The blogger behind incredible claims that the FBI had a warrant to examine the Trump campaign's communications is facing serious questions about her legitimacy after making a series of conspiracy-theory claims about elaborate Russian plots that appear to have little basis in reality.

Louise Mensch is a British politician turned New York blogger who reported on the website Heat Street that the FBI was granted a FISA court warrant to access communications made by Trump's team during the presidential campaign.

On November 7, she wrote: 'Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of "U.S. persons" in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia.'

At first the story got little traction but in the months since the election has been increasingly recycled by other outlets until it finally caught the President’s eye, helping spark his fateful Saturday morning Tweet accusing his predecessor of having his wires tapped at Trump Tower.

And although her story has yet to be independently confirmed, the White House has cited it as part of the evidence behind President Donald Trump's incendiary Twitter claim that Barack Obama 'wiretapped' him during the election - including at a press briefing by Sean Spicer last week.

Claim: Louise Mensch used her blog to allege that the 15-year-old girl sexted by Anthony Weiner did not actually exist and was a front for Russian hackers. Her claim is one of many she has made - the most high-profile being that the FBI obtained a warrant to examine the communications of members of the Trump campaign, which was highlighted last week by Sean Spicer

It was not confirmed by the FBI Director James Comey, or the Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, when they appeared at the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

Mensch, who was a 'chick-lit' novelist then spent two years as a British MP before quitting to relocate to NYC with her rock-group-managing husband, has refused to reveal her source.

But she has happily positioned herself in interviews and on TV as a fearless crusader for the truth who believes Trump's voters are 'the scum of the earth'.

She has called the president 'a tool of Vladimir Putin' and spoken of her 'patriotic and conservative duty before anything else happens to help as best I can stop a Russian spy from entering the White House'.

And speaking on MSNBC - a channel on which she has appeared frequently - she has called the president an 'American zero', 'draft-dodger', said of his appearance that he has 'tiny, short, stumpy fingers'.

However her article was spoken about at length by Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, during last Thursday's daily press briefing, as he defended the president's claim that he was 'wiretapped'.

And this weekend Mensch wrote an op-ed in the New York Times which repeated her claim - only for New York Times news reporters to publicly say that they had no evidence it existed.

Now an investigation by Dailymail.com raises disturbing new questions about the accuracy of Mensch's reporting, with allegations that she has defamed people on Twitter and even claimed that a neighborhood florist is a front for the Kremlin.

CITED BY SPICER Sean Spicer used the Heat Street article in his press briefing on Thursday March 16, during a lengthy defense of the president's tweet that Obama 'wiretapped' him. This is what he said. 'On November 11th, 2016, days after the election, Heat Street reported: Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community had confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought and was granted a FISA warrant in October, giving counter-surveillance intelligence permission to examine the activities of U.S. persons in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia. The first request, which sources say named Trump, was denied back in June. But the second was drawn more narrowly and granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign and its alleged links to two banks - SVB bank and Russia's Alfa-Bank. Sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full context of related documents that concern U.S. persons. Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed that the FBI sought and was granted a FISA warrant in October giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activity of U.S. persons in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia. They go on: The FISA warrant was granted in connection with investigation of suspected activities between the server and two banks. However, it is thought that the intelligence community that the warrant covers any U.S. person connected to this U.N. investigation, and thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as media surrogates.' Advertisement

Most damningly of all, a lengthy blog-post outlining an outlandish conspiracy theory that the 15-year-old girl who had an online relationship with Anthony Weiner does not actually exist – and was a fake persona created by Russian hackers as part of an intricate plot to sink Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, can be revealed as 'error-ridden nonsense'.

It was Dailymail.com, which first exposed Weiner's relationship with the high-schooler last September, which led to the FBI publicly reopening its investigation into Hillary's Clinton email scandal at a critical time in the campaign.

Many people in the Clinton camp have openly blamed the intervention by FBI director James Comey for costing her the election.

Not surprisingly the DailyMail went to extraordinary lengths to confirm the Weiner story, including meeting with the girl Mensch claims does not exist and her father and verifying her age and identity during an extensive reporting process.

Mensch's theory was outlined in a 3,300-word blog post that she claimed offered 'direct evidence' that 'members the Trump campaign were involved in this conspiracy.'

Further down we reprint her allegations in full, along with the DailyMail.com's comprehensive rebuttal.

Mensch wrote that she had evidence that 'Vladimir Putin directed the entire attack' and 'Weiner was sexting not with a 15 year old girl but with a hacker, working for Russia.'

According to her theory, a hacking group called 'Crackas With Attitude' messaged Weiner pretending to be a teenage girl, and later leaked the conversations to prompt a criminal investigation of Weiner and his laptop.

Meanwhile, Mensch claims, a Russian hacker known as 'Nikulin' planted Hillary Clinton's emails on Weiner's computer so 'Russian moles' inside the FBI had grounds to reopen the Clinton email investigation shortly before the November presidential election.

