A young woman charged with leaking U.S. secrets to a news organization told FBI agents she was frustrated with her job as a government contractor when she tucked a classified report into her pantyhose and smuggled it out of a National Security Agency office in Georgia, according to court records.
Prosecutors are using Reality Winner's own words against her as they urge a federal judge to keep the former Air Force translator jailed until her trial. In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors attached a 77-page transcript of Winner's interview with FBI agents before her arrest in June.
"Yeah, I screwed up royally," Winner, 25, told the agents in a transcript that makes public the details of her confession, which prosecutors have alluded to in prior court hearings.
...
Winner faces up to 10 years in federal prison if she's convicted on charges that she printed a classified U.S. report and mailed it to an online news outlet.
Authorities haven't described the report or named the news outlet. But the Justice Department announced Winner's arrest as The Intercept reported it had obtained a classified NSA report suggesting Russian hackers attacked a U.S. voting software supplier before last year's presidential election. The NSA report was dated May 5, the same as the document Winner is charged with leaking.
Winner told the FBI she was frustrated at her civilian contractor job, which involved translating documents from Farsi to English for the NSA in Augusta, Georgia, where the federal agency has facilities.
"I've filed formal complaints about them having Fox News on, you know?" Winner told the agents. "Uh, just at least, for God's sake, put Al Jazeera on, or a slideshow with people's pets."
I've received half a dozen breathless CNN alerts today about now Russians were buying Facebook advertising for racially charged issues and using Twitter bots during the election. Honestly, I can't bring myself to care about the fact that happened. People do and say shitty, racist things on the internet all day, every day. I ignore or push back against it all because it doesn't align with my value system.
The part that I care about (and that makes me infinitely depressed), is that it worked. That there are enough shitty people in the country who would nod their head and say "Yeah, I can get on board with that anti-black/Muslim/hispanic/immigrant/whatever message". That's the fact that makes me wonder if we've reached a point of no return.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
Skinypupy wrote:I've received half a dozen breathless CNN alerts today about now Russians were buying Facebook advertising for racially charged issues and using Twitter bots during the election. Honestly, I can't bring myself to care about the fact that happened. People do and say shitty, racist things on the internet all day, every day. I ignore or push back against it all because it doesn't align with my value system.
The part that I care about (and that makes me infinitely depressed), is that it worked. That there are enough shitty people in the country who would nod their head and say "Yeah, I can get on board with that anti-black/Muslim/hispanic/immigrant/whatever message". That's the fact that makes me wonder if we've reached a point of no return.
I think you under estimate how subtle some of the racist things can be. How much do you really know about Islam? When you see ISIS videos of beheadings and are then told that all Muslim's believe in that sort of thing for all unbelievers it is easy to get angry and afraid when you live in ignorance regarding Islam. Not all of the folks caught up in this mess are racist and full of hatred. Some are simply ignorant and afraid - both of which make them more malleable for those who are racist and full of hate.
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” - H.L. Mencken
It’s the echo chamber effect on steroids. Even if you’re aware, like advertising, enough exposure to those tweaked messages in your inbox, in your feed, side by side with “real” news, will have an effect on you, if only at the subconscious level.
SAN FRANCISCO — After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump’s admonishment of N.F.L. players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee.
Skinypupy wrote:I've received half a dozen breathless CNN alerts today about now Russians were buying Facebook advertising for racially charged issues and using Twitter bots during the election. Honestly, I can't bring myself to care about the fact that happened. People do and say shitty, racist things on the internet all day, every day. I ignore or push back against it all because it doesn't align with my value system.
The part that I care about (and that makes me infinitely depressed), is that it worked. That there are enough shitty people in the country who would nod their head and say "Yeah, I can get on board with that anti-black/Muslim/hispanic/immigrant/whatever message". That's the fact that makes me wonder if we've reached a point of no return.
Just as an update, the number of ads was possibly underestimated...by a factor of 10:
Facebook estimates 10 million Americans saw the advertisements that Russian groups purchased to try to influence the presidential election last year, but analysts said that undersells the reach of the ads, which may have been seen by as many as 70 million.
That kind of reach is stunning given the relatively modest budget of $100,000 spent by Russian trolls linked to the ads. The Russian-linked groups spent less than $3 on about half of the ads and never spent more than $1,000 on a single ad, Facebook said.
The special counsel investigating whether Russia tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy’s dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to President Donald Trump’s campaign and associates, sources familiar with the inquiry told Reuters.
A report compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele identified Russian businessmen and others whom U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded are Russian intelligence officers or working on behalf of the Russian government.
A spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller declined comment. The FBI also declined comment.
Three sources with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.
His nibs' next Twitter dump should make for fun reading.
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
And as the article notes, the Steele Dossier has been more accurate thus far than most people realize:
That said, as Sipher notes, Steele is a highly respected investigator, and as time has passed, his dossier has looked better and better. He outlined the contours of a Russian plot to help elect Trump, and many of its detailed elements. Steele discovered that Russia had offered the Trump campaign compromising material on Hillary Clinton, a fact that has subsequently been confirmed by the New York Times. Steele accurately described, among other things, the involvement of Russian embassy staff in the plot, Paul Manafort’s off-the-books payments from a pro-Russian party in Ukraine, and Trump’s stalled negotiations to receive licensing payments for projects in Russia. (The latter was recently bolstered by a 2015 letter of intent from the Trump Organization, obtained by CNN, outlining an unconsummated deal that would have given Trump a $4 million upfront fee at no risk.)
Steele found out a lot of detail about Trump’s dealings with Russia before the rest of the world caught on. All this implies that the still-unproven elements of Steele’s reporting, including sexual blackmail, are more likely to be correct than skeptics may have once assumed.
