Posted on 08/02/2025 6:32:59 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Tulsi Gabbard’s bombshell revives the question: was Russiagate a fraud orchestrated by Clinton, Comey, and Brennan to legitimize spying on Trump and bury a DNC leak?
After Tulsi Gabbard’s recent revelation that President Obama ordered a false, politicized Intelligence Community Assessment (“ICA”) following Trump’s 2016 victory, the questions again arise about whether Putin interfered with the election to help Trump.
The triumvirate of former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and Hillary Clinton has contended since 2016 that Russian President Vladimir Putin “hacked and leaked” embarrassing internal DNC emails showing Clinton cheating rival Bernie Sanders in the nomination process. The “hack-and-leak” claim was upheld by the ICA and later adopted by reports of both the Special Counsel and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Comey and Brennan, especially, are vulnerable for the false statements they made in the course of the “Russian collusion” imbroglio, which include misrepresentations to Congress and FISC and concealments from President and President-elect Donald Trump. The supposedly objective and professionally conducted ICA concluded that the “hack and leak” operation was orchestrated by Putin to benefit Trump over Clinton, lending a veneer of credibility to their deceit—an argument they might use to downplay criminal intent. But if, as Gabbard implies, the ICA’s “hack-and-leak” finding was deliberately falsified, then Comey, Brennan, and Clinton would all appear to be in criminal jeopardy for that fraud, in addition to other materially false statements, all part of a criminal conspiracy of falsity and concealment running at least through 2023.
So, let’s take a fresh look at the “hack-and-leak” claim. The truth or falsity of this charge hinges on one extremely odd communication: the July 5, 2016, release of a small, supposedly hacked, tranche of DNC emails by a purported hacker going by the persona of Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer 2.0 published these emails while advising the public that he had given far more emails exfiltrated from the DNC to WikiLeaks for later distribution.
The small group of emails he did produce on July 5, 2016, contained multiple markers external to the documents showing Russian origins of the supposed hack, thus “proving” that Russia had hacked the DNC, and any future embarrassing revelations would as well be the work of Putin.
If Guccifer 2.0 was indeed an authentic Russian source for externally hacked emails, the Russiagate narrative could be viewed as not irrationally predicated. But, on the other hand, if these July 5, 2016, documents were deliberate red herrings created from internal downloads, to which Russian markings were later attached, this phoniness would support the theory that Russiagate was a ruse concocted by Clinton, supported by the meretricious Brennan and Comey. It would therefore show the “hack-and-leak” claim to be the centerpiece of a deliberately false narrative. So, rather than legitimizing a “Russian collusion” investigation, the “hack and leak” claim in fact supports criminal charges against this dishonest triumvirate.
Let’s also examine the timing of this unfolding story. It was not until June 12, 2016, that WikiLeaks announced that it would soon be releasing DNC emails relating to the Clinton campaign. Almost immediately, on June 14, 2016, the DNC announced that its forensic consultant, CrowdStrike, had discovered malware some months earlier on the DNC server.
On July 5, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 produced the few emails described above, showing Russian markings. On July 22, 2016, just three days before the DNC convention, WikiLeaks produced a large tranche showing that Clinton had financially corrupted the DNC and committed various dirty tricks to the detriment of her rival Bernie Sanders. However, with the earlier release of the Guccifer 2.0 emails revealing a Russian plot, the harm to Bernie Sanders was overshadowed by the dastardly Putin-Trump conspiracy.
Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, noted that “her mission was to get the press focused on something even they found difficult to process: the proposition that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.”
As of June 2016, an exfiltration issue had been brewing for months. It is not controversial for several reasons that, by at least the latter half of April 2016, the DNC and the Clinton campaign understood that someone possessed exfiltrated embarrassing DNC documents. By that point, CrowdStrike had been retained, and it had installed monitoring software on the DNC server.
That approximate date range is consistent with other known “Russiagate” activity. It was in April 2016 that “Russian-connected” Professor Joseph Mifsud, actually a UK asset, initially approached the beleaguered young Trump advisor, George Papadopoulos, to tell him that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton” in the form of emails, soon to be followed up in early May by former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. Downer, in turn, got Papadopoulos’s agreement that he too had heard, like Downer, that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. This was the flimsy basis for the FBI’s initiation of the “Crossfire Hurricane” counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign for Russian electoral collusion, which was officially opened on July 30, 2016.
Since Mifsud and Downer were likely being deployed as “Five Eyes” assets at the behest of the FBI and CIA, it appears that Comey and Brennan were behind their actions, looking to create a pretextual basis for Crossfire Hurricane, which in turn would support Clinton’s claim.
There are serious flaws in the hacking claim. The campaign had a more than friendly relationship with the FBI under James Comey. Yet, it refused to provide the DNC server to the FBI, whose forensic team could quickly affirm or deny an outside hack and determine whether there were truly Russian earmarks to it.
Fortunately, a highly respected, independent group of some of our nation’s finest retired forensic examiners, known as VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), has analyzed both the July 15, 2016, small tranche of Guccifer 2.0 and the large one produced by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016.