The most significant error in the post is her claim that the 15-year-old girl did not exist and did not exchange messages with Weiner.

Dailymail.com extensively verified the girl's age and identity, corroborated the messages she and Weiner exchanged, and interviewed her and her father on camera. The girl has since spoken to other news outlets, including Buzzfeed.

Additionally, the U.S. Attorney in New York and the New York Police Department are investigating.

Prosecutors are weighing child pornography charges and lawyers for Weiner are pursuing a plea deal, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

The errors range from the trivial to the serious.

Beyond claiming the girl did not exist, the many things Mensch also got wrong include:

Confusing James Comey and Anthony Weiner as the person to whom the 15-year-old addressed a letter;

Wrongly claiming that two hackers bombarded thousands of police officers with recorded phonecalls - as well as mis-stating when they were arrested and one of their ages;

Misquoting a former Congresswoman, Michelle Bachman, and a journalist turned White House adviser, Julia Hahn;

Claiming that one of the balls on the night of the presidential inauguration on January 21 took place before New Year's Eve;

Claiming that the Trump campaign has a member or staffer called Moishe Lee; no such person appears to exist;

Claiming that the Cyrillic letters for USSR look like the Roman alphabet's CWA - they are in fact CCCP.

A DailyMail.com spokesman said: 'We can't speak for everything Mrs Mensch has reported but so far as her piece about the Weiner story goes, it is an error-ridden farrago of fantasy and nonsense. Fake news hardly begins to cover it.'

Mensch has also claimed the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart was assassinated on orders from Vladimir Putin.

The supposed assassination paved the way for Stephen Bannon, now a top aide to Donald Trump, to take leadership of the late muckraker's news outlet.

Breitbart's death from a heart attack in 2012 at age 43 spawned conspiracy theories that he was assassinated for political reasons – a notion that conflicts with the autopsy report and accounts from those closest to him.

Russian front in the flowers: Mensch speculated that a mobile florist - New York City only has one, Uprooted - was being used by the Russians to hack her

Fact-free: Mensch suggested that the TWCWiFi network was being used as a Russian 'middleman' hack, where communications are unknowingly intercepted by a third party. In fact it is a free public WiFi hotspot provided by Spectrum, which took over the Time Warner Cable (TWC) brand in New York in 2016

Conservative firebrand: Andrew Breitbart set up the Breitbart website before dying in Los Angeles in 2012, aged just 43. Mensch claims he was 'murdered by Putin'. His family and friends have said he died of heart problems, as did a coroner's report

'Absolutely': Mensch leaves no room for doubt on what she thinks about the death of Breitbart. However a coroner concluded that his death was of natural causes

Orson Bean, Breitbart's father-in-law told media outlets including the New York Times that the journalist had a history of heart problems.

One of his close friends, Bill Whittle, also disclosed after Breitbart's death that the conservative firebrand had suffered a previous serious heart attack about a year earlier.

According to a coroner's report, CNN said, the cause of death was a heart attack stemming from coronary disease, and foul play was not suspected.

Mensch also raised eyebrows after claiming the Kremlin has been targeting her with hackers and surveillance around her home.

She lines in a four-story townhouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which she shares with her three children from her first marriage and her second husband Peter Mensch, the manager of bands including Metallica and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

She speculated during an interview with The Sunday Times that the Russians might be using a mobile florist in her Manhattan neighborhood as a front to intercept her emails.

She had previously suggested that Russia set up a fake WiFi network near her home using the name TWCWiFi and offering free access.

In fact it was a free WiFi hotspot for the public and belongs to Spectrum, formerly known as Time Warner Cable, the company told Dailymail.com.

The two florists have been operating New York's Uprooted, only curbside bouquet business since 2015, and launched it through a Kickstarter campaign. They were unavailable for comment.

Mensch has also set her sights on ordinary American Twitter users who have little connection to international relations.

They include Jennifer Perillo, a conservative food blogger who she labeled a 'Putinbot' and a Kristin Winfree, a conservative Texas mom who Mensch declared was really a phony Russian account involved in a plot to hack Anthony Weiner.

They both declined to comment. But other Twitter users based outside the U.S. said they were considering legal action against Mensch.

One Twitter user, freelance writer Thomas Theiner, said he has faced a barrage of harassment on the social media site after Mensch sent out a flurry of tweets calling him a 'Kremlin fake oppo troll.'

Theiner, who said he lived in Ukraine for several years after working for the Italian army, said he has no idea where her accusations came from.

He told DailyMail.com he has been looking for a libel attorney, and claims he's not alone.

'I'm the fifth [person] I know of that wants to sue her,' Theiner said, adding that he believes her media appearances boost her credibility.

'I wouldn't give a damn about her if she didn't go to her followers and go on TV and say she catches Russian spies,' he added. 'It's obnoxious stupidity from her.'

