483

While for a long time Smith was dismissed as a peripheral figure more and more information has come out suggesting the opposite. It was clear from the beginning that he was tight with Michael Flynn and his son-and perhaps other high ranking Trump operatives, judging by the emails he sent them-Bannon, Kellyann Conway, Sean Spicer…

We then learned he raised $100,0000-and $50,000 of his own money-to acquire Clinton’s deleted 33,000 emails. More recently, it’s emerged he may have had prior knowledge of the Podesta emails as we saw in a previous chapter

Then there’s the possibility he may have used the money raised to pay the Russian hackers for the release of the Podesta emails. 

The WSJ really bolloxes describing the significance of the timing of this email as coming,

just days after WikiLeaks and the website DCLeaks began releasing emails damaging to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and four days after the U.S. government publicly warned that Russia was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election

What it means is that it came just four days after the Podesta emails first started coming out, suggesting that the reference to Russian students is actually code for happiness about the emails already being released by the Russians.

Now in yet another bombshell, an associate of Smith’s states he met with unnamed hackers in a DC hotel in August of 2016:

Mr. Smith said that he met with hackers in suburban Washington, D.C., according to one of his former associates. “I was told by Smith that he met with several groups of hackers in a suburban Washington hotel on the weekend of August 27-8, 2016. I have no idea what he meant by ‘several’ nor did I ask him for clarification,” said John Szobocsan, a friend and business partner who worked closely with Mr. Smith during 2016.

“Mr. Smith was in contact with powerful Republicans in Mr. Trump’s orbit into the final months of his life, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Flynn and others, according to interviews and the emails reviewed by the Journal.”

“The emails show Mr. Smith brainstormed about business ventures involving Mr. Flynn and later went so far as to copy Mr. Flynn’s government-provided email account on a message to Mr. Trump’s incoming defense secretary, Mr. Mattis. In February 2016, Mr. Smith wrote to a friend to discuss “a possible way into cybersecurity to involve Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.”

“An attorney for Mr. Flynn declined to comment. The Pentagon also declined to comment.”

“Other emails that Mr. Flynn is copied on show Mr. Smith either communicating directly with high-level Trump administration officials and allies or discussing such connections.”

You wonder what he could have been talking to Mattis about. Perhaps Mueller will have to interview him.

UPDATE: Of course, Mueller has interviewed Flynn in great detail and while it hasn’t been discussed much in the MSM, it stands to reason Mueller also asked Flynn about Peter Smith’s emails about Russian hackers and Wikileaks helping them find Clinton’s rightfully and legally deleted emails.

FN: What does the Mueller Report say about what Mueller asked Flynn about Smith?

Of course, now the Dems can interview him too-and they are interested in Smith:

“House Democrats, poised to reactivate a probe of President Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, said this week that an investigatory priority is learning more about a Republican activist who sought 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s private emails, and whether he served as a conduit between the Trump campaign and Russia-tied groups.”

“That is an area of continuing interest for us,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who is expected to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats regain control of the House in January, said in an interview. “In fact, that’s one of the areas that we’ve been able to make progress” on, despite Republican attempts to end the probe.

Interesting tease-progress has been made. What have they learned about Smith-beyond what public records show?

Mr. Schiff said the parameters of the panel’s work would be guided partly by the status in January of Mr. Mueller’s criminal investigation.

“But our intention would be to look at those areas that we were precluded from getting answers,” he said. “And there are entire investigative threads which the Republicans refused to pursue because they thought it too threatening to the president.”

FN: We still don’t know to this day if Schiff and Friends continued to investigate Smith and what they may have found. We did learn this year that the FBI stopped sending Congress intel on the Trump-Russia investigation after Comey was fired-wether Schiff was finally able to get the spigot turned back on from Trumpland we have not heard.

“Jack Langer, a spokesman for Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), current chairman of the House Intelligence panel, said Democrats “claimed nearly two years ago to have ‘more than circumstantial’ evidence of collusion. So instead of investigating new conspiracy theories, they should finally reveal the bombshell evidence they claim to already have.”

LOL-another comment by Nunes and friends that doesn’t pass the laugh test. You guys were in charge of this investigation and chose to shut it down before even speaking to Papadopoulos, Flynn, or Manafort.

FN: Nunes is one to talk about conspiracy theories-considering the role he played in Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s Excellent Ukrainian Adventure

But Smith’s role keeps getting bigger.

We now have a lot of different Trump operatives who apparently had prior knowledge of the Podesta emails. Both Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as well as Cambridge Analytica who somehow received saw the emails a month in advance. Corsi’s explanation doesn’t pass the laugh test-that he used an educated guess to deduce Wikileaks had Podesta’s emails.

We also have the new texts between Stone and Randy Credico where the circle is also getting tighter.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this chapter back on November 17, 2018-under 4 months we have learned a lot. You can put together a basic thumbnail sketch of Russian Collusion and Conspiracy.

It’s now clear through publicly released emails between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi that Corsi and not Credico was Stone’s back channel as far as far as his prior knowledge of the Podesta emails are concerned. The lines are pretty clear.

