In case you weren't feeling sufficiently freaked-out lately.
(BTW, this is BuzzFeed, so we recommend grains of salt)
Anthony Courmier and Jason Leopold, BuzzFeed:
US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.
The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what multiple US intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.
Most startlingly, Russia requested sensitive documents on Dirk, Edward, and Daniel Ziff, billionaire investors who had run afoul of the Kremlin. That request was made weeks before a Russian lawyer showed up at Trump Tower offering top campaign aides “dirt” on Hillary Clinton — including her supposed connection to the Ziff brothers.
- and -
In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange information with other countries.
Analysts at an elite agency within Treasury first warned supervisors in 2016 that the Russians were “manipulating the system” to conduct “fishing expeditions.” And they raised fears that the Treasury’s internal systems could be compromised by viruses contained in emails from the unofficial Russian accounts. But staff continued using the Gmail back channel into 2017, despite repeated internal warnings that Russia could be trawling for sensitive financial records — including Social Security and bank account numbers — to spy on, endanger, or recruit targets in the West.
Every time we turn around, there's another gasoline fire.
About all I can think of to do is to try to be aware of as much as possible, so I can formulate a few options, and be as ready as I can be to make some judgment as to what I need to do in response to whatever unfolds on any given day.
And as I read that last sentence to myself, I understand a little more about just how fucked up all of this has gotten.
I have conversations with myself, and I keep coming back to: "Y'know, I'm pretty good at thinking my way thru a lot of this shit, but I don't know what the fuck is going on anymore".
I do know this much: None of this can even be addressed until we start the removal of the Cult45 infestation.
This shit's gotta stop.