HOW MENSCH TWEETED CLAIM WEINER SEXTING VICTIM DIDN'T EXIST - AND 'ABUSED' OTHER USERS

Powers: Mensch told the BBC Sunday Politics interviewer Andrew Neil that she could see 'patterns and connections' because of her ADHD. She then said that hat she wrote on her blog was 'reporting' but what she wrote on Twitter was 'belief.'

Ariana Gic, an independent political analyst focusing on Ukraine and Russia, said Mensch and her supporters subjected her to 'psychotic abuse' after the former British PM called her a 'Kremlin troll' who was 'shilling' for Putin.

Gic, who insisted she is vehemently anti-Putin, said she was singled out by Mensch after criticizing corruption in the Ukrainian government.

'I do really feel very strongly that she owes me an apology and everyone that she's attacking warrantlessly and without merit,' said Gic.

'If I have to go as far as filing a claim against her, suing her for libel, then this will form part of the future claim.'

Mensch's reporting has come under scrutiny from others.

Despite having appeared recently on MSNBC to discuss her Heat Street claims, one of its contributors launched a withering attack - despite agreeing that Putin tried to hack the election.

Malcolm Nance, a former Navy intelligence and counter-terrorism officer and the author of a book called The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election, told the Daily Beast: 'She's bats*** crazy, OK? She is a fruit loop of the highest order.'

It has also been scrutinized in the UK, including by BBC interviewer Andrew Neil earlier this month on the broadcaster's Sunday Politics show.

MENSCH'S EMPLOYER RESPONDS Noah Kotch, publisher and managing editor of Heat Street, emailed a statement on Mensch to DailyMail.com, saying that claims on Mensch's blog are nothing to do with her employer. 'Heat Street stands by the Nov. 7th story as we have for the past four and a half months. Heat Street is a product of News Corp. / Dow Jones. 'Patribotics is not a News Corp. product. Louise is presently Vice President of Creative and Strategy at News Corp.' Advertisement

Neil asked Mensch whether she had become 'delusional' after she claimed to have developed 'temporary superpowers', which she said were in fact an ability to see 'patterns and connections' because of her ADHD.

Mensch also told Neil that what she wrote on her blog was 'reporting' but what she wrote on Twitter was 'belief.'

'A belief and a report are two different things,' she insisted, 'and no matter how often you say they are the same, they will never be the same.'

Mensch Tweets dozens of times per day.

The accuracy of Mensch's most high-profile story, that the FBI requested a FISA court warrant to investigate Trump's ties to Russia, is still unknown.

When it was published in November by Heat Street – a startup inside News Corp, the publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch – Mensch was its leader.

But the following month she moved to another role in News Corp, 'incubating several further digital products', Politico reported.

The story first received renewed attention after Trump accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his communications during the campaign - culminating in Sean Spicer citing it on Thursday.

Other news outlets have yet to find firm evidence of the FISA warrant. Obama-era officials have vehemently denied Trump's specific 'wiretapping' claim.

And last week the bipartisan leadership of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees said there was 'no indication' Trump had been wiretapped by Obama.

That was followed by Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, quoting Mensch's report on the Heat Street website as one of the reasons to justify the president's tweet.

Mensch did not respond to requests for comment by DailyMail.com on our investigation.

It is unknown if the White House has investigated Mensch's credibility as a source – or indeed her motivation.

'As soon as Donald Trump is impeached, I'm deleting my Twitter account,' she has said.

Medium: Mensch no longer works for Heat Street, where she aired her incredible claims about the FBI getting a FISA warrant - and has published further allegations on her own blog

LINE BY LINE, THE ERRORS IN MENSCH'S CLAIM THAT ANTHONY WEINER WASN'T SEXTING A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL, HE WAS IN TOUCH WITH RUSSIA BACKED HACKERS

DailyMail.com publishes a detailed examination of Mensch's piece and reality. We have redacted a claim about where the girl is from as we are protecting her identity. The redaction is not an indication of whether Mensch's claim is true or false.

The Carolina Conspiracy

FEBRUARY 14, 2017 ~ PATRIBOTICS

Or, How Vladimir Putin Catfished A US Election With the Collusion of Team Trump

Did Russia invent a criminal case against Anthony Weiner – so their hacker Nikulin could plant Hillary's emails on his computer?

It was the Comey letter that handed the election to Trump. Even if corrupt elements in the FBI Field Office in New York, penetrated by Russia, forced Comey's hand – even if Russian hacker Nikulin did plant emails on Anthony Weiner's computer – there had to be a 'separate criminal case' in the first place for the NYPD and FBI to go looking, right?

But what if there wasn't?

What if Vladimir Putin directed the entire attack – not via a '15 year old girl' from REDACTED but by a hardened group of adult hackers from that state who had penetrated the emails of Director Brennan of the CIA, and doxed and attacked hundreds of FBI and law enforcement personnel?