The FBI reportedly used Steele’s reporting in some capacity. Strassel seizes upon the relationship to imply a sinister conspiracy against Trump. “Who was Mr. Steele’s friend at the FBI?” she asks. “Did the bureau influence the direction of the Trump dossier? Did it give Mr. Steele material support from the start?”
Working from the premise that Steele’s dossier is discredited, Republicans hope to attach Comey to it, and thereby sink his reputation. But it’s possible their argument will do something else entirely: They might prove Steele was right after all.
Almost lost in all the other chaos lately, we finally have a look at how the administration hopes to get out of the additional Russia sanctions required by HR 3364... ignore them. https://www.lawfareblog.com/white-house ... -sanctions
Although Section 231(a) gives President Trump 180 days to actually impose specific sanctions measures, Section 231(d) requires him to start the process within 60 days:
(d) Requirement To Issue Guidance.—Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall issue regulations or other guidance to specify the persons that are part of, or operate for or on behalf of, the defense and intelligence sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation.
As of October 13, the administration has neither issued such guidance nor provided an explanation as to why it has been delayed.
Several recent actions suggest that the Trump administration is aware of the bill’s sectoral sanctions requirements. For example, on September 29, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum delegating “to the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, the functions and authorities vested in the President by” Section 231. Additionally, the administration has complied with other 60 day sectoral sanctions-related deadlines. For example, Sections 222 and 223 effectively codified and intensified pre-existing sectoral sanctions that had been imposed under Executive Order 13662. The government made the modifications that Section 223 required be done within 60 days on September 29. Moreover, although President Trump’s signing statement included a number of constitutional objections to specific provisions of the bill (including Section 222), Section 231 is not among them.
Twitter announced on Thursday that it would ban all advertisements from the Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik.
"Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, effective immediately," the company wrote in a statement posted on its blog.
"This decision was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government."
RT directed reporters to a lengthy statement published on its website in which it said it "never violated any rules while advertising on Twitter" and "has never spread any sort of deliberate misinformation."
Sputnik told Business Insider in a statement that it "has never used paid for promotion on Twitter."
...
RT said last month that the US Department of Justice had asked it to register as a foreign agent, and Yahoo reported around the same time that the FBI had interviewed a former Sputnik reporter as part of an investigation into whether the company was violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Twitter's representatives are set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week, along with representatives from Facebook and Google, about how Russia exploited the platform to spread disinformation and propaganda during the 2016 election.
The committee's vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner, said earlier this month that the committee's first interview with Twitter representatives was "deeply disappointing" and "frankly inadequate."
...
Sputnik and RT will still be able to keep their organic accounts, according to the statement.
Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.”
But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.
The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.
You may not be shocked to learn that the "American congressman" who saw the same memo that Veselnitskaya brought to the Trump Tower meeting was Dana Rohrabacher, who senior GOP House leaders were recorded "joking" about how he was paid by Russia.
I honestly don't know where this belongs, but I guess this is a good place. Bodyguard testified that offer of women was turned down, however he then later indicated during testimony:
he eventually left Trump's hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.
Has anything from the Steele document shown to be verifiably false? There were a lot of specifics about traveling to Russia and meetings and so far it seems like it has all checked out. So why not the pee tapes as well?
Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Nov 09, 2017 6:31 pm
I honestly don't know where this belongs, but I guess this is a good place. Bodyguard testified that offer of women was turned down, however he then later indicated during testimony:
he eventually left Trump's hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.
My blog (mostly photos): Fort Ephemera - My Flickr Photostream
“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn’t waste either.” ―Galen Rowell
A series of shadow subdomains, all with Russian IP addresses and associated with malware campaigns, were created after hackers accessed the domain registration account of the Trump organization and likely went undiscovered until as recently as this week.
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Nov 09, 2017 6:31 pm
I honestly don't know where this belongs, but I guess this is a good place. Bodyguard testified that offer of women was turned down, however he then later indicated during testimony:
he eventually left Trump's hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.
Grifman wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:52 pmThat's hardly confirmation:
It's not, but appreciate how the story has changed over the last ~10 months. We went from a straight up "this never happened, it's ridiculous" denial to "well, he was at the hotel, but nothing happened" to "well, women were offered, but nothing happened". In another 2 months it'll be "well, they were in the room to talk about adoption, but nothing happened."
Grifman wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:52 pmThat's hardly confirmation:
It's not, but appreciate how the story has changed over the last ~10 months. We went from a straight up "this never happened, it's ridiculous" denial to "well, he was at the hotel, but nothing happened" to "well, women were offered, but nothing happened". In another 2 months it'll be "well, they were in the room to talk about adoption, but nothing happened."
I was just informed the Steele Dossiers are "completely unsubstantiated" and I also used making the jump from adoptions to peepee tapes as a talking point after Manafort and Page being indicted are unsubstantiated evidence. And I am at the CLINTON DID IT! going on with regard to Russian Influence. I really don't like Clinton and put a lot of blame at their feet for a lot of things but . And you know goes hand in hand with Clinton did it? You have no proof! We don't convict with no proof. I don't even know how to engage in conversation. You'd think I was talking to the Russian Trolls every one loves to mention right now, but nope. These are people I know to be real, in the US, people. Crazy, man, crazy.
No one writes the dollar sign on the right in North America (maybe francophones? I don't recall specifically)
Well, maybe it's a regional thing?
There is basically zero chance reporters are bribing women into making accusations.
This is just another attempt to undermine victims. For every false claim there are thousands of real events that don't get reported. Some of the reasons are the victim blaming and undermining as seen here.