Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post Is on Pace to Lose $100 Million in Just a Year

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[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (22 children)

you're claiming that the Russians' didn't interfere in the election?

You know the Steele Dossier was pure fiction, bought and paid for by the DNC, right? Russia's so-called "interference" in the 2016 was a few tens of thousands of dollars spent by a private group for Facebook ads and some Twitter memes, with no effect on the election.

Even WaPo begrudgingly admitted there was no effect on the election -- seven years later.

The Democrats knew about the so-called "Russian interference" before the election, it didn't become an issue until they had to rationalise their defeat. Suddenly Clinton and the Dems were parroting the exact same views about election fairness that just a few weeks earlier they were lambasting Trump for saying, except with Trump and Clinton swapped in the role of hero and villain.

"Putin posted nasty memes about Hillary on teh interwebs and that's why we lost! 😢 😢"

Journalists who uncritically repeated the conspiracy theory got promoted, while those who were critical or skeptical got slammed for being Russian agents.

There were charges.

Yes, for obstruction and perjury, not conspiracy or election fraud. Mueller concluded that there was no criminal conspiracy in the first place, so even those charges have to be treated as suspect and likely politically motivated.

Especially as so many other players in this fraud weren't charged by Mueller. Like Joseph Mifsud when Mueller stated that Mifsud had lied to him?

Or Clinton's lawyer Michael Sussmann over the fraud. He's been charged now, by John Durham, but the question is, why didn't Mueller notice that Clinton's lawyer paid for Steele to invent this conspiracy story, and if he did notice, why did he let it slide?

The Mueller report was a nothing burger with extra nothing and a side-order of nothing. Mueller was forced to drop the charges against Concord when they showed up to defend themselves, because he had no evidence, exactly as Zerohedge predicted.

The Democrats concocted this elaborate fantasy of Trump as an agent of Russia and Russian interference out of thin air, and the compliant press ran with it for years, repeating every insane DNC conspiracy theory as if it were true. Russiagate and the "Russian interference hoax" was obvious fiction from the beginning and yet BlueAnon have lapped up every word. Even the pee tape story 😂

Mueller's major source for the claim that Russia hacked the Democrat servers, Crowdstrike, admitted that there is no evidence that the servers were hacked. They basically just made it up, and Mueller just repeated these conspiracy theories as fact despite having no evidence for them.

When Mueller asked Crowdstrike for permission to do a forensic examination of the servers they claimed were hacked, they blew him off, refused to allow it, and then finally provided him with a couple of hard drives they had copied themselves. (By memory, they provided copies of four disks out of the ten or more servers they claimed had been hacked.) Which of course showed no firm evidence of having been hacked.

It's far more likely that a DNC insider leaked the emails to Wikileaks out of disgust at how the DNC was rigging the primaries -- something that the DNC admitted in court, arguing that they are not obliged to run fair elections in the primaries and if they choose to interfere in their own elections they're allowed to. And the courts agreed with them.

This is your democracy in action.

Hillary Clinton has never forgiven Wikileaks for releasing this information. This is why she suggested that the US should assassinate Julian Assange, and then to add insult to injury then Trump defeated her in 2016. This was a good way to kill three birds with one stone:

  • ramp up a new cold war with Russia (good for arms sales, good for the intelligence agencies, good for business)
  • use that to smear and discredit political enemies, starting with Trump
  • and get revenge on Wikileaks.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (21 children)

The Meuller report is very hard to read. Here's summary.

Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”[1]

Major attack avenues included a social media “information warfare” campaign that “favored” candidate Trump[2] and the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks.[3]

Russia also targeted databases in many states related to administering elections gaining access to information for millions of registered voters.[4]

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (20 children)

You know that repeating the worthless conclusions of a worthless report doesn't make them less worthless?

