dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

60 Minutes tonight, Muh Russian hackers edition.

There was a lot of testimony during this past week's impeachment inquiry about Russian interference in our 2016 election, at the same time that the president continued to assert that Ukraine was involved. On this Sunday's 60 Minutes, Bill Whitaker speaks with the Justice Department official who is overseeing the case against 12 Russian military intelligence agents for a so-called "hack and release" operation that targeted the 2016 election. He explains how members of two Russian military units hacked staffers' computers inside the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and disseminated proprietary information that was used to undermine individual candidates and sow discord. Whitaker's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, November 24 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

Whitaker speaks to John Demers, the assistant attorney general who runs the Department of Justice's National Security Division, which inherited the Russian hacking case from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. There is no doubt in his mind the Russian agents executed the hack and strategically released the stolen documents using the online persona "Guccifer 2.0." The agents behind the plot gave the stolen data to political operatives and bloggers, and some material eventually found its way into the mainstream media. "Guccifer 2.0 is a fictional online persona," says Demers. "It's all an effort on the Russian side to hide their involvement."

The Russian information warfare operation is laid out in a remarkably detailed 29-page indictment compiled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team and handed off to the Justice Department's National Security Division. The case remains open. "The insight here is that behind every one of those keyboards is not an IP address. It's a human being," says Demers. He says he'd be surprised if he ever gets to try the Russians in court, but adds: "The purpose of this kind of indictment is to educate the public." Even so, he's confident he could get a conviction. "We believe that if we had to, we could prove [that the Russians interfered with the U.S. election] in court tomorrow using only admissible, non-classified evidence to 12 jurors."

Robert Anderson, who oversaw the FBI's counterintelligence and cybersecurity divisions, says the Russian hacking teams are made up of "some of the best mathematical minds in Russia." He says the operation in 2016 was "a huge success" and warns that the Russians will be back for the 2020 election. "The thing that you need to worry about with Russia and every one of their intelligence services is they will learn from these operations…They will analyze everything they did right or wrong. And when they attack again, they will not come at you the same way," he says.

First published on November 22, 2019 / 1:13 PM

Inb4 Seth Rich gave Julian Assange the hacker info