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“Peter W. Smith, an Illinois businessman with a long history of involvement in GOP politics, sought and collected the funds from at least four wealthy donors as part of the plan to obtain Mrs. Clinton’s stolen emails from hackers just weeks before election day in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.”

“Mr. Smith’s effort to find what he believed were some 33,000 deleted emails Mrs. Clinton said were personal was first reported by the Journal in a 2017 story, but the extent of his planning went far beyond what was previously known. Mr. Smith died 10 days after describing his efforts to a reporter for the Journal.”

Indeed, while many previously dismissed him as a marginal light this new reporting shows that this was a mistake.

This story completely changed my view of Smith. He was a cunning political operative who used insanely suspicious techniques such as foldering his emails, a technique made infamous by al Qaeda.

— Scott Stedman (indefinite hiatus) (@ScottMStedman) October 7, 2018

This story is a bombshell on a number of levels such that it’s very easy to bury the lede-because there are multiple angles that could reasonably be considered the lede. But if there’s a lede it’s this: if this story is true this is a clear case of Russia collusion with a connected operative of the Trump campaign.

The way the story is written strongly suggests that Smith paid Russians in the US $150,000 under the guise of “the Washington Scholarship Fund for the Russian students.” If this is accurate, then we now have a confirmed example of a payment made to Russians from a GOP operative.

— Scott Stedman (indefinite hiatus) (@ScottMStedman) October 7, 2018

He raised the $100 grand through a fake group for: Russian students.

“According to an email in the “Robert Tyler” account reviewed by the Journal, Mr. Smith obtained $100,000 from at least four financiers as well as a $50,000 contribution from Mr. Smith himself. People familiar with Mr. Smith’s financial transactions confirm there were donations.”

“The email, dated Oct. 11, 2016, in the “Robert Tyler” account, included the subject line “Wire Instructions—Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative” and was addressed to Mr. Smith. The writer, who identified himself as “ROB, ” said: “This $100k total with the $50k received from you will allow us to fund the Washington Scholarship Fund for the Russian students for the promised $150K.” The Journal couldn’t determine if such a fund actually exists.

“The students are very pleased with the email releases they have seen, and are thrilled with their educational advancement opportunities,” the email read. Because multiple people had access to the “Robert Tyler” email account, it couldn’t be determined who sent the email to Mr. Smith.

Emptywheel points out that based on the timing and the content ‘the students are very pleased with the email releases they have seen…’ this could be the hackers behind the leaked 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.”

Another just stunning implication of the piece is that Smith may not have killed himself. First of all, I don’t want to hear any GOPers laughing, because, after all: Vince Foster.

“Way at the end of the story, it provides evidence that casts doubt on the claim Smith killed himself last year — an on the record quote from retired Wall Street financier Charles Ortel, who had been involved in the anti-Clinton effort, describing correspondence with Smith in the days before he died laying out optimistic future plans.”

Indeed, let’s go back to the WSJ for a moment for the exact quote:

“Retired Wall Street financier Charles Ortel said he spoke with Mr. Smith on the phone in the hours before his death about a new project to brief the Obama Foundation and warn its leaders against the mistakes they believed were made by the Clinton Foundation. According to Mr. Ortel, Mr. Smith sounded excited, and he began brainstorming who to contact and how to proceed.”

“I came away from that conversation saying this is great. We’re going to make progress,” said Mr. Ortel, who had previously communicated with Mr. Smith about efforts to obtain Clinton’s emails but was not one of the four people named in the email account as financial contributors. He said he was stunned when news outlets reported that Mr. Smith had taken his life shortly after their conversation.”

Look, I’m not an expert on suicides by any means but is it typical to write on your suicide note ‘No foul play whatsoever?’

Another very interesting aspect of the reporting is the sourcing. Back to Emptywheel:

“As regards the Clinton email effort itself, the story says that the Smith effort “remain[s] of intense interest to federal investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller’s office and on Capitol Hill,” suggesting it relies on both Hill sources and people who know what Mueller is up to (the latter of which up to this point, has always been mediated through witnesses). In key places in the story, it conflates those two investigations, which doesn’t necessarily mean witnesses making claims about Mueller’s intensifying focus are wrong, but does show real sloppiness on the part of the reporting, which invites some skepticism about the significance of the conclusions offered (including the article’s focus on Mike Flynn role in Smith’s rat-fuck; click through to read that).”

