The plot thickens, as the saying goes. As the “Trump-Russia collusion” story heats up, a new piece to the story emerges, with a little-known hacker who goes by the name “Johnnie Walker,” stealing the private emails of a top State Department expert on Russia.
According to Newsweek:
A hacker claimed Tuesday to be in possession of emails taken from a top State Department official who focuses on “secret” intelligence work by the diplomatic agency toward Russia, and some of the emails included exchanges between the official and Central Intelligence Agency officers, Foreign Policy reported Friday.
The hacker, using the name “Johnnie Walker,” stated in an email to an unknown number of people that he had emails dating back two years from the State official’s personal Gmail account. The hacker’s motives and nation of origin are unclear, and the report does not mention wanting payment, which many hackers are known to request. The official’s identity was withheld for national security reasons.
The hacker’s message claimed the emails were to and from “CIA officers and other intelligence agencies, mainstream media, NGOs and international funds” and that they would “give you evidence of who is responsible for agenda formation in many countries worldwide, especially where the situation is insecure.”
While the official’s identity is unknown, he is quite high ranking and has a very specific area of expertise: Russia.
“He’s probably the top intelligence guy in the entire U.S. government on Russia. He knows more than anybody about what’s going on there,” an unnamed source told Foreign Policy.
News of the hack comes on the heels of a bombshell report, covered by The Gateway Pundit, that Russia lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya brought a document outlining shady Democrat funding sources to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr.
According to AP:
Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democrats, Akhmetshin said. Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the campaign, he said.
“This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin recalled her saying.
Trump Jr. asked the attorney if she had sufficient evidence to back up her claims, including whether she could demonstrate the flow of the money. But Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would need to research it more. After that, Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.
“They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,” he said.
Akhmetshin said he does not know if Veselnitskaya’s documents were provided by the Russian government. He said he thinks she left the materials with the Trump associates. It was unclear if she handed the documents to anyone in the room or simply left them behind, he said.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and current White House senior adviser, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting. Akhmetshin said he recognized Kushner and Trump Jr. He also said he recognized Manafort because they worked in “adjacent political circles” but never together.
