Wife Of Fusion GPS Founder Admits Her Husband Was Behind Fake "RussiaGate" Story

Authored by Alex Christoforou via The Duran,

The Russiagate story concocted by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who coincidently funded Fusion GPS (the firm behind the ‘Trump dossier’ that the entire Russia election meddling is based upon), is unraveling at record speed.

Mary Jacoby, the wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who is the man in the middle of the entire Russiagate scandal, boasted on Facebook about how ‘Russiagate,’ would not exist if it weren’t for her husband.

Tablet Magazine reports…

A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s top-secret “sources” in the Russian government—which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control—but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for TheWall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed, and Donald Trump was simply another loud-mouthed Manhattan real estate millionaire. Understanding the origins of the “Steele dossier” is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected president of the United States.

 

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In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion’s share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.)

 

“It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump,” Jacoby wrote. “Let’s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”

 

This assertion is hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the “Steele dossier,” on which the Russiagate narrative is founded.

The Gateway Pundit reports that the news of the Facebook post comes amid heightened scrutiny for the opposition research firm.

According to Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called on a senior Justice Department attorney to look into appointing a special counsel to investigate recently demoted official Bruce Ohr’s contacts with Fusion GPS.

“Sessions on calls for a special counsel to look into Sr DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie’s contacts with Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016: I’ve put a Senior Attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren’t being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met, and the recommended one should be established,” tweeted Fox News reporter Jake Gibson on Tuesday.

 

Fox News‘ James Rosen and Jake Gibson recently reported the wife of Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr worked for the opposition research firm during the 2016 presidential election.

Fox News reports…

Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

In a statement to Fox News, a Justice Department spokesperson noted that…

“It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focus - director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combatting transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the Attorney General.”

Twitter Told Congress This Random American Is A Russian Propaganda Troll

Update: Twitter has re-activated Delaware"s account. The company declined to comment about why it reinstated the account and about whether it would amend the list it sent to Congress.

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Authored by Louise Matsakis via Motherboard.Vice.com,

Robert Delaware is now part of the Congressional record, despite having no apparent ties to Russia...

Robert Delaware is a US citizen, a former Microsoft contractor, and an avid Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) filer. According to the United States Federal Government however, he"s a Russian propaganda agent - at least on Twitter.

As part of the social media company"s investigation into Russia"s meddling into the 2016 US presidential election, it deleted Delaware"s account, and sent record of it to US lawmakers as evidence of foreign interference.

The problem is Delaware is actually an American - and has never even been to Russia. So how did his account get swept into a list of those believed to be connected to a Russian troll farm?

Representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter testified at several open hearings on Capitol Hill this week about how Russian-linked trolls used their platforms to influence the 2016 US presidential election and sow political unrest. As part of that process, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a list of 2,753 suspended Twitter accounts the company believes to be linked to a Russian troll farm.

The committee said those handles "impersonate[ed] U.S. news entities, political parties, and groups focused on social and political issues," in a memo it released along with the accounts.

Included on the list is Delaware, under the handle @RobbyDelaware. Motherboard reviewed emails sent to Delaware by Twitter verifying that he was the owner of the handle or at least had access to the email account associated with it. Motherboard also verified that Robert Delaware was the person he purported to be by verifying his Facebook account.

The fact that Delaware was included in the cache sent to the US government indicates that real people are being swept up in Twitter"s investigation into how Russia used its platform to influence US politics. Delaware"s Twitter account is now part of the Congressional record as being linked to a Russian troll farm - even though he has no apparent ties to it.

A Google cache as well as several news articles which aggregated his tweets show that Delaware talked about the journalist Don Lemon, a Microsoft chatbot, and used the hashtag #1980sin4words on Twitter. According to a Google cache, his bio said "I support the free movement of people, ideas and capital."

The cached version of his Twitter account shows Delaware tweeted about current events, as well as mundane events like having a cold. A screenshot from the Internet Archive also shows that he was tweeting about similar topics in 2012.

According to an email from Twitter to Delaware reviewed by Motherboard, Delaware"s account was suspended two weeks ago, on October 17.

Delaware"s life is far from connected to Russian propaganda efforts. He is a United States citizen and was born in California. In 2010, he moved to the country Georgia, and now resides there with a Georgian woman. He works as a commercial actor and an English instructor. He mainly used his Twitter account to tweet about books, movies, and television shows, he told me.