Mueller had no evidence of Russian hacking. Crowdstrike prevented him from doing a forensic examination of the allegedly hacked servers. Later on they broke all the rules for evidence integrity by providing Mueller with their own curated selection of copies of just some of the relevant hard drives. Any defence attorney would love that! And you're all "Data tampering? Never heard of it." 🙈 🙉 🙊

And then Crowdstrike themselves admitted that they didn't actually have any evidence of Russian hacking.

These are the facts: Mueller found no criminal conspiracy. He selectively prosecuted a few Trump-aligned witnesses for obstruction and perjury, while allowing Clinton-aligned witnesses like Mifsud off the hook. That selective prosecution proves that the Mueller investigation was not neutral or fair-handed.

Mueller failed to discover, or ignored, the criminal conspiracy between Clinton's lawyer Sussmann and the dodgy British intelligent agent Steele. Mueller invented bullshit accusations against the Concord company, and then when forced to put up or shut up in court, he dropped the charges. His evidence for "Russian hackers" is basically "Crowdstrike said so" and then Crowdstrike turned around and said "Um well ackchyually we don't have any evidence that we were hacked by Russia".

I mean, at least Ken Starr was able to prove that Bill Clinton had received a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky. Mueller found nothing.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

You know that repeating the worthless conclusions of a worthless report doesn't make them less worthless?

Locking up criminals is worthless to you?

So you think we should have any prisons or police?

And recovering well over $20,000,000 from manafort alone is worthless?

But much money does it take to have worth?

Mueller had no evidence of Russian hacking

Hackers have been convicted. Read the report.

These are the facts: Mueller found no criminal conspiracy.

Read the report. Being a republican hack he didn't consider Trump withing scope. But he detailed meetings between today close to trump and the Russians.

Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner were not charged for this because Mueller claimed that it would be to hard to establish "willfulness". That is that they could agree that they were too dumb to know that what they were doing was illegal.

He detailed Trump's obstruction of justice, but did not charge him because he felt that was out of scope.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

Locking up criminals is worthless to you?

If I said the food from "Dave's Greasy Spoon Diner" was over-priced and terrible, would you respond "So you think people shouldn't eat?"

We could debate the details of the various criminal justice systems from around the world, but in general I can see the utility in locking up criminals as punishment, for the protection of society and the deterrence of others. But that has nothing to do with the terrible, worthless Mueller report.

Hackers have been convicted.

Hackers have been indicted based on evidence we haven't seen, and probably never will. But we know that at least some of that evidence is contaminated, and has not been handled correctly for a forensic investigation. Mueller's forensic team was not allowed access to the DNC servers. They were given a subset of carefully collected copies of the server hard drives prepared by Crowdstrike. Authentic copies? Maybe, maybe not. That alone gives Reasonable Doubt.

It is the most convenient thing in the world for Mueller to indict some GPU officers. He will never, ever have to prove a single one of those allegations. Even Time, in an otherwise uncritical article about the Mueller report, emphasised the unproven nature of the allegations against the supposed hackers, and how unlikely it is that they would ever stand trial.

The Russian hacker indictment makes for a nice story, but so did the allegations against Concord. When Mueller was forced to either put up or shut up about Concord, he shut up and dropped all the charges rather than go to court with the evidence, or lack of evidence, he actually had. What makes you think the allegations against the GPU hackers are any stronger?

How do you know that the evidence they have against the Russian hackers is any better than the evidence that Saddam Hussein was still building WMD? The US has a long history of claiming irrefutable evidence that turns out to be made of moon beams and pixie dust.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

Hackers have been indicted ...

Yes, i should've said indicted.

Mueller's forensic team was not allowed access to the DNC servers.

Of course they were. They had images of them.

It is the most convenient thing in the world for Mueller to indict some GPU officers. He will never, ever have to prove a single one of those allegations.

There were Americans charges with parts of the hacks. The guy who pled guilty to identity theft was phishing for access to the servers.

Mueller didn't write things in his report because they were convenient. He proved charges against half a dozen people close to trump.

