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    Aaron Maté: Pelosis Take a Big Stake in CrowdStrike, Democrat-Connected Linchpin of Russia Probe Archived Message

    Posted by sashimi on October 12, 2020, 10:33 pm

    h/t Jimmy Dore

    (quote)
    The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike rose to global prominence in
    mid-June 2016 when it publicly accused Russia of hacking the
    Democratic National Committee and stealing its data. The previously
    unknown company's explosive allegation set off a seismic chain of
    events that engulfs U.S. national politics to this day. The Hillary
    Clinton campaign seized on CrowdStrike's claim by accusing Russia of
    meddling in the election to help Donald Trump. U.S. intelligence
    officials would soon also endorse CrowdStrike's allegation and pursue
    what amounted to a multi-year, all-consuming investigation of Russian
    interference and Trump's potential complicity.

    With the next presidential election now in its final weeks, the
    Democrats' national leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her
    husband, Paul Pelosi, are endorsing the publicly traded firm in a
    different way. Recent financial disclosure filings show the couple
    have invested up to $1 million in CrowdStrike Holdings. The Pelosis
    purchased the stock at a share price of $129.25 on Sept. 3. The price
    has since risen above $140.

    Drew Hammill, spokesman for Pelosi, said: "Speaker Pelosi is not
    involved in her husband's investments and was not aware of the
    investment until the required filing was made. Mr. Pelosi is a
    private investor and has investments in a number of publicly traded
    companies. The Speaker fully complies with House Rules and the
    relevant statutory requirements."

    The Pelosis' sizeable investment in CrowdStrike in the
    $500,000-to-$1-million range could revive scrutiny of the company's
    involvement in the Trump-Russia saga since the Democrats' 2016
    election loss.

    After generating the hacking allegation against Russia in 2016,
    CrowdStrike played a critical role in the FBI's ensuing investigation
    of the DNC data theft. CrowdStrike executives shared intelligence with
    the FBI on a consistent basis, making dozens of contacts in the
    investigation's early months. According to Esquire, when
    U.S. intelligence officials first accused Russia of conducting
    malicious cyber activity in October 2016, a senior U.S. government
    official personally alerted CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch
    and thanked him "for pushing the government along." The final reports
    of both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence
    Committee cite CrowdStrike's forensics. The firm's centrality to
    Russiagate has drawn the ire of President Trump. During the fateful
    July 2019 phone call that would later trigger impeachment proceedings,
    Trump asked Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky to scrutinize CrowdStrike's
    role in the DNC server breach, suggesting that the company may have
    been involved in hiding the real perpetrators.

    Pelosi's recent investment in CrowdStrike also adds a new partisan
    entanglement for a company with significant connections to Democratic
    Party and intelligence officials that drove Russiagate.

    DNC law firm Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike to investigate the breach
    in late April 2016. At the outset, Perkins Coie attorney Michael
    Sussmann personally informed CrowdStrike officials that Russia was
    suspected of breaching the server. By the time CrowdStrike went public
    with the Russian hacking allegation less than two months later,
    Perkins Coie had recently hired Fusion GPS, the opposition research
    firm that produced discredited Steele dossier alleging a longstanding
    conspiracy between Trump and Russia.

    CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry, who led the team that remediated
    the DNC breach and blamed Russia for the hacking, previously served as
    assistant director at the FBI under Robert Mueller. Since June 2015,
    Henry has also worked as an analyst at MSNBC, the cable network that
    has promoted debunked Trump-Russia innuendo perhaps more than any
    other outlet. Alperovitch, the co-founder and former chief technology
    officer, is a former nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic
    Council, the Washington organization that actively lobbies for a
    hawkish posture toward Russia.

    Campaign disclosures also show that CrowdStrike contributed $100,000
    to the Democratic Governors Association in 2016 and 2017.

    The firm's multiple conflicts of interest in the Russia investigation
    coincide with a series of embarrassing disclosures that call into
    question its technical reliability.

    In early 2017, CrowdStrike was forced to retract its allegation that
    Russia had hacked Ukrainian military equipment with the same malware
    the firm claimed to have discovered inside the DNC server.

    During the FBI's investigation of the DNC breach, CrowdStrike never
    provided direct access to the pilfered servers, rebuffing multiple
    requests that came from officials all the way up to then-Director
    James Comey. The FBI had to rely on CrowdStrike's own images of the
    servers, as well as reports that Justice Department officials later
    acknowledged were delivered in incomplete, redacted form. James
    Trainor, who served as assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division,
    complained to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the DNC's
    cooperation with the FBI's 2016 hack investigation was "slow and
    laborious in many respects" and that CrowdStrike's information was
    "scrubbed" before it was handed over. Alperovitch, the former CTO, has
    claimed that CrowdStrike installed its Falcon software to protect the
    DNC server on May 5, 2016. Yet the Democratic Party emails were stolen
    from the server three weeks later, from May 25 to June 1.

    Yet the most damaging revelation calling into question CrowdStrike's
    Russian hacking allegations came with an admission early in the Russia
    probe that was only made public this year. Unsealed testimony from the
    House Intelligence Committee shows that Henry admitted under oath
    behind closed doors in December 2017 that the firm "did not have
    concrete evidence" that Russian hackers actually stole any emails or
    other data from the DNC servers. "There's circumstantial evidence, but
    no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated," Henry said. "There
    are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say
    conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be
    exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually
    left."

    The Henry testimony was among a trove of damning transcripts released
    by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff only after
    pressure from the then-acting Director of the Office of the Director
    of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell.

    As RealClearInvestigations reported last month, Henry's House
    testimony also conflicts with his testimony before the Senate
    Intelligence Committee two months prior, in October 2017. According to
    the Senate report, Henry claimed that CrowdStrike was "able to see
    some exfiltration and the types of files that had been touched," but
    not the files' content. Yet two months later, Henry told the House
    that "we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on
    what we saw."

    Notably, Henry's acknowledgment to the House that CrowdStrike did not
    have evidence of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and
    prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. Right before
    that intervention from CrowdStrike counsel, Henry had falsely asserted
    that he knew when Russian hackers had exfiltrated the stolen
    information:
    (/quote)
    -- Cont'd at https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/10/09/pelosi_takes_big_stake_in_crowdstrike_democrat-tied_linchpin_of_russiagate_125557.html

    Message Thread:

    • Aaron Maté: Pelosis Take a Big Stake in CrowdStrike, Democrat-Connected Linchpin of Russia Probe - sashimi October 12, 2020, 10:33 pm