Transcript suggests Obama White House pressured intelligence agencies to blame Russia

That almost certainly refers to the October 7, 2016 joint statement of the Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence that the “U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

In other words, it looks like the Obama White House put its thumb on the scale, pressuring intelligence agencies to adopt the Democratic National Committee’s talking points, i.e., to blame the stolen emails on Russian hackers rather than an internal source (like Seth Rich). Thanks to Roger Stone, we now know that neither the FBI nor anyone else from the U.S. government actually examined the DNC servers that supposedly were hacked. Instead, the FBI, et al. relied exclusively on a redacted report from CrowdStrike, a private security company with strong Democratic affiliations that was hired by Perkins Coie, the same firm that hired Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.

As I noted in my July 23, 2019 post, CrowdStrike and the DNC are both fighting subpoenas that I issued (on behalf of Ed Butowsky) for information about the servers and the purported Russian hacking.

The Rybicki transcript was part of 55 additional pages that the FBI belatedly produced in response to my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Ty Clevenger v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al., Case No. 18-CV-01568 (E.D.N.Y.). (The FBI is still refusing to search its Computer Analysis and Research Team (“CART”) files for records related to Seth Rich, and that’s were any relevant records most likely would be found. I’ll be battling the FBI in federal court next month to make it search for records in CART).

Here are a few other observations about the latest records release:

* Pages 13-18 of Volume 1 appear to be transcript excerpts of an undated interview of “Anderson” by two OSC prosecutors, one of whom appears to be Ana Galindo-Marron.

* Pages 22-25 of Volume 1 apparently refer to the discovery of Clinton emails on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

* Page 30 of Volume 1 includes the comment about the White House wanting a public statement about Russia.

* Volume 2 further reveals attempts by attorney Beth Wilkerson to regain custody of laptops belonging to her clients, Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and… someone whose name is redacted. You may recall that Ms. Mills, Ms. Samuelson, and David Kendall were the attorneys responsible for deleting more than 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails, all of which were subject to Congressional and civil subpoenas.

* Even though the records were produced by the FBI, most of them are OSC records. You may recall that the FBI made the OSC sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to keep embarrassing documents away from Congress and FOIA requestors (like me). I sued the FBI and the OSC, but OSC still allows the FBI to decide which of its records get released. Pages 1-12 of Volume 1 are heavily redacted negotiations between the FBI and the OSC regarding the nondisclosure agreement.

The redactions appear to be arbitrary. On pages 30-31 of Volume 1, for example, the transcript just skips from page 126 to 132 without explanation, and the FBI does not even cite the exemption(s) it is relying on. [A question for you FOIA wizards: Can the FBI redact information and cite exemptions when producing records from another agency such as OSC?].

ODDS AND ENDS

* On July 23, 2019, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas asked me to explain my reasons for issuing a subpoena to the FBI on behalf of Ed Butowsky. In a letter dated July 26, 2019, I explained that any evidence that the FBI has about Seth Rich is directly relevant to Mr. Butowsky’s two civil lawsuits, and I asked DOJ to declassify the evidence if necessary. Later that evening, an assistant to U.S. Attorney Joseph D. Brown said I can expect an answer early next week.

* I’m in the early stages of organizing a LARGE racketeering lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Buowsky, and we will likely name the major players in the whole Russian collusion fraud, e.g., John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al. If you are a civil litigator and you are interested, shoot me an email at tyclevenger dot yahoo dot com. It doesn’t matter where you are licensed.