How Hillary was (or will be) framed

If my theory is right, we're about to hear a political explosion unlike any heard before. Hillary faces a time bomb, one that was planted back in 2011.

Before proceeding, let's make one thing clear: My thoughts are still in the germinal phase, and I'm surely wrong on various points. If you know French history, you may be aware of Zola's famous "J'accuse!" essay, which he wrote during the Dreyfuss controversy. Zola flubbed many details and hopped to some very paranoid conclusions. Nevertheless, the general thrust of the essay was accurate. He had glimpsed the truth, even if he couldn't get it in a choke-hold.

It's also possible that this "time bomb" may not go off in time, or may not carry sufficient force. This story, published on the obnoxiously anti-Clinton site Zero Hedge, explains how the explosion might be controlled. And of course, Trump faces his own set of booby traps; see here and here.

Nevertheless, I'm not betting on Hillary.

Sartori hit me yesterday morning, as I lay in a steaming bathtub. A brand-new scenario came together in my mind -- a narrative which runs counter to the groupthink of both right and left.

In other words, this post is designed to piss off everyone.

For example: If you are a liberal, you are probably angry at FBI Director James Comey, and at the White House for defending Comey. You'll no doubt be pissed off to hear me say that Comey could be the best friend Hillary Clinton ever had.

Trump, I now believe, was right: Comey had indeed engaged in a pro-Hillary cover-up. The FBI Director and his select team controlled the investigation into Hillary's email server, and managed to hide certain "incriminating" details.

However, Comey cannot fully control the separate investigation into Weiner's computer. That investigation is run by FBI agents in New York who have been leaking to the right-wing press about what they consider a cover-up.

This important Daily Kos diary tells much of the story. Although the writer doesn't make the conceptual leap which marked my samasara moment, he has still done extraordinary work.

Most of us who don’t watch Fox were unaware that Rudy Giuliani and Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Yunaska Trump, had been talking up an impending October surprise last week, however I happened to notice two separate tweets that came across my Twitter feed last Monday and Thursday and caught my attention: one quoted Lara Trump as saying, “We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve,” and the second mentioned Rudy Giuliani talking about the campaign having “surprises up its sleeve.”

According to CNN, the FBI have been aware of the newly “found” emails for several weeks, and by his own admission, (it’s on the10/28/16 Lars Larson Show audio which you can listen to below), Giuliani has been talking to both former and active FBI agents very recently. While this is not unusual on its face, because Giuliani would have gotten to know many agents during his tenure as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, it’s clear from his comments that the main topic of his discussion with the agents, including ones currently in the field, was Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.

What we do know for a fact, however, is that Giuliani has been on a rampage against Comey since July and has savaged him time and time again for caving on the Clinton investigation.

Would Giuliani have acted in this fashion if Comey were (as many liberals presume) a secret operative of the Republicans?

Appearing on “America’s Newsroom,” @2:16 in Giuliani says, "I think he's [Trump] got a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I mean...I'm talking about some... pretty big surprises...You’ll see. (Cackles).” Then he continues, “We’re not going to go down, and we’re certainly not gonna stop fighting. We've got a couple things up our sleeve that should turn this around."

Most relevant for our purposes is that Giuliani brings up several rumors he’s gotten from “both former and active agents” he’s spoken with “who obviously don’t want to identify themselves.” He asserts that “there’s a kind of revolution going on within the FBI,” and Comey is “feeling the pressure.”

Trump, the Prophet. When the Comey letter first broke, a number of commentators (Rachel Maddow among them) noted an oddity: Months earlier, Trump had -- in his usual marble-mouthed way -- intimated that Anthony Weiner was somehow tied in with the Clinton email "scandal."

That's so typically Trumpian, isn't it? Whenever he's dying to blurt out what's on his mind, he lapses into Basil Fawlty mode: "Listen, don't mention the war!"

In order to understand what's really going on, one must make a conceptual leap. Prepare for the first half of an epiphany:

There really is something bad -- very bad -- in those emails.

I don't know what that "something" is. The specifics don't matter. The monster will spring from his hiding place soon enough -- perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, perhaps the day before the election.

Comey is not covering up that "something bad" because he adores Hillary or because he took a bribe. Either through instinct or simple deduction, he understands the true origin of that "something bad." It's a truth that he cannot divulge to the public, because the public would never buy it.

And that brings us to the second half of our epiphanic moment:

Hillary was framed. 

The plot was hatched years ago. If I'm right, she will soon be at the center of the most audacious political lie since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Trump forces were disheartened and outraged when the "proof" against Hillary did not come out during the FBI's official investigation of her server. They correctly divined a cover-up. Fortunately (from their point of view), they had a back-up plan involving Anthony Weiner's computer.

The plan against Hillary traces back to 2011 and the first Anthony Weiner scandal. At that time, I outraged many people with my suggestion that Weiner really was hacked, just as he claimed.

(Adversaries accused me of being a blinkered supporter of the man, even though I had never written one positive word about him.)

