Fun with Dr. Corsi’s “Forensics”!
By far the most ridiculous part of Jerome Corsi’s book is where he spends an entire chapter pretending that he figured out on his own that WikiLeaks had John Podesta’s emails rather than being told that by someone whose identity he’s trying to avoid sharing with Mueller’s team.
The chapter is one of three in the book that he presents as having been written in real time, effectively as diary entries. Corsi presents it as the fevered narrative he writes on November 18, 2018, at a time when Mueller’s team was cracking down on him for his continued lies but before he refused the plea deal, after a night of nightmares.
Last night, I was plagued by nightmares that caused me to sleep very poorly.
His change in voice is followed with an even more direct address to readers, which he returns to as an interjection in the middle of his crazed explanation.
I am going to write this chapter to explain to you, the reader, how I used my basic intuitive skills as a reporter to figure out in August 2016 that Assange had Podesta’s emails, that Assange planned to start making the Podesta file public in October 2016, and that Assange would release the emails in a serial, day-by-day fashion, right up to election day.
[snip]
Now, I know this is tedious and will tax many readers, so I’ve decided here to take a break. You have to understand what I am going through is a roller-coaster. Sometimes I feel like everything is normal and that the federal government will understand that I am a reporter and should be protected by the First Amendment. Then, I realize that the next ring of the doorbell could be the FBI seeking to handcuff me and arrest me in full view of my family.
Resuming after a much-needed break, we need only a few more dates to complete the analysis.
The chapter consists of three things, none of which even remotely presents a case for how he could have concluded WikiLeaks was sitting on John Podesta’s emails:
- An argument that claims he simply reasoned it all out, without proof
- A chronology that makes no sense given the July and August 2016 emails he’s trying to explain away
- Other crap theories designed to undermine Mueller’s argument about Russian involvement, most of which post-date the date when Corsi claims to have figured out the Podesta emails were coming
Corsi’s “argument”
Corsi’s main argument is this:
Clearly, I reasoned there had to have been Podesta emails on that server that would have discussed the Clinton/DNC plot to deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016. Where were these Podesta emails, I wondered?
[snip]
I felt certain that if Assange had Podesta’s emails he would wait to drop them in October 2016, capturing the chance to stage the 2016 “October Surprise,” a term that had been in vogue in U.S. presidential politics since 1980 when Jimmy Carter lost re-election to Ronald Reagan, largely because the Reagan camp finessed Ayatollah Khomeini to postpone the release of the hostages from the American embassy in Tehran until after that year’s November election. I also figured that Assange would release the Podesta emails in drip-drip fashion, serially, over a number of days, stretching right up to the Election Day. In presidential politics, the news cycle speeds up, such that what might take a month or a week to play out in a normal news cycle might take only a day or two in the heightened intensity of a presidential news cycle—especially a presidential news cycle in October, right at Election Day is nearing.
In spite of his claims, elsewhere, to have done forensic analysis that told him John Podesta’s emails were coming, ultimately his argument boils down to this: he figured out that Podesta’s emails (which he purportedly hadn’t read) would be the most damning possible thing and therefore WikiLeaks must have and intend to release them in a serial release because it made sense.
Corsi’s chronology
From there, Corsi proceeds to spin out the following bullshit about how he came to that conclusion:
- Starting in February 2016, a woman named LH whose ex-husband was a former top NSA figure told him [why?] incorrect things about how the Democrats organize their servers. This information seems to be inflected by the flap over VAN space the previous December, but Corsi doesn’t mention that. This information is wrong in many of the ways later skeptics of the Russian hack would be wrong, but Corsi claims he had that wrong understanding well in advance of the crowd.
- When Assange announced on June 12 that he had upcoming Hillary leaks, Corsi was “alerted to the possibility Assange had obtained emails from the DNC email server,” which he took to mean VAN.
- When the WaPo reported on the DNC hack on June 14, 2016, Corsi took Democrats’ (false) reassurances about financial data to be true, matched it to his incorrect claimed understanding of how the Democrats organized their data, and assumed VAN had been hacked (this is the day before Guccifer 2.0 would claim he got in through VAN, remember). Corsi also claims to have noted from the WaPo story that Perkins Coie and Crowdstrike were involved, the latter of which he tied to Google’s Eric Schmidt (who was helping Dems on tech), which together he used to suggest that in real time he believed the Democrats had “manufactured” evidence to pin the hack on the Russians. Again, Corsi is suggesting he got to the conspiracy theories it took the rest of Republicans a year to get to, but in real time.
