Preface

The following report covers one of the largest stories of the past year. It details the events from the beginning until present day and my thoughts as appropriate. It is extensive to a point of key details. I offer my technical knowledge and critical thinking to make some of the topics easier to grasp.

Introduction

November 9th 2017, 1:30 am: It was the best of times and the worst of times… Champagne popped while posters torn down, hats joyously thrown while windows shattered, and cheers exuded while sorrow met tears. To many, that moment of peace or pain will forever remain in their hearts. How could a man who disgusted oh so many, win the highest level of prestige in the United States? A man who once had a 1% chance of winning his party’s nomination now controls the free world. One word: Russia.

Almost immediately the intelligence officials and media barraged President Trump with claims of Russian Collaboration. Major headlines outlined “Russia Hacked the US Election”. Some people demanded a recount while others wanted an impeachment. To this day reports still continue to push this story and has been counterattacked by claims of espionage by the previous administration.

With all the hullabaloo facts turned into fiction and fiction turned into facts. It is tiring seeing lies after lies. There are people blindly who believe what they have watched or read. I intend to dive deep into this area and give a full recount from the very beginning as independently as possible. Some events I will question and leave you as the reader to think about since I do not have government clearance to the secret documentation. This information comes from resources I scraped by over the years and I intend to be truthful with what I say. Let me know if you believe something is incorrect.

Backstory

November 19th, 2012: A couple weeks after Romney’s defeat and Obama’s triumph for his second term, a New York billionaire pulled the trigger on his master plan. Donald Trump finally decided to run for the Presidential office. From rumors in the early 90s that he would run with Oprah to constant questioning for the next 20 years, Trump’s once answer of “if it got so bad…” came true. On this day Trump trademarked his catch phrase, “Make America Great Again”.

Fast forward to 2015 when Trump publicly announced his presidential campaign. Polls at that time gave him less than 1% chance to beat his 16 opponents to run as the Republican Party’s candidate. To most, Trump became synonymous with a jester, but a few months later and his fellow opponents certainly stopped laughing. Trump was the man to beat. More importantly, across the aisle, Clinton and the (Democratic National Convention) DNC saw the shark looming in the water.

John Podesta Hacked?

March 2016: You probably heard of John Podesta and his hacked emails. After all, WikiLeaks released them over the course of the campaign. What you may not be informed about is no one hacked Podesta? Instead email phishing was used. Podesta received an email that said “Someone has your Gmail password. Change your password here”.

His IT security expert told him that it was a “legitimate threat”. However, that link was not going to Google’s password reset and instead he typed his current password, ‘[email protected]’ (very secure), on a malicious site which the person used to access his account. Email phishing is not hacking and a child can perform the basic account theft. Tip: this is why it is important to inspect links in emails and if unsure type in the URL yourself.

Clinton, Putin Connection

April 27th, 2016: Behind closed doors, the DNC concocted the narrative to try and shoot the man who soared to the top. In WikiLeaks email 27381, a DNC member stated “… the pro-Russia stuff ties in pretty well to idea that Trump is too friendly with Putin/weak on Russia”. This was 3 months before any leaks would be released and around the time that the story of Trump and Putin being friends emerged. Regardless of your thoughts on WikiLeaks, all of their emails are real and this is extremely important to the story. They planned to mix Trump with Putin at a time of global uncertainty to cast doubt on his loyalty, welcome to world of politics.

It is also necessary to point out that it is well known Vladimir Putin had disdain for Hillary Clinton and vice versa. Clinton once stated Putin “has no soul”. Putin responded later with the translation of “At least the state figure should have a head (brain)”.

Back to December 2011: mass protests erupted in Moscow, Russia. People believed that Putin rigged the Russian election. Putin remarked that Secretary of State, Clinton, sparked the demonstration as the political losers appeared to be fond of Clinton. Clinton stated at the time that the Russian election was “dishonest and unfair”.

Rumors said Clinton worked with the protest organizers and told them the US State Department supports them. I do not have proof for either denying or confirming this statement since I need communication transcripts from the State Department. I wanted to show it since Putin believes it to be true.

During the DNC debates Clinton was asked on her view of the relationship. “It’s interesting” she said. Later Clinton would commit fully to wrapping Putin and Trump together into her basket of deplorables. She would purchase advertisements seeding the relationship between the two.

DNC Hacked

June 2016: The DNC noticed that their security was breached. They first realized back in March. The DNC hired a private firm called CrowdStrike. After an investigation, CrowdStrike named Fancy Bear as the group responsible for hacking the DNC’s Trump files and Cozy Bear as a group that monitored the DNC’s communication from a year before. CrowdStrike stated that the attacks came from these Russian-backed hacking groups.

July 22nd 2016: WikiLeaks dumped 20,000 emails from the DNC. I will not cover the contents of the leaks since it is out of scope. Almost instantly hacker Guccifer 2.0 again claimed to have infiltrated the servers. There are some that do not believe that Guccifer 2.0 was responsible. Attention turned to Russia even stronger than before.

