Regarding speculation as to the "mystery candidate" who received hacked docs from Russia.
Back in July, the Special Counsel's office indicted multiple Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers for various hacking related offenses during the 2016 election season.
In the middle of the indictment, Mueller drops an interesting little tidbit:
The conspirators--aka GRU--set up the Guccifer 2.0 account and communicated with several individuals known to associate with political figures. This includes the ever lovely Roger Stone (any chance we get an indictment of him before the new year?) as well as a Florida based blogger and political consultant by the name of Aaron Nevins.
Based on the timing and the Nevins connection, it's believed that the alleged leak by Guccifer 2.0 to the mystery candidate means the candidate requesting that info was from Florida. Here's a story from Politico that lays it out:
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2018/07/13/florida-republicans-play-starring-roles-in-russia-hacking-indictment-510037
The big question of course is....who is the candidate?
A lot of speculation has centered on Rep. Brian Mast, who was elected the representative of Florida's 18th District in 2016. The reason is obvious--Nevins acted as a political consultant for Mast during his 2016 campaign. So it immediately creates the specter of motive and opportunity.
I'm a little bit skeptical Mast is the man, however. Mast is essentially a run-of-the-mill, boring, typical back bencher Republican congressman. Besides from having an admittedly sympathetic military resume, there's nothing really remarkable about Mast's behavior either before or after he was elected that suggests he was one to engage in--shall we call it--light treason. Unlike, say, Dana Rohrabacher, there's no major red flags about Mast that suggest he is one to conspire with Russian military intelligence. If he's hiding those sort of sentiments, he's been hiding them pretty well.
Other Florida-based congressional candidates who've been bandied about as suspects include Rep. Matt Gaetz of the 1st District and the now Governor-elect but then representative of the 6th District, Ron DeSantis. And opposed to Mast, some of their behavior since 2016 and their attitudes towards the Mueller investigation have been a little bit more suspect.
But I think we still are forgetting another suspect, one who I think has both strong motive, opportunity and red flags galore.
That would be Tim Canova, who was Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's primary opponent in 2016. What makes me suspect Canova is things in the indictment that might be overlooked.
Notably, the indictment says the person was a "candidate." There's no mention whatsoever that the person was actually elected to office in the end. Moreover, there's nothing that says that the candidate was seeking information for the purposes of the general election. And with that in mind, the information was released on August 15th, which was roughly two weeks before the Florida primary elections. People assume it was a Republican seeking information for the general election and that Republican was the ultimate victor. That's not necessarily the case.
Why else Canova? Because he has multiple red flags and motive to seek that information:
1. The release came just a couple weeks after Guccifer 2.0's leak right before the DNC convention. That leak created a huge embarrassment for DWS, so much so that she was forced to step down as chair of the DNC before the convention started. So DWS was certainly in the crosshairs for the Russian hackers. And who would benefit most from another hack that involved DWS but DWS's own primary opponent, that being Tim Canova.
2. Canova acted in ways that were rather unconventional for what you might expect a Democrat from Broward County to act. For example, on more than one occasion, he appeared on the radio show of Joyce Kaufman, a right-wing extremist who was almost named the congressional chief of staff for one-term Tea Party firebrand Allen West.
3. Throwing the race for the congressional seat of the one-time DNC chair into chaos and creating division amongst Democratic voters (in order to suppress turnout) is the typical MO of Russian interference actions in elections.
4. Canova is based in Broward County, where Nevins (and his father, Buddy Nevins) have made a well-known name for themselves in political circles. And while Roger Stone has a more national footprint, he too is based out of Broward. So both of Guccifer 2.0's contacts had close ties to Broward.
4. Since that election, Tim Canova has quit the Democratic party.
5. Since that election, Tim Canova has heavily criticized the Mueller investigation and explicitly expressed doubt that it was Russia who hacked the DNC, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
6. Since that election, Tim Canova has engaged in spreading wild conspiracy theories similar to the ones being spread over social media by Russian propagandists, such as the claim that the DNC and the Clintons were behind the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
And yes, on the day of the apparent release (August 15, 2016), Tim Canova did get a few very interesting messages from followers on Twitter.
Now, as tantalizing as this might seem, it's not quite a smoking (or smocking) gun for Canova. Delivering materials via a Twitter post is a rather public way that leaves the risk of exposure if it were indeed a response for a request for hacked materials. Furthermore, the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress link doesn't actually contain any materials related to the DWS-Canova race (District 23). (For that matter, it doesn't contain any info on the race for Gaetz or DeSantis' district, either, although it does contain info on the race for Mast's district.)
So more likely than not this was just a coincidence and just some zealous followers of Guccifer 2.0 wanted to pass on this material to Canova (which is still very, very odd, don't you think?). But there's nothing in the Indictment that says the materials sent to the mystery candidate were part of the WordPress post; it's possible and likely they were sent using more encrypted means.
That all being said, with DWS already being in Guccifer 2.0's crosshairs before these documents were leaked, with Canova's curious subersive and disruptive behavior both before and after the leaks, and the various connections to Broward County, I think a further inquiry into the possibility that Tim Canova was the mystery candidate is warranted.
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