DailyMail.com responds:

There is no doubt over the existence of the 15-year-old girl and no doubt that she was sexted by Anthony Weiner.

DailyMail.com took extensive steps to verify her identity, and especially her age, and did so from her learner's permit.

We spoke at length face-to-face with the girl and her father, and published a video of our interview. We also published all of the messages which she provided.

While we are not identifying the girl or our sources, we are publishing here a timeline which shows the length of the investigation we undertook before making public the revelations.

We were first alerted in early August that Anthony Weiner, whose sexting history was well known, had been sexting which was said to be an unnamed woman.

While working on this investigation, the New York Post revealed on August 29 his sexting relationship with a 40-something divorcee.

On the day of that revelation, a source disclosed to DailyMail.com that the woman in the relationship DailyMail.com was investigating was a different person to the one revealed by the New York Post.

On August 30 Huma Abedin announced her separation from Weiner, and that day a source told DailyMail.com the woman we were investigating was in fact an underage girl.

As part of the continuing investigation, DailyMail.com approached the father of the underage girl whom we believed to be Weiner's victim and received confirmation that was true.

On September 1 we conducted an on-camera interview with both the father and his 15-year-old daughter.

This was only the start of further work to verify the allegations. That process involved fact-checking, verifying the underage girl's identity and age, and the veracity of the messages.

It also involved approaching Anthony Weiner for comment, which he provided and which we published in full. We published the results of our investigation on September 21.

We have not disclosed any aspect of her identity and we are not doing so. We are not confirming or denying Mensch's claim about her home state.

And what if, after making Carter Page's recruiter Jeff Sessions Attorney General, Donald Trump repeated the trick by making the 'prosecutor' of those Carolina hackers Acting AG – then changing the order of succession at Justice to cement him as number two?

Mensch is referring to Dana Boente. He is not 'cemented' as number two, he is Acting Deputy Attorney General. The White House announced its intent to nominate Rod Rosenstein as Deputy Attorney General on January 31. The Senate held a confirmation hearing for the nominee on March 7. If confirmed, he will be second in line of succession at the Department of Justice.

In this story I exclusively report the connections between the USSR-CWA hacker group of North Carolina 'Crackas With Attitude' and the 'sexts with a 15 year old girl' REDACTED, that started the chain of events that led to James Comey's forced letter to Congress, including the fact that the '15 year old girl's 'email to Weiner' is in fact a series of plagiarized texts it is unlikely any 15 year old girl has read, including works by J.D. Salinger, David Foster Wallace, Charles Bukowski, and – yes – 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk.

There is also direct evidence that members of the Trump campaign were involved in this conspiracy and knew in advance what was coming – including Lara Trump, who visited Gaston, North Carolina, some days before she promised an 'October surprise' and 'tricks up our sleeve.'

Lara Trump did not visit the town of Gaston, North Carolina at any time in October.

Russia's Hacker Nikulin, Formspring, and Anthony Weiner

Russia, I believe, created, from scratch, the chain of events that forced James Comey's letter to Congress. All available data shows that it was the timing of this letter that handed the election to Donald Trump. On November 3rd, just before the election, the Russian plane MKATE and Putin's bagman Rybolovev met Donald Trump's campaign plane on the tarmac at Charlotte, North Carolina. By that time, events in North Carolina had swung the election to Mr. Trump.

In my first piece of work at Patribotics I laid out a unified theory on Russian active measures against the United States, including as part of it that Russia has a team of influencers inside the FBI Field Office in New York (the criminal division) and I regret to say, the NYPD, who work directly with Rudy Giuliani and General Flynn.

I drew readers' attention to the arrest in Prague of the Russian hacker, Yvgeny Nikulin. He was indicted on charges of hacking Dropbox, Linked in and Formspring in 2012-2013.

Formspring is the little-known sexting app that Anthony Weiner used for his sexting the first time around.

My theory was that Nikulin, on instructions from the Russian state, 'woke' or 'planted' a laptop of Anthony Weiner's via a virus which he placed on it through his prior hack of Formspring, and alerted Russia's moles and agents of influence in the FBI field office in New York, who subsequently 'leaked' to all and sundry that the emails had been found, and, by Rudy Giuliani's own testimony, pressured James Comey into sending the letter he did.

However, the emails were – nonetheless- found as part of an 'unrelated criminal investigation' into Weiner's sexting with a '15 year old girl'. The story of these 'sexts' broke Sep 21st in the Daily Mail with a byline from Alana Goodman.

Alleged to be fake: Mensch claims - without evidence and in a report littered with errors - that Anthony Weiner did not sext a 15-year-old but a group of hackers acting as a front for Putin

Who Was Weiner Actually Talking To?

I can exclusively report that there is ample evidence that suggests that Weiner was sexting not with a 15 year old girl but with a hacker, working for Russia, part of the North Carolina hacking group 'Crackas With Attitude', who hacked the head of the CIA, and a great many FBI agents, police officers, and other law enforcement officials.

