Huma Abedin forwarded sensitive State Department emails, including passwords to government systems, to her personal Yahoo email account before every single Yahoo account was hacked, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of emails released as part of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch shows.
Abedin, the top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, used her insecure personal email provider to conduct sensitive work. This guarantees that an account with high-level correspondence in Clinton’s State Department was impacted by one or more of a series of breaches — at least one of which was perpetrated by a “state-sponsored actor.”
The U.S. later charged Russian intelligence agent Igor Sushchin with hacking 500 million Yahoo email accounts. The initial hack occurred in 2014 and allowed his associates to access accounts into 2015 and 2016 by using forged cookies. Sushchin also worked for the Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital, which paid former President Bill Clinton $500,000 for a June 2010 speech in Moscow.
A separate hack in 2013 compromised three billion accounts across multiple Yahoo properties, and the culprit is still unclear. “All Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft,” the company said in a statement.
Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, regularly forwarded work emails to her personal humamabedin@yahoo.com address. “She would use these accounts if her (State) account was down or if she needed to print an email or document. Abedin further explained that it was difficult to print from the DoS system so she routinely forwarded emails to her non-DoS accounts so she could more easily print,” an FBI report says.
Abedin sent passwords for her government laptop to her Yahoo account on Aug. 24, 2009, an email released by the State Department in September 2017 shows.
Huma sends laptop password to Yahoo / Source: State Department
Long-time Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal sent Clinton an email in July 2009 with the subject line: “Important. Not for circulation. You only. Sid.” The message began “CONFIDENTIAL… Re: Moscow Summit.” Abedin forwarded the email to her Yahoo address, potentially making it visible to hackers.
The email was deemed too sensitive to release to the public and was redacted before being published pursuant to the Judicial Watch lawsuit. The released copy says “Classified by DAS/ A/GIS, DoS on 10/30/2015 Class: Confidential.” The unredacted portion reads: “I have heard authoritatively from Bill Drozdiak, who is in Berlin…. We should expect that the Germans and Russians will now cut their own separate deals on energy, regional security, etc.”
The three email accounts Abedin used were abedinh@state.gov, huma@clintonemail.com, and humamabedin@yahoo.com. Though the emails released by the State Department partially redact personal email addresses, the Yahoo emails are displayed as humamabedin[redacted].
Clinton forwarded Abedin an email titled “Ambassadors” in March 2009 from Denis McDonough, who served as foreign policy adviser to former President Barack Obama’s campaign and later as White House chief of staff. The email was heavily redacted before being released to the public.
Stuart Delery, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, sent a draft memo titled “PA/PLO Memo” in May 2009, seemingly referring to two Palestinian groups. The content was withheld from the public with large letters spelling “Page Denied.” Abedin forwarded it to her Yahoo account.
Abedin routed sensitive information through Yahoo multiple times, such as notes on a call with the U.N. secretary-general, according to messages released under the lawsuit.
Contemporaneous news reports documented the security weaknesses of Yahoo while Abedin continued to use it. Credentials to 450,000 Yahoo accounts had been posted online, a July 2012 CNN article reported. Five days later, Abedin forwarded sensitive information to her personal Yahoo email.
Abedin received an email “with the subject ‘Re: your yahoo acct.’ Abedin did not recall the email and provided that despite the content of the email she was not sure that her email account had ever been compromised,” on Aug. 16, 2010, an FBI report says.
The FBI also asked her about sending other sensitive information to Yahoo. “Abedin was shown an email dated October 4, 2009 with the subject ‘Fwd: US interest in Pak Paper 10-04’ which Abedin received from [redacted] and then forwarded to her Yahoo email account…. At the time of the email, [redacted] worked for Richard Holbrooke who was the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP). Abedin was unaware of the classification of the document and stated that she did not make judgments on the classification of materials that she received,” the report said.
The U.S. charged Sushchin with hacking half a billion Yahoo accounts in March 2017, in one of the largest cyber-breaches in history, the Associated Press reported. Sushchin was an intelligence agent with Russia’s Federal Security Service — the successor to the KGB — and was also working as security director for Renaissance Capital, Russian media said.
