Her F*cking Emails: What Mueller Missed
The Russian-backed operation to destroy Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the worst political crime since the Civil War. No one has been held accountable.
Turnaround
The weekend of October 7th-9th, 2016, represented one of the most miraculous political turnarounds in American history. Within 48 hours, Donald Trump not only survived two massive scandals, either of which would have ended anyone else’s hopes of the presidency, he used them to kickstart an operation that destroyed Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Getting to the bottom of what actually happened during this period is crucial because until we collectively absorb how America made such a colossal error as electing Donald Trump, twice, we will never be able to move forward constructively.
In my view, the Russian-backed operation to wage cyber and psychological warfare against American citizens and Hillary Clinton—objectively the most qualified candidate to ever run for president—makes everything that followed morally, if not legally, illegitimate.
There were at least five major stories breaking the weekend starting Friday, October 7th, 2016—an absolute explosion of news, commentary, and social media propaganda that made it all nearly impossible to follow. To review, this is what hundreds of millions of Americans actually witnessed.
Friday, 10/7/16, ~3PM ET: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DHS jointly publish a warning to the American public that they assess with high confidence: Russian intelligence is interfering with the election, and is specifically responsible for hacking Democratic National Committee emails being distributed by DCLeaks and Wikileaks.
4:03PM ET: The Washington Post releases the Access Hollywood tape featuring the Republican candidate for president bragging about sexual assault.
4:30PM ET: Wikileaks publishes the first tranche of Russian-hacked Podesta emails. Importantly, this was just the start. Wikileaks intended to draw the material out from day one. More releases followed daily through the end of October.
4:50PM ET: Trump releases a statement that already shows the counterstrategy: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close… I apologize if anyone was offended.”
Midnight ET, Friday night: Trump releases another attack video disguised as an apology: “Bill Clinton has actually abused women… We will be discussing this more in the coming days.”
Sunday, 10/9/16, 8PM ET: A brief press appearance was arranged with three of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of misconduct—Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, and Kathleen Willey, independent counsel Ken Starr’s chief witnesses in 1998—as well as Kathy Shelton, who accused Hillary Clinton of mishandling her rape case decades before.
9PM ET: Second Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The Clinton accusers were given seats up front by the Trump campaign after trying to seat them in the VIP section to stage a confrontation with Bill Clinton.
As any casual observer might note, this is an extremely unusual sequence. By 4:30PM Friday, after watching the Access Hollywood tape and hearing the U.S. government say Russia is helping Trump, many people naturally felt his campaign was over and that Trump would have to drop out or lose spectacularly.
But that didn’t happen. There was a rescue plan already in place.
Rescue Plan
Crucially, special counsel Robert Mueller was very interested in this sequence of events. Mueller made a lot of progress identifying the mechanics of how parts of it worked, but he was missing a big piece, a clear operational node with direct, real-time communications with the Russian government during these events: Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, and Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.
On October 7th, the same day as the Access Hollywood tape, the most infamous pedophile in the world, a PayPal Mafia oligarch with deep ties to the government and intelligence community, and the most senior Russian official in New York City met for “an important lunch” at 12:30PM. As I previously reported, this was no coincidence.
In hindsight, then-AG William Barr’s operation to submarine Mueller’s findings was astonishingly successful considering how much evidence Mueller showed of both the Russians and their American co-conspirators trying to help Trump win. The report is nearly 1,000 pages and full of damning evidence of “Russian collusion.”
But if you layer the Epstein Files—at least the half that Todd Blanche decided to release—on top of the Mueller Report, a far more complete picture comes into view.
First, it’s important to remember the context of Mueller’s investigation. As proven by Trump’s own recent declassification, there was never a full counterintelligence investigation into Trump, or a deep investigation into his finances—because Rod Rosenstein, who replaced James Comey, limited Mueller to investigating “crimes.”
Nevertheless, Mueller found a way to show how the Russian side of the operation worked, by indicting the Russians themselves—both in military intelligence (GRU), and in Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency. But Mueller was not free to go down every road. This is in stark contrast to Whitewater Independent counsel Ken Starr, who was looking into a real estate deal and found Monica Lewinsky and the “Clinton accusers” instead.
This leads to an important question that I have not seen adequately reported. On the morning of October 7th, at 11:22AM ET, almost five hours before the Access Hollywood tape came out, Jeffrey Epstein invited his friend and former defense lawyer Ken Starr to meet with Peter Thiel and Vitaly Churkin for lunch. There is no record of whether Starr joined them but this is an important indication of what the meeting was all about.
Just two days after this meeting, three of Starr’s accusers did a press appearance together and showed up in the front row of a presidential debate. Epstein obviously knew they were going to be used before Access Hollywood was released.