How do you know that the evidence they have against the Russian hackers is any better than the evidence that Saddam Hussein was still building WMD?

Because people spent time in prison and the standard is behind reasonable doubt.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

Of course they were. They had images of them.

Do you not read the links I give? Mueller's team was not allowed access to the servers. Months later, Mueller was sent a curated partial set of some hard drives, prepared by CrowdStrike, which Crowdstrike claims to be images of some of the server hard drives.

If this were a genuine criminal investigation, and not a political hit job, there is no way in the world that any competent investigator would allow something like that. It violates all the rules for evidence gathering during forensic data collection, and there's no chain of custody for the data.

In a nutshell, allowing the complainant such an opportunity to tamper with the data and pick and choose what evidence Mueller sees put the whole thing in doubt. The evidence from the Crowdstrike hard drives must be considered irreparably tainted and that alone provides more than enough reasonable doubt that in a fair trial every single one of the supposed Russian hackers would walk free.

Assuming they would get a fair trial, which is highly unlikely in the current American political climate.

He proved charges against half a dozen people close to trump.

He proved charges of obstruction, perjury and financial crimes, not conspiracy with Russians.

How do you know that the evidence they have against the Russian hackers is any better than the evidence that Saddam Hussein was still building WMD?

Because people spent time in prison and the standard is behind reasonable doubt.

You think spending time in prison proves guilt???

None of the supposed hackers have been put on trial so none of the evidence has been seen, let alone tested in court.

Even if we accept the guilt of those charged with unrelated crimes (obstruction, fraud, identity theft) that doesn't prove the guilt of the supposed hackers. How could it? They are unrelated crimes.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

Do you not read the links I give? Mueller's team was not allowed access to the servers.

That's not correct. They had images of the servers, so there was no need for them to try to get physical access to the servers. It's not that they weren't allowed. It's merely one of the many things they didn't request.

The images were better than physical access, because they were taken during the time the penetrations were perpetrated, so has better information than the physical servers. The images were more convenient than physical access to the servers, as it avoided the logistical problems of plugging in keyboards and monitors to hundreds of physical computers.

there's no chain of custody for the data.

Okay, I'm going in: What the fuck do you claim broke the chain of custody for the images?

He proved charges of obstruction, perjury and financial crimes, not conspiracy with Russians.

Only with respect to the criminal mind. He showed that the conspiracy existed, but felt that he couldn't show in court that those 18 people who were meeting with the Russians weren't too dumb to know it was a crime, beyond all reasonable doubt.

You think spending time in prison proves guilt???

Not always. But the people who plead or were found guilty by Mueller were not examples of miscarriage of justice.

None of the supposed hackers have been put on trial so none of the evidence has been seen, let alone tested in court.

Not true. There was an american convicted of identity theft, as part of the phishing operations of the hackers.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

It's not that they weren't allowed.

It is that they weren't permitted. Mueller requested access to the servers so a trained FBI team could make verified, tamper-proof images of the drives, and was refused access. Its not clear to me whether it was the DNC or Crowdstrike that refused them access, although in practical terms it makes no difference. Crowdstrike works for the DNC and dances to their tune. Later on, Crowdstrike provided what they say are images of some of the drives, not all, although again it isn't clear whether they imaged the entire drive or just selected parts of the data.

Come on now, this isn't in dispute. This has been widely reported and acknowledged by everyone that neither the FBI nor Mueller had access to the crime scene (the DNC servers) or made their own certified forensic images of the drives. They were completely at the mercy of Crowdstrike as to what they were allowed to see.

Crowdstrike, who are paid by the DNC. At least the FBI is supposed to be independent and neutral but Crowdstrike is completely, 100% partisan here: their client is the supposedly injured party. Can you see just a teeny, tiny conflict of interest there?

The images were better than physical access, because ...

If you don't know how law enforcement investigate data crimes, just say so. Because your description of why images are better is Not Even Wrong.