“It is unknown to the grand jury whether [Renaissance] knew of his FSB affiliation,” the indictment says.
Renaissance Capital paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in 2010 that was attended by Russian officials and corporate leaders. The speech received a thank-you note from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Renaissance Capital is owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who also owned the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. He unsuccessfully ran for Russian president against Putin in 2012.
Sushchin’s indictment says “the conspirators sought access to the Yahoo, Inc. email accounts of Russian journalists; Russian and U.S. government officials,” and others. Information about the accounts such as usernames and password challenge questions and answers were stolen for 500 million accounts, the indictment says. The indictment does not mention Abedin’s account.
A hacker called “Peace” claimed to be selling data from 200 million Yahoo users.
The user data also included people’s alternate email addresses, that were often work accounts tying a Yahoo user to an organization of interest. The hackers were able to generate “nonces” that allowed them to read emails “via external cookie minting” for some accounts.
The New York Times reported that in the 2013 hack, which affected all Yahoo accounts, “Digital thieves made off with names, birth dates, phone numbers and passwords of users that were encrypted with security that was easy to crack. The intruders also obtained the security questions and backup email addressed used to reset lost passwords — valuable information for someone trying to break into other accounts owned by the same user, and particularly useful to a hacker seeking to break into government computers around the world.”
Yahoo published a notification on Sept. 22, 2016, saying: “Yahoo has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company’s network in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor.”
Clinton downplayed the risks of her email use days later, saying it was simply a matter of convenience.
“After a year-long investigation, there is no evidence that anyone hacked the server I was using and there is no evidence that anyone can point to at all, anyone who says otherwise has no basis, that any classified materials ended up in the wrong hands. I take classified materials very seriously and always have,” Clinton said on Oct. 9, 2016, at the second presidential debate,
Abedin’s use of Yahoo email is consistent with the determination by the FBI that Clinton associates’ emails were, in fact, compromised. “We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private email accounts of individuals with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her private account,” then-FBI director Jim Comey said in 2016.
The Duran reported back in October that one Trump hating Republican was a driving force behind the fake Trump dossier…that RINO, Anti-Trumper was and is Senator John McCain.
It has since been confirmed that McCain did deliver the infamous Trump Dossier to the FBI.
John McCain has never hidden his hatred for Donald Trump, going to outrageous lengths to derail Trump’s presidency.
It seems that the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign took over in April 2016 from a previous unnamed Republican the funding of the ‘research’ which resulted in the Trump Dossier (the Washington rumour mill says this Republican was Senator McCain).
According to The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris, it certainly look like the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign circulated the Trump Dossier to their friends in the media and in the US intelligence community, triggering the start of the FBI investigation in July 2016 and the decision in August 2016 by the CIA to report its contents to President Obama. It was those two actions taken together which were the starting point of the Russiagate scandal.
It appears that the US Congress is starting to catch on to McCain’s treasonous antics to sabotage Trump’s presidency, and flame the war fires against Russia. Via Zerohedge…
Several months ago it emerged that the Republican sponsor behind the Fusion GPS Trump project was hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a fact which surprised many who expected that John McCain would be the GOP mastermind looking for dirt in Trump’s past. However, a new and credible McCain trail has emerged in the annals of the “Trump Dossier” after the Washington Examiner reported that the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to an associate of John McCain over his connection with the salacious dossier containing unverified allegations about Trump and his ties to Russia, which many speculate served as the illegitimate basis for FISA warrants against the Trump campaign – permitting the NSA to listen in on Trump’s phone calls – and which the president yesterday slammed as “bogus” and a “crooked Hillary pile of garbage.”
In the latest twist, committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) wants to talk to David Kramer, a former State Department official and current senior fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, about his visit to London in November 2016. During his trip, at McCain’s request Kramer met with the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele, to view “the pre-election memoranda on a confidential basis,” according to court filings and to receive a briefing and a copy of the Trump dossier. Kramer then returned to the U.S. to give the document to McCain. McCain then took a copy of the dossier to the FBI’s then-director, James Comey. But the FBI already had the document; Steele himself gave the dossier to the bureau in installments, reportedly beginning in early July 2016.