So investigators continue to be interested in Smith. And indeed, it’s possible he could have been involved with the Podesta emails.

Then there’s Smith’s link to Chuck Johnson-who was also linked to the GOP crusade in 2016 to catfish Weiner, though I digress.

Back to Emptywheel:

“Further, with regards to encryption, this Politico article from last year reveals Royal O’Brien (who, except for the context, might be a candidate to be the October 11 email described by WSJ) advising Smith about PGP, which suggests any non-commercial encryption may have been adopted after key parts of the conspiracy took place.”

In an email chain from October obtained by Politico, Smith sought the advice of a tech-savvy business associate about concerns that WikiLeaks had been attacked by hackers. In the email, the associate, Royal O’Brien, a Jacksonville-based programmer Smith described as a dark web expert, advised Smith about the use of PGP keys for encryption and opined that anyone who launched an attack on WikiLeaks would likely face stiff blowback from the group’s web-savvy supporters.

“All of this leads me to be more interested in where the methods adopted imperfectly by this 80 year old came from than that he did. An obvious candidate is Chuck Johnson, whose cooperation with the Smith rat-fuck is detailed in the Politico article, and whose businesses have all been shutting down in recent months, and whose defense attorney did not respond to a question from me last week about whether he still represents Johnson. Though Johnson, and his Nazi friend living in Ukraine, Weev, are better at operational security than what the WSJ describes here.”

FN: See chapter A for Johnson’s role in Weinergate. He and Roger Stone-recently found guilty on all five counts at his criminal  trial got into a pissing contest on who really deserves credit for Trump’s vile use of the Bill Clinton accusers at Trump’s debate with Hillary two days after Hollywood Access. Stone  points out he wrote a book about the-unpredicated accusations against Bill-but it does seem Johnson may have had a role in actually getting the women there. We know-again Chapter A-that Johnson paid Sydney Leathers for information that could take Weiner down again-as she had during his attempted comeback in 2013; and that Johnson was also involved in paying the young underage woman-and her father-Weiner ended up sexting.

Of course, Stone and Jerome Corsi themselves had a major-hithero unknown-role in  Comeygate: see chapter A for details; for here suffice it to say that not many have read Roger Stone’s book on 2016 or if anyone has they skimmed it.

End FN

Back to the WSJ:

“In addition to giving hard drives to the House and Senate intelligence committees, which are also investigating election interference by Russia, Mr. Smith’s estate has given documents to Mr. Mueller’s team, people with the matter said. Associates of Mr. Smith have been interviewed by investigators or summoned before a grand jury as recently as this summer, according to documents and people familiar with the matter. BuzzFeed has also reported that Mr. Smith’s bank transfers are under scrutiny.”

“John Szobocsan, a business associate of Mr. Smith, appeared before a federal grand jury in August, according to one person familiar with the matter. Mr. Szobocsan, who emails show was involved in Mr. Smith’s pursuit of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, also was interviewed by Mr. Mueller’s team three times earlier in the year, according to court records that were reviewed by the Journal.”

“Mr. Szobocsan is seeking repayment from Mr. Smith’s estate for the legal costs he has accrued, according to court records. He and an attorney representing him didn’t respond to requests for comment.”

So those facing questions from Mueller have been going to Smith’s estate for repayment.

.@mflynnJR what do you know about Smith's funding?

— Scott Stedman (indefinite hiatus) (@ScottMStedman) October 7, 2018

Seeing as Flynn cooperated with Mueller we may know the answer to that in the future-when Mueller’s report comes out and the Dems reopen the House Russia investigation.

UPDATE: It’s amazing how much water under the bridge since I wrote this chapter on October 8. 2018. With all the talk about wether Mueller is about to wind down, we haven’t heard anything about Peter Smith since this bombshell reporting that suggests he could have paid the Russian hackers post Podesta’s emails. Regarding the collusion coordination angle, all the focus has been on the Roger Stone-Jerome Corsi nexus.

With Michael Cohen’s testifying that he witnessed Roger Stone telling Trump himself about DNC emails ahead of time in late July we now have a pretty decent timeline of how coordination went down as we see in Chapter A. 

