October 21, 2019

"CNN’s new hire, former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), has used his first two appearances on the network to push a conspiracy theory that has already been widely debunked — including by CNN’s own reporting."

"The debunked Crowdstrike conspiracy theory is at the center of the impeachment inquiry into whether President Donald Trump improperly withheld congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine. The theory posits that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of the Democrats -- conveniently exonerating Russia’s efforts to aid Trump -- and that a Ukrainian-owned company tried to cover the tracks and took the Democratic National Committee’s computer server that was hacked to Ukraine. In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win. The company at the center of the conspiracy theory -- CrowdStrike -- is headquartered in the United States, not Ukraine. And there was never a physical DNC server that could’ve been taken to Ukraine.... Duffy has used his first two appearances on CNN to argue that Trump was right to pressure Ukraine to look into the conspiracy theory, even though it 'may be' debunked. In both instances, Duffy received strong pushback, begging the question why CNN would hire a bad-faith conspiracy theorist who undermines CNN’s own reporting and needs to be fact-checked on-air."

From "CNN hired Sean Duffy, who immediately pushed conspiracy theories that CNN had already debunked" (Media Matters).

It's so easy to answer the question why CNN would hire a bad-faith conspiracy theorist who undermines CNN’s own reporting and needs to be fact-checked on-air!

I don't know if that's a fair characterization of Duffy (and I haven't followed the Crowdstrike business), but let's do it as a hypothetical and leave Duffy and Crowdstrike out of this.

CNN hires a bad-faith conspiracy theorist who undermines CNN’s own reporting and needs to be fact-checked on-air. Why? A network strongly biased against Trump wants to have some claim of balance — of showing both sides and having someone who ostensibly defends Trump. Because of their actual bias, they choose someone who will make weak, inflammatory arguments, and the other people on the show will make sport of him for the entertainment and edification of the anti-Trump audience.

Is Duffy a mere punching bag, or is he performing a role similar to what Juan Williams does on Fox News (on "The Five")? I don't know. I don't watch CNN.

103 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win."

That was debunked by the Mueller-is-god report.
Get your lies straight - CNN.

rcocean said...

Exactly, this is a response to the Veritas video's which show CNN to be insanely anti-trump and it all coming from President Jeff Zucker. So, hire a "Washington General" to play a Conservative on CNN. See Trump: we do have "balance" - drop that lawsuit.

The Wapo and NYT don't hire weak incompetent conservatives, they hire fakes like David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, etc. who CALL themselves conservative while not being one. The Daily Beast does the same with Matt Lewis as the Trump-hating Token "Conservative".

Todd said...

I don't know. I don't watch CNN.

You and millions upon millions of others. CNN's audience has become so "selective" over the years.

In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win.

They say that the label "fake news" is slander and then publish a statement like that...

narciso said...

unlike alpha bank, Russian ties to skybridge, premature release of WikiLeaks, 'hands up don't shoot,' hoody, it was the video, etc etc.

Gusty Winds said...

Media definition of debunked = "We don't want you to know it's true, so we will say it isn't....over, and over again..."

Gusty Winds said...

Vladimir Putin had to be amazed at how many Russian Assets he's acquired in the US without actually trying.

holdfast said...

I have no idea how or where Crowdstrike operated.

But I do know that CNN and other members of the MSM are very free with the label “debunked”. They use it to mean “something that hasn’t been proven to our satisfaction”, not “something that has been disproven” - those aren’t the same things. Sometimes you have allegations that have never been properly investigated, or where the results of the investigation haven’t been made public. So, pardon me if I am not predisposed to believe the statements of the DNC, or really any political organization, without some compelling evidence.

And I also recall from 2016 that the DNC made it difficult for the FBI to investigate the [alleged] hack of the DNC email system. And I do recall that the DNC proferred the Crowdstrike “report” in lieu of a full FBI investigation.

One can still believe that Russia hacked the DNC (and did other unspecified “meddling” - like buying FB ads and trolling on Twitter), while still also believing that the DNC was less than forthcoming with the FBI and the public, and that there’s nothing wrong with a President attempting to further the investigation into alleged 2016 election hacking.

traditionalguy said...

Look at him. He is the hayseed Deplorable from the Trump voting State of Wisconsin. So they can tell everyone that he is a Alex King conspiracy nut.Ha, Ha, Ha. CNN knows that Obama/Biden was a scandal free administration. Ha, Ha, Ha.

Rob said...

There was never a physical DNC server that could have been taken to Ukraine? First of all, there had to be one or more physical servers. These things aren't ephemera, though it's possible the DNC used a server owned by someone else. Second, why would it be necessary to take the server to Ukraine? The questions, I should think, are (1) did the FBI and Crowdstrike and the other analysts have a true copy of what was on the DNC server or merely what was purported to have been a copy of what was on the server, (2) did Crowdstrike correctly analyze the data (purportedly) on the server in concluding that the hack was of Russian origin?

To ask those questions is not to give credence to any particular conspiracy theory, simply to assess how solid is the view that it's beyond doubt that the hack was done by the Russians.

tim maguire said...