When asked, Julian Assange (leader of WikiLeaks) fully denied that the Russian government handed him the emails. Instead he hinted that they received them from a leak, not a hack. Note: Assange would continue to reaffirm that all the emails he released from the DNC or Podesta did not come from Russia.

Sometime in this timeframe, the FBI was contacted. The FBI typically handles cases of domestic groups being hacked and determining the culprit, especially for a political party. When the FBI asked the DNC for the servers to investigate, they refused to transfer them over. The FBI stressed the importance that they see all servers and related data as it could relate to national security, again the DNC denied. Instead the FBI had to rely on the findings of CrowdStrike for their documentation and reports.

Why did the DNC not hand over their servers and how did they determine that the Russians were responsible? CrowdStrike mentioned that they have seen the style from Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear before. Could they have misrepresented that information either accidentally by rushing through judgement or on purpose to tell a different tale?

By working with technology, from my understanding it is not hard to make a hacking look like someone else. If you wanted to anonymously infiltrate a system, you make it look like the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, or Iranians. They are the highest probability that no one would question otherwise.

Chaotic Finale

August 20th 2016: A major turn in the Trump campaign. The campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned from his position. At the time, rumors spun about Manafort’s dealing with a pro-Russian entity in Ukraine. An investigation was launched to see if Manafort’s lobbying stepped out of the legal requirements. To prevent damaging the campaign, Manafort either resigned himself or pushed to gracefully take the resignation.

October 2016: Everything hit the fan. WikiLeaks begun releasing a constant drip of emails. The Clinton campaign further enforced that Putin and the Russians remained responsible. This is when it was full swing. Judging from her attitude and campaign activities, I do not believe Clinton believed she could even lose. Most likely she felt that that constant connecting Trump with Russia along with other topics like his private banter, would force voters to distance from him.

Trump Team Leaks

December 2016: Besides the untampered election (by this I mean hacking voting machines, election fraud has been discovered of illegal voting) and the continued talk of Russian interference not a whole lot happened in November so I will skip that. In December news broke out that Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, may have communicated with the Russian Ambassador about Russia and Crimea. When asked by Vice President Pence, Flynn denied these allegations.

A False Russian Claim

December 31st 2016: The Washington Post made a shocking statement that “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, Officials say”. Potentially hacking an election is one thing, hacking a power grid during winter is terrorism. I am sure FBI, CIA, and DHS all jumped. Thankfully, this story was proven as false as the utility company released the full report that a single laptop, not connected to the grid, contained malware.

Intelligence Report Anaylsis

January 2017: During this time, the intelligence community consisting of the FBI, NSA, CIA, and DHS released a joint declassified report. They also gave President Obama and his employees with proper clearance the fully classified report. I went through the entire document and these are my findings.

One of the first things the document mentions that properly identifying the responsible party is “difficult but not impossible”. I disagree completely and you probably question my expertise versus the United States intelligence teams. Let me explain.

As I mentioned earlier, you can fake an attack to blame someone else through various ways. If you are dealing with a professional cyber-attacker you will only unveil who it is if the attacker wanted you to. I fully believed this for a long time. If you do not believe me, then take the CIA’s word for it with their top-secret anti-forensic Marble Framework. The CIA can make it appear as though someone else was responsible for the attack to create a false flag. Let's say Korea, China, or even Russia. Sound familiar?

Another point in the report is that they did not specify if the election was influenced by a cyber-attack. All such statements that state either Russia did/did not influence the election are thus opinions. No one investigated it. I imagine it would be hard to measure the effect of certain events.

Third, the entire report is situated on top of a judgement that the intelligence community has a high confidence that “assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump over Hillary Clinton”. The report is opinion based, with minimal facts to back anything substantial.

Take for instance that they think Russia paid users to “troll” social media platforms. There were bots for both campaigns so to alienate one side and claim influence is alarming. How about the RT news site talking about anti-fracking and the dangers it causes? The intelligence community believes this is Russian Propaganda to stop US oil and gas production. How does this effect the election when Trump campaigned for gas/oil/fracking? I have also seen several celebrities and US media comment about anti-fracking. Are they also working with Moscow or simply care about the damage done by it?

The report released by US intelligence is nothing more than a fluff piece. Several cybersecurity experts contest the report for actual evidence. It is unprofessional to write something that bursts with mere opinions and conspiracies of how random puzzle pieces join together. As mentioned at the beginning I am questioning anything that is not fact regardless of who it originates from.

More Leaks

The government leaks rolled out targeting several of Trump’s team members and himself. The major one was a potential, unverified Russian dossier of Trump crafted by a former British MI6 operative. It was plastered as major headlines days before the inauguration.