There is evidence linking Russia's propaganda outlet Sputnik to both acts of hacking; and there is, therefore, grave reason to be concerned about Trump's choice of Dana Boente as Jeff Sessions' second-in-command at the Justice Department. Which he now is. For in a little-noticed Executive Order released this weekend, Trump altered the order of succession at the Justice Department in order to make Boente second to Sessions.

Two of the Americans involved in Crackas With Attitude were arrested and took a guilty plea in December.

The two were arrested on September 8 2016 and their pleas were entered in federal court on January 6, 2017, the Department of Justice has said.

And one of the prosecuting AGs on that case? Dana Boente.

Boente was United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, not an Attorney General.

As I have previously reported, Jeff Sessions was placed by Trump as Attorney General, I believe, for the sole reason of protecting Trump from impeachment and prosecution in the matter of Russia's hack on America. The placement of Boente as Sessions' number two ought to raise yet another red flag. For Dana Boente is listed as AG on the North Carolina Crackas With Attitude case.

If I am right on the theory which I report here – that Crackas With Attitude conspired with Russian moles within the FBI and NY in New York, with the encouragement of Sputnik, to invent a criminal case against Anthony Weiner in order that Russia's Nikulin could plant Hillary Clinton's emails on Weiner's now 'discoverable' laptop – then Messrs Trump and Bannon, above all other things, need the CWA case to go away really fast – and now its prosecutor Dana Boente finds himself number two to Jeff Sessions in Trump's Justice Department.

The publicly-available sworn testimony of the FBI Special Agent who investigated Crackas With Attitude at no point says that the two, who each lived with their respective parents, were linked to Russia. However the special agent testified that in a Twitter conversation Boggs said: 'I've been looking for evidence of aliens since Gary.' The identity of Gary is not disclosed.

Thus far, the term 'Russian hacking' as it relates to the US elections has been understood by the mainstream media to mean two things: the hack of the DNC and Republican politicians' emails, and the phishing attack on John Podesta, plus the subsequent release of emails obtained by those attacks through Russia's puppet organization, Wikileaks.

(To a lesser extent, the mainstream media also acknowledges that Russia backed and created a fleet of Twitter bots. They have not yet shown much sign of understanding that what is sloppily termed 'fake news' is in fact a coordinated Russian propaganda effort.)

But the Russian hack on the United States was, it seems far more direct than that.

It forced the Comey letter out of thin air. Using Weiner's sleazebag tendencies, Russia invented an underage 'victim of sexts' actually written by an adult hacker, and thus created a crime.

Then, with pliant moles in the NY FBI Field Office and NYPD, they seized the laptop. Nikulin planted Hillary's emails upon it. Russian moles in the FBI Field Office leaked, tweeted and threatened – and even Lara Trump (from North Carolina) boasted in advance that the 'October surprise' was coming.

From start to finish, Russia manipulated the Director of the FBI into sending his letter – which Jason Chaffetz leaked, by arrangement with the Trump camp, I believe, in order directly to swing the election to Donald Trump, Putin's puppet.

Who Are Crackas With Attitude and How Do They Connect Weiner and Russia?

The hacker group's name, sources say, is a pun. The letters USSR in Cyrillic look like the American letters 'CWA'.

The letters USSR in Cyrillic are CCCP.

Be that as it may, CWA involved an underage English hacker who was arrested, and subsequent to his arrest, two of his co-conspirators in North Carolina were also arrested. Their attack on the United States was exceptionally serious. It involved obtaining emails from the then Director of the CIA and doxing hundreds of United States law enforcement and intelligence personnel.

The '15 year old girl' is also apparently from North Carolina, according to reports, and her father is an attorney.

DailyMail.com has never disclosed anything to identify the underage girl in any way.

However, I can exclusively report that there is extensive evidence online that the 'sexts' were not written by the 15 year old girl, but by members of the hacking gang.

'You Got Catfished by a Dude' – Or, The Infinite Jest of a Plagiarized Email

It was no use Yvgeny Nikulin planting Hillary Clinton's emails on Weiner's computer, or even waking Weiner's computer, on behalf of Russian assets in the FBI New York, unless they had a right to look at Weiner's computer. For that to happen, Anthony Weiner had to have committed a criminal offense that would enable NYPD to have probable cause to go through his computers in the first place.

And for that, Nikulin needed an 'underage victim'.

All of Anthony Weiner's sleazy sexting prior to this had been done with girls and women over the age of sexual consent. The youngest among them was 17 years old.

In order for a case to be created, there needed to be an 'underage victim'. It seems evident that just such an operation was planned by Russia; to create a 'victim', to create a 'criminal case', to allow Weiner's computers to be seized and for Nikulin to plant his emails via Formspring.

According to the 'breaking story' of September 21st, by Alana Goodman in the Daily Mail, this girl had begun to sext with Weiner in January 2016. Her original story is odd and convoluted in a number of respects.

