re: WSJ: GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn

Getting warmer - the WSJ is now following up yesterday's story linked in the first post of this thread with this update about a document Peter W. Smith used to try to recruit a cybersecurity analyst to try to authenticate Clinton emails.

quote:

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WASHINGTON—A longtime Republican activist who led an operation hoping to obtain Hillary Clinton emails from hackers listed senior members of the Trump campaign, including some who now serve as top aides in the White House, in a recruitment document for his effort. The activist, Peter W. Smith, named the officials in a section of the document marked “Trump Campaign.” The document was dated Sept. 7, 2016. That was around the time Mr. Smith said he started his search for 33,000 emails Mrs. Clinton deleted from the private server she used for official business while secretary of state.

Officials identified in the document include Steve Bannon, now chief strategist for President Donald Trump; Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and now White House counselor; Sam Clovis, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department; and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was a campaign adviser and briefly was national security adviser in the Trump administration.

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WSJ

Meanwhile, Ben Wittes at Lawfare has now published a first-person account from Matt Tait, the British Cybersecurity expert who Smith had approached to develop a relationship to authenticate emails who was the source for the second WSJ story. While the first story was vague with regard to Smith's relationship to Flynn, Tait says this about this following conversations with Smith.

quote:

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Although it wasn’t initially clear to me how independent Smith’s operation was from Flynn or the Trump campaign, it was immediately apparent that Smith was both well connected within the top echelons of the campaign and he seemed to know both Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son well. Smith routinely talked about the goings on at the top of the Trump team, offering deep insights into the bizarre world at the top of the Trump campaign. Smith told of Flynn’s deep dislike of DNI Clapper, whom Flynn blamed for his dismissal by President Obama. Smith told of Flynn’s moves to position himself to become CIA Director under Trump, but also that Flynn had been persuaded that the Senate confirmation process would be prohibitively difficult. He would instead therefore become National Security Advisor should Trump win the election, Smith said. He also told of a deep sense of angst even among Trump loyalists in the campaign, saying “Trump often just repeats whatever he’s heard from the last person who spoke to him,” and expressing the view that this was especially dangerous when Trump was away.

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Lawfare - The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians

So you've got reporting that US intelligence has evidence that Russian hackers were discussing trying to get Emails to Mike Flynn via an intermediary, Smith himself telling the journal he discussed with Russian hackers about getting Clinton emails, and a cybersecurity expert who says Smith tried to recruit him to authenticate Clinton emails.

What's not clear is whether there ever were any emails (probably not since they never became public) or the conduct of Flynn or others in the campaign with regard to this operation. It's also not clear who exactly these Russians were Smith was talking to, though US intelligence may know. Keep in my mind this was all 6 weeks after Trump's "Russia are you listening?" comments. It's possible Smith's operation was a rogue dirty tricks shop inspired but not coordinated by the Trump campaign, but there's enough here that will shake the tree for a lot of further reporting.