- Corsi incorrectly read the Crowdstrike white paper (on which the WaPo story was obviously based and which Ellen Nakashima had had for about a week, and which includes an update written in response to the appearance of Guccifer 2.0) as a response to Guccifer 2.0’s post on June 15 and — in spite of the WaPo report that Cozy Bear had been “monitoring DNC’s email and chat communications” — concluded that the hackers had not taken email.
- After the DNC emails were released, Corsi had what he claims was his big insight: that these emails largely came from DNC’s Comms Director and their finance staffers, which meant Podesta’s (and DWS’, which he logically should but did not, pursue) had to be what was left. Mind you, the former point is something WikiLeaks made clear on its website:
On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks began releasing over two days a total of 44,053 emails and17,761 email attachments from key figures in the DNC. What I noticed immediately was that the largest number of emails by far came from DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda (10,520 emails), who had approximately three-times the emails released for the next highest on the list, National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3,799 emails) and Finance Chief of Staff Scott Corner (3,095 emails). What I noticed immediately was that emails from Debbie Wasserman Schultz and John Podesta were missing. Yet, by analyzing the addresses in the emails, it was clear the “From,” “To,” and or “CC” listings indicate the email was sent by or to an addressee using the DNC email server, identified as @dnc.org.
- In his narrative of how he “figured out” there must be Podesta emails, he relies not on the July 25 NBC story he cites earlier in his book, quoting Assange saying there was “no proof” the emails came from Russia (and suggesting his set were a different one than the ones analyzed by cybersecurity experts), but a CNN story he dates to July 26 but which got updated early morning July 27, citing Assange saying, “Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment some people may have egg on their faces. But to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are;” Corsi also cites a July 27 NYMag story citing the CNN one. Corsi claims that as he was listening to this interview, he realized that Assange had Podesta emails “lifted from the DNC server,” which would be incorrect even if it were true, given that Podesta’s emails were from his Gmail account.
Listening to this interview on CNN, all the pieces fit in place for me. Assange had Podesta emails that were also lifted from the DNC server and these were the emails he was holding to drop later in the campaign.
- Corsi describes “the last piece of the puzzle” to be Seth Rich’s death on July 10, 2016, but which occurred before Assange’s post DNC release interviews, in one of which Assange suggested his sources were still alive to “step forward,” then points to Assange’s offer of a reward for information leading to a conviction on August 9. This happened after he had already suggested to Stone that Podesta’s emails were coming.
None of this explains how Corsi would not have decided that Clinton Foundation emails were what was missing, which is what Stone believed when he instructed Corsi to reach out to Ted Malloch on July 25, the day before the Assange interviews Corsi says led him to conclude WikiLeaks instead had Podesta’s emails. And much of it assumes that a unified hack occurred (otherwise it would be impossible to decide what was coming from what had already been released), an assumption he claims not to believe in much of the rest of his crap.
Corsi’s crap
In addition to that chronology, though, Corsi throws in a bunch of crap meant to discredit the evidence laid out in the Mueller GRU indictment. Much of this evidence post-dates the moment he claims he figured out that WikiLeaks had Podesta’s emails, which makes it irrelevant to his theory, nevertheless Corsi throws it out there.
- Corsi takes the Guccifer 2.0 leak of DCCC files to Aaron Nevins — which didn’t happen until over a month after he told Stone that WikiLeaks had Podesta emails — to be “proof” not just that Guccifer 2.0 only hacked DNC files, which he again asserts incorrectly came from VAN, but also that Guccifer 2.0 had not hacked emails.
- Corsi claims that Guccifer 2.0 “never bragged that he hacked the DNC email server that contained the Podesta emails,” even though Guccifer 2.0 did brag that WikiLeaks had published documents he gave them after the DNC leak.
- Corsi claims that Guccifer 2.0 published donor lists and voter analysis at DCLeaks, which is generally inaccurate (indeed, some Podesta files came out via DCLeaks!), but also admits a tie between Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks that would either rely on contemporary reporting that asserted a tie, the GRU indictment, or some personal knowledge not otherwise explained.
