Over the past year, I've believed, until recently, almost totally in the claims by Consortium News, and somewhat lesser by people like Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, that Putin Did NOT Do It on massive election interference in the US.
I still think there's blatant Hillbot claims that are overblown about what the Russians DID do, and I also know that much of what Robert Mueller has on Paul Manafort is him grifting for Ukraine, rather than Russia, as I noted here.
That said, there's an increasing belief in my mind that Seth Rich did NOT steal any DNC emails. (Or, per that, other people at the DNC.) Related to that, at a minimum, there's the strong belief that the Consortium News / Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity claims that Putin henchmen couldn't have downloaded the initial, spring 2018 emails quickly enough is on thin ice and was on thin ice from the time the claims were made. Couple that with the nondisclosure of who this "Forensicator" is and my skeptic hat is back on.
Seeing all of this in light of Consortium News being riddled with conspiracy theorists is why I de-blogrolled it.
That's the backdrop for something new, and seemingly big.
Marcy Wheeler, aka Emptywheel, has a bombshell claim. Big enough to top Memeorandum.
She says she personally knows a journalist who was helping Russky operators. Helping them enough she turned said person into the FBI.
Sometime last year, I went to the FBI and provided information on a person whom I had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US. Since that time, a number of public events have made it clear I was correct.
I never in my life imagined I would share information with the FBI, especially not on someone I had a journalistic relationship with. I did so for many reasons. Some, but not all, of the reasons are:
- I believed he was doing serious harm to innocent people
- I believed (others agreed) that reporting the story at that time would risk doing far more harm than good
- I had concrete evidence he was lying to me and others, including but not limited to other journalists
- I had reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper with my website
To protect the investigation, I will not disclose this person’s true identity or the identity and/or role I believe he played in the attack. …
- I believed that if the FBI otherwise came to understand what kind of information I had, their likely investigative steps would pose a risk to the privacy of my readers
The other reason I’m disclosing this now is to put a human face to the danger in which the House Republicans are putting other people who, like me, provided information about the Russian attack on the US to the government.
Well, that's pretty serious. IF it's meaningful.
If this is even 50 percent true, it finishes sinking the Consortium News / Ray McGovern / VIPS battleship.
But is it?
Let's examine a bit further.
"Serious harm to innocent people"? Can't be physical harm, unless Wheeler is refusing to file charges against someone for aggravated assault. If she means something like gaslighting, well ... we don't know what it is since she didn't spell it out.
Most the rest of this is similarly vague.
And, "privacy of my readers"? Like she thinks the FBI is going to look up the IP addresses of every person reading, or even every person commenting? Yikes if you're really saying that.
As far as some of the other stuff, as Aaron Mate noted on Twitter, that Trump wanted to talk to Syria is nothing new. And? Maybe not in the exact way Trump is doing it, and not for forming an anti-Iran coalition, we need to get out of Syria, period.
In fact, much of the piece seems to focus on "Mr. X" and his relation to Syria issues.
But is it?
Let's examine a bit further.
"Serious harm to innocent people"? Can't be physical harm, unless Wheeler is refusing to file charges against someone for aggravated assault. If she means something like gaslighting, well ... we don't know what it is since she didn't spell it out.
Most the rest of this is similarly vague.
And, "privacy of my readers"? Like she thinks the FBI is going to look up the IP addresses of every person reading, or even every person commenting? Yikes if you're really saying that.
As far as some of the other stuff, as Aaron Mate noted on Twitter, that Trump wanted to talk to Syria is nothing new. And? Maybe not in the exact way Trump is doing it, and not for forming an anti-Iran coalition, we need to get out of Syria, period.
In fact, much of the piece seems to focus on "Mr. X" and his relation to Syria issues.
Given that Ray McGovern is so nutbar as to think Devin Nunes is a genius, here's Marcy's latest take on him, "the half-wit running our intelligence oversight."
That then said, though, Marcy Wheeler is ultimately a Democrat. She's a Democrat who is right about the Jill Stein recount, but overblown at best and wrong at worst about Jill Stein the person.