"The theory posits that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election....In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively"

Boom! Take that wing nuts!

Fernandinande said...

Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election ...
Russia meddled extensively ...


If anything, "interfered" and "meddled" both mean "made facebook and twitter posts" or the equivalent, correct? They don't mean anything like "hacked voting servers and changed votes" or voter intimidation by armed goons at polling places, correct?

So I'm meddling and interfering in the 2020 election by posting this comment - cool!

Dave Begley said...

What did Russia exactly do to "extensively meddle" in our elections? They bought $100k in Facebook ads. What else?

This Russia meddling thing is total BS.

Dave Begley said...

I have seen Sean Duffy on Fox before and I could never figure out why he was on TV. He said nothing. Totally content free. His wife is 10x smarter than him. She actually makes a point and can think.

mccullough said...

Crowdstrike is the company that examined the server. The FBI did not examine it. They relied on the report from Crowdstrikes examiners and have relied on Crowdstrike in the past. The FBI also has its own computer forensics examiners. The FBI could have applied for a warrant for the server and a judge would have issued it. They did not.

These are the facts.

It’s up to people to decide whether Crowdstrike’s examination was reliable. The FBI did not independently verify it.



Greg the class traitor said...

In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win.

That's a flat out lie.

So you can pretty much disregard anything else they say here.

The "Steele Dossier" was a Putin Russia disinformation attack targeted at Trump.

Hillary was anti-fracking, and would have continued Obama Admin efforts to block US oil and gas production. Which is exactly what Putin wanted.

Trump, OTOH, was and is pro fracking and pro more US energy production, which is a great threat to Russia, and to Putin's international influence.

Anyone who wasn't a moron could figure out in 2016 that Hillary was a far better President for Russia than Trump would be.

Only morons and liars claim that Putin wanted Trump to win.

It's "Media Matters", so the person writing that is probably both

Temujin said...

Forget it, Jake. It's Media Matters.

That'd be like using The Onion as the single source for your PhD on the intersection of race, politics, and space exploration.

I'm Full of Soup said...

"I don't watch CNN".

I knew there was something I liked about you!

PhilD said...

"In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win."

Does that counts as a 'conspiracy theory' or as an outright lie?

And then "And there was never a physical DNC server that could’ve been taken to Ukraine."?
There most certainly was a 'physical DNC server'. But that there existed a conspiracy theory that that server was supposedly send to the Ukraine is a new one for me. Sending it into scrap would be enough.
Now that the FBI was denied access to that server and accepted being denied, that's simply a fact. As for why the FBI acted like this or why , now that's something different.

And why this 2016 BS is supposedly at the heart of the 2019 impeachment inquiry? Beats me.


If the citation given is indicative of the quality of the work done by 'media matters' then whatever the democrats are paying 'media matters' is way too much. For sure, their must be better liars out there?

narciso said...

media matters, Shirley, how do they still have a tax exemption?

Michael K said...

The Crowdstrike questions are still coming. You have to be a dummy, or a Democrat, (or both) to believe that the DNC did not let the FBI examine the "hacked" server, which showed download speeds unattainable via the internet, and Crowdstrike concluded against evidence that the Russians did it.

Seth Rich, a Bernie bro who worked in the DNC, could not be reached for comment.

Crowdstrike, founded by a Ukrainian, is now "owned" by a group of DNC donors.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

They are trying to label as conspiracy theory the FACT that the DNC did got to Ukraine to request they dig up dirt on Trump and his associates. But we know she exists because Politico wrote about the delightfully named Alexandra Chalupa and her dirt digging in Ukraine in a 2017 article explaining how the Ikrainians were scrambling to repair the relationship with Trump after backing Hillary so publicly. It’s not just the disk-image Crowdstrike has in Ukraine.

narciso said...

this is cnn,


https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2019/10/21/cnns-toobin-iregret-covering-big-nothing-clinton-emails-very

Dave Begley said...

More people have pet chickens in the US than watch CNN.

If it was a free standing public company, it would be BK.

BamaBadgOR said...

BREAKING NEWS: Ann doesn't watch CNN.

Wince said...

Why do they prefer to use the term "conspiracy theory" instead of, say, "false allegation" if it has in fact been "debunked"?

Dangerous Dreamer said...

AFAIK, Crowdstrike are the only ones who have definitively stated that Russia hacked the DNC server. And conveniently the only ones who have been allowed by the DNC to look at the server.

Hagar said...

I thought this was about two servers in the Ukraine which were ostensibly used by the DNC hackers to route their work through, and one of these is rumored to have survived and is in the possession of a Russian "oligarch"?

And if this is so, it seems the U.S. government should be very much interested in getting hold of this server and see what the IT guys can find out by studying its innards.

Bruce Hayden said...

"In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win."

