Questions That Should Be Asked But Won't Be

I can’t say I’m disappointed by the Durham report. I’m too confused to be upset.

He didn’t confirm our suspicions, and he didn’t dispell them either. Topic after topic, he failed to deliver answers on some of our most important questions. Did he even look at the DNC hack? We don’t know.

Even on topics and theories I give no credence to like Mifsud and Seth Rich, he failed to even say “I looked at it, and there was nothing to it.”

That’s all he had to do. We know he looked at Mifsud stuff, why didn’t he just say it was all garbage made up by Papadopolous who was under a ton of pressure at the time?

That is what we have come to expect from a series of Special Counsels. It’s not just about whether you prosecuted someone or not, it’s become an expectation that there is a narrative and telling of what happened.

It’s not about being a raging conspiracy theorist, we have some questions that deserve to be asked and any reasonable journalist has to agree with that. There are questions he had to anticipate, or should have anticipated.

We have documents indicating Antonakakis and Dagon were working for Special Counsel Mueller “via DARPA”, how do you leave that open and just walk away? We have documents that seem to suggest that they had involvement in looking at the DNC hack as well.

Those seem like basic questions. It would’ve been totally fine to say that he looked at those things and found no wrongdoing. He can’t just ignore it or expect us to just ignore it.

At the time of this writing, there is no confirmed hearing for John Durham. It’s surely to be a national embarassment. Half the time will be used by frothing Democrats reclaiming their time to spin a narrative about Trump collusion and Durham failing to look at damning material on Trump.

The other half of of the time will largely be used by grandstanding Republicans trying to get a nice soundbite worthy of a Hannity appearance. Are they going to launch a serious investigation or even a series of public testimonies? I doubt it.

Our questions won’t be asked. And if they are, Durham will probably stick to his report.

However, some of us have looked at this for years, and we have a responsibility to make a record. With Walkafyre’s help, we compiled a handful of questions that we kept pretty simple and basic, that should be asked.

If Durham answers these and if we are right, there will be some bombshell answers:

1. Why didn’t you address the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee in your report? 

   1. And even though it is not addressed in your report, was the hack and the underlying investigation of the hack reviewed by you or your team?

2. Exhibits you produced at trial indicate that as of the middle of October 2016, the US Government had not received forensic images of the hacked DNC servers. Yet, On October 7, 2016 ODNI/DHS released a joint statement attributing the hack to Russia. 

   1. How did they make that attribution without evidence from the DNC or Crowdstrike? See Exhibits 1-2.

3. Did you review the grand jury materials in the indictments relating to the hack of the DNC?

4. Did you review the grand jury materials in the indictment of the Internet Research Agency?

5. Do you know who the authors of each of the Alfa Bank white papers were?

6. Materials obtained through Open Records requests indicate your office asked Manos Antonakakis, referenced as University-1 Researcher-1 in your report, whether he thought it was appropriate for DARPA to ask him to look into Guccifer 2.0. Did Mr. Antonakakis provide any analysis on the hack of the DNC and in what context? See Exhibit 3. 

7. Other materials obtained via Open Records requests show a letter from an attorney from David Dagon, which similarly suggests that he conducted research on the hack of the Democratic National Committee and APT-28. Did Mr. Dagon provide any analysis on the hack of the DNC and in what context? See Exhibit 4. 

8. Did any other persons associated with the Alfa Bank or Yota Phone allegations provide data or analysis used in attribution for the DNC hack?

9. To what extent did you look into Daniel Jones, Mikey Dickerson and Matt Weaver for their roles in the Alfa Bank scheme?

   1. Did any of them have any nexus to other elements of your investigation?

10. Did you look at the false flag operation known as Project Birmingham in which fake Russian twitter bots were created to support a contrived narrative of Russian influence around the 2017 Alabama Senate race?

11. What was the relationship between Special Counsel Mueller and the Alfa Bank researchers?

    1. Based on your investigation, do you believe Special Counsel Mueller and/or his team were aware of the identities of the Tech Executives or University-1 researchers in regards to the original Alfa Bank allegations?

