Nigel Farage - The Net Closes

Special counsel Robert Mueller has now “indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee before the 2016 US [Presidential] election”. As Business Insider has reported, “This is the first time Mueller's office has directly pointed a finger at the Russian government for meddling in the race”.

Squeaky impending indictment finger up the bum time

There is more. “Friday's indictment names 12 members of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, and accuses 11 of them of conspiring to interfere with the election by hacking into computers, stealing documents, and releasing those documents with the intent to interfere … In addition to accusing the officers of engaging in malicious cyber operations to steal and disseminate information, the indictment specifically names the Russia-linked hacker Guccifer 2.0 and the website DCLeaks”.

Interesting. Do go on. “The charging document says the intelligence officers falsely claimed that DCLeaks was controlled by American hackers and that Guccifer 2.0 was a Romanian hacker when in fact both were created and controlled by the GRU. Additionally, the indictment says the conspirators - in this case, Guccifer 2.0 - also communicated with US persons about the release of stolen documents. In one instance, it says, the conspirator posing as Guccifer 2.0 contacted a person who was ‘in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.’”

That last may be proving mildly uncomfortable reading for former UKIP Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage: last year, the Guardian, confirming that Farage was a “person of interest” to the FBI, noted “The source mentioned Farage’s links with Roger Stone, Trump’s long-time political adviser who has admitted being in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker whom US intelligence agencies believe to be a Kremlin agent”.

And this is what the indictment had to say about Guccifer 2.0 - and others. “In order to expand their interference in the 2016 US Presidential election, the Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to Organisation 1. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organisation 1 to highlight their impact on the 2016 US Presidential election”.

Then comes this nugget: “On or about June 22, 2016, Organisation 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to ‘[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review’”. Organisation 1 is believed to be WikiLeaks.

So how was the information passed between Guccifer 2.0 and Organisation 1? Eventually, a highly encrypted email transmission appears to have been responsible for some of them. But it has been suggested to me that before that point, someone was playing courier- physically carrying memory devices from the Russian Embassy in London to that of Ecuador, where Julian Assange was, and remains, holed up.

Nigel Farage was caught coming out of the Ecuadorian Embassy earlier last year, and has still not furnished an even slightly credible account of why he was there. And that Guardian account, telling that he was a “person of interest” to the FBI, had this observation: “If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage … He’s right in the middle of these relationships. He turns up over and over again. There’s a lot of attention being paid to him”.

Well, now Robert Mueller and his team have nailed down Guccifer 2.0 as an asset of the GRU, with Organisation 1 almost certainly being WikiLeaks. Farage knew all those on the US side linked to the Trump-Russia investigation; as soon as he was caught coming out of that Embassy, the world knew of the Assange and WikiLeaks connection.

The next links in the chain are most likely to be those in the USA who participated in this enterprise. Then comes the go-between. That is how close Mueller now is to Farage.

It’s taking longer than I had hoped. But it is getting there. More on this later.