Today, of course, we know that John Podesta and Colin Powell and the DNC and Lord-knows-who-else were hacked. What a funny old world we live in! It's perfectly acceptable to say the words "Powell was hacked" but God help you if you say "Weiner was hacked." If you do, you'll be accused enabling a pervert.

But hacked he was.

Back in 2011, I privately received confirmation of my "Weiner was hacked" theory, which I had formulated from a close examination of the case. Andrew Breitbart knew of the congressman's pervy ways well before that infamous crotch pic found its way into his Twitter stream. A Breitbart operative conveniently spotted the pic within the few seconds of its online existence (for Weiner deleted it immediately after it showed up). Conveniently, this operative recorded the whole thing, while pretending to be shocked, shocked, shocked by a photo which -- as we later learned -- was already quite familiar to him.

One or more of the women with whom Weiner "sexted" was a plant. That's how Andrew Breitbart obtained the "fully erect" photo.

It's ridiculously easy to hack a guy like Weiner: Just pretend to be a sexy girl -- or, better, be an actual female. Engage with him in the kind of dirty talk he fancies. Once he becomes hypnotized, he'll click on any link you send him, especially if he thinks that he's about to see a racy photo.

(In 2008, my own computer was hacked when someone pretending to be writer Evelyn Pringle sent me a malware-laden link.)

I don't know a lot about hacking, and I don't want to know. However, I do understand that the basis of most hacking is old-fashioned scamming, which is now called "social engineering." Many people think: Hacking = magic. Not true. Hacking = grifting.

In 2011, there was no pressing reason for hackers to target Anthony Weiner per se. Although he often appeared on cable news, he was just one congressman among many, representing a district that would inevitably replace him with another liberal. In and of himself, he was not worth the effort that the Breitbarters put into him.

I believe that Weiner's wife Huma Abedin was the real target.

And beyond Huma, the ultimate target was her boss and mentor, Hillary Clinton.

Back in 2011, I recall writing (in either a private letter or in the comments section of this blog) that going after Weiner was not as important as going after Huma. Husband and wife presumably plugged into the same computer network, and malware can hop from computer to computer in a household.

At the time, the public did not know that Weiner used a laptop which originally belonged to his wife. She had used it for both her personal Yahoo account and for the Clinton email server. She was one of the few people to hold an account on that server -- which could, of course, be reached via a normal browser.

Weiner foolishly used the same password for all of his accounts. It is fair to presume that Huma Abedin -- not the world's most technically sophisticated computer user -- did likewise.

It's also fair to presume that she did not change her passwords as often as she should have. Most people don't.

Whenever someone gives a used computer to a friend or family member, the giver usually forgets one very important fact: The browser stores all the passwords.

Let's repeat that. I want the implications to sink in.

THE BROWSER STORES ALL THE PASSWORDS.

If a hacker can gain complete remote access to a computer, it's easy to see those passwords: In Firefox, one goes to Options/Security/Saved Passwords/Show Passwords. Even without the ability to control the cursor remotely, a hacker need merely acquire the Mozilla profile in the AppData folder, where passwords are stored in what's called a json file. The passwords are encrypted, but hackers know about decrypting apps.

Are you beginning to see the picture? Can you visualize the mischief possible if an enemy possesses the passwords of Hillary Clinton's right-hand woman?

From a 2016 Politico story:

In January 2011, President Clinton's aide Justin Cooper told Abedin via email that he'd shut down the server, which hosted accounts for the former president, the then-secretary of state, Abedin and others. "Someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to."

Four months later, two of Clinton's aides corresponded via email about Clinton's concern that someone was "hacking into her email," the report says.

Look at the timing!

These hack attempts were not reported to State Department security staffers. Perhaps Cooper or another Clinton staffer put two-and-two together: The Weiner scandal broke in May of 2011 -- the exact same time as that correspondence about an attempt to hack into the Clinton server. (I presume that Weiner's system had already been compromised for a while.)

The whole thing was kept quiet. Obama faced a tough re-election battle the next year. He surely didn't need a scandal.

From a 2015 AP story:

Clinton's server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012. Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn't intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.

This was foolish, though not for the reasons that everyone presume. Despite what you've been told by the right-wing media, there was no truly sensitive information passing through that server. Hillary used the State Department's classified server for truly secret information; other material went through her private server. Most of it was piffle.

However: Anyone gaining remote access to Clinton's private server would, once again, gain access to the passwords.

(It occurs to me that hackers might have elevated the remote access settings. That can be done, if the hacker is skillful. This scenario would explain a lot.)

You are probably now thinking: "So? How does this justify all of that earlier talk about a frame up? Why were you talking about something bad on Clinton's server?"

Ah, padawan! If only you understood the POWER of the Dark Side!

Here's the standard media narrative: Hacker breaks into politician's account, steals communications, passes the cache to Wikileaks. Hilarity ensues. But that's only the beginning of what a malign hacker can do. Expand your preconceptions; consider the possibilities.

