 A memo written by the Democratic minority of the House Intelligence Committee, released Saturday with the approval of the FBI and Department of Justice, disputes the narrative put forth in the memo released February 2 by the supposedly-recused Republican chairman of the committee, Representative Devin Nunes. The rebuttal memo primarily deals with the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant and two extensions that the Department of Justice obtained on Carter Page, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The Nunes memo asserted that the FBI and Department of Justice improperly obtained the FISA warrant by using information contained in the report of a British citizen working for an American company hired by individuals politically aligned with Hillary Clinton. Page was already known to investigators before he joined the Trump campaign, due to several instances of Russian operatives attempting to recruit Page to spy for the Russian government. An important passage in the rebuttal memo explains that by September 2016, “... the FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into [redacted] individuals linked to the Trump campaign: [redacted] and former campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page. As Committee testimony bears out, the FBI would have continued its investigation, including against [redacted] individuals, even if it had never received information from Steele, never applied for a FISA warrant against Page, or if the FISC had rejected the application.” Footnote 7 in the memo reveals what is likely the list of Trump campaign officials who were, as of September 2016, under investigation by the FBI. mo makes clear that five members of the Trump campaign were under investigation by the FBI for being probable agents of the Russian government:
“FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’ Case reopened” The Comey letter was released on Twitter 19 minutes later by Fox News analyst Brit Hume.
“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information.”
Clearly, there was evidence in October 2016 that the Trump campaign needed to be investigated, and was in fact under investigation.
I have some questions: Why did the FBI tell the American people about the Clinton investigation, but not about the investigation into high-level Trump campaign officials? Why did the FBI find Clinton emails, which turned out to be copies of emails the FBI had already seen, end up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop? Why did Jason Chaffetz announce on Twitter that the investigation into Clinton was reopened? Where did Brit Hume get the letter to Congressional members? The minority memo from the House Intelligence Committee can be read here. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4387022/Democrats-memo-rebutting-Republican-claims-of.pdf The letter sent to Congressional committee heads announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation can be seen here.  The New York Times article from October 31, 2016 can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html The Mother Jones article from the same day can be found here. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/ The announcement of the FBI closing the Clinton investigation July 5, 2016 can be found here. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system Note: Thanks to former CIA officer Ned Price for pointing out the information contained in Footnote 7.
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 National Public Radio reported today: “A memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance authority became public on Friday after a push by House Republicans. President Trump authorized the memo's release, even after the FBI expressed "grave concerns" about the ‘accuracy’ of the document, authored by House intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.” NPR release the text of the memo with annotations from their Justice Department, national security, and White House reporters. The annotated text can be found here. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/02/582828461/fact-check-read-the-gop-memo-released-by-house-intelligence-committee Some Republicans have argued that the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government operatives is based solely on the so-called “Steele dossier,” a set of field documents created by Christopher Steele, retired head of the Russia desk in Great Britain’s intelligence service, MI6. According to an NPR story from today’s “All Things Considered” program, the memo undercuts that argument. “Instead, it says, overtures by Russian operatives to a junior campaign adviser are what sparked the FBI's counterintelligence investigation. George Papadopoulos — who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those contacts — ‘triggered’ the opening of the investigation, the memo says.” Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October 2017 of lying to the FBI about his contacts with agents of the Russian government. The “All Things Considered” story can be found here. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/02/582713363/memo-russian-overtures-to-trump-aide-triggered-fbi-investigation While some GOP lawmakers have asserted that the FBI’s interest in Trump campaign aide Carter Page began with the Steele dossier, it is important to note the Page was a focus of FBI attention at least as far back as 2013, when Russian agents in the United States attempted to recruit him for their government. A federal Intelligence Surveillance Court granted the FBI a surveillance warrant on Page in October 2016. Three 90-day extensions were granted. Five senior Justice Department and FBI officials signed off on the three requests for extensions. The memo released today states that all the requests for extension were approved by a federal judge. This would not have occurred unless the warrant was yielding information useful to counterintelligence or a criminal investigation. A Washington Post article explains the issues surrounding the FBI surveillance of Carter Page. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/memo-points-to-fbis-ongoing-interest-in-trump-adviser-carter-page/2018/02/02/89bfdee2-077c-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.eeb1adfeedba Photo source: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS testified to the House Intelligence Committee on November 8 and 14, 2017. The committee voted unanimously to release the testimony today. Many experts are reporting that the testimony is fascinating to read. The testimony covers the facts discovered as Simpson's firm began looking into the financial dealings of the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign. Simpson asserts that he was very surprised when he began to investigate and found so many potential cases of money laundering: " ... we threw a line in the water and Moby Dick came back, and we didn't know what to do with it at first." The testimony can be found here. https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=850 The documents can be found in their entirety below.  Both the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees held hearings November 1 to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which may be continuing to this day. The House Democrats released a list of more than 2700 social media accounts that Twitter has identified as linked to Russian intelligence agencies.