Firstly, the story is dated September 21st, but publishing dates on videos contained within the story appear to indicate that they were uploaded some six days earlier.

Metadata available to public view in the videos shows that they were published on September 21 along with the story: it is in the URLs of the videos as 2016/09/21.

The 'publishing dates' to which Mensch refers show simply when they were created as files, during the lengthy and rigorous verification and editing process before DailyMail.com published the story, which is described above.

DailyMail.com did not call the story 'breaking'.

Secondly, the story contains a report that Weiner 'provided emails that he says proved he was the subject of a hoax' but the journalist does not tell us why Mr. Weiner said these emails proved this.

Weiner did not say why he believed these emails proved the sexting was a 'hoax'. DailyMail.com published the full statement and all the letters he provided. He declined to explain his statements further

Of course, there is the one sentence: 'You got catfished by a dude.'

Mensch uses the quote from a letter the 15-year-old wrote to Weiner, and published on DailyMail.com, out of context. In the published letter, which was sent to Weiner on September 12, the girl is explaining why she is worried about Weiner's sexting obsession.

She writes: 'I am worried about you. You are messaging anyone that flirts with you online. I am 15 years old. You got catfished by a dude! It will only get worse. It's time to retire.

'I want you to know that I'm not releasing the story for money. I am doing this to teach you a lesson. I want you to get help. I don't care if you hate me. I don't hate you, I care about you very much. I think this story will help you become a better person. I hope at least.'

The 'catfish' comment refers to an article originally published by the New York Post on August 13 2016, which describes how Weiner gave his cell number to a college student during a flirty online chat.

The Post reports that 'the target of his online affection was actually a dude… who heads a ­Republican club at his NYC-area college'.

She exists: This is the 15-year-old girl who Mensch claims is not real. She alleges Anthony Weiner was sexting hackers, not the girl, who DailyMail.com spoke to in person, and whose identity and age we verified

But, I can reveal, the '15 year old girl's letter was not written by her.

It is full of plagiarized quotes from novels. A second letter, ostensibly written by her to James Comey, appears to contain an odd phrase used by Julia Hahn, a former Breitbart writer whom Steve Bannon brought into the White House, and Michelle Bachman.

The '15 year old girl' not only claims to be a 'dude' 'catfishing', that is to say, a hacker pretending to be a woman or girl in order to entrap, but 'her' email contains the following passages:

1. 'My posture was consciously congruent to the back of my chair' – from the opening of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

2. 'We're the middle children of history….' To the words 'But we won't.' – From Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

3. 'Guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away…' to the words 'paralyzing you.' – From Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction, both by J.D. Salinger

4. 'I was losing my soul….' To '…you still have a soul to lose.' – From Tales of Ordinary Madness, 'A Dollar and Twenty Cents' by Charles Bukowski.

In the letter 'she' signs off 'Girl that lost her faith in America'. 'Lost her faith in America' turns up both in a quote from Michelle Bachmann and a Breitbart article by Julia Hahn.

The girl does not sign off her letter to Anthony Weiner, published by DailyMail.com, with the phrase 'Girl that lost her faith in America'. She ends it: 'Sorry, I'm not sorry. I wish you the best!'

The girl wrote a second letter which she supplied to Buzzfeed News, who published it on November 2, which was signed 'Girl that lost her faith in America'. It was reported as 'an open letter to James Comey' from Weiner's victim.

There is no evidence Michelle Bachmann has ever used the phrase 'lost her faith in America'. In August 2011, after winning the Iowa Straw Poll, Bachmann said: 'You have restored in me my faith in America.' That appears to have prompted a user in at least one web chatroom to write 'Michelle Bachman says she lost her faith in America'.

There is also no evidence that Hahn used the phrase in any Breitbart articles, as Mensch suggests.

In March 2015 Hahn wrote on Breitbart about Maureen Maloney, whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant: 'Maloney—who has not lost her faith in America's political system— explained that she's tired of elections in which Republicans are forced to vote for 'the lesser of two evils'.

The above is the classic signature of a cat-fishing attempt. But there is plenty more online to connect this North Carolina teen with the Crackas With Attitude hack.

Just as Nikulin planted a virus using Weiner's little known sexting app Formspring, in this case, Weiner had been using the little-known app Confide. Online, arch references were made in advance about the publication of Goodman's article as to what was going on, using the word 'Confide'. Other accounts with ostensibly no knowledge of the case stated plainly that Weiner was actually sexting with a 28 year old hacker.

Mensch links to one tweet from before publication, although she claims there are 'references'. The other tweet she refers to is dated October 29 - more than a month after publication.

One of the North Carolina Crackas With Attitude is Justin Liverman, who is around 28.

The Department of Justice issued a press release in January, when he was convicted, which stated that Liverman was 24, repeating the age given in their September press release announcing his arrest.

