The FBI says there is no definitive connection between Donald Trump and the Russian government, reaching that conclusion after a wide-ranging investigation that stemmed from concerns about the Republican presidential nominee’s foreign associations.
In a New York Times report published Monday night, the newspaper cited law-enforcement officials who said, if anything, the cyberattacks that US intelligence agencies suspect Russia of carrying out against Democratic Party organizations were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Trump.”
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server
By
DEVLIN BARRETT
Updated Oct. 30, 2016 4:58 p.m. ET
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
“I need to open with a very critical breaking news announcement. The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails pertaining to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s investigation, and they are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America.
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.
“I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the DOJ are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understand. It is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.” – Donald J. Trump
NSA Analyst: We now have incontrovertible proof the Bureau never had any intention of prosecuting Hillary Clinton
By John R. Schindler • 09/25/16 8:30am
From the moment the EmailGate scandal went public more than a year ago, it was obvious that the Federal Bureau of Investigation never had much enthusiasm for prosecuting Hillary Clinton or her friends. Under President Obama, the FBI grew so politicized that it became impossible for the Bureau to do its job – at least where high-ranking Democrats are concerned.
As I observed in early July, when Director James Comey announced that the FBI would not be seeking prosecution of anyone on Team Clinton over EmailGate, the Bureau had turned its back on its own traditions of floating above partisan politics in the pursuit of justice. “Malfeasance by the FBI, its bending to political winds, is a matter that should concern all Americans, regardless of their politics,” I stated, noting that it’s never a healthy turn of events in a democracy when your secret police force gets tarnished by politics.
Ahmad Khan Rahami lying wounded on a Linden, NJ sidewalk after he wounded two police officers and was shot by police himself late Monday morning.
BREAKING : Manhattan bombing suspect Ahmad Rahami is in police custody after shooting a police officer in Linden, NJ, according to WNBC.
September 19,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, A key suspect in the NYC bombing that injured 29 people has been arrested after a dramatic manhunt by US law enforcement agencies,.
Police named 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami as a prime suspect in an explosion in Manhattan over the weekend.
Earlier today, The FBI issued a wanted poster seeking information and warning that Rahami should be considered “armed and dangerous”.
The arrest came around 11am local time after a standoff with police, according to media reports. At least one officer is believed to have been injured in the arrest.
Sep 19, 2016 05:25:38 AM Northeast Corridor & North Jersey Coastline rail service will resume regular weekday service starting at 5:30 a.m. Customers are advised to plan for delays.
By Larry Celona
September 18, 2016 | 11:09pm
FBI agents arrested five men who may be connected to Saturday’s bombing in Chelsea after stopping their car in Brooklyn, sources said.
The men were heading over the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island when they were stopped Sunday night.
Sources said the FBI suspected the men may have had a role in the bombing and were questioning them at the FBI headquarters in Manhattan.
It is believed the men, who live in New Jersey, were heading to the airport when they were busted.
Seaside Park NJ , Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino announced that authorities are investigating an explosion in a trash can near the boardwalk in Seaside Park, N.J., that occurred this morning as a charity 5K race was about to begin.
No one was injured in the blast, which is being investigated by the New Jersey State Police, FBI, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, Ocean County Sheriff’s Department and Seaside Park Police Department. All of those agencies are at the scene.
Attorney General Porrino and Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, have briefed Governor Chris Christie on the incident and the investigation into the blast.
“Working with the FBI and ATF, we are taking every step to ensure the safety of the public and to determine who was responsible for this explosion, which occurred at a time when runners in this charity race could have been in harms way,” said Attorney General Porrino. “We are grateful that nobody was injured, but this is a serious act of violence against the people of New Jersey. We will not rest until we find the person or persons responsible.”
The explosion occurred at approximately 9:30 a.m. The Semper Five 5K run had been scheduled to begin shortly after 9 a.m., but the start was delayed and no runners were in proximity to the trash can when the explosion occurred. The race was canceled after the blast.
Authorities cordoned off the scene of the explosion at the corner of D Street and Ocean Avenue and are conducting a search of the surrounding area. No additional explosions or secondary locations have been identified. Initial reports of a second device found in another trash can have been refuted. However, State Police bomb technicians have rendered safe items located in the same trash can in which the explosion occurred.
