Alexandra Chalupa claimed DHS and DOJ worked with Anonymous group tied to fugitive hacker and convicted bomber

UPDATE - On 12/5/19, fugitive hacker Commander X tweeted that he was granted emergency refugee status in Mexico. In an open letter addressed to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Christopher Doyon wrote, "I request that I be well received, and that I be granted emergency refugee status due to the current threats against my life and liberty by ex-officials of the US government currently involved in the security contracting industry."

Commander X added, "For nearly ten years I have been the target of a campaign of persecution directed against me by the US DoJ and the FBI for my human rights work online, as well as my close association with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange - and my online defense of both."

Doyen vowed to share "working computer code" that the CIA & NSA "use in their network operations and surveillance against" Mexico. He wrote, "If the nation of Mexico will grant me sanctuary, I offer to brief members of your Executive branch, including the President himself - on the nature, extent, and scope of the threat posed to your civil society, economy, and democratic process by the government of the USA through the agency of the CIA & NSA."

"Why have I never heard of Alexandra Chalupa's claim that the United States Department of Justice teamed up with an offshoot of Anonymous known as 'The Protectors'?" @The_War_Economy asked on Twitter in 2018.

There may be two reasons why the mainstream media has stayed away from reporting on the former DNC contractor's work with sketchy characters in 2016, and barely followed-up on a 2017 Politico story about her meetings at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington to get foreign officials to "expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia." The foremost reason is because most journalists report on one side or the other, and there aren't many liberal-leaning reporters who want to give any credence to alleged shenanigans committed by Democrats. But, at the same time, there are conservatives who absurdly claim that reporting on this somehow negates the very real Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The second thing may be fear, since two of the sketchy characters include a convicted bomber and a cyberstalking deadbeat dad, who have terrorized and falsely sued journalists, websites and media organizations.

On November 9. 2016, Alexandra Chalupa wrote on Facebook, "Homeland Security/DOJ teamed up with a group that is part of Anonymous based in Washington, D.C. called 'The Protectors."

"This group saw a lot of activity during Election Day from the Russians and believe that the voting results projected don’t match the internal and public polls because the voting results were manufactured in favor of Trump in heavily Republican counties in key states, and voting results may have been decreased for Clinton in key Democratic counties via malware that was placed by the Russians when they hacked the election systems of more than half our states," Chalupa wrote.

I helped expose "The Protectors" as a hoax in November of 2012. As I noted seven years ago, "On November 16, Wonkette's Rebecca Schoenkopf blogged about an unsubstantiated claim that 'Anonymous had stopped Karl Rove from hacking the election by hacking Orca,' and added 'we think' to the headline."

"Former Democratic operative Neal Rauhauser - who has spent the last two years trolling and harassing conservatives and even liberal critics [including me] - has claimed responsibility for many political hoaxes, in the past, and appears to be one of the driving forces behind this one," I added.

However, perhaps it wasn't a hoax, and a fugitive hacker did hack into the 2012 election.

In his book, "Dark Ops: Anonymous Story", Christopher Doyon aka Commander X claims that on November 6, 2012 he "hacked into the national election in the USA" from a Starbucks in Toronto. "No, seriously," he insists.

"The manifesto for the hack was simple: to find any way we could to destabilize and de-legitimize the 2012 national election in the USA. It was an apolitical approach, we would not attempt to favor either candidate. In fact we would take pains not to. Instead the goal we settled on was in showing easily we hacked in, doing some random damage - and then putting out a statement after detailing the hacks and pointing out the obvious fact that if we could do it, others probably also did too. This line of argument ultimately leading to - no one actually knows who did win the national election in the USA. And whomever they crown would be thus de-legitimized by those lingering questions, and the entire democratic process in the USA would be brought into question over the doubts whether it could ever be secured from network hacking attempts."

X claimed he spent a year-and-a-half working on this operation with his "Crew", and that included "days researching white papers and YouTube videos on proof-of-concept hacks against everything from individual voting machines to the ORCA electronic vote counting systems."

"The latter ended up as our primary attack vector for Florida and Ohio," Doyon wrote.

However, X claimed that "one of the six people in [his] Crew turned out to be a snitch working as a Confidential Informant for the FBI." Without any proof, X fingers Locke as the person who got him "vanned" by the FBI when he was chased and arrested outside of a San Francisco coffee house. Since he was meeting his attorney, Jay Leiderman, at the time of his arrest, it's also possible the feds were wiretapping his communications.

But X and his four remaining alleged co-conspirators - who he names as Gh0stAn0n, Vect0r, PizzaMan and DigitalTerrorists - decided to press on without Locke.