On July 23, 2016 seeing how successful the leak of the DNC emails were in terms of dividing the Democrats at the exact moment they most needed unity-the start of their convention- a senior aide at the Trump campaign-Manafort?-directed by possibly Donald Trump himself-directed Stone to see what else Wikileaks had. On July 25 Stone delegates the task to Jerome Corsi who delegated the task to Ted Malloch-a British conservative commentator for whom Stone wrote the forward to his book claiming the real conspiracy is the Deep State against ‘President Trump’-to find out what’s on the emails.

FN: We now know this fake conspiracy was actually authored by Putin himself. December 4, 2019

That Stone sent this email to Corsi on July 25 of all dates is just another ‘amazing coincidence’ as this is the first day of the Dem convention where Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is shouted down and forced to resign that very morning. Again as far as Nixonian dirty tricks the timing couldn’t be more perfect for Wikileaks’ dump.

Parenthetically, it’s quite appropriate that Wikileaks is one of the entities on Jerrold Nadler’s list of 81 Trump associates who need to preserve all relevant communications. 

As was, of course, the late Peter Smith’s estate.

Stone  must have watched the Dem’s dumpster fire of an opening day-where they had to keep clapping loudly when Clinton spoke to drown out the boos of the Bernie Bros with unadulterated glee. Maybe after turning off the tv of the Dems’ dumpster fire Stone pleasured himself  while gazing at pictures of his own Nixon tattoo on his back?

FN: Outside the convention hall in Philadelphia the Bernie Bros were marching to the chant ‘Lock Her Up!’

Whatever the exact specifics of the Watergate alum’s  perverse gloating, it seems quite possible that Roger Stone thought to himself ‘Wow-we’ve just got to find out what else Julian Assange has’ and fired that email off to his co-conspirator Corsi immediately.

Now regarding the DNC leaks, we now know per Michael Cohen’s testimony that Stone told Donald Trump himself about the emails on about July 18-19 so he had prior knowledge of the DNC emails as well as the subsequent Podesta emails. Interestingly, according to Cohen, Stone had claimed to have spoken directly to Assange regarding the DNC emails.

Then just two days in which would be Trump’s last press conference of the election-though the Chuck Todd and Amy Walter in December, 2016 would still be claiming that Trump was the transparent one and Hillary Clinton failed in this regard-even though she had loads of pressers after September 1 which revealed nothing other than how overrated pressers are in the first place-he declared Russia, if you’re listening. 

Then on August 2 Corsi got back to Stone. Malloch had given Corsi the dirty details: Podesta would be the subject of Wikileaks’ coming email dump and it would be out in October.

Just like July 25 was a pretty amazing coincidence for the day Stone gave the directive, August 2 was a pretty amazing coincidence as the day Corsi fulfilled it as this was also the day that then campaign manager, Paul Manafort, met with his long time friend and business associate-Konstantin Kilimnik-at the Cigar Club where they discussed:

1. Russian sanctions

2. Wikileaks leaks of the DNC.

3. Manafort handed over to this Russian intel agent 75 pages of detailed polling data.

So all the basic elements of Russian conspiracy and coordination are here-the quid-relief on sanctions for the Russians, the quo, Russia help in the election, Wikileaks; and the quo, Manafort gives the Russians-Kilimnik in their representative at this meeting with the Trump campaign manager-the 75 pages of detailed poling data for the Russian fake news campaign on social media.

But with all we’ve learned about Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi the last few months, Peter Smith has largely been forgotten. But his estate was also on Nadler’s 81 Trump associates and as we saw above Schiff has stated that somehow the Dems have been able to make progress on Smith’s role even with Nunes’ totally obstructing the investigation.

And note the significance of Peter Smith’s role. Both the letter about the ‘happy students’ after the Podesta emails were leaked and the Wall Street Journal piece above reporting that Smith met with hackers in a DC hotel room suggest that Smith did a lot more than simply have prior knowledge. Indeed, if true it would mean that the Trump campaign did more than simply help coordinate the distribution and reception of the hacked emails, it would mean that the campaign was involved on the supply side-the hacking side itself.

Note that Smith also spoke to Corsi and Smith’s emails to the to Trump campaign staff-Bannon, Flynn, Spicer, Kellayann Conway, Reince Priebus, et. al. If this is true this potentially implicates the entire senior echelons of the Trump campaign in not just coordination after the fact but the computer crimes themselves.

We’ve heard little about Peter Smith recently but keep his name in mind. Whenever Mueller’s report does become public-if it does-may have a lot on Smith. He’s the key conduit in terms of implicating the Trump campaign not just in the coordination side-Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi-but the computer crimes themselves-if Smith paid the hackers than that’s game-set-match.

And I would expect Peter Smith to be a very important part of the report. We know that Mueller has been investigating his role. 

The linked piece is from October-as noted above, in the last 4 months we’ve heard a ton about Stone and Corsi and nothing about Smith-which makes the MSM declare ‘I guess they weren’t able to find anything on Peter Smith, Oh well, ‘President Trump’ is right-no collusion. A lot of corruption though… Maybe obstruction of justice.’