- Corsi claims that, unlike Marcel Lazar, “Guccifer 2.0 has never been positively identified let alone arrested,” without explaining how he’s sure that the 12 GRU officers Mueller indicted don’t amount to positively identifying the people running Guccifer 2.0. Indeed, rather than addressing that indictment, Corsi instead tries to rebut the Intelligence Community Assessment’s “high confidence” attribution of Guccifer 2.0 to GRU, which he claims relies on ‘tradecraft’ that relies on circumstantial evidence at best, presuming a hacker leaves a signature.” In the ICA, that discussion appears in a section that also notes that “Some analytic judgments are based directly on collected information,” as the Mueller indictment makes clear the GRU one was.
- Corsi claims the Vault 7 release suggesting the CIA has a tool to falsely attribute its own hacks “undermined” the IC’s attribution of Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, without realizing that’s a different issue from whether the CIA, NSA, and FBI can correctly attribute the hack (though if the Russians obtained those files in the weeks after Joshua Schulte allegedly stole them in 2016, it would have made it harder for CIA to chase down the Russians).
- Corsi initially argues, providing no evidence except that he’s sure the DNC emails come from the DNC email server and not NGP-VAN or Hillary’s private server, that, “While the DNC email server could have been hacked by an outside agent, what is equally plausible is that the emails could have been stolen by someone on the inside of the DNC, perhaps an employee with their own @dnc.org email address.” He then feeds the Seth Rich conspiracy.
- Corsi uses what he claims to have learned about serialization in a college course covering Dickens (but details of which, regarding the history of Dickens’ serialization, he gets entirely wrong) to explain how he knew the Podesta emails would come out in a serialized release.
- Corsi dismisses the possibility the Russians used a cut-out with this garble:
The attempt to distinguish is disingenuous, suggesting the Russians may have been responsible for the hack, turning the information to a third party, not the Russians or a state actor, who handed WikiLeaks the emails and thus became “the source.”
- Corsi cites the Nation’s August 9, 2017 version of the Bill Binney theory purportedly proving that a set of files purporting to be from the DNC — which were never released by WikiLeaks — were copied inside the US and also noting that the Russian metadata in the first Guccifer 2.0 documents was placed there intentionally. As I noted at the time, the two theories actually don’t — at all — disprove the claim that Russia hacked the DNC. But they’re even worse for Corsi’s claims, because (even though the set of files were called NGP/VAN) they undermine his false claim about the Democrats’ servers and they acknowledge that the files he said disproved that Guccifer 2.0 had Podesta files actually were Podesta files.
These things are utterly irrelevant to the soundness of Corsi’s own claim to have been able to guess that the Podesta emails were coming and — as I note — a number of them sharply contradict what he claims to believe.
Corsi’s mistaken notion of his role in proving “collusion”
But the crap does serve Corsi’s larger point, which is to undermine what he imagines Mueller’s theory of “collusion” to be.
Mueller & Company had decided the Trump campaign somehow encouraged Russia to steal the DNC emails and give them to Assange, so WikiLeaks could publish them. Then to establish “Russian collusion” with the Trump campaign, Mueller was out to connect his own dots. The Mueller prosecutors had been charged with the mission to grill me until
I would “give up” my source to Assange. I was their critical “missing link.” If Rhee, Zelinsky, and Goldstein only got me to confess, Mueller figured he could connect the dots from Roger Stone to me to Assange, and from Assange back again to me, and from me to Roger Stone, who would feed the information to Steve Bannon, then chairing the Trump campaign.
The final dots, the Mueller prosecutors assumed, would connect Bannon to Trump and the “Russian collusion” chain of communication would be complete. The only problem was that I did not have a source connecting me to Assange, so Mueller’s chain-link narrative does not connect.
While I actually think it possible that Corsi’s shenanigans may have harmed the neatness of Mueller’s case against Stone, perhaps even leading Mueller to charge Stone only with the obstruction charges rather than in a larger conspiracy, it doesn’t affect the understanding with which Mueller seems to be approaching the Don Jr side of any conspiracy, in which Trump’s son accepted a meeting offering dirt, thinking the family might make $300 million off it, and promised policy considerations that — even before he was sworn into office — his father took steps to pay off.