The Mueller Report and other sources add a lot of additional context. This was an extremely busy 5 1/2 hours both in public—and in private. To summarize:
11:00AM ET: An unknown source gives Washington Post reporter David Farenthold the Access Hollywood tape, which had been circulating internally at NBC since several days before.
11:22AM: Epstein invites Ken Starr to a meeting that had been scheduled on July 5th as “an important lunch”—with Peter Thiel and Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.
11:53AM: Roger Stone, who had been in contact with GRU-cutout “Guccifer 2” and correctly predicted a new Wikileaks drop days before, receives an 18-minute call from a Washington Post number. Mueller didn’t know who it was—but based on timing presumably Farenthold or his team.
12:30PM: Epstein-Thiel-Churkin lunch begins.
1:42PM and 2:18PM: Roger Stone speaks at length to Jerome Corsi, who later tells Mueller than Stone knew about the tape and wanted to use Wikileaks as a counterattack.
Early afternoon, before 3PM: NSA Susan Rice calls Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak into her office to tell him that the U.S. is about to accuse Russia of interfering in the election.
3PM: The U.S. government publishes the warning about Russian interference and Wikileaks.
4:03PM: Access Hollywood released.
4:30PM: Wikileaks releases Podesta’s emails.
This series of events effectively reversed what would have otherwise been an electoral disaster for Trump and turned it into a referendum on conspiracy theories about Hillary’s emails.
But how did it work? We now know a lot more than Mueller did.
Five Camps
The operation to destroy Hillary Clinton using GRU-hacked material for psychological warfare was designed to give Donald Trump’s campaign plausible deniability. The “October Surprise” of Podesta’s emails and Clinton accusers—which successfully pushed Access Hollywood out of the headlines—involved several influential operatives with significant networks and covert capabilities of their own.
Mueller identified parts of Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, and the Russian government’s networks, but either because Mueller’s scope was limited or because he simply didn’t see them as relevant, Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Epstein, and Vitaly Churkin went totally unmentioned in his report.
Below are five distinct political “camps” in operation during this period as I see them. This is based on the Mueller Report, the Epstein files, and other open source information. All of these groups operated well before the October 7th events and several still continue in some form.
CAMP 1–STONE / INFOWARS / CLINTON ACCUSERS
Roger Stone—an infamous political assassin since Nixon; sought WikiLeaks material; had an unexplained WaPo call on October 7th; built the Clinton-accuser package well before Access Hollywood.
Jerome Corsi—Stone friend/intermediary; Council for National Policy member; claimed Stone wanted a WikiLeaks release to counteract Access Hollywood; later promoted QAnon with Flynn ally Tracy Diaz to raise money for Flynn’s defense fund.
Randy Credico—WikiLeaks/Assange intermediary for Stone.
Alex Jones / Infowars—Russian-aligned propagandist; major Stone media ally and amplification node.
Candice Jackson—attorney/cutout used by Stone in the accuser operation; represented Kathy Shelton and helped move the women toward the debate.
Clinton accuser network—Jones, Willey, Broaddrick and Shelton were pre-assembled by Stone by August 2016 as a political weapon.
CAMP 2—BANNON / BREITBART / CAMPAIGN COMMAND
Steve Bannon—campaign CEO from August 2016 and a separate power center from Stone; received Stone’s accuser proposal and sought conversations with Stone about WikiLeaks-related expectations.
Breitbart / Aaron Klein—sustained anti-Clinton and accuser narratives before and after October 7. Promoted Erik Prince’s false email allegations.
Jared Kushner / campaign HQ—involved with Bannon in the to set up a confrontation at the debate with the accusers.
Bannon functioned as an integration point to the campaign: Stone could bring him WikiLeaks and accuser proposals without a single chain of command.
CAMP 3–FLYNN / FIG / SMITH / LEDEEN
Mike Flynn—Disgraced retired three-star general; visited GRU HQ in June 2013 as DIA Director and befriended chief Igor Sergun; fired from Obama’s administration in February 2014 while Putin was invading Crimea with GRU “little green men”; returned to Moscow in December 2015. After Trump pushed campaign staffers to find Clinton’s “30,000 emails”—and infamously asked Russia to help—Flynn contacted Peter W. Smith and Barbara Ledeen to look for them.
Flynn Intel Group (FIG)—Flynn’s private intelligence shop; during the campaign FIG conducted influence work for Inovo/Turkey, hired research, PR, production and former intelligence/law-enforcement personnel, and met senior foreign officials; Mike Flynn Jr. was his chief of staff.
Peter W. Smith / KLS Research—longtime anti-Clinton operative who already knew Flynn; formed KLS Research, raised money, recruited technical participants and pursued Russian hackers to find Clinton’s deleted emails, including hiring neo-Nazi troll Chuck Johnson. Smith died of apparent suicide in 2017 with a note that read: “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER.”