It's not the images that is the problem. It's that we have no way of knowing that the images are legitimate, and haven't been tampered with. Its that Mueller was only given a subset of the server hard drive images, and we don't know what is on the other drives.

The DNC claimed in their lawsuit that the hack affected over 330 servers. I smell a tiny bit of exaggeration there; over 140 of those servers were decommissioned after the alleged hack, which suggests that they were probably old and not in use and the DNC took the opportunity to get rid of them at Russia's expense. (Assuming they can collect damages.)

We can get a better idea of what really went on when we remember that Crowdstrike provided Mueller with four, count 'em, four server hard drive images. So out of 330+ servers that the DNC claim were hacked and needed to be repaired, replaced or decommissioned, only four actually contained any (alleged) signs of hacking.

Hmmm.

I say signs of hacking advisably, rather than evidence, because Crowdstrike reported in 2017 that they had no evidence that any data was actually removed from the servers.

You can see how these sorts of politically motivated hit pieces work. Crowdstrike reports to the intelligence committee that they claim Russia hacked the servers; the intelligence committed doesn't have access to the servers themselves, only to the data that Crowdstrike gives them, so of course they concur with Crowdstrike's report. They see only what Crowdstrike wants them to see.

You can also see the corporate dishonesty here. Under oath, Crowdstrike's CEO literally used the words "We did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC" but in Crowdstrike's corporate blog they describe this "no concrete evidence" as "Does CrowdStrike have evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC network? Yes."

By "Yes" they mean "No". If they actually had evidence, the CEO would have said "We did have concrete evidence..." when speaking under oath. What they have is quote-unquote "indications" which could mean anything at all.

Any time a corporation says they're going to "set the record straight", you can be certain that you are about to read spin, PR and a self-congratulatory puff-piece.

What the fuck do you claim broke the chain of custody for the images?

You're not serious are you? Playing a joke on your good friend Weavils right?

The FBI and Mueller never, at no point in the investigation, had access to the crime scene (the DNC servers) or a verifiable tamper-proof image of their drives. The alleged images of the drives could have been accessed by anyone at all before being given to Mueller. There's your break in the chain of custody right there.

It's as if Hillary called up the FBI and said that some Russian dude just broke in to her office and stabbed her intern Monica to death and left a knife behind with his name written in Cyrillic on it. "No you can't come and investigate the crime scene. You can't see the knife. But don't worry, I've hired a private investigate who has taken some photos of the knife and they'll send you the photos. Eventually, when we get around to it."

The Mueller investigation really is that stupid.

Aside from all the other problems with the Mueller investigation that I've already mentioned:

  • failure to investigate the criminal conspiracy between Clinton's lawyer Sussmann and the dodgy British intelligent agent Steele
  • failure to investigate Joseph Mifsud, who Mueller himself accused of lying to him
  • the bogus charges against Concord that Mueller dropped rather than face the humiliation of having to go to court with no evidence
  • Crowdstrike's admission that they have no evidence that data was copied from the DNC servers
  • failure to follow basic law enforcement procedures when investigating data theft

there are other serious problems with the Russia Did It narrative:

It's a good thing for Mueller's credibility that he will never, ever have to prove his claims against the GRU officers in court, because any defence attorney would absolutely destroy him over these holes in the narrative. (That is assuming that the people named actually are GRU officers and not just random Russian names plucked out of the Moscow phone book.)

The best we can say about the Mueller report is not that it proves the Russian hack beyond reasonable doubt, or even on the balance of probabilities, but that it makes a nice story that seems plausible to people who know nothing about IT or forensics.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

It is that they weren't permitted. Mueller requested access to the servers so a trained FBI team could make verified, tamper-proof images of the drives, and was refused access.

Wrong.

the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers

not clear to me whether it was the DNC or Crowdstrike that refused them access

It's good that your suspicions were aroused.