BuzzFeed news was the one who released the document with the heading “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors”. Further into the document it states that they published the document so “… Americans can make up their own minds about allegations…” Today, BuzzFeed and the former British spy are dealing with a libel lawsuit by XBT Holdings, a Russian tech firm, mentioned in the document over a false tarnished reputation. This case is ongoing.

February 2017: Another leak occurred. The transcript of Flynn’s talk with the ambassador was leaked to a news organization. Flynn did in fact communicate with the Russian Ambassador and lied to Pence about the material covered. He resigned similar to Manafort on February 13th 2017.

Leaks also came about that in 2016 Attorney General (AG), Jeff Sessions, had meetings with the Russian Ambassador. Many people called for the AG to resign. During Sessions’ confirmation hearing he was asked about how he would handle an investigation into potential Russian interference where Sessions stated he would step aside since he campaigned several times with Trump. He also said he did not communicate with Russia with the context of on behalf of the Trump team.

Other senators attacked him, stating that they never had to meet with ambassadors as a senator. Photo evidence proved them wrong. Sessions resubmitted his confirmation transcript to clarify that section and disclose the two meetings and their agenda he had as a senator. Sessions story is mostly closed besides a handful of naysayers.

Espionage Claims

March 2017: The tides shifted drastically. First former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, stated there is no evidence of collusion between the Russian government and President Trump during or after his campaign. The investigation is still ongoing so this may change, but as of right now there is zero connection between the two. This revelation is major as Trump has been exonerated for the time being. Be that as it may, the President hit back.

President Trump received some sort of secret evidence that led him to believe that the Obama administration spied on him and his campaign. This could have led to the many leaks of his team members and the push for a Russian story. This story, if true, will be the largest story since Watergate.

Nixon, during that time, allegedly had burglars sneak into the DNC building to wiretap their phones and steal secret documents. He did however bribe certain individuals and destroy any evidence. He resigned and President Ford pardoned him immediately. If Obama or had someone in his administration receiving reports of the Trump team as private citizens, it can drastically change history. How so? I do not fully know but there could be prison sentences and I would predict a change with the intelligence communities’ powers.

Obama released a response that detailed he did not “order surveillance on any U.S. citizen”. He did not deny potential surveillance conducted independently during his term and whether he was made aware if it existed.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, Evelyn Farkas, stated interesting comments in an MSNBC interview. She stated that she told the “Hill (Capitol Hill) to get as much information as you can” before Obama left office. She worried that Trump and his team would “find out how we knew what we knew about the Trump’s staff doings with Russia… not enough was coming out into the open.” This could mean just inside the intelligence community or possibly leaked to the public through the media.

Recent developments on Trump’s assertion are also interesting. Devin Nunes, House Intelligence Chairman, defended Trump’s claim by announcing that members from Trump’s campaign team and himself could have been inadvertently surveilled.

There was much protest as Nunes personally went to Trump to share his findings. He believes in his decision and the moral obligation of his position to do so. Adam Schiff, the Democrat ranking member on the intelligence community, criticized Nunes and the Trump/Russian connection. He recently was granted permission to see the evidence Nunes collected.

Schiff did not make a vocal comment on what he saw and instead made a written response where he “saw the same evidence that Nunes did”. He lowered his rhetoric against Trump’s claim. This leads me to think that something substantial is there, enough to begin to question some individuals. The documents have to become visible to see exactly what has happened. Anything else is speculation or leaked information.

More news also came that Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Advisor after Tom Donilon resigned, requested the unmasking of private US citizens connected with President Trump. Unmasking refers to intelligence organizations revealing the identity of a certain communication and is limited to authorized public employees. Just two weeks earlier, she stated on PBS that she had no knowledge of anyone being unmasked. Recently she stated that they unmasked individuals, Michael Flynn is reported as one. To do so she said that she would need to have found something interesting to better understand reports.

Mrs. Rice was the one who repeated the false claim back in 2012 that the attack in Benghazi was caused by a disturbing video that proved to have never existed. She is also a potential suspect for the leaking of Flynn’s calls to ABC news. Currently the House Intelligence group is looking to have her testify under oath about what occurred.

It is worthy to note that CNN claimed the Susan Rice story is not real and is a distraction. I am not trying to smear media organizations but wanted to point out that they took a big leap that the Susan Rice is nothing more than a witch hunt. This can help/hurt them based on what happens in the next few months. I want to note that former CNN Reporter, Donna Brazille, leaked the DNC towhhall questions to Clinton. She has been fired since, but it does not lift the uncertainty of the dealings of this media group.

Final Thoughts

It is like the game of Clue, someone is guilty. Probably more than one person. We just need to find out who. The claims made over the past year on multiple sides are significant. Depending on who that someone is and the extent of the lie, this could affect our country’s future forever. I hope that I encouraged you to think about things you hear from all sides and try to question the truth and the stories that are told.

Feel free to share your thoughts below and share the post across your social media platforms. I will update this as more information rolls to the public.