Barbara Ledeen / Michael Ledeen—separate Flynn-linked acquisition branch. Barbara Ledeen pursued purported Clinton emails and later claimed access to a dark-web cache; Michael Ledeen was Flynn’s close collaborator and co-author of “Field of Fight”—a book that suggest partnering with Russia to fight Islam.
Brian McCauley—retired senior FBI official hired by FIG; paid $28,000 beginning October 4; on October 18 McCauley became a public source in a Clinton-email controversy that Flynn immediately amplified.
Erik Prince overlaps significantly—Prince and Flynn have been close since Afghanistan; Prince funded technical authentication of Ledeen’s purported dark-web emails. Prince also had independent Bannon/Trump Jr./Stone and international relationships, including Russia, Saudi, UAE, and Israel.
CAMP 4—THIEL / GIESEA / MAGA3X / JOHNSON
Peter Thiel—billionaire PayPal Mafia member close to Jeffrey Epstein. Major Trump supporter and RNC speaker; maintained significant relationship with Epstein for years; asked Epstein for thoughts on the race—Epstein replied “take to signal” establishing an encrypted comms channel; attended the October 7th Churkin lunch.
Jeff Giesea—Thiel protégé and MAGA3X organizer; President of Thiel Capital; wrote openly about memetic warfare and mentioned his friend Chuck Johnson.
Mike Cernovich—MAGA3X co-founder/amplifier and major anti-Clinton/WikiLeaks-derived narrative producer; GamerGate and Pizzagate promoter; Flynn friend.
Chuck Johnson—infamous internet troll; Holocaust denier; cross-stream relay / collector / connector; had access to Smith’s email hunt, Giesea/Cernovich memetic circles, WeSearchr accuser logistics; visited Assange at Colombian embassy in London; paid Thiel operative.
Pax Dickinson—Johnson’s WeSearchr co-founder and business partner; involved in Smith’s Clinton-email effort.
WeSearchr—crowdfunding/bounty/propaganda platform that funded travel logistics for accusers before Access Hollywood broke.
MAGA3X—domestic social-media mobilization/amplification/psyops network active before, during, and after the Podesta releases. Created Pizzagate. Members included: Jack Posobiec, Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, Milo Yiannopolous, “Microchip” and James Brower (original “Q” posters), Mike Flynn Jr., and Joe Biggs. Mike Flynn Sr. was a major MAGA3X promoter online and on the Trump campaign. Flynn coined them “digital soldiers.”
CAMP 5 - RUSSIAN STATE / GRU / IRA / WIKILEAKS
GRU/Russian Intelligence Services—hacked Democratic targets, including John Podesta, and operated DCLeaks/Guccifer 2.0; maintained direct electronic contact with WikiLeaks and a separate Guccifer 2.0 channel with Stone.
WikiLeaks—publisher of GRU-obtained Democratic material and communicated directly with GRU personas; Assange had an open relationship with Russia—he hosted a show on RT in 2012; in 2013, Wikileaks published classified information obtained by Edward Snowden which originated on Mike Flynn’s DIA servers; Wikileaks then helped Snowden escape to Russia.
Internet Research Agency—Prigozhin-funded, St. Petersburg psychological warfare operation running U.S.-facing personas and coordinated social-media propaganda.
Sergey Kislyak—Russian ambassador in Washington; privately warned by National Security Adviser Susan Rice before the October 7 public attribution; Flynn contact during the transition.
Vitaly Churkin—Russian ambassador to the UN; repeated Epstein contact and October 7th lunch guest. Churkin died suddenly in February 2017 in New York City, one week after then-NSA Mike Flynn had to leave the Trump administration for lying about speaking to Sergey Kislyak.
Sergey Belyakov—former Russian deputy economic-development minister, FSB Academy graduate and later RDIF adviser. Epstein maintained a significant relationship with him and was asked to broker access to Iozzo. Thiel was introduced in 2015.
Igor Sergun—GRU chief until January 2016 and Flynn’s official liaison while Director of DIA. Flynn maintained a close relationship with Sergun—who died in January 2016 under cloudy circumstances.
Each of these five camps—Stone, Bannon/Campaign HQ, Flynn/Prince, Thiel/Epstein, and the Russians—operated independently but had the shared goal of preventing Hillary Clinton from ever becoming president, so they cooperated as closely as necessary. In many ways, Trump himself was incidental to the project—the goal was to tear Hillary down at all costs. That way even if she won, she would be far weaker.
The events of the weekend of October 7th represented a unique moment when all five of these camps had to cooperate in rapid succession to pull off Trump’s political miracle. But regardless of how the communications traveled among these groups, or when each knew the totality of what was happening, within short order all of them knew what they were doing: weaponizing Russian-hacked material to interfere in a presidential campaign. This was a criminal conspiracy by definition.