Is this the same FBI that failed to demand that they be able to actually look at the DNC server because they were assured by Crowdstrike that the Russians had hacked it, despite, of course, that that story turned out to be impossible (due to the transfer speed of the download, that the emails had been stored on a FAT drive, that the NSA hadn’t noticed the supposed transfer, explicit denial by Wikileaks, etc), and that a Ukrainian connection to Crowdstrike alone would give them an excuse to lie (along with being a DNC contractor)? And, no, the Russian meddling was never shown to be extensive, but rather found to have been de minimis and amateurish. But keep up the narrative spinning. And the left has failed to actually explain why the Ruskies would have preferred Trump over Crooked Hillary. Was it his stand on fracking? They had bought and paid for Clinton already. If they had seriously tried to meddle in Trump’s favor (they didn’t) it would have been one of the worst strategic decisions on their part, in a long time. And, given that the country is run by ex KGB, that is unlikely. Never mind that the narrative is set in concrete - it is still brain dead.

William said...

I'd like to offer a few kind words about CNN. So far as I know, they're the only major network that hasn't had a sex scandal. None of their on air talents are rapists. That's a remarkable accomplishment in this day and age....There's been a lot of publicity about the scandals with Ailes at Fox News, but that just shows the bias of the media. The rapiest news organization was NBC, not just in promoting and shielding rapists on their own staff, but in shielding rapists like Weinstein and Simmons in other branches of the entertainment industry. On the plus side, they fired Billy Bush for not showing sufficient outrage to Trump's comments....Well, anyway, CNN hasn't had any sex scandals. They should highlight that in their promotional materials. They're unique in that regard.

Anonymous said...

The FBI could provide an actual debunking of this durable allegation, instead of the news media’s debunking-by-repeated-assertion, if only they would issue an unequivocal official statement confirming that they examined the DNC’s server hardware. Their prolonged lack of clarity on this issue tends to support rather than debunk the notion that they merely depended on assurances from the DNC’s hired help at CrowdStrike, and performed no forensic analysis themselves.

Sigivald said...

It's gotten to the point that when CNN says something is "debunked" I want independent confirmation.

Not because this nonsense sounds especially likely or plausible, but because I actively disstrust their judgment of what counts, especially in this kind of context.

(And re. above, "meddling" does seem established.

It's just not "interference" in the implied senses of "actually hacking election machines or rolls to change votes or disenfranchise people".

[Which IIRC polls show a lot of people believe, precisely because of the language choices media make when covering it!]

It's "troll farms and ad buys", and while some of it attacked Trump, *none of it* was pro-Hillary. Which I think we can fairly call "pushing for a Trump win".

That is the weakest sauce of "meddling", but it is something the term can cover.)

Hagar said...

Oh, and the DNC hacks and the Bidens thing are quite separate matters.
The media does a lot of this; conflating different matters to keep us confused.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

CNN hires a bad-faith conspiracy theorist who undermines CNN’s own reporting and needs to be fact-checked on-air. Why?

Maybe because somebody there woke up and realized that CNN's declining ratings were due to the fact that the news staff has totally lost their minds.

And I don't think the Crowdstrike theory has ever been "debunked" because it's never been investigated.

tim in vermont said...

The best place to hide evidence of purportedly non existent election interference out of the Ukraine was apparently in the New York Times, which ran this story in August leading up to the election, ripped from the pages of Ukraine’s intelligence files.

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html

If you want to get blocked on Twitter by somebody who says that Russia’s interference in the election was bigger than the Ukraine’s, you only need to post the above “smoking gun” of a story.

Big Mike said...

In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win.

Except that exactly the opposite happened. And the DNC had no physical Email server? From where did Seth Rich download the message traffic onto his thumb drive?

Begonia said...

Like CNN, I'm strongly biased against Trump. But Althouse's argument leads me to wonder...even if CNN were not biased against Trump, who could they choose that would be a "good" conservative viewpoint?

Conservatives who are Never-Trumpers (Matt Lewis, Jonah Goldberg, David French) are seen as "weak" or "fakes" or RINOs. So if CNN chose one of them for the conservative viewpoint, it would be panned by Trump supporters.

So, CNN had to choose someone who was pro-Trump in order to represent a true "Conservative" viewpoint. But: choosing someone who is pro-Trump means that they would have to choose someone who will back up Trump's conspiracy theories.

Correct?

I don't watch any TV news at all so I have no clue who would make a good conservative viewpoint.

traditionalguy said...

Seymour Hersh says that the FBI has always known Seth Rich downloaded the DNC E-mails and gave then to Assange. Source was the Deputy Director.

tim in vermont said...

Server mirroring is a service that most hosting sites offer. It is nothing like impossible that mirroring could have been set up overseas, with or without the knowledge of the server owner. It is pretty much impossible to prove it didn’t happen without a lot more cooperation from the parties involved than we have seen to date.

tim in vermont said...

""troll farms and ad buys", and while some of it attacked Trump, *none of it* was pro-Hillary.”

The fake dirt in the dossier came largely from Putin spies. How come that doesn’t count?

Why isn’t it an issue that Putin cronies gave millions of dollars in stock to Hillary’s campaign manager?

Watching the news now makes me embarrassed for my country. Not because of Trump, he’s great, but because we have a media that is pushing easily refuted lies ever night. The media is now no longer just “biased.” Which is something you can overcome, but it’s completely one-sided, which makes a large tranche of Americans unreachable. I used to laugh at Soviet Russia and how their media fed them transparent lies, it’s not so funny anymore.

tim in vermont said...