12. Is there any indication that the wiping of phones on the Mueller team obstructed or concealed evidence that would have been relevant to your investigation? 

    1. Were there any direct communications between the University-1 Researchers and the Special Counsel Mueller team? 

13. What is the nature of Rodney Joffe’s relationship to the US intelligence community?

14. Did you look at Appmospheric, Trustcor, Measurement Systems, Chivalric Holding Company, and Frigate Bay Holdings, Global Resource Systems, which are entities with ties to Rodney Joffe and his associates?

    1. Were there any violations of US laws that you found in looking at those entities?

    2. Were any of those entities set up as cutouts for US intelligence agencies to evade US laws? 

15. DNC Hack

    1. Is there any indication that Rodney Joffe was in contact with Michael Sussmann or any other person involved in the DNC hack investigation, regarding the hack?

16. ICA construction

    1. Did you look at the compilation of the ICA report on the alleged Russian interference efforts?

17. What can you tell us about the Fusion cell John Brennan set up? Did you review all of the holdings generated or analyzed by the Fusion Cell as part of your investigation?

    1. At any time, were any of the Alfa Bank researchers in contact with either the fusion cell or any other public-private governmental team?

18. Halper

    1. Why was Stefan Halper in proximity to the Trump campaign prior to being a CHS?

       1. What or who prompted him?

19. Alfa Bank

    1. Based on your Report, court documents, and other public reporting, it is unclear whether the IC concluded the underlying data regarding the Alfa Bank server was fraudulent itself or if the data was more likely cherry-picked to advance a narrative.  Can you state whether your team or any other component of the USIC with which you collaborated definitely determined the source of the “pings”?

20. Steele

    1. How much did Steele lie about what Danchenko was saying and how much was just fabricated by Danchenko for the dossier?

21. Flynn

    1. Do you feel the prosecutors treated General Flynn fairly?

22. Accepting that the investigation into Trump itself had no predicate, by January 2017, there was sufficient evidence that all investigations into Trump and his associates should have ended, correct?

    1. Why didn’t they?

23. The 7th floor at the FBI was closely following and directing the Crossfire Hurricane investigation?

24. What justification was there for Director Comey to announce in March 2017 that the FBI was formally investigating Trump?

25. Within weeks of his appointment, Special Counsel Mueller should have known there was no credible evidence remaining of collusion, correct?

26. What explanation did you get for the plans, referenced in public reporting, involving Andrew McCabe to launch an obstruction investigation into Trump?

    1. Do you feel an obstruction investigation had merit?

       1. Why or why not?

27. Did you obtain and review all records around President Obama and the meetings held about Crossfire Hurricane?

    1. Did you obtain records over meetings held between January 4-5, 2017?

    2. What was the substance of those meetings?

28. Did you obtain and review the Renteria memo?

29. Did you obtain and review the Sir Lyall Grant memo?

30. According to the Order appointing you as Special Counsel, you were to produce a confidential report to the Attorney General regarding your investigation.  Subsection (f) of the Order then states you were to submit a final report…in a form that will permit public dissemination “[i]n addition to the confidential report.”  In your cover letter to the Attorney General on May 12, you stated that your Report is “presented in fulfillment of these requirements.”  Why did your Office combine the “final report” and the “confidential report” that were required under the Order?

    1. Do you believe the phrase “in a form that will permit public dissemination” was meant to be expansive or restrictive regarding the content of your Report?

31. How cooperative were then-current Federal employees and/or federal agencies with your investigation?

32. To what extent was there an active effort to evade or obstruct the investigation led by Devin Nunes? 

33. Was there any evidence that one of the considerations behind making Igor Danchenko a confidential human source was to hide him from Congressional oversight? 

Links to our questions and exhibits:

1. Questions

2. Exhibits

If there is a Durham hearing this week in primetime, we will stream it with commentary.