Chris' Fish Place

I'm reading it so you don't have to.  

Edition: I am using the Brown Books Publishing Group Edition because it was cheap.  It has a foreword by Lt. Col. Allen B. West (Ret.), and an introduction by Hon. Dan Boren.  One is Republican, one a Democrat.  Neither one seems very happy about the current state of politics.  Because this kindle edition does not use page numbers, I will use location numbers.  ALl typos are my mistakes.

Cool, Brown Books including a link so we can compare the original document with your transcription.  Well done.

So “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion” (307).  FBI started investigating in July 2016 – “whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities” (315).

Russia interfered via social media with a campaign that supported Donald J Trump and attacked Clinton (323).  The report itself uses the word disparaged.  Russia also targeted the computers of various Clinton employees and volunteers (323).   (It seems that this will be a large amount of the personal redacted bits).

“The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” but “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” (330).   – This seems to be a bit different than what Barr reported. 

The report goes on to note that the investigators used the framework of conspiracy law as opposed to the “concept of collusion” (338).  Collusion wasn’t used because it is not a term in Federal law, apparently (338).  Investigators using the term coordinated.  The report notes:

“We understood coordination to require an agreement -tacit or express- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference.  That requires more than two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election inference activities” (344-46).

This is an important difference in terms.  Not only because Trump’s “no collusion” claim is a bit wrong, but there does seem to be a grayish area here.  It may not legally be bad fish, but it is bad fish.

Ex. Summery to Vol 1

Internet Research Agency (IRA) -backing from St. Petersburg, started the operation, social media campaign.  It gets funding from Yevgeny Prigozhin who supposedly has ties to Putin (356)

IRA sent employees to US in 2014 to gather intelligence (356).  The process that the IRA used, it called information warfare (356).  It did this to help Trump and harm Clinton (364) and used advertisements, supposedly brought using the names of the US people and groups and even staged rallies (364)

It is important to note “The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. person conspired or coordinated with the IRA” (364).

Russia also used hacking and release of hacked materials.  This started in early 2016 (364) and was done by Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) (373).

In Mar 2016, emails, including those of Podesta were hacked, and the DCCC and DNC were hacked in April.  (373).  GRU posted material online and passed material to Wikileaks (373).  Notes that Trump Campaign welcome the publication of the material by Wikileaks (373).  There is a bit redacted and then “forecast to senior Campaign officials that Wikileaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton” (380).  Redaction is due to “Harm to an ongoing matter”. 

Wikileaks released Podesta’s emails less than an hour after the video of Trump admitting to sexual harassing women [the Grab Them BY the Pussy video], (380).  Homeland security later notes that the theft and disclosure were to interfere with the election (437).

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” (389)

Apparently Russian contacts included business connections, invitations for Trump to meet Putin, offers of assistance, and for representatives to meet and discussion pro-Russian policy (389).  This seems to have started in 2015 with Trump Tower Moscow (397).  This finding should at the very least count as conflict of interest in terms of the Trump presidency.

In 2016 Georg Papadopoulos, the foreign policy advisor for Trump’s campaign, contacted Joseph Mifsud, a professor in London who had connections to Russia (397).  Mifsud said the Russians had dirt on Clinton and supposedly Papadopoulos suggested that the Russian government could help the Trump Campaign by releasing the emails (405).  They tried to arrange a meeting, but it didn’t happen (405).  IN June 2016 it was the meeting at the Trump Tower, and also notes Page’s acquainted with two Russian intelligence officers (414).  Wikileaks released emails in July 2016.

In August 2016, Konstantin Kilimnik met with Paul Manafort.  Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence (421).  Purpose of the meeting was to present a peace treaty for the Ukraine that would basically give Russia control of Eastern Ukraine (421).  Additionally, Manafort shared polling data with Kilimnik (429).

Right after the election, Russian officials reached out to the new administration (437), this included Kirill Dmitriev, who is executive of Russian Sovereign Wealth fund (437).  He was introduced to Erik Prince, associate of Bannon (437).  Dmitriev worked a friend of Kushner (not on the transition team) and came up with a “reconciliation” plan to bring Russia and US together (444).  Supposedly cleared by Putin (444), Kushner than passed it on to Bannon and Tillerson (444).  So it isn’t just the family, it is friends of the family making policy.  I feel so safe now.