The leak could have happened in Ukraine with the high download speeds if there were a mirrored server there.

rhhardin said...

Nobody on the air is a serious person. It's all ratings.

Bruce Hayden said...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Matters_for_Americahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Matters_for_America

“Media Matters for America (MMfA) is a progressive 501(c)(3), far left George Soros funded organization, with the mission of "comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and spreading misinformation about conservative in the U.S. media."”

Yancey Ward said...

The "Russia Meddled to Help Trump" meme rests entirely a single claim- that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails and sent them to Wikileaks. That is it- is the only claim that supports the lead assertion. Now, where did this claim come from? It came from Crowdstrikes internal analysis of the DNC servers- we know this because the Mueller Report simply reiterates this claim with no additional evidence offered- it is the same claim made by Crowdstrike using the exact same analysis, but we know the DNC didn't allow the FBI or anyone else access to the servers, and we know one additional fact- Mueller's team never even got to see Crowdstrike's actual report- this was also withheld by the DNC (we know this from the DoJ's reply to Roger Stone's request for the report itself- they said they never obtained it). In other words, the only people who claim to have proof that the Russians hacked the DNC is Crowdstrike itself, but they have never shown it to anyone outside the DNC or Crowdstrike itself.

Look, Mueller had an opportunity to subpoena all of this material from Crowdstrike and the DNC. Mueller also had the opportunity to get data from the NSA supporting the original claim, and Mueller and his team could have outlined in detail in the report how his investigation confirmed Crowdstrike's analyses, but Mueller didn't do this- he simply repeated the claim as stated in the Crowdstrike public conclusions.

As for whether or not the server is in Ukraine isn't a settled and debunked issue. Sure, the company has a base in the US, but it was founded by a Ukrainian, and it does have offices in Ukraine. It is entirely possible a mirror of the server exists there, outside the reach of subpoenae issued in the US, or it is possible Trump was talking about some other Crowdstrike servers, or the servers Crowdstrike claims were used to hack the DNC computers. Any of these could shed light on the veracity of Crowdstrike's claims. The media seem awfully intent on trying to shut down any such search for "servers" in Ukraine. I wonder why?

Ray - SoCal said...

CNN does have a sex scandal.

Just not male female...

Don Lemon has some type of civil suit.

YoungHegelian said...

The company at the center of the conspiracy theory -- CrowdStrike -- is headquartered in the United States, not Ukraine. And there was never a physical DNC server that could’ve been taken to Ukraine....

Oh, good Lord, can CNN at least find someone who has the slightest clue about IT? I mean, even the slightest?!

The affected server(s) were running DNC's email server(s), which at the time were running Microsoft Exchange. Was Exchange being run on a physical server, or as a virtual machine on a physical server in-house, or on a server "in the cloud"? Who knows? But it doesn't matter. The important thing is that the Exchange server(s) were only examined by Crowdstrike & not by any law enforcement agency, and then they disappeared!

It is always standard practice when doing forensic analysis on a computer to make multiple image copies of the affected computer. Always. Unless Crowdstrike deliberately deleted all the images of the DNC's Exchange server, somebody in Crowdstrike has those images. If the images were deleted, who gave that order from the DNC & from Crowdstrike?

I want to disagree with something Mike K said above -- one of the founders of Crowdstrike, Dmitri Alperovitch, is not Ukrainian born, but is Russian born. Buuuuuuuut, Alperovitch & CS seems to have a soft-spot for the Ukrainians because in 2016 CS sided with the Ukrainians in agreeing that the Russians had hacked a Ukrainian artillery app that caused damage to Ukrainian forces in the battles between the Russian & Ukrainians. So, in overview Mike K is correct -- CS has good relations with the Ukrainians, and offices over there.

Does a CS office in Ukraine have an image of the DNC's Exchange server? Who the hell knows! But, does it seem like a likely possibility, and something that Trump & Trump's DoJ might want to look into? Yep, sure as hell does.

tcrosse said...

In reality, the FBI and Congress have investigated the 2016 election and found that Russia meddled extensively to push for Trump’s win.

"I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it."

Michael K said...


Blogger Skylark said...

The leak could have happened in Ukraine with the high download speeds if there were a mirrored server there.


Sure but then the DNC would have let the FBI see the one in their headquarters in DC. And Seth Rich would be alive.

Kevin said...

CNN conveniently leaves out the 2-year conspiracy theory it peddled 24/7 that was debunked by the Mueller Report.

Determining what's true and false doesn't seem to be its core competency.

Kevin said...

In other news Anderson Cooper has deemed the idea that Hunter Biden did anything improper "debunked".

This comes as news to, of all people, Hunter Biden.

Kevin said...

Here's a clue: if there are facts in error, point them out.

If you're instead running around yelling "debunked", it creates more questions than it answers.

We now return you to your regular clown-show programming.

BUMBLE BEE said...

All MSM are gonna need a heavy smokescreen... This goes DEEP.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/20/durhams-trail-leading-to-ssci-ali-watkins-never-slept-with-james-wolfe-it-was-a-cover-story/

BUMBLE BEE said...

