By John Ubaldi–

In a widely covered press conference Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday, indicted 13 Russians for alleged election interference for their role in hacking emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election.

At the same time Rosenstein stated unequivocally that no Americans willingly or knowingly had any knowledge of the operation, nor did the operation have any impact on the election.

The indictments charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes as it relates to trying to influence the U.S. 2016 presidential election, with Rosenstein stating,  “According to the allegations in the indictment, 12 of the individual defendants worked, at various times, for a company called Internet Research Agency, LLC, a Russian company based in St. Petersburg.”

Rosenstein continued, “The other individual defendant, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, funded the conspiracy through companies known as Concord Management and Consulting, LLC; Concord Catering; and many affiliates and subsidiaries. The conspiracy was part of a larger operation called Project Lakhta. Project Lakhta included multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation, and others targeting foreign audiences in multiple countries.”

Throughout the press conference Rosenstein goes into detail how this operation was conducted and carried out, but again he reiterated that no Americans knowingly or willingly took part, but one glaring omission was any mention of the original aspect of the Special Counsel’s investigation on whether President Trump or any of his campaign officials had colluded with the Russian in the presidential election.

At the end of the press conference Rosenstein professed his remarks that everyone charged in the indictment of the alleged crimes in question are all innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Unfortunately we are left with many unanswered questions. The first one being does the Department of Justice and or the FBI has the DNC servers in its possession to fully authenticate that Russia did in fact hack the DNC?

This is an interesting question as of last year then FBI Director James Comey stated the bureau tried to get direct access to the hacked computer servers but were denied by the DNC.

Multiple attempts were made at different levels, but according to Comey the DNC contracted out to “CrowdStrike” a cybersecurity company in California who alleged that Russia likely hacked into the servers, but so far their results have not been made public.

There has been much quibbling if the FBI asked to examine the server or whether the DNC actually refused the bureau access, but a senior law enforcement official disputed the account.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,” the official said.

“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

This begs the question;

  • Why didn’t the FBI obtain a warrant to seize the server?
  • Why would a law enforcement agency acquiesce to a third party of a key element of its investigation and take it as fact, especially when it was paid for by the DNC?

Since the indictments were handed down many alleged that this is further proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin had intended all along to target Hillary Clinton and support Trump, this is a narrative we have been told, but could a more plausible scenario altogether be different?

Throughout the western world everyone thought Clinton would win the election, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the Bush administration has speculated that Putin never believed in a Trump victory, instead hacked into Clinton’s server as sort of a warning that we may have information on you.

In a Wall Street Journal report Mukasay argues, “Consider the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized and vulnerable email server,” Mukasey wrote. “It found that the bureau had concluded the server could well have been penetrated without detection. Recall also that some of the people hacked by GRU [Russia’s military intelligence agency] agents were aware of that server and mentioned it in messages they sent, so that the Russians too were aware of it.”

Many of the Clinton emails contained classified information, even the Inspector General of the Intelligence community reported that 22 emails contained information so sensitive that it would cause irreparable harm to the United States.

Remember there were 30,000 emails that Clinton never turned over, and she claimed they were of a personal nature dealing with yoga exercises, and her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.  What if they contained damaging information with regard to the Clinton Foundation fundraising apparatus or the infamous Russian dossier which we know was used to gain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant paid for by both the DNC and the Clinton Campaign.

None of the contents of the Russian dossier have been verified, by the DOJ, the FBI or U.S. intelligence agencies.

The warrant was presented to a United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) to gain a warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign officials.

Other items could have been on the missing emails;

  • One that showed deeper coordination between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
  • Was there any coordination between the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign and the Department of Justice? We do know through the DOJ Inspector General that President Obama had in fact emailed Clinton, contradicting his statement of only finding out when the public was made aware.
  • What if there was coordination between the Justice department and the Clinton campaign. We do know that a DOJ official was coordinating with the Clinton Campaign with regard to information being requested by Congress.

Evidence has surfaced to suggest there was co-mingling between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.  In the IG report a top justice official contacted former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and told him to shut down the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, but we still haven’t gotten a solid answer on who this was or what is the status of the investigation.

One only has to look back at former President Bill Clinton who received $500,000 to speak in Moscow at a Russian investment bank linked to the Kremlin, that was in involved in the controversial Uranium One deal, and then acquired by Rosatum, the Russian government’s nuclear agency.

Incidentally once the deal was completed a total of $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from Russian entities.

Here are a few questions to ponder;

  • Why have Bill Clinton’s speaking fee’s dramatically dropped since Hillary was defeated?
  • Whv have Hillary’s speaking fee’s dramatically dropped from her customary pre- election amount to her current of around $20,000?
  • How much money from Russia is going to the Clinton Foundation and from other countries today; if none why a sudden drop off?

There still is a lot of unanswered questions we still do not know yet, maybe someday we will get an answer; hopefully for the countries sake!