"Days later we packaged the whole thing up and sent it to the media. We invented a Crew in Anonymous called the Protectors of Democracy (a name that still makes me want to vomit), gathered what little forensic evidence we had on the GOP, and blasted the entire thing to the world's media outlets. To their credit, several had the balls to actually go with the story. In the underground, the whole thing became a bit of a legend. Anonymous has been credited with many amazing things but saving the election for Barack Obama has to be right up there near the top of the 'most epic list'. Sort of ironic since Obama has tormented, tortured, jailed and even killed more Information Activists in his eight years than all other previous Presidents combined. Hell of a way to show your gratitude."

"Several months later, the hacker I have called 'Vect0r' live tweeted as he went out on Golden Gate Bridge and threw the laptop he had done the election hack with into the San Francisco Bay," X wrote. "He then left the Underground, got a good paying job as a White Hat security consultant - and never looked back."

"Postscript: I reiterate here the offer I have made publicly in recent months, to both the USA and Russian governments. I will gladly return to the USA in order to offer testimony and evidence to Congress regarding the election in the USA, the above report - and how to end the war between the world's Black Hat hackers and the government of the USA by ceasing political persecution of Information Activists and reforming the CFAA. I will only give testimony to Congress or directly in person to President Trump, and I will never debrief either the FBI oir the CIA. I will require in advance a full Presidential Pardon, and a guarantee of Full Immunity when I testify."

Doyon added: "The counter proposal is addressed to the Russian Government. I will happily travel to Moscow and testify under oath in the Duma regarding the details of the above report. The Russian people, and their government - have been so brutally maligned in the West that I feel they deserve to hear the Truth from someone who is actually on the inside of the Hacker Underground. I will require full and permanent political asylum and transport from Canada to Russia."

Five days before he was set to go to court in February of 2012, Doyon issued a press release called “Commander X escapes into exile.” As The Smoking Gun reported in March of 2012, "A lawyer for Christopher Doyon, a homeless 47-year-old who calls himself 'Commander X, recently told a federal judge that his client 'has fled to Canada,' according to a filing in U.S. District Court in San Jose." The story added, "As a result, an arrest warrant has been issued for Doyon, who is pictured in the above United States Marshals Service mug shots."

Convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin's Velvet Revolution website linked to the letter that the Protectors released in 2012, and former Project Vigilant associate Neal Rauhauser hyped it on a podcast. Rauhauser and Kimberlin have been accused of committing swattings, cyberattacks and countless political hoaxes together. I was absurdly accused of making fake 911 calls to get police to harass bloggers who reported on Weinergate and Kimberlin, and was sued by a lawyer I outed for using a fake name, while asking for people to attach their real names to offensive cartoons of Muhammad. The attorney for Aaron Worthing/Walker was Dan Backer, who later became the Treasurer for a Trump SuperPAC. Patrick Frey, a deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles who blogs as Patterico, falsely accused me of swatting him and working with Rauhauser and Kimberlin, but the judge dismissed the Dan Backer led multi-million dollar bizarre conspiracy theory lawsuit, which conservatives like Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Ali Akbar promoted and helped raise thousands of dollars slandering me.

I don't think Kimberlin had anything to do with the swattings, but it's possible that Patterico and Rauhauser worked together on them. However, Patterico is correct that the Protectors letter sounds like it was written by Neal Rauhauser. "We may just put all our evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London," the letter ends, as Patterico notes, and Rauhauser has used the term "tidy little package" before. In a Daily Kos diary post ten years ago, Rauhauser wrote, "Their only choice Huckabee as VP with an aging, tottering McCain't is likely the only thing that'll keep the Republican base in line ... disaster ticket for the country if they should win(read:steal another election) but dream ticket for Democrats - something for everyone to hate all in one tidy little package."

Both Kimberlin and Rauhauser have been involved in lengthy lawsuits against bloggers, media organizations and website owners, so that's probably why most journalists refuse to probe this wacky never-ending saga.

More to come...

Day before Assange indictment, Chelsea Manning claimed she chatted 'with multiple people' at WikiLeaks, but her 2013 statement referred to 'an individual'

Hours after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London today, a March 6, 2018 indictment was unsealed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which stated, "On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist [former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea] Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications.” Manning was jailed one month ago for refusing to testify before a grand jury about her contacts with WikiLeaks. A day before the indictment, on March 5, 2018, Manning responded to a question after a lecture she gave at UCLA, which asked about her "interactions" with Assange.