That conspiracy remains, even if Mueller can’t show that at the same time, Trump was maximizing the advantage of the WikiLeaks releases via his old political advisor Roger Stone.
But who knows? Perhaps Mueller may one day prove that, too?
One other thing that’s worth noting, however: As I laid out above, Corsi doesn’t just attempt to explain how he came to guess that WikiLeaks would release John Podesta’s emails. In the guise of doing that, he lays out what amounts to the Greatest Hits of the Denialist Conspiracies, throwing every possible claim mobilized to undermine the conclusion that Russia hacked the Democrats out there, even the ones that undermine Corsi’s own claimed beliefs.
And, as Corsi himself notes, Mueller has Corsi’s Google searches.
Truthfully, I was astounded because it seemed as if the FBI had studied me down to knowing the key strokes that I had used on my computer to do Google searches for articles. I realized my Google file would have much information about my locations and my Internet searches, but the way Zelinsky drilled down on how I wrote this article was shocking.
Repeatedly Zelinsky had warned me that I had no idea how truly extensive the Special Counselor’s investigation had been. Now, I imagined an army of FBI computer specialists at Quantico mapping out my every electronic communication in 2016, including my emails, my cellphone calls, and my use of the laptop and the Internet to conduct my research and write my various articles and memos.
They actually know whether he read this stuff (notably, the NBC, CNN, and NYMag articles he cites from late July 2016) in real time or only after the fact. They know when Corsi downloaded a bunch of other things (including the Guccifer 2.0 releases), and they know whether he read the GRU indictment. The FBI has also likely obtained what he was doing in November, 2018, as he was writing this stuff.
So it may be that when Corsi’s book comes out in hard cover on March 12, Mueller’s team will already have put together the forensic evidence to prove that Corsi’s claims about how he came by his own forensic analysis — and the rest of these conspiracies — are absolute bullshit. It is, admittedly, frightening how much the government can obtain about our contemporaneous thinking.
But it would be an ironic and just outcome for Corsi if Mueller’s best demonstration about the power of FBI’s forensic analysis comes not in the GRU indictment Corsi so studiously avoided mentioning in the entire book attempting to discredit it, but in proving Corsi’s own claims about forensics to be utterly false.
Corsi’s Timeline
March 16, 2016: WikiLeaks indexes FOIAed Hillary emails
June 12, 2016: Assange announces he has more information on Hillary
In that interview, Assange disclosed that WikiLeaks has “upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,” though Assange distinguished the Hillary Clinton emails WikiLeaks possessed pending publication came from a different source than the emails from Hillary’s private email server. This alerted me to the possibility Assange had obtained emails from the DNC email server.
June 14, 2016: WaPo announces the DNC hack
June 15, 2016: Crowdstrike publicly releases white paper on DNC hack and Guccifer 2.0 first posts
July 10, 2016: Seth Rich’s murder
July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks releases the DNC emails
July 25, 2016: Stone emails Corsi asking him to Get to Assange to “get the pending WikiLeaks emails;” Corsi forwards the email to Ted Malloch
July 26, 2016: Assange tells CNN a lot more material is coming and refuses to exclude Russia as a source because “to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are”
July 28, 2016: Corsi and his wife leave for Italy
July 31, 2016: Stone emails Corsi to “call me MON” instructing him to get Malloch to see Assange
August 2, 2016: Corsi emails Stone,
Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.… Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke — neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.
August 9, 2016: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 reward for information leading to conviction for murder of Seth Rich
August 12, 2016: Corsi returns from Italy
March 7, 2017: WikiLeaks starts to release Vault 7 documents, including an Umbrage file showing that CIA uses disinformation to hide which attacks it launches
May 25, 2017: WSJ reports on Aaron Nevins files that Guccifer 2.0 noted in real time; Corsi deems this (in a Murdoch paper) to be part of the anti-Stone narrative
As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Sounds like someone has had a FISA warrant on them for awhile.
Eh, let us not be to loose about the nature of surveillance warrants, and why they may be, or may not be, issued.
I doubt that, not least bc the standards to surpass the First Amendment are pretty stringent. But a lot of what he’s talking about could be collected under Section 215 or a simple subpoena (probably both, to parallel construct it all).
Reading Corsi’s book really is above and beyond the call of duty. A grateful nation thanks you for your sacrifice.
Nope.