any Twitter users believe that the influence of Russian intelligence on the Twitter platform is much more widespread than the company has admitted. Bots, which are computer-driven accounts used to boost popularity of content, and trolls, which have a real person behind them (although often not the person represented in the profile) and can criticize, mock, or report targeted accounts for suspension, are common. Bots, which are computer-generated accounts, can appear to be real on casual inspection. They can answer simple questions and give general support or criticism. The comments can be activated by certain words or hashtags. Trolls come in a variety of forms. Some of them pretend to be Americans, but are actually working from another country. They can have a profile describing a "Christian grandmother with fibromyalgia," but actually the account is a 20 year-old man working at a troll farm in Saint Petersburg. A false identity is called a persona. Bot and troll accounts, which can work in coordination to target an account, can foment discord in several ways. Here are a few examples:
My own experience is that turning in accounts that violated the Twitter terms of service got no response until November 3 - two days after the Intelligence Committee hearings. I got no responses to numerous reports of harassment I observed between November 2016 and November 2017. Then I received notice of 7 suspended accounts that had violated the terms of service in the week of November 1. Twitter deleted the accounts on the list they provided House Intelligence, so interested individuals cannot examine these accounts to see their characteristics. I ran the User ID numbers near in number to the Russia-linked accounts through tweeterid.com, a reverse look-up service. I then searched Twitter for the handles associated with those ID numbers. Most of the accounts were "blue eggs" - accounts with generic names, no photos and no profile. Most of the accounts had never Tweeted, or had Tweeted only a few times. Most of the accounts has been formed in 2009 or 2012. The collage of screen captures of some of the accounts are shown above. What does this show? These accounts appear to be dormant. They were created years ago, and nothing has been done with them yet. Are these nefarious, Russian intelligence accounts? There is no way for me to tell, but it seems that Twitter did not search very hard to identify accounts that are not "authentic" - their word for accounts associated with real people. These may be innocent accounts made by individuals who never used them. They may also be silent accounts, waiting for someone to activate them and adopt personas that boost content or bully real people. They may also be part of a botnet, a group of bots used to boost the popularity of troll accounts. More information is needed, and Twitter is likely not finished testifying to Congress. In the words of Representative Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Commitee: "Russia exploited real vulnerabilities that exist across online platforms and we must identify, expose, and defend ourselves against similar covert influence operations in the future. The companies here today must play a central role as we seek to better protect legitimate political expression, while preventing cyberspace from being misused by our adversaries. " The Russia-linked Twitter handles submitted to the House Intelligence Committee by Twitter can be found here. https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/hpsci-11-1/hpsci-minority-exhibit-b.htm Members of both committees, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, expressed disappointment that the social media companies represented (Twitter, Google, and Facebook) sent their attorneys, rather than the CEOs coming to the hearings. Politico reported that Senator Mark Warner said Twitter's "actions have not matched their words in terms of grasping the seriousness of the threat ... I'm more than a bit surprised, in light of all the public interest from the subject, that anyone from the Twitter team would think that the presentation made to Senate staff today even began to answer the kinds of questions that we'd asked," he told reporters after the staff briefing. "So there's a lot more work they have to do." The Politico article can be found here. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/28/twitter-russia-today-advertisements-243268 Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said Thursday, November 9, that he is willing to testify to Congress, but that he had not been invited. This is inaccurate - according to Recode, "lawmakers previously and repeatedly called on Dorsey and other tech executives to make the trip to Capitol Hill — and they’ve apparently declined." The Recode article can be found here. https://www.recode.net/2017/11/9/16631230/twitter-jack-dorsey-congress-russia-testify-lawyers-new-york-times-dealbook  There were three open Congressional hearings this week addressing Russian interference in U.S. social media. Google, Facebook, and Twitter sent lawyers to represent them. Congressional leaders expressed clear dissatisfaction with the lack of company Chief Executive Officers at the hearings, given the seriousness of the issue.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, at Wednesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, told the representatives that she doesn’t think they get it. She said she went home disappointed from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the day before: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/extremist-content-and-russian-disinformation-online-working-with-tech-to-find-solutions While you might not ordinarily think Congressional hearings are riveting television, these three hearings present the information that shows how far the Russian information operation went in an effort to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. It is fascinating to see the scope of the effort to use divisive social issues to confuse, frighten and pit Americans against each other. Disinformation was used on both sides of social issues to create a wedge between fellow citizens. All voters should see what was done to us as a nation. The hearings are linked here. Tuesday, October 31: Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online: Working with Tech to Find Solutions” https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/extremist-content-and-russian-disinformation-online-working-with-tech-to-find-solutions Wednesday, November 1: Senate intelligence Committee Hearing “Social Media Influence in the 2016 U.S. Elections https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-social-media-influence-2016-us-elections House Intelligence Committee Hearing “Russia Investigative Task Force Open Hearing with Social Media Companies” Opening statements and prepared testimony can be found here. https://intelligence.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=814 The hearing can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=42c9oMBggIk The many exhibits used in the Senate Intelligence hearing can be accessed at the Senate committee website. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-social-media-influence-2016-us-elections An article from Wired summarizes the three hearings. https://www.wired.com/story/six-revealing-moments-from-the-second-day-of-russia-hearings/ An article from Engadget contains examples of some of the propaganda released by the Internet Research Agency. https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/01/house-intel-committee-releases-russia-backed-facebook-election-a/ The Hamilton 68 dashboard for tracking social media topics on Twitter, created by Securing Democracy and referenced in the hearings, can be found here. http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ |
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