Suppose I acquired your email password. Suppose I really, really hated you. Let us further suppose that I was bright enough to use Tor to hide my IP address while I skulk into your email account. How will you react when the cops come knocking on your door to ask why you've been mailing child porn to various pervs on the Dark Net? No doubt you'll say: "What child porn? I never had any child porn!" Good luck convincing them that you have an invisible, untraceable enemy.

All right. Perhaps you don't like my theory about how Breitbart-linked hackers used Weiner to get into Huma Abedin's email accounts. Fine. But the fact still remains: There is evidence that someone hacked into Clinton's server in May of 2011.

So the scenario remains very possible. A truly malign hacker will not content himself with stealing emails (most of which, as we know, were quite innocuous). A malign hacker will slip something in (just as that crotch pic was slipped into Anthony Weiner's public Twitter stream).

In other words: The hacker planted a time bomb.

"What kind of a bomb?" you ask, echoing the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises.

Perhaps we're talking about a truly classified piece of information, such as a list of real names and covers for MI6 field agents. (Just such a list has been floating around for years. Back in 2007, I talked to a journalist who was given a copy of that document by a very sinister figure; she immediately handed it over to someone in American intelligence.) Or perhaps we're talking about a personal email in which Hillary Clinton confesses the details of some imaginary crime to Bill or Huma.

The possibilities are plentiful. The time bomb could be...anything.

Once the bomb is in place, it's just a matter of whipping up public frenzy over an email scandal and waiting for the FBI to find the planted evidence.

But...they didn't.

Either Comey's team could not discover the time bomb or -- more likely -- they understood it for what it was, and they refused to mention the matter in public.

That must have been a very frustrating situation for the hackers. But they had a backup plan: The Weiner computer, which he (allegedly) used to sext a 15 year old girl. (I say "allegedly" for reasons which we may discuss in a future post.) A completely separate FBI team in New York has looked into that machine.

Someone -- probably Comey -- has been trying to hinder the work of that team until after the election. The machine was acquired on October 3, yet they were not allowed to read the Huma emails stored on the device. For more than three weeks, they did not get a warrant. Why the wait? And why didn't they seek permission from Abedin, a move which would have obviated the need for a warrant?

Huma says she has no idea how her emails got on that computer. I believe her.

In a previous post, I suggested that Weiner used his wife's password (remember: The browser stores the password) to check up on his wife's emails. Having given that woman ample reason to seek a divorce, he must have been curious to learn what she was saying in private to her confidants. Sneaking into her account might have resulted in the emails being stored locally.

Here's another possibility, which now strikes me as even more likely: The hackers who commandeered that computer in 2011 deliberately downloaded Huma's emails onto that system. Just in case. Plan B.

Then they insured that the feds had good reason to give that computer a thorough forensic examination.

That one laptop sure has made an awful lot of history, hasn't it? (So has Anthony Weiner's lap.)

Question: Will the time bomb go off before the election? The above-linked story suggests not:

However, it seems impossible that a full analysis will be completed by Election Day on Nov. 8 because if potentially classified messages that haven't been found before are located, they will have to be farmed out to various intelligence agencies for classification review. That interagency process often takes months.

Here's the problem: The New York FBI team is not directly under Comey's thumb. It is known that they don't like Hillary, and that their office is leakier than the Andrea Doria.

And now you know why Donald Trump is campaigning in safely blue states when he should be concentrating on the battlegrounds. Now you know why he never bothered to mount any ground game. Now you know why he never prepared for the debates. Now you know why his ad buys often went to the wrong states. Now you know why he has treated this election as a money-making opportunity. Now you know why he has remained focused on the email "scandal," making increasingly hyperbolic claims.

And now you know how and why Steve Bannon, King of the Breitbarters, came to run the Trump campaign.

Honey Badger don't care. Honey Badger don't give a shit.

The time bomb was planted in 2011. Donald Trump need not concern himself with winning; he merely has to wait for the bomb to go off.

I can guess what you are now saying: "It's just a theory, Cannon. You don't have proof."

You're right.

The proof will be in the pudding. Watch it happen. If I'm wrong, I'll be a happier man.

A final note: If my theory is correct, I remain puzzled by a few nagging problems. Such as: Why was Weiner targeted for scandal in 2011? Huma might well have divorced him at that time. From a hacker's point of view, it made more sense to keep him in place: His sexual compulsions insured that he would always grant hackers an easy way to compromise the computer network in that household.

Perhaps Andrew Breitbart, ever the publicity-seeker, went for a short-term "score" at the expense of the long con against Hillary. Those of you who recall the events of 2011 may remember that Breitbart would occasionally voice displeasure with the crew providing him with dirt on Weiner.

Poor Andy! He always did like attention, and he always insisted on doing things his way. Not really a team player. Maybe he became a problem.

Added note: A reader corrected me. Originally, I wrote samsara instead of sartori. Wow...was my comparitive religions class THAT long ago?