Jerome Corsi is an annoying LYING old fart.
Agree. My eyes would have dropped smoking out of my skull after ten minutes reading that drivel.
Why did he go to all this trouble? Muller isn’t going to be Swiftboated. Judges either, well besides Thomas. It isn’t like he has a PR problem. Most people don’t know who he is and for those that do nothing is going to change their minds. This one isn’t going to be on every checkout line.
Well there’s Barr and history.
Seems like this book was written (a) for others implicated to read and coordinate from and (b) published as a book so it’s easier to bring in some wingnut welfare for Corsi through bulk purchases by certain wealthy conservatives.
Agreed. From what Marcy has described (and yes a grateful nation thanks you and owes you a siff drink) it sounds like this is the narrative he wants a jury and his supporters to believe, or at least believe enough to doubt. The only reasons for putting that out there now as I can see are: 1) to compare notes with his fellow defendants so that they can all get their stories straight; and 2) to drum up cash from the people who believe him while he can, either to fund his defense or to pay for his time in the weeds when all of this is over.
My guess is that Roger Stone’s media blitz is serving the same tactical ends.
First time posting here, although I’ve been a reader for some months now since a friend introduced me to the site… just hesitant to post, hence the name.
I have to wonder who, exactly, it is Corsi is trying to protect as his source. I would have assumed Stone, but it seems there is no love lost between the two these days if I remember correctly. The other thing I’m wondering is if Corsi is looking at joining Stone soon. He was offered a plea deal, noped out of it, and now Stone is going down anyway. On top of that, the Special Counsel’s team has almost certainly retrieved incriminating information with the raids on Stone’s properties, and we know that Corsi and Credico were in contact with Stone. It makes me wonder if there is a sealed indictment with Corsi’s name on it already, or if one will be issued within the next few months. Ditto for Credico. Unless, that is, one or both of them have quietly flipped. But in that case, Corsi publishing this book doesn’t make sense to me…
Apologies if I have missed information, as I am almost certain I have. There’s just so much shit that’s been brought to light I can’t quite keep track of it all anymore.
I think Credico is safe, though am not sure. I think they won’t indict Corsi until they have a hard copy of his book, which the publisher wouldn’t give them; it comes out in March. And yes, there’s likely more evidence in what was taken from Stone.
The mostly likely source is still Ted Malloch. There may be some twist still (not least that Zelinsky suggested that Corsi’s source doesn’t show up in call or email records). But Malloch is the most likely thus far.
Credico??? This is nuts. Have you forgotten about Nate Ebner, Brady and Gronk?
in light of recent developments … I am suspect of anyone who hasn’t written a book
Sigh. This after your series of posts slapping down the “emails are emails are emails” conflation, a conflation that Corsi relies upon.
But intuition, my arse. There’s nothing in the public Wikileaks release from which to intuit anything related to Podesta. (A question for Ari Melber to ask Corsi next time he shows up: did you know Podesta’s personal Gmail address before July 2016? If so, how?)
Given that Corsi is a serial fabricator, it’s difficult to put together an alternative hypothesis based upon public information. Based on his comments, Mueller’s team seems to have been especially interested in the Italy trip that preceded his “intuition”, but who knows?
And so we go back to the question of who might have known by July 2016 (besides the GRU) that Podesta’s Gmail account had been spearphished and dumped in mid-March, and how that knowledge was disseminated.
If he’s not lying about this, it’s a sad statement about Corsi. You’ve got to be a very sad man to lie to yourself in your own diary.
I hope for Marcy’s sake the other two chapters do not get into an equally ridiculous and fanciful treatment of Corsi’s love life. “Dear Diary – I didn’t know whether to write to you or to Penthouse Letters about what happened to me today, but I chose you. It started like this . . .”
I honestly think he believed that if he could write what he considers a “credible” counter-theory it will help him stay out of prison, when writing it up like this to debunk may make it more likely he ends up in prison.
FIFY:
May he make some nice pen pals….
He’s a stable genius. Feeling his oats.
I see what you did there. Thread-hopping!
(people-chase?)
“Again, Corsi is suggesting he got to the conspiracy theories it took the rest of Republicans a year to get to, but in real time.” Yep. That’s his superpower.
“Then, I realize that the next ring of the doorbell could be the FBI seeking to handcuff me and arrest me in full view of my family.“
And that Mr. Corsi, is what is known as reaping what you have sown.