Obfuscation is the point... "As heads is tails call me Lucifer" Swirling claims, bullshit reportage all work on Joe democrat.

Amadeus 48 said...

Who, whom?

Who debunked the Crowdstrike theory for the benefit of whom? Has the conspiracy theory really been debunked? Perhaps the debunking needs to be debunked.

There are so many unanswered questions.

rcocean said...

A pet chicken can lay you an egg you can eat. CNN just lays an egg, metaphorically. Why watch CNN when you can watch MSNBC? Its the same thing, done better.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Server mirroring is a service that most hosting sites offer. It is nothing like impossible that mirroring could have been set up overseas, with or without the knowledge of the server owner. It is pretty much impossible to prove it didn’t happen without a lot more cooperation from the parties involved than we have seen to date.”

Why would the DNC have their email server mirrored almost halfway around the world? Were they expecting to do a lot of business with the Russians or the Ukrainians? If you told me that they had mirrored their server in CA (or maybe NV with its better power situation), I would have believed it. Clinton and the Dems spent more time in CA than in most of fly over country in 2016. But almost halfway around the world. And that doesn’t even get into legal reasons against it - such as ITAR.

Amadeus 48 said...

Althouse, it's a good thing that you don't watch CNN. Their programs make you misinformed rather than better-informed.

There is also a reasonable possibility that they make you stupider, but that is speculation only. Sources close to Jeff Zucker, who cannot be named because they are not authorized to speak to anyone on any topic, say that he certainly appears more stupid than he used to be, although they add that he always appeared to be stupid.

Sources also say that there were no sources for most of CNN's reporting on the Mueller investigation, and that Rep.Adam Schiff has vowed to get to the bottom of the question as to who fiddled with the leads he gave to Mueller.

Meade said...

William said...
"Well, anyway, CNN hasn't had any sex scandals. They should highlight that in their promotional materials. They're unique in that regard."

CNN: The Least Trysted Name in News

tim in vermont said...

" But: choosing someone who is pro-Trump means that they would have to choose someone who will back up Trump's conspiracy theories. “

You are in deep, so I am going to give you a lesson on critical thinking. People say it’s hard to teach, but it really isn’t if you use Aunty Trump’s method, learned from years of doing IT requirements and paying the price of mistakes by seeing the projects through to completion, many of which were late entirely due to misunderstandings of requirements.

1) This is *the* most important rule, and maybe the only rule you will need to get you going. Make sure you understand what each word or phrase in a sentence means. For instance if Biden says that his son’s dealings in the Ukraine were “looked into,” what the fuck does that really mean?

2) This is also big, but if you stick by rule one, this one sort of naturally follows. Always look to primary sources whenever they can be found. For instance, if you have a story about a phone call that does not reference the transcript, or selectively quotes from it (often worse) LOOK AT THE FUCKING TRANSCRIPT!

3) Pay attention to your own biases and emotional reactions to a story!. You may find that you are addicted to a little frisson of superiority you get from imagining that you are the smart one and the other side are benighted fools. Before you write off a large group of your fellow Americans and morons who are lucky to be able to start their car in the morning, you should apply rules one and two above to their arguments to see if it is remotely possible that they have a point and that you might be wrong.

4 Consider that possibility that politicians, even Democrats, will lie to get your vote.. This is true, therefore you have a duty as an American and an obligation as a voter to apply rules one and two at a minimum, all the while keeping rule three in mind.

Otherwise you are just parroting talking points and add nothing to the conversation that we can’t hear in the media.

tim in vermont said...

"Why would the DNC have their email server mirrored almost halfway around the world?”

Maybe they didn’t know. Those servers were filled with extremely valuable information that very wealthy people could put to good use. But all the DNC has to go on is trust. All I am saying is that it’s not as impossible as people claim.

tim in vermont said...

"t is always standard practice when doing forensic analysis on a computer to make multiple image copies of the affected computer.”

I thought that best practice was BleachBit and hammers!

BUMBLE BEE said...

CIA lawyering up? Durham has the sizzle and the steak.

tim in vermont said...

Incidentally, the Ukrainians themselves were investigating who leaked the dirt on Manafort to the New York Times as illegal election interference under their own laws.

But that’s a crazy conspiracy theory.

Matt said...

In terms of crowd strike, we know from court filings that came out of one of the Mueller cases (I think roger stone’s) that the only proffered evidence of Russians hacking the DNC server is a redacted report provided to the FBI by crowd strike. The US government never examined the server, and allowed crowdstrike to make redactions to their report.

Perhaps the government has more than this, though I can’t say I’m comfortable with “secret evidence”, and it’s damned peculiar that the server was not examined by them given the national security angles.

tim in vermont said...

Not only did Hunter. Biden “do nothing wrong” in collecting all of that graft, but we can be assured that the millions that Hillary took from Putin during the time that sale of a huge slice of North American uranium was being approved is also “not wrong.”

Nor was it wrong for those Senators, including Sheehan of New Hampshire, to take campaign contributions from Burisma and then vote money for them out of the US Treasury.