It’s clear that Roger Stone with the help of Jerome Corsi gave the Trump campaign advanced knowledge of both the July and October email leaks by Wikileaks. After seeing how successful the July leaks were-DWS had to resign as Chairwoman at literally the worst moment-the first day of the Democratic primary-the Trump campaign including Trump himself-proactively directed Stone to find out what else Assange had. So we have prior knowledge what about coordination?

It seems to me that to a large extent taking the trouble to find out all this info in advance is coordination in itself-simply knowing this information enables the campaign to coordinate its own activities in sync with what/when they know it breaks-Stone himself tweeted about Podesta’s time in the barrel.

Beyond that the release of Podesta’s emails just 1 hour and 40 minutes after Hollywood Access certainly looks like classic coordination.

But while we haven’t heard about Smith in over 3 months, he potentially adds another dimension to coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia-did he actually pay the Russian hackers behind the emails? If true this would add an even more active element to Russian coordination.

Adding to Stone-Corsi prior knowledge and planning-ie coordination-potential Smith-Flynn commissioning the Russian hackers themselves. But this dimension has been totally forgotten with all the Stone-Corsi news.

I say Smith-Flynn as Smith sent emails to Flynn-along with a number of other senior Trump aides-Spicer, Kellyann Conway and Bannon-Bannon’s emails with Stone on Wikileaks-‘well done’-became public knowledge from Stone’s indictment memo.

While Stone-Corsi point to the demand side of Russia coordination Smith-Flynn point to the supply side-that they didn’t just seek it out but were involved in obtaining it.

After Cohen’s blockbuster testimony-apparently his private testimony to House Intel was an even bigger blockbuster, potentially giving Schiff and friends game changing information-he’s coming back next week and then his childhood buddy, Felix Sater, will be testifying publicly in two weeks.

Swalwell on Cohen's closed door hearing: "We truly were at the edge of our seats listening intently as Mr. Cohen told us information that he certainly did not tell us in October 2017 … We expect him to come back on Wednesday with corroborating docs." https://t.co/zPvHn82HMk

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 2, 2019

As we saw above, Cohen’s testimony about Trump misstating his income led Richard Neal to finally take the plunge and request Trump’s tax returns. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg:

Democrats want to call Trump family members — with subpoenas, if needed — and investigate Trump's biz, foundation and presidency.

The probes could extend into 2020, Axios reports, and cover conflicts of interest, money laundering, and security clearances. https://t.co/5DrrPZlSTP

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 1, 2019

Chairman Elijah Cummings put it this way: if someone’s name was in Cohen’s transcripts we want to speak to them. One person who wasn’t in the transcripts though was Michael Flynn. But to get the bottom of collusion-coordination-conspiracy the Dems-presumably Schiff and friends-should call him in-we know Flynn is eager to cooperate where he can with his future still in limbo after Judge Emmet Sullivan warned him he couldn’t assure him of no prison time and told him ‘I won’t try to hide my disgust with your actions’ and Flynn agreed to a delay in sentencing.

The Dems will have plenty to ask Flynn about-failure to disclose he was a foreign agent, his call  to Kisylak not to worry about the sanctions-installed to punish Russia’s interference in out election on the Trump campaign’s behalf, his subsequent lies to the FBI about the same-he knows now not to try to pretend he didn’t know lying to the FBI is bad-and Peter Smith. 

Peter Smith is certainly a very important figure regarding the actual coordination around the emails-along with Papadopoulos-who according to a Chicago sports bar patron did tell Jeff Sessions about the emails and Stone-Corsi, of course.

Then there’s the question of wether or not he was Peter Schmidt’s client-it would stand to reason as it’d be quite a coincidence if both Schmdit and Smith were rifling through the Dark Web looking for Hillary’s emails independently. Then there’s the question of wether or not Schmdit was actually were Comey got his fake Russian document from-or was there yet another supplier?

UPDATE: The Mueller Report added more  color to both Russia if you’re listening and the Flynn-Smith connection. While the Corsi-Stone connection demonstrates coordination, the Flynn-Smith connection is a case of potential conspiracy. The MR revealed that on the day Trump said Russia if you’re listening, he also instructed Flynn to get the emails-we knew prior to the MR that the Russians actually attempted for the first time to hack Clinton’s office for the first time.

Flynn  followed  Trump’s command by following up with Smith-though the MR doesn’t reveal who may have funded Smith-again could it have been Joseph Schmitz? Seth Abramson’s conjecture remains very plausible.