A little earlier today, Rod Rosenstein, acting as go-fer for his alleged employee, Robert Mueller, held a press conference to announce yet another Reuben sandwich had been indicted. In this one, twelve GRU officers were indicted for a variety of crimes for which they will never be apprehended, much less prosecuted. Not only was the indictment disappointing the #Resistance, it also was a direct slap in their face. Rosenstein went to some pains to say that none of the Americans in communications with either DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 knew their correspondent was a Russian military intelligence officer and that nothing done by the GRU had affected any votes. And, by the way, Trump was notified last week of the impending indictments so the whole Trump-slamming narrative was immediately discredited.

The facts of the case being unhelpful, the Faithful began looking for hidden meanings in the indictment and Washington Post “data reporter” (hahahahahaha) Christopher Ingraham leapt into action to flog a bizarre little conspiracy theory.

July 27, 2016, Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
Indictment: That evening, Russian operatives targeted Clinton campaign emails "for the first time." pic.twitter.com/fanyaAxwfJ

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 13, 2018

What he’s referring to is the statement made by Trump on July 27, 2016 around 8 p.m. Moscow time

There is no chance this was a coincidence. None. https://t.co/kVnAp9rHH1

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) July 13, 2018

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1017813946789552128

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1017814481936642048

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1017818573052395520

Important clarification as @awprokop notes: The Russians had been targeting the Clinton campaign since at least April. But after Trump's plea it looks they stepped up their spearfishing efforts and targeted certain accounts for the first time. https://t.co/BMVRlxKml2

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 13, 2018

There is a lot wrong with this nonsense.

First and foremost, what Trump is obviously referring to are the 33,000 emails an employee of Platte River Networks “accidentally” deleted with Bleach Bit after Clinton received a subpoena from the Benghazi committee. That incident happened in March 2015 and had received a lot of coverage from outlets not called the Washington Post or New York Times.

The assumption that the GRU monitored Trump’s campaign speech, translated it, came up with a plan and executed it within the space of just a few hours disregards everything we know about how the Russian intelligence apparatus works. In fact, the NSA couldn’t do this.

Once you stop huffing shaving cream, the biggest problem with this idea is that is simply doesn’t make any sense. Why would the GRU launch an attack on DNC affiliated servers based on Trump talking about something he’d harped on on the campaign trail for months? If you truly believe Trump was communicating with the Russians, why would he signal them to launch this attack? If he said this and suddenly Hillary’s vanished emails appeared then you’d have my attention. Moreover, we know from the DOJ IG report that Hillary Clinton’s server had been penetrated by numerous foreign intelligence services and we know that her server was automatically forwarding all emails to a foreign controlled server. So we have to assume the GRU and/or SVR already had those 33,000 missing emails.

https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1017835809284685825

And the “first time” reference is to “after hours” attempts to penetrate the DNC. This, itself, is eminently explainable. Every analysis of Russian hacking attempts during the 2016 election points to the fact that the attempts were made between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Moscow time.

Wired:

Crowdstrike also found the group’s code contained Russian-language artifacts, and that it operated during Moscow business hours.

Chicago Tribune:

The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours — between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday.

New York Times:

That largely rules out cybercriminals and most countries, Mr. Alperovitch said. “There’s no plausible actor that has an interest in all those victims other than Russia,” he said. Another clue: The Russian hacking groups tended to be active during working hours in the Moscow time zone.

Associated Press:

The AP’s reporting has shown how the hackers who hit Podesta acted globally in close alignment with the Russian government’s interests — backing assessments made by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian spies were responsible. Here’s a review of the evidence:

The hackers worked business hours, Moscow time

They created nearly all their links from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Moscow time, according to AP’s analysis of the data. They were busiest in the midday hours and took weekends off.

As we know, neither the FBI nor Mueller’s team has examined the DNC servers. Their information is based totally on the examination made by Crowdstrike. So we don’t even know with any certitude that the information is correct.

I really don’t have much doubt that the July 27 date is placed in the indictment to feed the collusion narrative. Mueller’s investigation is losing any steam it might have had and it is facing calls from numerous GOP members of Congress, like Lindsey Graham, to wind up operations. It is also looking increasingly unlikely that Trump will agree to be interviewed. The odds of this particular mope making the connection without having it pointed out to him by someone on or affiliated with Mueller’s team approaches zero. At best this is coincidence. At worst it is mischief generated by Mueller’s team. Regardless, Ingraham’s linkage is bizarre and the fact that he’s pushing this story on a Twitter account that shows his affiliation with the Washington Post tells you what you need to know about the integrity of the news media.

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