France Threatens to Jail Journalists Who Publish Rothschild Banker Candidate Emails

(ZH) After 9 gigabytes of Macron-linked documents and emails were released on an anonymous pastebin website on Friday afternoon in what Macron’s campaign said was a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack, France – fearing a similar response to what happened with Hillary Clinton after 35,000 John Podesta emails were released one month before the US presidential election – cracked down on the distribution of the files, warning on Saturday it would be a “criminal offense” to republish the data, and warning the French media not to publish content from any of the hacked emails “to prevent the outcome of the vote being influenced.”

Quoted by Reuters, the French election commission said in a statement that “on the eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot.” Following a rushed meeting on Saturday morning, the commission which supervises the electoral process, said that the data been “fraudulently obtained and could be mixed with false information.” It is unclear, however, how it hopes to enforce any punitive claims, especially when much of the initial document distribution appears to have taken place offshore.

Domestically, in a similar reaction to the US media’s response to the Podesta emails, French TV news channels chose not to mention the hack, although the left-leading Liberation prominently featured the news on its website. Liberation author Cedric Mathiot wrote that the leak, and its timing, “wants to create chaos” adding that the information was distributed in an “unethical method.”

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On Friday night, as news of what has been hashtagged as @MacronLeaks on twitter spread, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of the National Front, tweeted “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately kept silent?” In a tweeted response, Macron spokesman Sylvain Fort called Philippot’s tweet “vile”.

In another parallel to the Clinton leaks, Macron’s En Marche! party said the leaked documents dealt with “the normal operations of a campaign and included some information on campaign accounts.” It said the hackers had mixed false documents with authentic ones to “sow doubt and disinformation.”

But in the biggest parallel to the Clinton hacking, few have touched upon the actual contents of the documents, which some say confirm prior allegations of illicit financial dealings and offshore accounts, and instead merely sought to attack the messenger. Indeed, as journalist Kim Zetter noted overnight, “Telling journos to not report on hacked emails misses point that nearly all important leaks occur because someone broke law or a contract” and then followed up with the following rhetorical question, flipping the situation by 180 degrees: “If GRU, intending to assault dem., hacks Trump & publishes emails showing his direct connection to Russia, should journos report on those.”

Telling journos to not report on hacked emails misses point that nearly all important leaks occur because someone broke law or a contract

— Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) May 6, 2017

If GRU, intending to assault dem., hacks Trump & publishes emails showing his direct connection to Russia, should journos report on those? https://t.co/cJJcjXkgBa

— Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) May 6, 2017

As reported on Friday evening, WikiLeaks tweeted that the leak contained “many tens of thousands” of emails, photos and attachments dated up to April 24, but it noted that it had come “too late” to affect the election results. In a follow up tweet, the controversial whistleblowing organization posted a tweet sharing the location of all #MacronLeaks archives which are “now available as uncensorable magnet links http://archive.is/aULcm”

#MacronLeaks archives are now available as uncensorable magnet links https://t.co/woLR5BOhrr@WikiLeaks is still assessing content.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 6, 2017

Since there has been no suggestion WikiLeaks is responsible for this hack, speculation about the source of the hack has grown, with Russia once again emerging as the “usual suspect.”

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Cited by Reuters, Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said his review indicates that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak. He cited similarities with U.S. election hacks that have been previously attributed to that group. Kremez also said that APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of En Marche, which it likely used send tainted emails to hack into the campaign’s computers. Those domains include onedrive-en-marche.fr and mail-en-marche.fr.

“If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the U.S. presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,” Kremez said.

We expect the Kremlin to deny all allegations shortly.

To cover all bases, others have also accused the “Alt Right” of being responsible for the leak:

Ben Nimmo, a UK-based security researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council think tank, said initial analysis indicated that a group of U.S. far-right online activists were behind early efforts to spread the documents via social media. They were later picked up and promoted by core social media supporters of Le Pen in France, Nimmo said.

The leaks emerged on 4chan, a discussion forum popular with far right activists in the United States. An anonymous poster provided links to the documents on Pastebin, saying, “This was passed on to me today so now I am giving it to you, the people.”

The hashtag #MacronLeaks was then spread by Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump activist whose Twitter profile identifies him as Washington D.C. bureau chief of the far-right activist site Rebel TV, according to Nimmo and other analysts tracking the election. Contacted by Reuters, Posobiec said he had simply reposted what he saw on 4chan.

