their operations,” Figliuzzi said.

The FBI announced the arrests on June 28, 2010, a day after they were made.

The ring highlights the long-standing efforts Russia has made to gain access to U.S. officials, which sprouted up well before the last election. But the recent events also illustrate how Russia’s efforts have advanced.

Figliuzzi said they show a “logical evolution or morphing of methodology to exploit social media in a way that is far more effective and potentially damaging” than the spy ring rolled up in 2010.

“We watched a sleeper cell of ten people for ten years that didn’t come close to the impact of a few thousand ads and posts on FB, Twitter, Google and Instagram,” he said.

Bill Clinton’s big check

A day after the arrests of the sleeper ring, another event captured the FBI’s attention.

Thousands of miles away in Russia, former President Clinton collected a $500,000 check for giving a 90-minute speech to Renaissance Capital, a Kremlin-connected bank, then scored a meeting with Putin himself.

The check caught the attention of FBI agents, especially with Hillary Clinton having recently returned from meetings in Russia, and her department working on a variety of issues where Moscow had an interest, records show.

One issue was American approval of the Russian nuclear company Rosatom’s purchase of a Canadian company called Uranium One, which controlled 20 percent of America’s strategic uranium reserves. State was one of more than a dozen federal agencies that needed to weigh in, and a Clinton deputy was handling the matter.

The second issue was the Russian company TENEX’s desire to score a new raft of commercial nuclear sales to U.S. companies. TENEX for years was selling uranium recycled from old Soviet warheads to the United States. But that deal was coming to an end and now it needed a new U.S. market.

And the third was a promise Secretary Clinton herself made to Russian leaders to round up support in America’s Silicon Valley for then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s dream for a new high-tech hub outside Moscow known as Skolkovo. A team of venture capitalists had been dispatched to Moscow just a few weeks before Bill Clinton landed his payday, records show.

“We have 40,000 Russians living in Silicon Valley in California. We would be thrilled if 40,000 Russians were working in whatever the Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley is, providing global economic competition, taking the internet and technology to the next level,” Hillary Clinton said at the time, according to a State Department transcript. She added that the business executives she dispatched to Putin’s homeland had Twittered their way through Russia.

The bank that paid Bill Clinton was promoting the Uranium One deal’s stock. And the former president entertained – though he never followed through with – meeting with two Russian figures who had ties to the nuclear sales and the Silicon Valley deals as well, State Department records show.

Angel Urena, the official spokeswoman for the former president, told The Hill that Bill Clinton never discussed the issues pending before his wife’s department when he was in Russia and that the money he collected for himself and his charitable efforts never influenced his wife’s decision-making.

Another investigation

Away from Bill Clinton’s check and the breaking news of a spy ring, the FBI had another major investigation underway where the Clinton name was surfacing.

Since 2009, the FBI had an undercover informant gathering evidence of a massive bribery and kickback scheme inside the Russian nuclear energy firm TENEX and its American arm TENAM.

Years later, FBI agents would help the Justice Department bring charges against the Russian nuclear industry’s point man in the United States, TENEX director Vadim Mikerin, as well as a Russian financier and an American trucking executive whose company moved Russian uranium around the United States.

But as the informant gathered evidence of the bribery scheme in early 2010, he began to hear a familiar name crop up in conversations. The Russians kept talking about ways they could win access to or favor with the Clintons, and the informant kept reporting it back to his FBI handlers.

The informant has never been publicly identified, but his lawyer told The Hill on Friday he can shed significant light to Congress on what the Russians were doing to try to win favorable treatment from the Obama administration.

“I can confirm that my client while working undercover for the FBI and in the employ of the Russian energy firm TENEX witnessed numerous, detailed conversations in which Russian actors described their efforts to lobby, influence or ingratiate themselves with the Clintons in hopes of winning favorable uranium decisions from the Obama administration,” attorney Victoria Toensing said.

“Unfortunately, he cannot at the present time disclose the specifics of that evidence he reported to the agents in real time because of an NDA he signed with the bureau. But we are working with Congress to find a means in the future for him to transmit the important information he possesses,” she added.

There are some public records that show what TENEX was trying to do inside the United States.

The Russian firm between 2009 and 2011 hired two Washington consulting firms to help it win Obama administration approval for policies and contracts that opened up billions in new nuclear fuel sales for TENEX, foreign agent registration records show. Those firms were never implicated in any wrongdoing in court records, and were just doing contract work to expand the Russian company’s commercial nuclear sales inside the United States.

The lobbying work was perfectly legal, focusing on agencies like State, Commerce and Energy that supervised the U.S.-Russia nuclear relationship. But once again, a connection to the Clintons emerged.

One of the firms TENEX hired in 2010 was providing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in support to the Clinton Global Initiative, starting in 2008.