His co-conspirator is one Andrew Otto Boggs. The two were arrested and pled guilty in January. As recently as two weeks ago, the FBI had confiscated their laptops and thumb drives.

The Department of Justice announced their arrests in a press release on September 8, the same day as they were taken into custody. They announced their guilty pleas on January 6.

CWA or USSR – The Hacking Group

Hackers need not be Russian to work on behalf of Russia. In this case, CWA's UK and US branches had close links to Sputnik, the Russian state owned propaganda channel.

A 'journalist' called Cassandra Fairbanks, @CassandraRules, on Twitter, who was and probably is 'active in the hacker community', posted photographs of herself with Liverman and said she was raising money for his defense. And why not? Weren't CWA just some young punks that got in over their heads?

The answer to that is no. The CWA hack managed to get into the emails of the director of the CIA.

Executives at Sputnik pressured non-Russian staff to obtain these CIA emails and threatened them if they refused. However, it is almost certain that Sputnik already had the emails; as soon as American staff refused to release them, Wikileaks was handed them and put them out on the internet.

The young boy, 15, in the UK, who had been tricked into doing a hack by and for adults, was conveniently too young to punish properly.

But his fully adult co-conspirators were not. CWA's North Carolina contingent used the same hack to dox FBI and law enforcement, mercilessly harassing American intelligence and police personnel, writing phone scripts that would ring officers on the hour through the hour through the night.

Liverman and Boggs were not alleged in the publicly-available sworn testimony of the FBI special agent who investigated them, or by the prosecution, to have committed harassment on the scale Mensch claims.

They pleaded guilty to arranging 'phone bombing' of two officials – then CIA Director John Brennan and then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Neither are 'police personnel'.

They did 'dox' – that is access illegally then make publicly available – the personnel details of as many as 20,000 law enforcement personnel. But they were not charged with and have not pleaded guilty to any harassment arising from that - meaning 'officers' were not called 'on the hour through the hour through the night'.

Confusion: Mensch mixed up Anthony Weiner, the disgraced sexting husband of Huma Abedin, and James Comey, the Director of the FBI, in her 3,300 word blog claiming the 15-year-old sexted by Weiner did not actually exist

Sputnik adopted Bernie Sanders and pro-Palestine colors when it wanted to defend the hackers.

Meanwhile, Ms. Fairbanks was promoting every anti-American hacker, defined by the IC as Russian state hackers, known to mankind.

She 'loved' Guccifer 2. She fangirled over Wikileaks and the Russian asset Julian Assange. Fairbanks also pushed out co-ordinated Russian propaganda from Infowars and others during the election, including pizzagate and other Russian-organized propaganda spread by Mike Flynn and other Russian agents of influence.

But with CWA she held personal meetings, photographing herself with Liverman and helping fund his defense in court.

The Daily Mail, Sputnik, and Trump

There seems to be a strong friendship between the Daily Mail's journalist Alana Goodman, who wrote the '15 year old girl' story on which the 'criminal case' was based, and Ms. Fairbanks of Sputnik.

They photographed themselves on multiple occasions together in social settings, such as sabering bottles of champagne at Trump Tower. They defended each other on Twitter.

Ms. Goodman appears in many tweeted photographs by Miss Fairbanks.

At one debate, Miss Goodman stars in a photograph of herself wearing a 'Make America Great' cap pulled down over her head. Sputnik's Miss Fairbanks points everybody to Goodman's story on Weiner of the 21st.

Goodman is also apparently close to the Trump campaign's Moishe Lee.

Fairbanks is a social acquaintance of Goodman. There are photographs of them together on three occasions, all of them clearly light-hearted. No person called Moishe Lee is known to Goodman and no public record appears to exist of a Trump campaign staffer called Moishe Lee.

Sputnik's Cassandra Fairbanks was also invited to the Inaugural Freedom Ball, which is quite an honor for a mouthpiece of the Russian state, and tweeted her pictures close to Trump and the First Lady. She followed this ostensibly unlikely triumph by spending New Year's eve, too, with Miss Goodman (shortly after her photograph with Justin Liverman of CWA).

There was no 'Inaugural Freedom Ball' before December 31. The Inauguration Freedom Ball took place on January 21 2017, as part of the celebrations of President Trump's inauguration.

Yet while Ms. Fairbanks promoted Ms. Goodman's exclusive on the '15 year old girl', on Twitter, her own organ, Sputnik, and RT.com, seemed awfully reticent to promote it – or even to touch it.

Although both Russian channels covered the preceding Weiner scandal, involving the married Weiner, his young son in a photograph, and an adult woman, there was no mention whatsoever online on both Russian media channels of this story.

Even though, ostensibly, it was the far more important one. Previously, all Anthony Weiner's sexting had been done with overage women or girls over the age of consent.

It was sleazy, and pathetic, certainly, and his wife, Huma Abedin, separated from him. But it was not criminal.

Russia and its spies within the FBI needed it to be criminal.