"No idea," Manning claimed roughly 56 minutes into the posted video of the lecture. "Whomever I was communicating with...I mean it was...I can say this...It was multiple people I was communicating with."

She added, "That is the thing about the Internet...and the tools that we're using...because I don't want to be identified...and they sure as hell don't want to be identified."

"But it was multiple people," Manning insisted. "It was not one person."

However, in her March 13, 2013 statement during her court martial, Manning seemed to suggest that she was speaking with "an individual."

"Almost immediately after submitting the aerial weapons team video and rules of engagement documents I notified the individuals in the WLO IRC to expect an important submission," Manning's statement said. "I received a response from an individual going by the handle of 'Ox' - at first our conversations were general in nature, but over time as our conversations progressed, I accessed this individual to be an important part of the WLO."

Manning noted, "Due to the strict adherence of anonymity by the WLO, we never exchanged identifying information."

"However, I believe the individual was likely Mr. Julian Assange, Mr. Daniel Schmidt, or a proxy representative of Mr. Assange and Schmidt," Manning's statement continued. "As the communications transfered from IRC to the Jabber client, I gave 'Ox' and later 'pressassociation' the name of Nathaniel Frank in my address book, after the author of a book I read in 2009."

Manning added, "After a period of time, I developed what I felt was a friendly relationship with Nathaniel. Our mutual interest in information technology and politics made our conversations enjoyable. We engaged in conversation often. Sometimes as long as an hour or more. I often looked forward to my conversations with Nathaniel after work."

A chatlog of Manning's communications reveals that on March 17, 2010, "Nathaniel Frank" told her, "will be doing an investigative journo conference in Norway this week end, so may be out of contact most of the time."

As this picture shows, Assange attended the Norwegian conference on investigative journalism (SKUP) on March 20, 2010. A statement by Assange released on March 26, 2010, noted, "On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen–on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway."

Earlier today, I tweeted, "On 12/6/13, after I criticized @kpoulsen for not reporting for @wired that it may be tough to prove Assange was or always was "Nathaniel Frank" in convos with @xychelsea, @WikiLeaks tweeted that Manning's statement suggested as much, too. I presume JA will stick to that defense."

Former "senior Trump campaign official" Steve Bannon was "directed" by Breitbart editor Matt Boyle, not Trump, to contact Roger Stone

Many media accounts based on the January 24, 2019 indictment of dirty trickster Roger Stone might be misinterpreting a phrase in paragraph 12, and some are wrongly presuming that the Special Counsel investigation is suggesting that "a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE" by the president. However, it most likely refers to "a reporter who had connections to a high-ranking Trump campaign official", which is mentioned in paragraph 16.

"After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign," the indictment stated. "STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1."

Dan Mangan reported the next day, "Organization 1 refers to WikiLeaks. A source has told CNBC that the senior campaign official was Steve Bannon, who later served as senior advisor to Trump once he was elected president."

But Mangan quotes a tweet by Washington Post White House reporter and CNN political analyst Seung Min Kim quoting Democratic House Intel Chair Rep. Adam Schiff's statement that the "Committee will be eager to learn just who directed a senior campaign official to contact Stone about additional damaging information held by Wikileaks, one of the publishing arms of Russian government hackers."

"It’s difficult to dismiss that as some coincidence, drafting error or a careless choice of words. The people who write these things parse them endlessly, and had to know that line would stick out," Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake argues, before adding, "Considering that, some have theorized it’s a reference to Trump himself."

Blake concludes, "Who else would direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official,' after all?" However, the email sent by Boyle certainly could be characterizing as a form of direction, and the word "directed" has two definitions.

Most readers are focused on the first definition - "control the operations of; manage or govern" - but the second definition doesn't insist on the director of having a authoritative position: "aim (something) in a particular direction or at a particular person."

On January 11, 2018 the NY Times published the email from Matt Boyle to his former boss, Steven Bannon.

Former Breitbart News White House reporter Lee Stranahan, who now hosts a radio show on the Kremlin-funded Sputnik noted the theory that it was Boyle during a video shot at a Roger Stone hearing on January 25th.

Russian 'troll factory' lawyer represented Breitbart News companies in libel case

A US attorney has garnered a lot of media attention for defending a Russian troll factory accused of allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election, but his prior work for the Trump-friendly website Breitbart News - which has been accused of publishing fake news - has been ignored by the press.

In April of 2018, it was revealed in court filings, that "[a] Russian company charged with helping fund a Russian propaganda operation that allegedly tampered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has retained two Washington lawyers to handle its defense." Reuters reported,"Concord Management and Consulting LLC, will be represented by Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly of the law firm Reed Smith, the filings say." Concord was one of three firms located in Russia that were accused by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller "in a February indictment of a conspiracy to defraud the United States."

