Re-visiting the "Russian Hacking" claim.
A more detailed debunking of the Russian Hacking claim.
In my latest article debunking smears against Jullian Assange, I briefly went over the claim that Russia was his source in 2016 DNC emails. I wanted to write a more detailed article showing the massive gaping holes and sketchy sources used in the muller report to back up this claim. I also wanted to report on the investigation by former intelligence officials that debunks this claim. Before reporting on this, I want to say even if the source of the DNC emails was Russia, they should have been published by WikiLeaks. Journalists should publish newsworthy information (which the DNC emails were) no matter what the source is or what the source’s political agenda is. That being said I think the evidence shows the Russian hacking claims are bogus.
Mullers timeline does not match up
The claim in the Muller report is that Russian officers hacked into the DNC server and disseminated them to WikiLeaks through online personalities named “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0”. The massive problem with this claim is that the timeline does not match up. Journalist Aaron Mate reported in Real Clear Investigations that Jullian Assange announced on June 12th, 2016 that WikiLeaks had leaks they were planning to publish yet the Muller report claims Assange’s first contacts with the alleged Russian hackers were on June 14th. According to Muller’s report, Assange announced that he had the DNC emails before he first contacted his alleged source. Furthermore, as Mate reported, Jullian Assange said in 2017 that he did not publish any documents sent to him by either the Guccifer 2.0 account or DCLeaks because he was unable to verify them. This proves that Assange already had the DNC emails before the two alleged Russian accounts reached out to him and he did not publish any material sent to him those two accounts.
Mullers Sketchy source.
The aforementioned journalist Aaron Mate in a later article reported that the FBI relied on a firm called CrowdStrike for their forensics on the claim of Russian hacking. Mate reports that according to the prosecutor Jessie Liu who prosecuted Trump associate Roger Stone, the F.B.I only possesses a redacted version of the crowd strike report alleging Russian hacking. Crowdstrike is not in any way a reliable source not only was it hired by the DNC its Co-founder was a senior fellow at the pro-war, pro-NATO think tank the Atlantic Council. Beyond this, as I have previously reported in several articles the CEO of crowd strike, Shawn Henry admitted under oath they have no evidence the DNC emails were hacked at all let alone by Russia.
Forensics shows Assange’s source could not have been a hack.
A forensic investigation was done by Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity, a group of former intelligence officials that found the Wikileaks source could not have been the result of a hack. According to their investigation, the source for the emails would have had to be a FAT (File Allocation Table) which is used for storage and not for hacking. They know this because a FAT file system rounds the time stamp to an even number and every single time stamp on the DNC emails ends in an even number. A VIPS letter to the president signed by 18 former United States intelligence officials explains this further saying “We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number—2, 4, 6, 8, or 0. If those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number. The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power. Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.” They later say in the open letter based on this information that “The only thing we know for sure is that the person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails.”.
Summary
What these facts show is that an unknown source copied the DNC emails directly and brought them to WikiLeaks. On June 12th, 2016 Assange announced he would be releasing this information. Two days later WikiLeaks was contacted by two mysterious sources “Guccifer 2.0” and “DC leaks” claiming to have more information. Assange did not publish this information because it could not be verified and was also most likely not newsworthy. We do not know who was behind the “Guccifer 2.0” or “DC leaks” accounts but it is highly unlikely they were Russian spies as Muller alleged. If they were they would have to be the dumbest spies on the planet. As Aaron mate reported in the article mentioned earlier the Guccifer 2.0 account promoted data in June that had easily traceable Russian metadata. As Mate reports “The computer that created it was configured for the Russian language, and the username was "Felix Dzerzhinsky," the Bolshevik-era founder of the first Soviet secret police.” We do not know who is behind the account but it is highly unlikely a spy would be that dumb and obvious about being one.
Phenomenal article debunking the Russian Hacking claims. I'm going to cite this whenever people bring that idea up.
Excellent. You said it all but it's brief and to the point.