I searched Marcy's site, and she has basically no postings about the Green Party. She has just a couple of late-2016 ones about Stein, which come off as sour grapes. So, I quote:
Jill Stein, admittedly, always struck me as a bit of a naive and somewhat unhinged candidate.
Naive? Not at all. Ardent, but short of unhinged? Yes. And, I've criticized both her campaign and her recount.
What Jill Stein is doing is blatant self promotion, list building, reputational repair where it is undeserved, and slush funding for an incoherent Green Party.
This is pure ignorance, re the Green Party. Given that the Party executive committee refused to support the recount, they get no money from this. Only Stein does. (And I just Tweeted her this.)
At the same time, Wheeler fully rejects the Hillbot route:
The vote differential, again in Wisconsin for instance, between Clinton and Trump currently stands at 27,259 votes. Yes, that is less than the total of Stein, so despite the wild claim she threw the election that some Clinton supporters have thrown, I will not. Some Stein voters were never going to vote for Clinton; so while Stein’s vanity run deserves ridicule, it does not, in and of itself, “prove” Clinton would have won but for Stein.
At the fourth time, the picture for this blog post is Stein at Putin's table. (That said, one Green Party presidential nomination candidate, Bill Kreml, is on record as it being a dumb idea.)
At the sixth time, Wheeler has a past history as a Democratic Party operative at the county level, per Wiki.
I think all of this is necessary for background.
I await finding out who Wheeler's fellow journalist is. And, even more, beyond Wheeler's blog post, how likely Wheeler's claims are about this person.
That's because, while the VIPS claim is not fully proven, it may well still be true, among other things. And, state election departments have already rejected claims their systems were hacked.
So, per a further review of Wheeler's site, already in December 2016 she was making claims not proven then nor proven today, such as:
This is the part that has always been missing in the past: how the documents got from GRU, which hacked the DNC and John Podesta, to Wikileaks, which released them.
That came up when I did the "17 intelligence agencies" search.
Wheeler seems to have had some degree of skepticism, but ... I don't know if enough. Anyway, her claims about "hacked the DNC" remain unproven, at least for public consumption. There also, at least at one time, were other candidates besides Seth Rich.
Anyway, that was one of only two hits on that search. Why? Maybe Marcy lost interest. Maybe, as other people noted even more than her the Mack-truck sized loopholes on that, she moved on.
Or because she believes "Putin Did It" is a slam dunk after all. (And she may be calling interest in the Steele Dossier overrated because of reported Clinton campaign connections to it.)
Also, she thinks the Internet Research Agency indictments are a much better deal than Aaron Mate, per my Manafort link above.
In other words, on her "journalist" claim, I just don't know at this time how much of Wheeler's skin in the came is her actual cybersecurity knowledge and how much of it is Democratic Party former operative background.
But, given what I've grokked, I'll call it a 50-50 split off the top of my head.
And so, while thinking her reporting is interesting, I'd take it with a grain of salt, starting with the header:
Putting A Face (Mine) To The Risks Posed By GOP Games On Mueller Investigation
Yes, the GOP has played games. So have Democrats. And, since I'm not part of the duopoly, I can say there are more than two sides here.
And, although page clicks are much less important than in the past, I put a "no follow" on Marcy's post.
So, again, no more than 50-50 on seriousness level. If some wingnutistan blogger was the attempted computer hacker, and allegedly was helping Putin from his parents' basement, we'll laugh about Marcy later.
That said, it's almost certainly not a stereotypical wingnut blogger. She claims to be "friendly" with the person.
And, although page clicks are much less important than in the past, I put a "no follow" on Marcy's post.
So, again, no more than 50-50 on seriousness level. If some wingnutistan blogger was the attempted computer hacker, and allegedly was helping Putin from his parents' basement, we'll laugh about Marcy later.
That said, it's almost certainly not a stereotypical wingnut blogger. She claims to be "friendly" with the person.