And yet RT and Sputnik showed an admirable, one might say inexplicable, level of restraint when confronted with the story of what appeared to be an actual crime by Weiner.

There are other disturbing notes to be made about the manner of the publication of the story. While it was reported as 'breaking news' on September 21st by Miss Goodman, online dates on the videos embedded within the story appear to show they were shot six days earlier. Why was the story held, if indeed it was?

The story was not reported as 'breaking news'. It was reported as an 'exclusive'. The two are clearly – and entirely – different. DailyMail.com went through an extensive, lengthy and rigorous process of editing, fact-checking and verifying the story before publication. That process included seeking a response from Weiner.

On September 21st, Eric Lichtblau, who would later publish a substantially false story at the New York Times saying that the FBI investigating Trump's server 'found no clear links to Trump', alerted Alfa Bank with a question about their involvement with the server.

At that point, Trump's server went dark. It was certainly a most opportune time to publish a major distraction that could have major consequences.

Neither the reporter or any of the editors involved in the process know Eric Lichtblau in any form. Nobody outside the reporter and editors knew of the story and plans for its publication.

Sputnik's Miss Fairbanks also seemed to know that publication was imminent; she decided to pose in an arch t-shirt for Wikileaks that said 'Publish or Perish' which she said she was 'wearing for traveling'.

Fairbanks had no knowledge of the story in any form before publication.

Foreknowledge from the FBI NY, the NYPD, Lara Trump, Giuliani and Flynn

It is by now well-known that now disgraced General Mike Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani, once a Secretary of State contender, boasted in advance of the 'October surprise' that was coming based on 'emails discovered' on Weiner's laptop as part of the 'separate criminal case'.

The FBI Field Office in New York, indeed, have hung themselves up nicely by leaking on Russia's behalf to these people but also by tweeting from an account.

The FBI's New York field office Twitter account, @NewYorkFBI, has never tweeted about Clinton or Weiner.

Giuliani's partner boasted that the NYPD was also corrupt; that if Director Comey did not write to Congress, the letter that handed the election to Trump, they, the NYPD, would call a press conference announcing all the 'arrests' they had made in the 'Weiner sexting' case.

There is no evidence of a business partner of Giuliani saying anything to this effect.

However Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, told Breitbart News Daily radio show on Sirius XM on November 4 in reference to Weiner: 'The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making.'

Prince is not known to have any business relationship to the former New York mayor.

But, partly perhaps from sexism, partly from fear of attacking the first family, not enough attention has been paid to the Trump family's own Carolina connection, and part in the conspiracy.

Lara Yunaska, NC, now Lara Trump, NY, boasted on the radio, in advance, that an October surprise was coming – something she had no legal way of knowing.

The FBI and NYPD are not supposed to leak information on criminal cases, particularly those ostensibly involving sexual abuse of a minor, to politicians for political purposes.

Yet Mrs. Eric Trump was on the radio, bold as brass, saying on October 24 that 'there are still a few days in October' and 'we've got a couple of things up our sleeve.'

The interview was on Fox & Friends, on Fox News, not on a radio channel.

On 29th October, when the Comey letter had been leaked by Jason Chaffetz, North Carolina native Lara Trump went further, saying on the radio to ABC's Rita Cosby that Trump had 'forced' Comey's hand with the letter.

Chaffetz did not 'leak' the letter. It was not confidential. The Lara Trump interview with Cosby was on October 28.

'I think my father-in-law forced their hand in this. You know, he has been the one since the beginning saying that she shouldn't be able to run for president, and I commend him on that' Lara Trump said.

These interviews followed her trip, with her husband Eric, to Gastonia, Gaston County, North Carolina. According to the Gaston County Gazette, Lara and Eric Trump visited the GOP headquarters there on October 21st.

The '15 year old teen' and her 'attorney father' are ostensibly from… Gaston, North Carolina.

I tried to discover the identity of the real teenage girl and her father for this story (since both Ms. Goodman and Buzzfeed News claimed to have spoken to them).

Buzzfeed News reported that they had spoken to the girl, and the New York Daily News reported that they had spoken to her father. It is unknown how they were able to find the girl. Her contact details were known only to Anthony Weiner and DailyMail.com. DailyMail.com did not provide her details to any other party. DailyMail.com has not revealed any aspect of her identity, including her home state and is not confirming or denying it now.

But I could not do so. I am glad now that I could not find out their identities. Thus, there is nobody to libel. The father may have been sincerely deceived. The girl may have thought it was a joke. But it is odd that in Miss Goodman's first report, the father, an attorney, says he did not make a police report.

The father made very clear his reasons for not making a police report – his daughter had asked him not to. 'I agreed because her mental health is in jeopardy and I agreed because I didn't want to exacerbate anything that she has mentally going on.'

Presumably because if he knew that in fact adult male hackers had done the sexting, he would be committing a criminal offense.

This story will be updated as I receive more evidence.

The story has not been updated.