JaimeRoberto said...

I searched for "Crowdstrike locations" and did not find that they have an office in Ukraine. Similarly I searched their site for job openings and didn't find an openings in Ukraine. However, it is still possible that they use contractors in Ukraine. My company does.

narciso said...

now the head honcho was shawn pryce, Mueller's handpicked head of cyberwarfare, who spent a certain amount of time in Romania, which is where guccifer 1 and 2 are from,

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

It doesn't much matter if Hunter Biden did anything wrong or not; the issue is if Joe Biden did something wrong on his behalf, or on the behalf of Burisma.

narciso said...

we have a problem,


https://www.amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/our-republic-is-under-attack-from-the-admirals-and-generals/

daskol said...

I believe the word they're looking for is bedunked. Bedunkedunked, maybe. Definitely not debunked, though.

Bruce Hayden said...

"Why would the DNC have their email server mirrored almost halfway around the world?”

“Maybe they didn’t know. Those servers were filled with extremely valuable information that very wealthy people could put to good use. But all the DNC has to go on is trust. All I am saying is that it’s not as impossible as people claim”

Why wouldn’t they know? Were both their attorneys and their IT people that brain dead? There are good legal reasons for a company’s attorneys to know what country their data actually resides in.

ken in tx said...

The practice of high-lighting a weak or ridiculous opponent of one's preferred stand is a time tested tactic in public discourse. Local newspapers do it all the time. A well reasoned, well written letter to the editor, opposing something the paper favors, will be rejected. OTOH, a letter written by an obviously ignorant nutcase opposing the same thing will be printed. It proves they're fair, right?

cubanbob said...

Althouse as Reynolds likes to say embrace the power of the word AND.

The Ukrainians AND the Russians AND the Clinton Campaign AND the DNC AND elements of the Obama Administration conspired together on behalf of the Clinton campaign by attempting to damage the Trump campaign and later trump Administration for their respective benefits.

I suspect that soon enough AG Barr will start indicting miscreants of the various parties and the broad picture of the conspiracy (which is an actual crime unlike collusion) will come to light.

victoria said...

It's ok, i don't watch FOX.


Vicki from Pasadena

Jeff Brokaw said...

Debunk this: “The time stamps contained in the released computer files’ metadata establish that, at 6:45 p.m. July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes (not megabits) of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. This took 87 seconds, which means the transfer rate was 22.7 megabytes per second, a speed, according to VIPS, that “is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack.” Such a speed could be accomplished only by direct connection of a portable storage device to the server.” — https://spectator.org/crowdstrike-and-the-impeachment-frenzy/

Any claims about hacking the DNC emails need to address this specific technical point. Nobody has ever done so, including Mueller. Everyone who ignores it either doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about, or is actively lying to your face.

It only takes one fact to tear an entire case apart. The devil is in the details... and the details say the emails were downloaded to a USB thumb drive plugged directly into the DNC server.

narciso said...


https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/15/no-the-biden-ukraine-story-is-not-a-conspiracy-theory/

Drago said...

Matt: "In terms of crowd strike, we know from court filings that came out of one of the Mueller cases (I think roger stone’s) that the only proffered evidence of Russians hacking the DNC server is a redacted report provided to the FBI by crowd strike."

That is precisely correct.

And then the dems couldn't help themselves. Instead of speaking truthfully and saying that ONLY lefty/Dem hacks Brennan, Clapper and Comey had used that "intel" to determine the Russian's tried to "hack our election", the lefties/dems/LLR's then lied and said all "17 intelligence agencies agreed".

Total lie.

First of all, 13 of those other agencies don't possess the capabilities to assess such intel AND that is not their mission.

The 14th, Admiral Rogers, Director of the NSA, did not agree with those findings.

And we are now seeing why it is that Coup-masters Brennan, Clapper and Comey were the ones who said what they did when they did.

It is my strong suspicion that we are going to shortly find out that the entire premise of Russians hacking our election is a hoax perpetrated by Hillary and obama and Biden and their deep state minions.

Further, it is my strong suspicion that we are about to find out alot more about hos John Brennan launched CIA-directed assets into the Trump campaign to set them up (Helllloooooooo Joseph Mifsud, Stefan Halper, Alexander Downer, etc)

Even further, it is my strong suspicion we are going to be hearing quite a bit more about FusionGPS and DOJ/FBI "small team" that was working directly with the Lawfare Group and more about what exactly little Rod Rosenstein was up to.

Even further, we are going to be hearing alot more about what MI6 REALLY thought of that hack partisan Christopher Steele.

No wonder the dems are pushing a hoax impeachment on top of all their other hoaxes.

Drago said...

Aunty Trump: "Incidentally, the Ukrainians themselves were investigating who leaked the dirt on Manafort to the New York Times as illegal election interference under their own laws."

I would personally like to know which Ukrainian parties, working hand in glove with the dems, conjured up the fake ledger.

Oh the dems and hillary and her team and the deep staters were certainly busy little beavers over the last 4 years...

Yes. "4 years", because we are going to find out shortly that Brennan started his CIA shenanigans in 2015.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Wonder what the Paki IT family has to do with this mess?