But remember that the senior Trump campaign staffer, Smith was closet to was: Michael Flynn. And Flynn has cooperated massively with Mueller. So massively that he looked poised to get no prison time-until he put his foot in his mouth by claiming that sure he lied, but nobody told him it was a crime to lie to the FBI. 

You think Mueller may have questioned him greatly regarding what he knows about regarding Smith’s  stated claim of working with Russian hackers and Wikileaks to get Clinton’s emails?

FN: What does the MR reveal in this regard?

So while the MSM has decided-Ken Dilanian and friends-that Mueller’s report will be a nothingburger that shows no collusion my guess is they’re flat wrong.

FN: Dilanian-Dean Baquet and Friends would finally be right in March  2019 about the release of the MR but it was hardly a nothingburger. But, of course, Dilanian-Baquet and Friends totally messed it up by believing Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter-NO COLLUSION NO OBSTRUCTION! will be written on Dilanian’s tombstone.

Here are the potential crimes of the Trump campaign-which certainly included so-called ‘President Trump’ himself.

1. Coordination: the emails between Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and the Trump campaign-Bannon in October, well done-and the other senior campaign aide on July 23-Manafort? Note that this makes even more sense when you note that Bannon was the titular leader of the campaign in October and Manafort in July.

There have been enough reports of Roger Stone’s regular conversations with Trump to pretty clearly establish that Stone must have spoken to Trump about it. Now on top of that we have Cohen’s firsthand testimony that he saw Stone tell Trump about the DNC emails. In Stone’s sentencing memo his close contact with the campaign was demonstrated.

Again let’s not fall into the MSM canard that this is all Mueller has to establish coordination. These are just the scraps of public information we’re privy to. Mueller likely has a lot more. Cohen told Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the hearing that while he personally can’t absolutely prove coordination Mueller likely can.

2. But if the reporting about Peter Smith is true we have conspiracy to commit computer crimes. He sought out Wikileaks and the Russian hackers. The WSJ story had him in a hotel with unidentified hackers. Then there’s the post email dump letter about the ‘happy students.’

And again, this is just what we have on the public record. So I think it’s quite plausible that the Mueller report won’t be the nothingburger that Ken Dilanian and friends so clearly and dearly want it to be. 

FN: I do think they wanted it to be a nothingburger which is why they were so quick to take Barr’s fake exoneration letter and run with it-the night Barr’s fake exoneration was released, just a few minutes before, Kasie Hunt declared ‘people are tired of Mueller’ and after many pundits were saying ‘it’s a relief that ‘our President’ didn’t conspire with Russia-when this is the opposite of what the report said.

The savvy smart money in Washington predicts that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings will be a dud — that there won’t be charges for criminal conspiracy with Russia, and that the Justice Department will release limited information about his findings.

The savvy smart money is not so smart-or at least they don’t know anything about the law. I think better money is that there will be crimes-coordination and conspiracy.

UPDATE: For the record I made this prediction on Thursday, March 7, 2019. What I can’t predict is what will happen first:

1. The Mueller report is released and Congress and the public learns what’s in it

2. I finally publish this book-almost 14 months and counting…

If 1 does precede 2 remember I’m writing this prior to 1.

UPDATE: But what I didn’t predict was that while the MR did demonstrate collusion-coordination-conspiracy the punditry would simply report Bill Barr’s lies as the truth and that the MSMers would continue to sell this false narrative to this very day-even now you always hear-the Democrats have been very careful to avoid the mistakes of the Mueller Report-when the real mistakes of the MR were how  the Savvy themselves butchered it.

UPDATE: Axios

 

https://www.axios.com/donald-trump-russia-mueller-investigation-scandal-c3023a26-b2b9-443b-aee5-ded4f0e6bc44.html

UPDATE: Just saw a talking head on Hallie Jackson interepret Nadler’s recent comments as meaning the Dem leaders are trying to run out the clock on impeachment-as it gets closer the election they will argue ‘why impeach now just let the voters decide?’ Because that thereby excuses Trump’s possibly criminal conspiracy to rig and election and steal the Oval Office.

If I feel the Democrats are playing such a game maybe I will sit out 2020. What’s the point in electing Democrats if even they give the GOPers a pass?

I’m fine with waiting for now but not if this is just a guise to run the clock out. In any case if I’m right about Mueller-he finds Trump guilty of crimes they wont be able to run it out

This is an outrage is true-the Democrats letting Ivanka and Jared off the hook because they’re Trump’s kids. If they weren’t his kids they’d be on the hot seat. That’s what Constitution means to prevent

 

FN: Yes I was quite serious-thankfully the Democrats changed course in September. The division now is wether to get impeachment over before Christmas or do a longer probe that covers all his impeachable offenses-are as many as you can fit into say the next nine months. I’ve been a strong advocate for the latter-happy to see Jennifer Rubin is now coming around.

 

Arguably this belongs in Manafort chapters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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