Delaware"s account was the oldest included in the ones Twitter provided to US lawmakers, according to a security expert Motherboard spoke to that asked to remain anonymous citing professional concerns. Twitter assigns a unique ID number to each person when they join the network. Delaware"s was 18710816. The number is an indication of the age of an account; you can use this website for example to calculate your own.

Other security researchers noticed the age of some of the accounts as well:

Looking at the user IDs, they must have been at this for awhile - some of those accounts are old.

— Adam Caudill (@adamcaudill) November 2, 2017

We don"t know for certain why Delaware"s account was banned or why it was on the list delivered to US lawmakers, and Twitter declined to tell me.

"We are confident in the methodology described in our written testimony to surface accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency.

 

We encourage all Twitter users to take steps to reinforce security on their accounts, including enabling two-factor authentication, and to file a support request if they believe their account may have been compromised," a Twitter spokesperson told me in an email.

Delaware believes that his account might have been mistakenly connected to Russia for two reasons.

For one, he lives in Georgia, which shares its northern border with Russia. For nearly seven years, he has tweeted from the country in which he lives. Delaware told me that he rarely tweeted about his intellectual pursuits (like filing FOIA requests) nor politics.

The second reason involves a Russian-created hoax from 2014. On September 11 of that year, Russian trolls spread a false rumor online about an explosion at the "Columbian Chemicals plant" in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. The "Columbian Chemicals plant" doesn"t exist. The trolls used text messages, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter to try and spread their hoax.

Almost a year later, journalist Adrian Chen published an extensive article in the New York Times connecting the hoax to a now-notorious Russian propaganda outfit, the Internet Research Agency. The accounts Twitter handed over to US lawmakers are believed to be connected to the same outfit.

On the day the trolls attempted to spread their explosion hoax, Twitter was flooded with hundreds of fake accounts tweeting under the hashtag #ColumbianChemicals, according to Chen"s reporting.

Robert Delaware was one of the people using the hashtag that day. Not because he was a bot trying to spread a hoax, but because he knew the explosion was fake, he told me. "I immediately suspected it as a hoax. I tweeted to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] saying something like, "what is this, please investigate,"" Delaware told me in a Twitter direct message from another account he has, @iPad_App_Bugs, where he documents minor iOS bugs that he finds. Delaware has had that account since 2016, but began using it more after @RobbyDelaware was suspended.

Delaware even communicated with Chen. The journalist confirmed with Motherboard that he was contacted by Delaware in a Twitter message. "I think I emailed him because he tweeted about [the hoax]," Chen told me. "And he emailed me back. I think we talked on the phone. He seemed fine."

After his account was suspended, Delaware tried a variety of methods to try and get it back, or at least figure out why he was banned in the first place. He opened a case with Twitter Support asking for information about his account, and he sent messages to various Twitter email accounts, according to messages Motherboard reviewed.

"I went to the thing where I entered in my account, and asked for support," Delaware told me. "I even cc"d other emails I found on the site. I searched on the internet, and someone on a blog wrote that Twitter has zero human customer support. That is why I cc"d advertising and jobs emails associated with Twitter."

In addition to @iPad_App_Bugs, Delaware also runs an account where he shares photos of his adopted country, Georgia. There, he sent a public plea to Twitter"s CEO Jack Dorsey for help with his banned account:

Hi .@jack, my other main twitter account, which dutifully follows all twitter rules, is suspended and this happens with password reset... pic.twitter.com/S0z5tJXACH

— Georgia Pictures (@GeorgiaPictures) October 17, 2017

As of Thursday, Twitter had not gotten back to Delaware, he said. Twitter did not immediately respond to a followup request for comment about why Delaware"s support case has yet to be addressed.

"Still puzzled as to how I entered into the Congressional record," he told me. "I would guess I am the only actual human who ended up on this list."

Wasserman Schultz IT Staffer "Frantically" Liquidating $2 Million In Real Estate Assets

As the mainstream media continues to report 24x7 on their Russian collusion narrative in a shameless attempt to take down a Republican administration without any actual evidence of wrongdoing, the Democrats find themselves embroiled in yet another actual scandal, with actual crimes, where people have actually been arrested by the FBI while actually trying to flee the country...yet shockingly, none of these actual crimes seem to be of any interest at all to traditional media outlets.

