In a story titled U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI probes, we learn that there are probes as follows:
The FBI's Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.
Then we get this:
Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.
and finally, this:
Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said.
This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.
One last snip from the article, before I offer commentary of my own:
The people who spoke to Reuters also corroborated a Tuesday New York Times report that Americans with ties to Trump or his campaign had repeated contacts with current and former Russian intelligence officers before the November election. Those alleged contacts are among the topics of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.
Now my observations.
By now, most reading this know that there was a not previously announced closed door meeting between FBI Director Comey and the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday. When the Senators came out basically no one would comment, and there have been some descriptions of the Senators being fairly stone-faced.
There has been a lot of criticism of Comey for being reluctant to sign his name to statements about Russian interference before the election. But just perhaps he was doing due diligence, knowing the scope of what was being investigated, and realized that the requested statement was in many ways somewhat misleading? I don’t know for sure.
Further, please note that NONE of these three investigations is being run from the NY Field office, which is where Giuliani had all his connections.
What Flynn said to the Russian ambassador pales compared to the scope of what these three investigations represents.
If the investigations link back to Trump, or to his businesses which in general he owns outright, then what is in his tax returns might well become part of the investigation, either by the FBI or by the Senate Intelligence Committee, as part of either a counter-intelligence or official corruption investigation.
I said official corruption. Trump has not divested himself of his businesses. Thus any shenanigans that might be on-going would fall in that category.
Stay tuned.