Friday, April 08, 2016

F.B.I. brings Romanian hacker to the U.S.



Catherine Herridge and Pamela K. Browne report for Fox News,
The extradition of Romanian hacker “Guccifer” to the U.S. at a critical point in the FBI’s criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email use is “not a coincidence,” according to an intelligence source close to the case.

One of the notches on Guccifer’s cyber-crime belt was allegedly accessing the email account of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, one of Clinton’s most prolific advice-givers when she was secretary of state. It was through that hack that Clinton's use of a personal account -- clintonemail.com -- first came to light.

Former law enforcement and cyber security experts said the hacker, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, could – now that he’s in the U.S. – help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server was compromised by a third party, one that did not have the formal backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

...In early 2013, news outlets including Russia Today and The Smoking Gun published memos from Guccifer, with excerpts of exchanges between Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton about Libya including details following the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.

In a 2015 prison interview from Romania with reporter Matei Rosca for Pando.com, Lazar told Rosca that, "I used to read [Clinton's] memos for six or seven hours ... and then do the gardening."

...Clinton’s deliberate choice to use a private, unsecure server based in her home and a private email address for her government business as secretary of state remains under federal investigation by the FBI while she campaigns for president. It has been widely reported in the last month that the FBI is setting up interviews with Clinton and her associates, what is believed to be a final phase in the process.
Read more here.

No comments: