Flowers For Socrates

 By ann summers

More interesting is how recent this blownwhistle may have occurred … within the last month, but more importantly it signals how much information was known in 2016 and how much information is available at the NSA.

It explains more about why Comey and Rogers are grouped together in terms of scheduling their testimonies.

NSA’s Rogers will have much to make available to Congress as well as to other investigations, but what’s unclear is how this classified information fits into the WH tactical scrambling, assuming that the cover-up continues.

The speculation about attempts to hack the US election becomes verified, yet again, even if it’s uncertain whether there were successful direct effects on it.

We’ve seen various windbags claim micro-targeting victories by some parallel efforts using data that might(sic) share similar provenance.

One implication is that elements in #TrumpRussia’s US cabal knew that the NSA or some IC asset had this information before the 2016 election, Yet they plodded forward with perhaps only indirectly coordinated activities that undermined opponents and/or the electoral process itself.

• Because the cabal had no real control (or complete knowledge) over multiple actors on both sides, they seem to have simply hoped that democracy would get in its own way and not discover that there were multiple groups of actors whose only shared goal was to destabilize the US election and/or win the election for the GOP.
• Because the effort was built on existing financial networks built over decades of shady operations, they felt they might just get away with it, except that on 8 November 2016, the worst happened when the GOP candidate unexpectedly won and the canopy disappeared.

The continuing investigations as well as the state-level prosecutions will have the usual lawfare over evidence and the subsequent firewalling of secret data. What remains difficult is getting to the circumstances motivating those who preferred to stay in the background and continue to get paid without scrutiny.

• The structure of maximizing the votes for an electoral win are not the same as selling products (in interviews Kushner used marketing jargon in describing the Cambridge Analytica technologies).
• Financing the data laundering of voter demographics and registration where personal information is not firewalled from the use of dodgy financial networks on the same server hardware that supported a loose form of mass identity theft. That mined data was then applied to regional push polling and media targeting, with perhaps even electoral interference.

Money was moved to support those tactical actions so that might be one of the current avenues for investigation — in possible places, groups, or individuals where there was common command and control of both financial payments and voter data plus campaign intelligence, however acquired.

This is where it potentially veers off to all those CT fantasies when the actual situation may simply be understanding how maximizing profit and centralizing power simply shares structural resemblances, albeit collusive ones. Maybe it all got over-delegated, like pressing the button and expecting the Diet Coke to appear.

The Russians pooped in the hallway; but it’s our house and we sent a Roomba to clean it up … you do the math.

And then there’s the potential intersection of data laundering and money laundering, where some of the float might have facilitated payment for services rendered. The money trail will attract the attention of other agencies. By the end, it’s so much more than Watergate or Iran-Contra.

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