Durham Investigates Pentagon Contractors Who Helped Clinton Campaign Plot Russia Hoax

The Sussmann grand jury indictment states that the federal contractors, who mined private internet records to help "Conduct opposition research" in coordination with the Clinton campaign, were driven not by data but by "Bias against Trump." Joffe's lawyer has described his client as "Apolitical." He said Joffe brought Sussmann information about Trump he believed to be true out of concern for the nation.

Government funding in hand, they continued mining nonpublic data on Trump after he took office in 2017 - as Sussmann, Sullivan and other former Clinton campaign officials renewed their effort to connect Trump to Alfa Bank.

Joffe himself called the data used to back up the narrative a "Red herring." In another email, Joffe said he had been promised a high post if Clinton were elected, suggesting he may have had a personal motivation to make a sinister connection between Russia and Trump.

Joffe is the "Max" quoted in media articles promoting the secret cyber plot targeting Trump, a code name likely given him by Simpson, who has a son named Max.

A registered Democrat, Lorenzen was tasked by Joffe with making a Trump connection from the data along with the researchers from Georgia Tech, where she has worked as a guest researcher since 2007.

Another "Computer scientist" tied to the project was Paul Vixie, a colleague of Joffe who, like Joffe, gave $250 in 2000 to Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who was close to the late Sen. John McCain, who feuded with Trump, federal campaign records show.

The materials Sussmann provided bureau headquarters in September 2016, in the heat of the presidential race, included two thumb drives containing DNS logs that Sussmann and Joffe claimed showed patterns of covert email communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, according to the indictment.

Alfa Bank, which also operates in the U.S., commissioned two studies that found the DNS data compiled by Joffe and his computer operatives were formatted differently than the bank server's DNS logs, and one study posited that the DNS activity may have been "Artificially created." Also, independent cyber forensics experts found that the emails released by researchers bore timestamps that did not match up with actual activity on the servers, suggesting they may have been altered.

The indictment stated that Joffe "Shared certain results of these data searches and analysis" with Sussmann for the FBI to investigate, suggesting he may have cherry-picked the data to fit a preconceived "Narrative," - or "Storyline," as the computer researchers also referred to it in emails obtained by Durham.

One Georgia Tech researcher warned Joffe in mid-2016, in the middle of their fishing expedition, of the lack of evidence: "We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump]." Tyrrell asserted that his client Joffe "Stands behind the rigorous research and analysis that was conducted, culminating in the report he felt was his patriotic duty to share with the FBI." Using nonpublic data from a federal research contract to bait the FBI into investigating Trump could constitute a breach of contract and nondisclosure agreements.

According to the indictment, Joffe directed Lorenzen and the two university researchers to "Search broadly through internet data for any information about Trump's potential ties to Russia." The Georgia Tech researchers named as "Investigators" on the project included David Dagon and Manos Antonakakis, who the sources confirmed are the two university researchers cited by Durham in his indictment.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/08/durham-investigates-pentagon-cybersecurity-contractors-who-helped-clinton-campaign-plot-russia-hoax/