Drago said...

victoria: "It's ok, i don't watch FOX."

No wonder you were so utterly unprepared for Trump's win and have been completely discombobulated ever since.

My recommendation: Stay safe within your bubble. You won't like the real world.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's so easy to answer the question why CNN would hire a bad-faith conspiracy theorist who undermines CNN’s own reporting and needs to be fact-checked on-air!

Because since the president does it so compulsively, reflexively, proudly and without challenge it's more efficient to put a die-hard Trumpist in that position instead?

Trump is the guy who told Alex Jones that his reputation was "amazing" and that he wouldn't "let him down." Trump is the guy who's catalogued thousands of lies even before his first thousand days are up.

And Trump is the guy who has an entire state TV propaganda channel all to himself: FOX News. Sean Duffy got his start in reality TV: Road Rules.

Republicans will back up anything Trump does, and feel completely vindicated by him in doing so. They know enough to stay hush about the conspiracy theories that drive his "thinking", but they like the results. So someone who actually represents that "thinking" needs to be available to a responsible news organization if they're going to have any hope of engaging with it.

Drago said...

Careful Jeff Brokaw.

The points you raise might make vickie cry.

Anyone who bothers to read sources other than just the NYT and similar mind-numbing Lie-rags has already been familiar with this download rate discrepancy in the dems/lefties/LLR-lefties House of Cards for several years now.

Not vickie of course. Goodness no.

Harrumph!

victoria said...


Drago, spell the name right if you are going to attempt to defame me. Please, pathetic attempt.

Vicki

Vicki from Pasadena

Ann Althouse said...

I don’t watch any news on TV, but some of it reaches me because Meade puts it on.

Milwaukie guy said...

We already know the WC server in Chappaqua was wiped with a cloth. The only real question is where is the mirrored server is and has it already been wiped. Whether Crowdstrike had legit offices in the Ukraine, the oligarch in charge was Ukrainian.

tim in vermont said...

"Why wouldn’t they know?”

I used to spec out these servers and knowing what they are and are not connected to is not a matter of tracing out wires and checking off a list. These servers are backed up as a matter of course, and once the data leaves them to be written to a backup, it can be copied from within the bowels of whatever device happens to be carrying the data, and split off and sent elsewhere.

If you are not hosting the server yourself, and the backup yourself, and managing all of the devices yourself, for instance routers and network switches, both types of which have capability to “tee” data streams, and doing the wiring yourself, and vetting every piece of software on every device on the network yourself, you are trusting *somebody*.

Do I think that there is a backup in the Ukraine? Probably not, but certainly it is a legitimate question that the servers have never been examined by law enforcement and I think that making all of this noise about servers in the Ukraine is kind of a broken wing mama duck maneuver to draw attention away from that fact. In fact some of the purloined emails were written after Crowdstrike had claimed to have evicted the Russian hackers from the servers.

Steve McIntyre has some good analysis of this stuff.

Drago said...

It's good that HoaxPPT showed up.

He'll explain why download rates are racist racist RACIST!!

He's also still feeling a little "Bernt" from Hillary Clinton bitch-slapping his boy Bernie in 2016 and Bernie just standing there like a good little comrade and taking it.

He knew his place.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Jeff Zucker is a one-man Democrat Super Pac.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

#Crowdstrike subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Australia, Romania, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, India, and Israel🤯

No wonder @realDonaldTrump brought them up.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1184968168210485248.html

Automatic_Wing said...

It's interesting that the stuff they don't want to talk about gets labeled "conspiracy theories". Conspiracies do occur, do they not? I think we're seeing one unfold before our very eyes.

PluralThumb said...

Oil, oil, oil !
Easier than saying beetlejuice 3 times.
If I recall correct, the Greeks would shout oi, oi, oi when dancing.
Random Greek fact.
The Russians depend on Ukraine oil deal(s). Americans can not live without oil. Probable, but impossible.
A Navy Seal I've met in the past was storytelling about a mission in Moscow in the gutters of the city to find and destroy documents. I was glad that he was calm and collective to freely talk about the such without showing trauma. Another man on Facebook was not as pleased about my conspiracy interests and a personal message of an apology for triggering his trauma and he returned to his life no problem.
This data war is like finding needles in a haystack.
No industrial revolution for sure & per say.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

senior manager of Crowdstrike is a former senior FBI man Shawn Henry, who was promoted by Robert Mueller to be the FBI's Head of Cyber Security in the 2000s.

Atlantic Council/Belfer Center support by Victor Pinchuk
Atlantic Council founders leading members of the CFR

https://washingtonsblog.com/2017/01/crowdstrikes-russian-hacking-story-fell-apart-say-hello-fancy-bear-2.html

Alperovitch, CrowdStrike, Google, CFR-Atlantic Council, and the “intelligence community” in that ongoing dangerous attack on liberty.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/28387-the-russia-collusion-suspect-nobodys-talking-about-crowdstrikes-dmitri-alperovitch

Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As “Russian Influence” and “Fake News”
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-domestic-american-activism-as-russian-influence-and-fake-news/

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/14/dcs-atlantic-council-raked-in-funding-from-hunter-bidens-corruption-stained-ukrainian-employer-while-courting-his-vp-father/

Guess Who Owns a Huge Chunk of Crowdstrike……..Google

Sebastian said...