Is it wrong that I am smiling?
Being arrested in front of his family shouldn’t be any worse for Corsi than going on TV and lying about everything, with his family watching. Or being on trial for all the lies he’s told.
Uh. That was painful. All I can take away is “Corsi is a serial fabricator”. Thank you for trying to do a close reading of his rediculous garbage.
If the judge can a gag order on Stone…can he order one on Rudy too?
It could be that his aren’t tactical lies – like covering for a source or a specific piece of knowlege. It may be that he knows about, or has good reason to know about a deeper corruption – let’s say direct Russian manipulation of US election results. He uses his wiles to publicly exploit and even amplify his well known association with a notorious scoundrel – accepting responsibility for ‘dirty tricks’ – to distact and distance himself from the more sinister play he was witness or partially witness to. But always careful to discretly shuffle away from the mess off to the side.
His own personal role may have been minor, but he had at least a glance at the script and that guilty knowlege would be profoundly incriminating – with unenviable ‘history book’ repercussions. The rampant lying up and down the ranks by almost all parties involved in the greater scandal is a compelling hint that people are worried about something much worse than tarnished reputations.
“His own personal roll may have been minor…”
I’m not certain that his roll was “minor” or at least I believe that what he had direct knowledge of was much more than “minor”. I hope he gets a felony charge of some kind out of this to be finally done with his slimy, comic persona in our national political tragic comedy.
I hope you’re right about that. But on the US side the heart remains the political quid pro quo. The Bendict Arnold stuff.
This post deserves several close readings to untangle. Perhaps I’ll feel more attuned to the rhythms of Dr. Crazi if I enjoy some Imperial Stout first.
Lord have mercy.
In addition to obviously supplying the others (pres? for pardon consideration?) with what he knows the SCO has already, this is a very desperate and fumbling attempt to create what he thinks could be a believable defense. IMO he knows he’s going down with the rest eventually so he’s coming up with something that might be just believable enough to save his sorry ass. Pretty pathetic but what else would we expect?
OK, Jerry.
The annoyance load must have been high for this post, again thank you.
While I’d like Corsi’s ‘forensics’ – like Assange’s ‘stochastic terminator’- to see their days in court should they ever be charged, my concern is that part of the intention of the nonsense garbage in this book (which you note, doesn’t even comport with his version events) is to bog the courts (or to ‘ward them off’). Like how many squirrely expert (sic) witnesses and side-shows could he get in, mounting a multi-factorial rwnj defense? In the future- if it comes to it- it would not surprise me to see hero Corsi go pro se to exploit grandstanding and leniency opportunities.
Maybe I’m reading this all wrong and he’s more bark than bite. Given how much he brings up his childhood getting-in-troubles during his interviews, I’d love to see any interviews from his parents’ pov.
Again, my sympathies to Zelinsky and Corsi’s other interlocutors.
Wow, just wow:
Subjects = The attempt… suggesting [the Russians]… not the Russians… who…
IOW, the subjects are completely murky and incoherent.
Verbs = [to] distinguish is… may have been… turning…handed…. became
Again, my level of confidence that I have these correct is not very high. And look at how vague they are: nothing happened, not really, and who knows who might have done stuff, or not done stuff, or even not tried to do stuff…
Wow, I’m not at all sure that I can sort the subjects from verbs, and I’ve done this TONS of times for other people’s work.
Basically, it looks to me as if he uses verbs for subjects, and treats subjects as verbs. If he is smart enough to do this, he’s diabolical: sinister obfuscation.
Otherwise…neurologically peculiar, and not in a good way.
(Edward Gibbon often used verbs as his subjects, but he did to artfully, with purpose, and in a way that added clarity. Corsi is no Edward Gibbon.)
“Corsi uses what he claims to have learned about serialization in a college course covering Dickens (but details of which, regarding the history of Dickens’ serialization, he gets entirely wrong) to explain how he knew the Podesta emails would come out in a serialized release.”
