There was a cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee during the runup to the 2016 presidential election and there are many who claim that it was Russians working on behalf of soon-to-be President Trump.
But since the servers never were examined by law enforcement, the conclusions remain murky.
Those answers now could be forthcoming.
A report at the Federalist explains that special counsel John Durham, who was assigned to find the origins – and crimes – of the 2016 Democrat conspiracy theory that then-candidate Donald Trump was somehow linked to or indebted to Russia, is looking into the hack.
The report explains the Federalist obtained an email that indicates Durham’s office is “investigating the investigation into the DNC hack.”
Also revealed was that the U.S. Department of Defense assigned the same Georgia Tech researcher who now has been caught up in scandal over the Alfa Bank hoax with investigating the “origins” of the DNC hack.
The Alfa Bank hoax involves unfounded claims by Democrats during the 2016 campaign of Trump links to Russia. They’ve been shown to have been fabricated.
The Federalist report explains Durham has labeled a person under review as “Researcher-1” in court documents but his identity has been confirmed by his own legal representative as Manos Antonakakis of Georgia Tech.
He was brought into the investigation when Durham indicted Michael Sussman, a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, for lying to the FBI by claiming he was reporting a “secret communication network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank” and Trump.
The indictment said tech executive Rodney Joffe had alerted Sussman to “data” that purportedly revealed backdoor communications between the two, and Joffe then asked Antonakakis and another researcher, David Dagon – to spy on internet data for evidence of that.
“According to the indictment, in mid-August, Antonakakis ‘queried internet data’ maintained by Joffe’s tech company for the mail1.trump-email.com domain. The results from that search, however, showed no apparent connections between the Trump email and Russia, causing Antonakakis to tell Joffe that the results do ‘not make sense with the storyline you have.'”
Even so, Joffe came up a tale of that secret channel, a tale that Sussmann provided to the FBI, with the claim he was not acting on behalf of anyone, even though he was representing the Clinton campaign and Joffe.
The report explained there previously there was no known connection between the special counsel and the investigation of the DNC hack.
“However, one email contained in a cache of documents obtained on March 9 from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-To-Know request reveals Antonakakis’ involvement in the investigation into the hack of the DNC,” the report said.
Antonakakis, after he was scheduled to be grilled before a grand jury, wrote to the university’s general counsel and “launched a soliloquy that perfectly described the Russia-collusion hoax and the plot by anti-Trump politicians and the deep state intelligence and law enforcement communities to take down the president of the United States,” the report said.
But Antonakakis portrayed the special counsel as the bad guy, complaining, “From where I stand, and for the first time in my life I felt that I am being investigated by law enforcement because of my ideas and the work I have done for the [U.S. government/Department of Defense].”
The Federalist said Antonakakis was “seething.”
“How dare the special counsel’s office inquire into this question, Antonakakis’s commentary continued, alleging the question served as an indictment of Assistant Special Prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis,” the report said.
“Someone hacked a political party (DNC, in this case), in the middle of an election year (2016), and the lead investigator of [the Department of Justice’s] special counsel would question whether U.S. researchers working for DARPA should conduct investigations in this matter is ‘acceptable’!” he charged.
The report explained, “Antonakakis is oblivious to reality: The entire reason the special counsel’s office first reached out to Georgia Tech, Antonakakis, Dagon, and other researchers, and later subpoenaed them, was because Sussmann and Joffe allegedly exploited data solely for political reasons. Sussmann, allegedly on behalf of Joffe and the Clinton campaign, then presented that supposedly ‘scientific attribution’—that Antonakakis admitted he did not support—to the FBI and CIA to show an Alfa Bank-Trump connection and thereby taint Trump with another Russia scandal in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.”
The report explains Antonakakis even complained that his research was needed to “preserve our democracy” and that “data belongs to no political party.”
“Let that sink in for a moment, folks. Antonakakis reviewed the Alfa Bank white paper Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer later allegedly provided to the FBI in an effort to implicate Trump in a Russia conspiracy. This same man professes that data-driven scientific attribution is politically unbiased—even though Antonakakis believed ‘a DNS expert would poke several holes’ in the hypothesis underlying the white paper given the government.”
A legitimate question is just why did the Defense Department Ask Antonakakis to investigate the DNC hack, and what brought that to Durham’s attention, the report said.
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