While McCain, recovering in Arizona from treatments for cancer, has long refused to detail his actions regarding the dossier, his associate Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 19. The new subpoena stems from statements Kramer made in that interview. In the session, the Washington Examiner reports, Kramer told House investigators that he knew the identities of the Russian sources for the allegations in Steele’s dossier. But when investigators pressed Kramer to reveal those names, he declined to do so.
Now, he is under subpoena which was issued Wednesday afternoon, and directs Kramer to appear again before House investigators on Jan. 11.
As the ongoing government probe slowly turns away from Trump’s “collusion” with the Russians and toward the FBI “insurance policy” to allegedly prevent Trump from becoming president by fabricating a narrative of Russian cooperation with the Trump, knowing Steele’s sources will be a critical part of the congressional dossier investigation:
“If one argues the document is unverified and never will be, it is critical to learn the identity of the sources to support that conclusion. If one argues the document is the whole truth, or largely true, knowing sources is equally critical.”
According to Zerohedge, there is another reason to know Steele’s sources, and that is to learn not just the origin of the dossier but its place in the larger Trump-Russia affair.
As the WashEx adds, there is a belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators’ views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.
Still, investigators who favor this theory ask a sensible question: “It is likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheing, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America – except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?”
On the other hand, the theory is still just a theory, for now… and as the Examiner’s Byron York correctly points out, to validate -or refute – it House investigators will seek Steele’s sources – and is why they will try to compel Kramer to talk.
FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page his Horse. Look At the Teeth of that woman. Can you say Mister Ed?
House Oversight Committee member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he is “convinced” that FBI officials used the salacious and false dossier about Donald Trump, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to get “warrants to spy on Americans associated with Donald Trump’s campaign.”
Jordan added that the FBI could clear up this issue “if they release the application that they took to court,” but they refuse to do so. It has been reported that former Trump campaign officials Carter Pageand Paul Manafort were spied on in 2016 by U.S. intelligence agencies after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) granted warrants to do so.
Rep. Jordan, speaking on Lou Dobbs Tonight, said he believes it was FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok “who took the dossier” to the “FISA Court.” Strzok was working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller until this summer when his extra-marital affair and vehemently anti-Trump tweets were discovered; Strzok was reassigned to the FBI’s human resources department in August.
“He’s the guy who took the dossier, I believe,” Jordan told Dobbs, “or part of the team that took the dossier and took it to the FISA court. It’s the dossier that was paid for by the Democratic National Committee. Paid [ex-British spy] Christopher Steele who paid Russians to put this false op together. He [Strzok] is the one I think who was working with others to put this together and take it to the court. That’s what we need to know.”
“This is why we need a second special counsel which we called for months ago,” said Jordan. “But every time we learn more, it just reinforces the idea that we need that second special counsel.”
In the beginning of his Dec. 7 interview of Rep. Jordan, host Lou Dobbs asked, “Congressman, you gave FBI Director [Christopher] Wray quite a grilling today. Are you satisfied with the answers that you elicited?”
Jordan said, “Well, I’ll be satisfied when they release the application that was taken to the FISA court. I’m convinced that most likely Peter Strzok was the guy who helped assembled that application, took it to the FISA where the court granted and that application was based on the dossier with all the garbage in it. That dossier was used as a basis for getting warrants to spy on Americans associated with Donald Trump’s campaign. So they can prove I’m wrong by releasing the application. I hope they do that.”
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is a Fraud. LOCK HIM UP!
“Lou, there are couple of fundamental questions here,” said Jordan. “Did the FBI pay [ex-British spy] Christopher Steele? I asked that of Attorney General Sessions two weeks ago, he wouldn’t answer the question. Did they actually vet this dossier, look at this dossier, go through this corroborative, corrected, look at it? Because it’s been disproven.”