VIPS found that both exfiltrations were the result of downloads, not hacks, albeit for radically different purposes. After the July 5, 2016, tranche was downloaded, VIPS found it was then implanted in a separate operation with various Russian markings. The download, of course, confirms that someone with access to the DNC server was responsible for the leak, and not an outside hacker. The subsequently placed Russian markings confirm that someone wished readers to conclude, falsely, that they were of Russian origin and that they were likely hacked.
So, while the July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks production was for the obvious purpose of exposing Clinton and DNC wrongdoing, the July 5, 2016, production was to establish, falsely, that Russia was behind it, inferentially to help Trump. The false hack and leak narrative was a basis for a counterintelligence operation, spying on a political candidate and later president, a criminal investigation of Trump, and a Senate inquiry. This would then appear to constitute a false statement and cover-up conspiracy prohibited by 18 USC sections 1001 and 371.
From the conspirators’ point of view, the only danger in pursuing this ruse was that it might backfire if the true leaker (such as a Bernie Bro employee of the DNC), upset over the shabby treatment of his candidate, were to step forward and declare the Russian hack theory a hoax. If there were such a person, the harm to Clinton would have been redoubled—first, for her cheating of Sanders, and secondly, for her lies about the episode to defraud Sanders’s supporters.
If a leaker risked losing anonymity to expose the false Russian narrative, there would also be motivation to silence him.
On July 10, 2016, two weeks before the DNC Convention and twelve days before WikiLeaks was to release the emails, a DNC staffer and Bernie Bro, a young man named Seth Rich, was shot in the back and killed in the early morning hours while walking home in the fashionable Bloomingdale section of D.C. His gold chain, watch, wallet, and phone were undisturbed, suggesting a lack of robbery motive.
WikiLeaks had a policy of never naming a leaker, but it denied that Russia was a source of DNC documents. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also noted vehemently after Rich’s death that WikiLeaks protects its leakers while offering a reward of $20,000 for the identification of Rich’s killer. Whether Rich was the clearly admitted WikiLeaks source remains unknown to this day.
A lawsuit was later filed in the Eastern District of Texas to pursue a Freedom of Information Act request for the FBI’s investigative file on Rich’s murder after staunch opposition by the FBI to the request. The Court initially ordered production of specific files, which the FBI slow-rolled, finally producing what it admitted was only a small part of what would be a larger production, approximately 142 pages. The FBI then refused to produce more.
It is difficult to believe that Vladimir Putin would care about internal party infighting or that he would wish to harm the politician whose State Department approved the controversial Uranium One sale and the transfer of dual-use technology to Skolkovo, “Russia’s Silicon Valley.” The almost comical Steele Dossier was a way to explain what would otherwise be Putin’s lack of motivation.
In any case, now that we can see that the ICA was just another politicized lie, the question is raised as to whether Clinton, Comey, and Brennan should be prosecuted for their conspiracy in putting our nation through nine years, and counting, of the highly divisive Russiagate canard.
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.
![]() |
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
A good review of the Russiagate background.
BTTT
Technically, very clear and very inciteful.
And so therefore, today’s democrat party liners in their national press corpse will (once again) ignore it.
IIRC, July 5, 2016, was also the day Comey held his infamous press conference, when we listed a long list of crimes committed by Hillary, but then went on to absolve her because she did not intend to break the law and therefore, no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against her.
Someone needs to explain how the following makes sense. Who is recommending these people? Radcliffe hires someone gabbard fired. Now this:
.https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1951357573686300918?
How do you rail against Brennan but then want to hire this guy?
Seth Rich
Expect some news on the laptops and the DNC any day now.
Wasn’t it Brennan who Russia warned, on multiple occasions, about the Tsarnaev family aka the Boston Bombers and he ignored Russia?
Way back in my notes. (earlier links are gone)
The Day That Guccifer 2.0 Quit Hacking The DNC (May 24, 2018)
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/the-day-that-guccifer-2-0-quit-hacking-the-dnc/
Derr Hilderbeast has lots of supporters then and now that sweep things off the web.
Original source from Wayback maching:
The Day That Guccifer 2.0 Quit Hacking The DNC
https://web.archive.org/web/20181202074425if_/https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/05/the-day-that-guccifer-2-0-quit-hacking-the-dnc/
This is the original, but not in 2016
Earlier Guccifer 2 coverage from link in Wayback machine:
Media Mishaps: Early Guccifer 2 Coverage
https://web.archive.org/web/20181221183234/https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/media-mishaps-early-guccifer-2-coverage/
Feedback
Comments on this reported should be submitted on this related blog entry. Comments will be open for roughly the next two weeks. Off topic and off color comments will be silently filtered and discarded.
Caveat
This analysis makes the assumption that the two media outlets (The Smoking Gun and Gawker) who initially covered Guccifer 2’s first document printed their own PDF files. If we learn that either/both of those media outlets received their PDF’s from Guccifer 2 or another third party, then this report will updated accordingly.
Much more at link.
The DNC leaked their own garbage and stamped Russia Russia Russia on it. This is typical of the left when you see racist acts committed by leftists and blamed on conservatives.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.