Trump adviser played key role in pursuit of possible Clinton emails from dark web before election

[MelissaB]

Trump adviser played key role in pursuit of possible Clinton emails from dark web before election

(CNN)A Donald Trump foreign policy adviser pushed government agencies to review materials from the dark web in the summer of 2016 that he thought were Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell CNN.

Joseph Schmitz approached the FBI and other government agencies about material a client of his had discovered that Schmitz believed might have been Clinton's missing 30,000 emails from her private e-mail server, sources say. The material was never verified, and sources say they ultimately believed it was fake.

His push is the latest example of Trump advisers who were mixed up in efforts to find dirt on Clinton during the presidential campaign. Schmitz was one of the first people Trump named to his campaign's national security and foreign policy team. The team, showcased in a March 2016 photo, was thrown together early in Trump's successful run as he faced mounting pressure to prove his ability to pull in high-level advisers who could help prepare him for the White House.

Another adviser pictured in the photo, Trump's foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, was told by a Kremlin-connected professor that the Russian government had damaging material on Clinton. Six weeks later, Donald Trump Jr. got a message from a business associate offering similar information, leading to the Trump Tower meeting that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort attended.

More: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/joseph-schmitz-trump-adviser-clinton-emails/index.html

[MelissaB]

1. another snip

Schmitz's connection to the multi-faceted effort to expose damaging information about Clinton has not been previously reported. His status as a former Pentagon inspector general afforded him access to the agencies and a sophisticated understanding of the government bureaucracy. He was relentless, sources say, and truly believed his client had found important, sensitive material. He did not hesitate in his pursuit even though the material on the dark web -- a part of the Internet not easily accessible or traceable -- was questionable and many experts already believed the Russians had stolen Clinton's emails.

Schmitz met with officials at the FBI, the State Department and the Intelligence Community Inspector General -- the watchdog tasked with investigating Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified information. He claimed a source he called "PATRIOT," an unidentified contractor he was representing, had discovered what he believed was likely material stolen from Clinton that could contain classified information. Both the client and Schmitz were afraid that going through the material without permission could jeopardize their security clearances, though there is no indication their actions were illegal.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. T R A I T O R S - I am getting angrier by the hour.

[sharedvalues]

3. Friday News Dump

Wish it was Friday Indictments instead.

Next week.

[MelissaB]

4. Me too!

[Leghorn21]

5. March 25, 2016 from Democracy Now - Schmitz was exec with Blackwater

When asked this week about how he would approach foreign policy, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told MSNBC, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a lot of things.” He also announced his lineup of little-known foreign policy advisers, including Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general with ties to the Center for Security Policy, who was forced out of his job amid accusations that he protected high-level officials in the George W. Bush administration who were suspected of wrongdoing. We get reaction from The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill, who notes Schmitz is a radical Christian supremacist with an “insane worldview” who was a former executive with Blackwater.

snip

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, Joseph Schmitz was the Pentagon inspector general under Donald Rumsfeld, and he didn’t really inspect much of anything. He was a big cheerleader, actually, for many of the most kind of excessive policies of Rumsfeld and the Pentagon in the post-9/11 world. And when Schmitz left the DOD, he became an executive at Blackwater. And Joseph Schmitz is a—you know, is a radical Christian supremacist. He is a member of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta and really is sort of a—you know, has a neo-crusader worldview. And I’m choosing those words carefully. I mean, that’s—he is definitely a radical Christian supremacist.

More:
https://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/donald_trumps_top_foreign_adviser_joseph

[MelissaB]

6. Blackwater!!

Damn!

[Leghorn21]

7. Yup! Heats comin down on Prince, and now Schmitz is in the headlines - from your link:

Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general in George W. Bush's administration as well as a co-worker and confidant of Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince, told the Chicago Tribune he had been working for the Trump campaign for about a month prior to the announcement, communicating closely with top Trump adviser Sam Clovis.


.....he and Prince are still in close touch, eh?

Also, there’s Sam Clovis mentioned, but I can’t keep up!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Wow, forgot about when Trump said he was hearing voices in his brain. So much happned since then. nt

[unc70]

9. Remember the sister of Schmitz is Mary Kay Letourneau

Remember her? She had an affair with and later married her sixth(?) grade student.

Their father ran for president in 1972 on the American Party. He was big in the John Birch Society.