                When the Obama administration-imposed sanctions on Russia because of the election inference, incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn asked the Russia via the Russian ambassador to not hit back (444). This was passed up to the highest levels and Flynn’s words carried the weight for it to go into effect (452).  See - bad fish.

Report then notes the standards that are being used in terms of finding a crime (i.e. the ability to win a case).  Has concluded that the Russian actions were illegal (478).  Then something is redacted for personal privacy.  The report says that about Trump/Russians “while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges” (486).  This includes charging someone has an unregistered agent for Russia (486).  Then notes that individuals lied to investigators (494).  More importantly, it is noted that important information was deleted or communicated using a program that would not save it.  

The next person that mentions Clinton’s emails will be shot.  This is worse than bad fish.  Basically couldn't find anything because it had been deleted.  Barr left that out.

Mueller ends this section with “the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in new light) the events described in the report” (519).

This is hardly a sterling endorsement of innocence.

The Special Counsel’s Investigation Section

                When the conformation of the investigation of Cohen, Gates, and Stone are discussed there is a heavy amount of personal privacy redaction (see around 558) Why is this?

     Notes that it builds on work started by the FBI in general (566).  The team was made up at the high points of 19 attorney (14 on detail or assignment from Justice Department; 5 from private practice), filter team of lawyers and personal from the FBI as well as admin staff and working alongside 40 FBI agents (583).  There were at least 2,800 subpoenas, around 500 search and seizure warrants, 230 plus orders for communication, 13 requests to foreign governments, interviewed around 300 people and had around 50 orders for the authorization of pen registers (592).  I really don’t like the use of almost.  What the hell does that mean?  To an Ent, one is almost 80.

There was no evidence that showed an US person working knowingly with the IRA (the Internet Research Agency) (626).  Between Jan 2015-Aug 2017, the IRA posted 80,000 times and possibly reached 126 people (626).  It had 3, 814 twitter accounts at least.  1.4 million people believed to have been in contact with such an account (626).

IRA’s U.S. operations part of Project Lakhta (649).  IN 2016, IRA employees recruited people in the US by claiming to be US activists.  People were recruited to hold up happy birthday signs on Prigozhin’s birthday (662).  IRA employees entered the US after lying about reasons for visit (687).  Accounts were created that were pretended to be accounts of US citizens or social activist groups (697).  By Feb 2016, documents in IRA written to ordering support of Trump and attacks on Clinton (709).  IRA purchased over 3,500 advertisements on Facebook (733).  Also, IRA operated the Russian bots (758).

Tweets and posts from these IRA controlled accounts were quoted and like by various media works and Trump officials (768-781).  IRA also organized rallies (781).  Barr’s redactions seem to be less served when talking about the IRA trying to gain support and aid of black social justice groups.  Funny that.  I think you could figure it out quite easily.

IRA had two different connections to members of Trump campaign (830). “The investigation identified no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton Campaign” (830).  The two methods include retweeting and asking for assistance in coordinating rallies (830).  The reaction of Trump Officials to the IRA tweets and post was monitored by the IRA (853). 

In June 2016, IRA tried to contact Trump campaign people to coordinate pro-Trump rallies.  There is no evidence of the people contact knowing that it was by an agent of a foreign government (858).

Russian Hacking Section

April 2016 GRU hacked the DCCC and DNC.  Information released via DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 as well as Wikileaks (1084), timing was done to interfere with the election (1084).  GRU used two military units (26165 and 74455) (1092).   74455 engaged in cyber operations (1101).  Accessed gained to DCCC by April 12 (1124).  Data stolen included information about the general elections (1155).  Guccifer 2.0 was used to release information to reporters. 

Notes that Wikileaks had expressed opposition to Clinton (1248), this includes calling Clinton a “sadistic sociopath” (qtd on 1247).  Which shows that Assange is not a reporter, doesn’t it?  Also notes that Wikileaks wanted to influence the election “because we want to be seen to be a resource/player in the US election” (qtd on 1256).

Notes that Wikileaks tried to hide where the emails and information came from.  This is where the Seth Rich comes from (1326).  This denial continued even after the US intelligence community report (1335).

After Trump’s calling on Russia to find Clinton’s emails, the GRU targeted her personal office (1352).  They don’t know how the GRU got the personal addresses but it did not seem the personal office had been targeted before (1352).

In addition to Clinton, GRU targeted people involved in elections, including state boards, and voter registration software.  (1361).  It gained access to a county government in Florida (1389).

There is a huge section about Michael Cohen that is redacted. And here I stop for the day.