Law enforcement partners have been performing a wide search in the area and roads remain closed during the ongoing search and investigation.
No suspects have been arrested in connection with the explosion. Attorney General Porrino urged any with information related to the explosion to call the New Jersey State Police Homeland Security Tipline at 1-866-4SAFENJ.
Manuel Alfonso, 47, is the first Latino to pursue the position of Bergen County Sheriff and score a major party endorsement. The Cuban American Republican entered the race earlier this year after a January party switch by incumbent Sheriff Michael Saudino from Republican to Democrat left the GOP scrambling for a candidate.
While Alfonso has never run for office before, the candidate is a 26-year veteran in law enforcement. Currently he works as a high-ranking official in a government agency but says that he cannot disclose information about his department or position for campaign purposes due to ethics violations. In the past, Alfonso worked with the FBI joint terrorism task force for five years and with the U.S. Marshals Service.
Newly released FBI documents detailing the bureau’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails reveal the aide who would likely follow her into the White House as chief counsel was central to a cover-up of evidence sought by investigators.
Yet despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
The smoking gun is on page 16 of the FBI’s 47-page report. It details how Mills ultimately made the determinations about which emails should be preserved before she and Clinton decided to delete the rest as “personal.” Clinton conducted both government and personal business using a personal email account — clintonemail.com — tied to an unsecured server set up in the basement of her New York home.
The FBI on Friday released a detailed report on its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, including the summary of its three-hour interview with the former secretary of State.
The report totals 58 pages, although large sections have been redacted.
In July, FBI Director James Comey announced that he did not recommend charging Clinton with willfully mishandling classified information.
While Comey called the former secretary of State “extremely careless” for using the server, he repeatedly said that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Be careful when you’re meeting new people in the nation’s capital and elsewhere, because you could be a prime target for foreign spies.
That’s the warning FBI agents gave to presidential campaign staffers Wednesday during two separate security briefings in Washington, D.C., according to sources.
While the briefings were portrayed as routine, they come amid increasingly aggressive efforts by foreign governments to access U.S. secrets and potentially influence upcoming elections here.
The FBI has responded to recent concerns about U.S. voting systems being targeted for cyberattacks as Election Day approaches, saying the agency takes the threat “very, very seriously” and is working to “equip the rest of our government with options.”
FBI Director James Comey addressed the issue while speaking to government and private-industry experts attending the Symantec Government Symposium in Washington, D.C.
“We take very seriously any effort by any actor,” he said, “to influence the conduct of affairs in our country, whether that’s an election or something else.”
His comments come one day after news surfaced about FBI warnings to the states that hackers had infiltrated one state board of election and targeted another.
Three days ago, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sent a letter to Comey, expressing concern that “the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results.”
In late June an “unknown actor scanned a state’s Board of Election website for vulnerabilities” and, after identifying a security gap, exploited the vulnerability to conduct a “data exfiltration,” or unauthorized data transfer, the FBI said in a recent bulletin.
Earlier this month, hackers used the same vulnerability in an “attempted intrusion activities into another state’s Board of Election system,” the FBI said.
Michael Isikoff
Chief Investigative Correspondent
August 29, 2016
The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials.
The FBI warning, contained in a “flash” alert from the FBI’s Cyber Division, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility of cyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections.
Those concerns prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to convene a conference call with state election officials on Aug. 15, in which he offered his department’s help to make state voting systems more secure, including providing federal cybersecurity experts to scan for vulnerabilities, according to a “readout” of the call released by the department.
Johnson emphasized in the call that Homeland Security was not aware of “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the election, officials said. But three days after that call, the FBI Cyber Division issued a potentially more disturbing warning, titled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” The alert, labeled as restricted for “NEED TO KNOW recipients,” disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the “exfiltration,” or theft, of voter registration data. “It was an eye opener,” a senior law enforcement official said of the bureau’s discovery of the intrusions. “We believe it’s kind of serious, and we’re investigating.”
The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.
Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton’s work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among “tens of thousands” of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.
The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.
