'Flash'- only just NOW being reported.
Quote:Mueller’s work has long had an important cybersecurity component — central to the probe is Russia’s hacking of Democrats’ emails in an effort to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system and help Trump win.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national...48c3f60d0a
The original FBI counterintelligence probe was launched in part because a Trump campaign adviser was said to have told an Australian diplomat that Russia had emails that could embarrass Democrats, and in July 2016, private Democratic messages thought to have been hacked by Russia began appearing online.
Mueller also is in possession of information from Facebook about politically themed advertisements bought through Russian accounts.
Legal analysts have said that one charge Mueller might pursue would be a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, if he can demonstrate that members of Trump’s team conspired in Russia’s hacking effort to influence the election.
Some in the legal world had wondered why Mueller had not previously tapped a cyber prosecutor to join his team.
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing and has decried the probe as a “witch hunt.” He tweeted Wednesday: “The single greatest Witch Hunt in American history continues. There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!”
Dickey, who previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, has participated in a number of high-profile computer-crime prosecutions — including the ongoing case against the file-sharing site Megaupload and the investigation of the Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer.”
Guccifer, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, penetrated email, Facebook and other online accounts of celebrities and political figures, including former secretary of state Colin Powell, former Bill Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal and a family member of George W. Bush. His hacking inadvertently revealed that Hillary Clinton was using a private email account when she was secretary of state.
Someone using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 in June 2016 claimed credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s network, though the intelligence community later assessed that the Russian spy agency GRU had used the persona and two websites to release data hacked from the Democrats. Lazar had long been in custody by that time; he was sentenced in September 2016 to four years and four months in U.S. prison.
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