“It’s a bunch of lies,” he said. “It’s a bunch of national enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing. Did they actually check it out before they took it to the FISA court which I’m convinced they do? Those are the sort of a fundamental questions.”
“And all this can get cleared up if they release the application that they took to the court,” said Jordan. “He [Wray] said he couldn’t do it, they’re allowed to do that. They can give it to the Judiciary Committee, the committee with oversight of the Justice Department. They can do that. That clears up a lot of things.”
“But I think they won’t give it to us, because they did take that to Steele,” said the congressman. “I think they did use the dossier as a basis for the warrants to spy on Americans associated with President Trump’s campaign.”
Lou Dobbs then remarked, “Your charges put it straightforwardly that the FBI leadership is corrupt and acted in corrupt and unlawful manner to achieve a political purpose.”
Congressman Jordan answered, “Think about [FBI agent] Peter Strzok, the guy who is dismissed from Mueller’s team, that’s what we learned this weekend. Here’s the guy who headed the Clinton investigation up, interviewed [Huma] Abedin, interviewed Cheryl Mills, interviewed Secretary Clinton. He’s the guy who took the exoneration statement, changed, ‘grossly negligent’ to ‘extreme carelessness.’ Grossly negligence is a crime.”
“He changed it,” said Jordan. “He interviewed [Trump adviser Michael] Flynn. He ran the Russian investigation and they kicked him off for a few text messages because they’re anti-Trump? There has to be more to this story. And I’m convinced the dossier is the key to this.”
Later in the interview, Dobbs said, “Congressman, I am entirely sympathetic with your view on the special counsel, except for one thing. If we end up with twice what Mueller has created, the republic will be in serious threat, if it’s not already. Look at what we’ve got here, as you pointed out today. We have a president whose entire administration is being threatened by a politically corrupt special counsel and politically corrupt leadership of the FBI.”
Jordan said, “All billed on — all billed on this dossier. And remember what the dossier is about. It was about the FBI working with the Democrat National Committee and their campaign to go after the other party’s nominee and the other party’s campaign. That is not supposed to happen in this country, and I think it did and all the evidence is pointing in that direction.”
people need to be held to account who were involved in, making that all happen.”
On Dec. 23 it was reported that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe will resign in March or April 2018, which is when his full pension and benefits would kick in. McCabe’s wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, received a little more than $700,000 in payments from two Democratic PACs in 2015, one headed by Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe. (Jill McCabe, a left-wing Democrat, ran for a state senate seat that year.)
In early 2016, Andrew McCabe helped to oversee the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a scandal for which she was exonerated by then-FBI Director James Comey in July 2016. (McCabe did not recuse himself from the Clinton case until one week before the 2016 presidential election.)
Andrew McCabe is also the FBI official whose emails show that the Hillary Clinton email investiagtion was designated “special” by the bureau and, contrary to procedure, a “decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team.”
Concerning Andrew McCabe’s decision to retire, President Trump tweeted on Dec. 23, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”
Bob Mueller Reassigned Peter Strzok: These Bastards Are Corrupt
Special counsel Robert Mueller removed a veteran FBI agent from his team amid an investigation into the agent potentially sending anti-Trump text messages, according to new reports on Saturday.
Three people close to the matter told The New York Times that Mueller reassigned Peter Strzok from the team investigating Russia’s election meddling to the FBI’s human resources department.
Strzok is a veteran FBI investigator who previously worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, as well as the investigation into potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.
The Times reported that Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team after the Department of Justice’s inspector general launched an investigation into text messages sent by the agent that could appear to contain anti-Trump views.
The agent reportedly exchanged text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whom he was dating, during the campaign and Clinton investigation that appeared to support the Democratic presidential candidate, people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post.
The Post could not reach Strzok or Page.
“Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel’s Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told The Hill. “Lisa Page completed her brief detail and had returned to the FBI weeks before our office was aware of the allegations.”
The news comes just one day after Mueller’s team charged former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with lying to FBI agents. Flynn pleaded guilty to the charge.