The profusion of conspiracy theory claims is a prog conspiracy.

I hardly ever watch TV news but try to keep up with who's speaking for the right. I don't think I ever heard of Duffy. Who dat?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's good that HoaxPPT showed up.

He'll explain why download rates are racist racist RACIST!!

He's also still feeling a little "Bernt" from Hillary Clinton bitch-slapping his boy Bernie in 2016 and Bernie just standing there like a good little comrade and taking it.

He knew his place.


Point of clarification from the host: Does "free discussion" mean just making things up about commenters in a way that is completely unresponsive to the post, let alone other comments on it?

Or perhaps just making things up is the way our resident GOP envelope stuffer indulges his own need for conspiracies.

Maybe he could look into the conspiracy of the clingy toilet paper that stuck to Trump's shoe as he boarded AF1. That was nice to see. Imagine that. A staff so disloyal and unsupportive that they won't even bother to tell their boss when he's walking about in public with a wad of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

I can see it now. Envelope-Stuffer complaining that the conspiracy of the sticky toilet paper was just a "hoax."

Maybe I'll change my avatar name to "President Toilet Paper Shoe."

Make Toilet Paper Shoes Great Again.

Michael K said...

Guess Who Owns a Huge Chunk of Crowdstrike……..Google

Oh, yes. Look at the Board,. They are all Hillary donors.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

CD Media Releasing Information On Poroshenko Money Laundering/Biden Cover Up, In Series Of Articles, With Sourcing

https://creativedestructionmedia.com/investigations/2019/10/21/cd-media-releasing-information-on-poroshenko-money-laundering-biden-cover-up-in-series-of-articles-with-sourcing/

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

subterranean deep-state blues
Shiffty's in the basement
Mixing up the 'medicine'
We're on the pavement
Thinkin' about the government...


Trump focusing on winning 2020 as Dems still trying to win 2016

and to the north:
Occasionally Black Trudeau forms a minority government

Nichevo said...

Debunk this: “The time stamps contained in the released computer files’ metadata establish that, at 6:45 p.m. July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes (not megabits) of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. This took 87 seconds, which means the transfer rate was 22.7 megabytes per second


=181.6 Mbps.

A T3 line=155 Mbps.

A 100BT LAN connection=100 Mbps.

Conceivably, though quite unlikely, the DNC uses gigabit Ethernet=100 Mbps internally. My bank doesn't. Including the trading floor. Possibly in the datacenter itself.

But it is enormously unlikely they would go higher than a T3 out to the Internet. They're a political office, not a quant centric hedge fund. Even multiple streams a la robocopy, set up to maximize throughput over redundant paired T3s, you are clobbering the office's bandwidth. Cron jobs would be impacted. Run speedtest on your office browser. If you do better than say 75 Mbps download, and typically upload will be slower, you're doing fantastically well.

22.7 MB/s is comfortably within USB 2.0 transfer speed limits. It's also within 50% of top end real world performance of a hard drive, which is far since the hard drive is also running Windows and other processes.

So 22.7 MB/s is reasonable performance for a local drive-to-USB copy, but is improbable performance for a WAN connection. If it were enabled by theoretical means, it would have impacted network performance to the point where competent network monitoring would have discovered it.

This is off the cuff, anyone is welcome to dispute my figures. But my conclusion, as an IT professional, is that it is not reasonable that that transfer was accomplished over the internet.

narciso said...

indeed:


https://www.conservativereview.com/news/levin-heres-media-republicans-still-getting-wrong-trump-ukraine-called-quid-pro-quo/

Unknown said...

Are they selling that O'Keefe is debunked?

hombre said...

The contradictory universe of CNN.

I don’t know what Duffy said. I do know that the only thing “debunked” by “CNN’s own reporting” is “CNN’s own reporting.”

The leftmediaswine have taken pains to obscure the fact that FBI officials “investigating” the breach never examined the supposedly hacked DNC servers, but relied on Crowdstrike’s assertion that there was evidence of hacking by entities “suspected” to have Russian connections. Crowdstrike is a contractor hired by the DNC, not a law enforcement agency.

Shabby law enforcement work that needs to be reviewed by somebody. Where can Trump go, the FBI? LOL! By now, is the FBI as reliable as the Ukrainians?

walter said...

Nichevo,
Dems and Deep Statists have access to special tech. Remember Comey's use of tech to review so many emails at blinding speed.

Drago said...

HoaxPPT: "Point of clarification from the host: Does "free discussion" mean just making things up about commenters in a way that is completely unresponsive to the post, let alone other comments on it?"

LOLOLOL

Yeah, HoaxPPT actually wrote that.

Nichevo said...

walter said...
Nichevo,
Dems and Deep Statists have access to special tech. Remember Comey's use of tech to review so many emails at blinding speed.

10/22/19, 1:02 PM


Phyeah. I wonder if Comey can fucking type.