https://www.reuters.com/video/2018/10/09/identity-of-novichok-suspect-revealed-be?videoId=471672524 On 9 July 2010, Skripal, along with three other Russian nationals imprisoned for espionage, was freed as part of a spy swapfor the ten Russian agents arrested in the United States as part of the Illegals Program,[32][33][34] after being pardoned by the then President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.[35] The UK government insisted on Skripal being included in the swap.[17] Skripal moved to Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he purchased a house in 2011.[36] According to British security officials, Skripal continued to provide information to the UK and other Western intelligence agencies for a period after 2010.[26] Skripal's wife died in 2012 of disseminated endometrial cancer. His daughter returned to Moscow in 2014 and worked in sales.[17] His son died aged 43 in March 2017, in unknown circumstances, on a visit to Saint Petersburg;[37] Skripal's older brother died within the two years before the poisoning.[2][38] Both Skripal's wife and his son are buried in a cemetery local to Salisbury.[39] In May 2018, the New York Times reported that Skripal, though retired, was "still in the game." While living in Britain he had travelled to former Communist countries, meeting with intelligence officials of the Czech Republic and Estonia, most likely discussing Russian spying techniques.[40] In June 2016 he travelled to Estonia to meet local spies.[41] Russia exile Valery Morozov told Channel 4 News Sergei Skripal was still working and in regular contact with military intelligence officers at the Russian Embassy.[42][43][44] It was reported that Skripal was a close confidant of Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled the controversial Trump–Russia dossier.[45][46]. On 28 September 2018, the news magazine Focus reported, referring to a statement of a senior official from NATO's Allied Command Counter-Intelligence Unit (ACCI) in Mons, that until 2017 Skripal worked for four intelligence agencies of NATO countries. Skripal not only traveled, accompanied by MI6 officials to Prague, where he contributed information about the active Russian spy network, some agents Skripal knew from his active service. He provided information to the Estonian secret service in Tallinn, which enabled them to identify three active Russian undercover operatives. Skripal also worked with the Spanish secret service Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, informing the agency about the Russian organized crime in the Spanish region of Costa del Sol. All the trips were organized and approved by the British foreign intelligence service, MI6.[47][48]
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers.
A whole -- endlessly long -- speculative article with an alluring title -- and the bottom line is NO. A complete waste of time to read it.
The answer has been NO pretty much these last two years. But when you're a one-trick-pony, well, you gotta run with it.
California fake ID salesman who helped Mueller investigate Russians gets six months in jail https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/politics/pinedo-mueller-sentencing/index.html He ran a website that sold dummy bank accounts to eBay, Facebook and other online service users having trouble with the transaction service PayPal. His service allowed people online to breeze through PayPal's financial verification steps and, in the case of the Russians, buy ads on Facebook. Pinedo had bought a few hundred bank accounts for $20 each and sold them for $40, generating him his sole income of about $40,000 over three years, according to prosecutors and his defense lawyer. He pleaded guilty to one count of identity fraud during a confidential court hearing in DC federal court on February 12. His case was made public four days later, when the Justice Department announced its indictment of 13 Russians and three companies for running an online election propaganda effort. Helping Mueller's investigation Prosecutors told the judge that Pinedo gave them "significant assistance" and that his admissions and testimony "saved the government significant time and resources in the investigation." Pinedo helped the investigators identify previously anonymous Russians who allegedly ran the social media propaganda scheme during the election. He then explained to investigators how the scheme of using false identities worked. His sessions with Mueller's team were the first time he had ever left California. Pinedo testified before a federal grand jury in DC, which approved the indictment of the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and Consulting and the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive. The U.S. intelligence community, for its part, is prohibited from investigating domestic political affairs. James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, told me, “We try not to spy on Americans. It’s not in our charter.” He emphasized that, although he and other intelligence officials produced—and shared with Trump—a postelection report confirming an extensive cyberattack by Russia, the assessment did not attempt to gauge how this foreign meddling had affected American voters. Speaking for himself, however, he told me that “it stretches credulity to think the Russians didn’t turn the election.” Jamieson began her study of the 2016 election with an open mind. But, in the fall of 2017, as she watched the House and the Senate hold hearings on Russia’s social-media manipulations, and reviewed the sampling of dozens of Facebook ads released by the House Intelligence Committee—all paid for by Russians during the Presidential campaign—she developed suspicions about the reasons behind Trump’s victory. Before the hearings, Facebook’s chairman and C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, had maintained that the amount of Russian content that had been disseminated on social media was too small to matter. But evidence presented to the Senate committee revealed that material generated by the Kremlin had reached a hundred and twenty-six million American Facebook users, leading Senator Dianne Feinstein to call the cyberattack “cataclysmic.” House Democrats later released not only the ads but also their “targeting data”—the demographics and the geographic locations of users receiving them—which indicated to Jamieson “whom the Russians were going for.” Among other things, she could discern that the Russians had tried “to minimize the vote of African-Americans.” Bogus Kremlin-sponsored ads that had circulated online—including one depicting a black woman in front of an “african-americans for hillary” sign—had urged voters to tweet or text rather than vote, or to “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”
C'mon Mueller, after the midterms, really? Why not have a press conference 10 days leading to them, with a follow up a two days prior? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...dy-to-deliver-key-findings-in-his-trump-probe Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings in His Trump Probe, Sources Say Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials. Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.
Shillary and the entire demrat apparatus stood helplessly by while Russian hackers and trolls strategically flipped these key places? Seriously?
https://www.businessinsider.com/rod-rosenstein-interview-mueller-russia-probe-2018-10 Rod Rosenstein says the Russia probe has uncovered a widespread Russian effort to meddle in the 2016 race Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told The Wall Street Journal the Russia investigation had already revealed a multifaceted Russian effort to meddle in the 2016 US election. Rosenstein added that he had a "solemn" responsibility to oversee and prosecute such cases and that he was "pleased the president has been supportive of that." President Donald Trump has repeatedly derided the Russia investigation, calling it a politically motivated "witch hunt" and a "hoax." "I believe that our department and our office have been appropriately managing that investigation," Rosenstein told The Journal. Rosenstein's comments came after it was reported that he had been pressuring the special counsel Robert Mueller to wrap up the Russia investigation.