“You have a hashtag drive that started with the alt-right in the United States that has been picked up by some of Le Pen’s most dedicated and aggressive followers online,” Nimmo told Reuters.

Sunday’s election, whose result is expected in just over 24 hours, is seen as “the most important in France for decades, with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and the country’s place in the world at stake.” Tune in then to find out if Wikileaks is correct, and the #MacronLeaks is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, unable to chisel away at Macron’s lead over Le Pen which the latest polls calculate to be as much as 25 points.

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Assange: Obama Seeking to Delegitimize Trump Presidency (VIDEO)

The efforts to shut up Assange have led all sorts of ugly places. If you can’t drone him (like Hillary Clinton suggested), then frame him and accuse him of pedophilia.

We have asked this questions here before: Why would the most powerful country in the world base its dwindling credibility on a report that possesses no warranties of any kind as far as the validity of its information, when it comes to blaming Russia for allegedly interfering in the last US election?

Why would Barack Obama accuse Russia of hacking anything without sufficient proof of it and go as far as to impose sanctions – toothless sanctions, but sanctions nonetheless – on diplomats if he had no proof of any hacking?

We ask such questions again in light of yesterday’s Julian Assange’s interview with Sean Hannity on FOX News.

During his interview, Assange took apart the narrative of Russia meddling in the recent US election. He cleared up the issue on whether Russia, Putin, Trump or any of their surrogates had been in contact with him previous or during the leaks that revealed corruption and collusion in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the illegal action carried out by that organization and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Assange explained that Russia had not been the source of the leaks and that Wikileaks would have undoubtedly published information of the same sort, had it been about Trump or the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Publishing anything about RNC collusion or corruption had not been necessary as the Republicans were open on their opposition to Donald Trump being the party’s candidate. Both the RNC and the mainstream media campaign strongly against Trump. However, it is comforting to know that Assange and Wikileaks would have had the same attitude towards the other party.

Why believe Assange, many ask? He could be lying about the whole thing! Sure, he could. The main reason is that Assange and Wikileaks have an impecable record when it comes to the veracity of the information the have put out over the last decade. Also, because the alternative would be to believe a deeply flawed intelligence community, or worse, to believe the politicians who have lied their way to power for decades. The validity of Wikileaks’ actions and revelations comes down to one question: Who do you believe?

Another fact that provides more validity to Wikileaks’ revelations is that no one in the DNC, the Clinton campaign or the White House has challenged the truthfulness of the content of the documents and information put out by Wikileaks.

There are, however, people on both parties who believe that the American people and the world do not have the right to know information such as the type revealed by Assange and his organization. That is why, when asked about whether they approve of the public having access to such information, they avoid answering directly and instead express their opposition to anyone leaking any information.

The narrative being used by the US president, the Clinton campaign and the DNC, after losing to Trump in November, has been that they will not let a ‘thug’ like Putin determine America’s destiny, yet the same White House, DNC and Clinton herself failed to address the hacking of millions of documents by the Chinese government and parties associated with it during Obama’s eight years in power.

Why the double standard? Why is Putin such a dangerous enemy for allegedly affecting the US election while China gets a free pass for doing worse things?

The answer is easy. The White House, the Clinton campaign and the DNC firmly believed that the election was in the bag for them. Raising the issue of Russia meddling in the election, had Clinton won it last November 8, would have delitimize her victory. Remember when Clinton herlsef warned about questioning the election results? Remember when she said that questioning the results was an assault on democracy?

The White House, the DNC and the Clinton campaign already knew of Russia’s alleged interference when Clinton made such a claim, yet they did not call for investigations or sanctions before the election because they thought every chip had fallen into place for them and that the victory was assured.

Trump is right on one thing: It is a very serious accussation to blame a nation or a political leader of influencing an election. There must be unequivocal assurance by the intelligence community that a person or a country were involved in hacking or meddling before an accussation of that sort is made. Up until now, neither the White House nor the intelligence community have presented any credible proof to support their claims. All that they have presented is their word and their word is woth nothing.

Do Obama, the White House, the intelligence community, the media and other Trump opponents seek to delegitimize his presidency even before he is sworn into office? It could be worse than that. They may want to avoid him getting to that moment. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan aid, has said publicly and openly that if they can’t stop him from becoming president they’ll kill Trump just as they did with John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley.

Roberts’ statement is not an unreasonable prediction since the US has been behind at least four assassinations of its own presidents as well as countless other leaders around the world.