Corsi does manifest as a character out of a Dickens serialization (rewritten and edited by Lewis Carol) in his casual 17th century racism and illogical attempts at logic. Being such a character, I am astounded that he risked being identified as a Dickens character in order to forward his illogical argument, as only a character in 17th century literature, specifically Dickens, would attempt to do. Perhaps he never read a Dickens novel to the end or reread one; and thus, never found that the entire novel, although serialized, is designed to ratchet an ironic trap that is sprung at the end of the novel on the unsuspecting antagonist. This is a grave flaw for a modern Dickens character writing his Dickensian self into history. In Corsi’s Dickens novel, could the ironic trap be that Corsi, a Dickens character, purports to understand Dickens, but doesn’t understand Dickens–making him a modern Dickens antagonist? And when the trap springs, could it be that he realizes that although a Dickens character, he never understood Dickens at all, and the world is no longer a Dickensian world? The wonder of it all is that our world still has a Dickensian narrative and is hoping for a Dickensian ending. May Mueller know Dickens serialization as well as Marcy! May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
This former lit major loves this comment like Joe loves Pip, like Ebenezer loves money, like Esther loves Woodcourt.. you get the picture!
Reader of Tea Leaves: (Reply button didn’t work) Your “analysis” of Corsi’s writing reminds me of why Corsi is constantly telling his audience that he has a PhD from Harvard. Because no one will accidentally assume he has an Ivy League pedigree from his writing or his talking. That program at Harvard must have been hard up for graduate students that year to have let him in. But then Kushner made it through Harvard somehow, too.
Not wishing to distract from your fine analysis, this paragraph alone is the tell. It is the first level defense of frauds when they’re caught — especially those who intentionally lie for political reward.
The self-pity often if not usually follows the fraud.
This toxic pustule of a human being could skate when the Ashcorft/Gonzales DoJ had little interest in fair play. He calls himself a journalist because he writes.
Recall how the Bush DoJ “respected” journalists when they imprisoned Vanessa for refusing to reveal sources. Leggett. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Leggett
Where was Brett Kavanaugh then and where is Brett Kavanaugh now? What was his defense from Dr Ford’s testimony? “Poor me. I was just a kid. I don’t remember. They’re out to get me.”
I could list many more examples of this toxicity, but the pustule in the WH displays all their rancid qualities. Trump isn’t the exception, he is the rule.
Okay, so the FBI has terabytes of data from Stone, and some may involve Corsi. But if Stone had the data encrypted, cracking the code would take ages of supercomputer time. On the other hand, if they had keystroke logging or other malware installed on Stone’s computer, they could know it already. I found this in an article from back in 2001:
“Magic lantern installs so-called “keylogging” software on a suspect’s machine that is capable of capturing keystrokes typed on a computer. By tracking exactly what a suspect types, critical encryption key information can be gathered, and then transmitted back to the FBI, according to the source, who requested anonymity.”
“… in an affidavit filed by Deputy Assistant Director Randall Murch in U.S. District Court, the bureau admitted using keylogging software to steal encryption keys in a recent high-profile mob case. Nicodemo Scarfo was arrested last year for loan sharking and running a gambling racket. During their investigation, Murch wrote in his affidavit, FBI agents broke into Scarfo’s New Jersey office and installed encryption-key-stealing software on the suspect’s machine. The key was later used to decrypt critical evidence in the case.”
If they bothered to take the computers, and are going to share with defense attorneys in a meaningful timeframe, I would conclude they must have the encryption codes already.
Even if it’s encrypted, odds are they have the piece of paper he kept under his keyboard with all of his passwords.
Or maybe in a more modern form, they have the password to his password manager. But I’m leaning toward a more basic way in.
“Finessed”? I’m confused. Is Corsi so anti-establishment that he’s fine with accusing Reagan of preventing the release of the hostages? Or does he think he’s paying Reagan a compliment? And is it commonly understood that the Reagan campaign actually had a hand in this? I thought all the major players were still denying it.
EW: You reminded me how little public information there is about Malloch’s activities in 2016 *before* the election. People only started paying attention to him after the election, particularly over the fabrications in his autobiography, and the assumption was that he was a Palm Beach bit-player. The snippets we have come via Corsi.
And yet: Malloch was detained and subpoenaed last March-April, and the Guardian had a fairly speculative piece in December (again, having to rely on Corsi for some of the narrative) suggesting that RT might have served as a cutout between Malloch and Assange on August 2nd.
“he’s paying Reagan a compliment”
It looks like that. It’s little different than, “Al Capone was a successful entrepreneur.”