Be that as it may, the rather curious case of Imran Awan continues with the latest development coming courtesy of the Daily Caller who notes that Imran was frantically liquidating nearly $2 million in real estate holdings right up until the day has was arrested at Dulles airport.

Imran Awan, a congressional aide arrested by the FBI after wiring $300,000 to Pakistan and misrepresenting the purpose, had previously wired money to the country and was frantically liquidating multiple real estate properties on the day he was arrested, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

Imran’s real estate properties provide a source of money that could be sent directly to Pakistan when two upcoming home sales close. Prosecutors have since filed paperwork saying they fear “the dissipation of the proceeds of the fraud and destruction of evidence in other locations.”

Imran was arrested July 24 — four months after the FBI says his wife Hina Alvi moved to Pakistan after learning the family was the subject of a criminal investigation into their work as IT administrators for House Democrats. On the day of Imran’s arrest, the couple accepted a buyer for one house owned by Hina with an asking price of $618,000 (Hawkshead Dr.) and listed another property for sale at $200,000 (Pembrook Village), real estate records show.

On June 20, a third house his wife owned was “sold” to his brother-in-law for $360,000 (Sprayer St.). In November 2016, a fourth home his wife owned was “sold” to his brother Jamal for $620,000 (Linnett Hill Dr.). In both cases, the bank financed nearly all of the purchase.

So why real estate?  As the Daily Caller notes, title companies, unlike individuals, can wire large sums of money to international bank accounts without arousing the suspicions of federal investigators.

Title companies can wire large sums abroad without attracting the suspicion Imran did at the bank, and with Hina — the nominal sole owner of each of the houses — residing in that country, it would be natural to send the proceeds to her.

In addition to the three houses sold or slated to be sold since June 20, Imran’s lawyer, Chris Gowen, told The New York Times that the $283,000 wire in January was preceded by other similar transfers to Pakistan. “Gowen said the transfer represented the latest payment by his client for a piece of property he was buying in the country,” The Times reported.

Gowen would not tell TheDCNF whether the proceeds of the $360,000 June 20 home sale were wired to Pakistan, nor where the income from the two upcoming sales would go. The office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia declined to comment on whether it would block the disbursements.

The value of the known homes that have been sold since November or are currently being sold is $1.8 million. There is also the $283,000 January wire transfer from the Congressional bank, in addition to previous wires of unknown amounts that Imran’s lawyer acknowledged.

Since Imran’s lawyer said the January wire of nearly $300,000 was the latest in a series of wires, the transfers may have been about moving money from the $4 million in House payments or other sources.

As we noted last week, Imran Awan was charged with bank fraud after being picked up by the FBI as Dulles airport while attempted to flee to Pakistan via Qatar.  That said, it is still unclear whether that charge is just a placeholder for other charges that are yet to come. 

While details are scarce, media reports have alleged that Awan and his brothers potentially ran a procurement scheme in which they bought equipment, then overcharged various House members that employed their IT firm.  Meanwhile, some congressional technology aides have alleged that the Awan’s were blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files, due to the fact that these representatives have displayed unwavering and intense loyalty towards the former aides.

As background, Imran was first employed in 2004 by former Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler (FL) as an “information technology director”, before he began working in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s office in 2005.

The family was paid extremely well, with Imran Awan being paid nearly $2 million working as an IT support staffer for House Democrats since 2004. Abid Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were each paid more than $1 million working for House Democrats. In total, since 2003, the family has collected nearly $5 million.

In total, Imran"s firm was employed by 31 Democrats in Congress, some of whom held extremely sensitive positions on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Some of the #Democrats who had Pakistani IT workers (currently under investigation) on their payroll. #AwanBrothers https://t.co/XvrJ6H1iW9 pic.twitter.com/gVjNkfqWH3

— Nick Short ???????? (@PoliticalShort) May 22, 2017

Of course, one of the most intriguing parts of the Awan narrative is precisely why former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (DWS) decided to keep him on her taxpayer-funded payroll right up until his arrest and whether that decision had anything to do with the whole DNC / Hillary email scandals that erupted last summer.

A preliminary hearing for Awan is scheduled for August 21.