Who Knew & When Did They Know It?
Despite the challenges of the Mueller investigation, we do have strong indicators that there was pre-knowledge about these events. First, Epstein and Thiel set up their “important lunch meeting” with the Russian UN Ambassador on October 5th, well after the Access Hollywood tape was circulating at NBC but before the public knew about it. Second, the day before the release, October 6th, there was an extremely anomalous event produced by Prigozhin‘s Internet Research Agency.
The psychological warfare operation manned by Russian trolls in St. Petersburg operated on both sides of the political spectrum to attack Hillary. But on October 6th, they switched primary political poles from right-leaning accounts to left-leaning accounts and produced a huge spike of negative information that appeared to the public to be attacking her from the left.
This would make perfect sense as an operation to psychologically prepare Hillary’s base for what was coming the next day. This kind of surge would have had the effect of over-sensitizing the electorate to negative information about Hillary, while making the damning evidence against Trump seem less important and damaging.
“…October 6, 2016. This day was the maximum day for English-language IRA output since very early in 2015, and it was, by far, the maximum day for the Left Trolls… In additional to being a spike, it also demarcated a significant change in behavior by both Left and Right Troll accounts, as they begin to tweet at much more consistent daily levels and to engage in much higher rates of retweeting”
Troll Factories: Manufacturing Specialized Disinformation on Twitter
It is also very clear from Jeffrey Epstein‘s emails that this had been the plan for months. Epstein had contacts with a number of hackers, including “black hat” Vincent Iozzo who sent Epstein the first drop of DNC-hacked material within hours of its release in June 2016. Epstein replied “fun but the only important ones would be hilarys secret.”
Four months before Wikileaks released the Podesta emails, Iozzo replied, “Think you need to wait for Wikileaks for those :)”.
More than two months before the Podesta emails were released, Jeffrey Epstein invited billionaire Tom Pritzker to meet with billionaire Tom Barrack, former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin—an extraordinary meeting by itself. Pritzker couldn‘t make it, so Epstein asked if he had any questions.
Pritzker: “How close will race need to be for Russians to give us an October surprise Which of Hilarys emails was most entertaining.”
They all knew what was going on. They all chose to cooperate with the Russian-backed sabotage of a candidate for president of the United States—a covert operation happening behind the back of the American electorate.
Seen as the trigger event for the last decade of American chaos—this was the worst political crime since the Civil War.
No Consequences
In the end, Mueller did not indict any Americans for this conspiracy to interfere—successfully, as it turned out—with a presidential election. He did not indict any American for cooperating with a foreign government. Instead, the handful of Trump operatives Mueller did indict—including Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos—were charged with lying to the FBI, obstruction, or financial crimes. Mueller punted.
Mike Flynn and Roger Stone successfully evaded any punishment whatsoever. Their dual pardons after Trump lost in 2020 freed them up to try to steal another election, this time through violence on J6. Nevertheless, Merrick Garland and Joe Biden’s DOJ ignored them entirely—for four years.
Now, nearly a full decade since Donald Trump’s “miraculous” turnaround after Access Hollywood, we are all suffering the consequences of the American government’s failure to protect its population from foreign interference—and domestic sabotage.
The Obama administration failed in real-time to adequately warn us. Its feeble attempt was drowned out by the very operation it warned about. Had Mueller even mentioned Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, Vitaly Churkin, or any number of other co-conspirators, we might not have been held in the dark for so long. Then Biden and Garland failed to prosecute anyone for 2016, or anyone above Proud Boy for J6.
We let treason, sedition, and conspiracy against the Constitution go unpunished, twice. The consequences are now that Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer is Attorney General; we have the most disastrous regime in American history in power; and we still have 30 months to go.
Returning to these events is not anyone’s idea of fun. It doesn’t lower the price of gasoline, or bring back anyone’s lost health insurance—but it is absolutely necessary to reckon with what happened if we are going to successfully navigate the current crisis and chart a better course. Otherwise we will just keep doing it again and again.
If we continue to fail to learn from our mistakes, if we continue to suffer a lack of imagination about how devious and committed our adversaries truly are, we will be doomed to be their victims in perpetuity.
The way through is the truth, the facts, and ultimately, the law. There must be a reckoning. It’s all very complicated but it really is that simple.
Thanks again to all who have sent messages, subscribed and donated recently in light of the judge’s ruling in the Flynn case. It is deeply appreciated.
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Great piece! This baffles me as does a judge failing to set a sentencing for the convicted felon who was not president at the time. The idea that you couldn't sentence a candidate for the presidency is absurd. Just another piece of the failing puzzle. I wonder what is in store for us in the coming couple of months. Any ideas?