The indictment stated, "Defendants CONCORD MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING LLC and CONCORD CATERING are related Russian entities with various Russian government contracts. CONCORD was the ORGANIZATION's primary source of funding for its interference operations. CONCORD controlled funding, recommended personnel, and oversaw ORGANIZATION activities through reporting and interaction with ORGANIZATION management." Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin who is suspected of being the owner of Concord was also indicted, and he reportedly has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Prigozhin, nicknamed 'Putin’s cook' because of his catering business that has organized banquets for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other political figures, has been quoted by the RIA news agency as saying he was unfazed by the indictment," Reuters reported.

As John Simerman reported for the Advocate on May 20, 2018, "the Tulane University graduate had a hand in some controversial cases," and "also played a key role in a case that featured perhaps the most infamous episode of prosecutorial misconduct in New Orleans in a generation."

Dubelier was blamed by a judge for withholding a confession in a point-shaving college basketball case in 1985, and "led the trial team that helped ship John Thompson off to death row" that same year. "Thompson was staring at an execution date in 1999 when a defense investigator unearthed a lab report that undermined his conviction in an earlier armed robbery trial that Dubelier had also prosecuted," Simerman reported. "Dubelier, the lead prosecutor in Thompson's subsequent murder trial, used the earlier armed robbery conviction to persuade a jury to hand Thompson a death sentence."

As Simerman noted, Dubelier gained a lot of media attention "for his feisty courtroom advocacy", and has "presented an aggressive challenge to the indictment." He has accused prosecutors of lying and claimed that Mueller was "conjuring up a 'make-believe' crime in the indictment for political reasons."

In October, ABC News reported that Dubelier argued Mueller's indictment was an attempt to "regulate what people say on the internet.” Ironically, President Trump has tweeted many times that mainstream media stories he considers "fake news" should be regulated, and the press is the "enemy of the people."

Earlier today, Tierney Sneed reported for Talking Points Memo, "A federal judge on Monday reamed the American lawyers for a Russian firm charged by special counsel Robert Mueller for the lawyers’ 'unprofessional, inappropriate, and ineffective' court filings." Dubelier accused Judge Dabney Friedrich of "some bias" after she told him to "knock it off."

In an October 5, 2013 court filing, Dubelier represented Susannah Breitbart, after attorneys for former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod substituted Andrew's widow in a defamatory lawsuit, a year-and-a-half after he suddenly died. Josh Gerstein referred to him "as Breitbart companies lawyer Eric Dubelier" in a Politico article published on July 21, 2014. In late 2015, Sherrod settled her case over a "selectively edited" video which cost her her job with the Obama Administration, but the terms have remained confidential.

According to www.law360.com, Eric A. Dubelier also represented BREITBART HOLDINGS, INC., BREITBART NEWS NETWORK LLC, BREITBART.COM LLC, and BREITBART.TV LLC in the Sherrod case. A notice of appearance was filed by Dubelier on July 17, 2014 for all four of the Breitbart companies.

Breitbart News was co-founded by Steve Bannon in 2007, and five years later, after Andrew Breitbart died, Bannon took over as executive chair of Breitbart News LLC. Bannon left Breitbart News to advise Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race, but after serving as the White House Chief Strategist for seven months in 2017, he returned to the website, which has almost unconditionally supported Trump, and dismissed the Russia probe as a "witch hunt."

Last October, Samantha Cole reported for Motherboard, that editors for Wikipedia voted that Breitbart "should not be used, ever, as a reference for facts, due to its unreliability.”

"Breitbart, a far-right conservative media website, has come under scrutiny—such as when it vehemently supported Alabama politician and alleged pedophile Roy Moore, when it shilled for scam cryptocurrencies through its newsletter, or when it fueled racist narratives about black NFL players," Cole wrote. "Wikipedians decided that because fact checkers have found much of Breitbart’s coverage to be 'misleading, false or both,' they won’t abide it as a source of fact anymore."

"Right-wing news site Breitbart News has apologized to German football star Lukas Podolski after publishing a photo of the 32-year-old former international player accompanying a story about human traffickers operating between Morocco and Spain," Haaretz reported on August 21, 2017. Breitbart admitted, "There is no evidence Mr Podolski is either a migrant gang member, nor being human trafficked."

(Editor's Note: I've worked on a few articles published at Breitbart News, including this story, where I'm named, but I've never been paid by them. Or Russia, as far as I know.)