Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (Part 1)

During the 2016 election cycle, an odd story emerged about a twitter account, @Guccifer2. It was registered days before the emergence of the actual Guccifer 2.0 (who later set up the twitter account @guccifer_2), and retweeted much of the materials released from the DNC. More than anyone else, Democrat strategist Adam Parkhomenko called this out:

This attention earned the user behind the Guccifer2 profile, Cassandra Ford, a few visits from the FBI during the late summer of 2016. Later, she was re-interviewed by the Special Counsel Mueller team. 

A few weeks ago, Cassandra Ford reached out in the wake of my collab with Matt Taibbi.

I was ill-prepared for the conversation. Being honest, I never paid much attention to this episode of Russiagate. Other than a few spaces chat comments, I hadn’t thought of it at all. 

Then she started telling me her story, and told me that the Buzzfeed article on her left out some information. (I take no position on this). 

Ford said there were weird things going on with her account that have not been explained. She remembers, and Buzzfeed reported this suggestion, that she believes she created the Guccifer2 account only on June 16th, 2016, which is after the Guccifer 2.0 blog was published. Ford has shared her account history with computer forensics firm Garrett Discovery, who later provided analysis with the Buzzfeed reporter indicating that Ford created a twitter account on June 9, 2016 and changed the account handle to Guccifer2 on June 16th, after the emergence of the Guccifer 2.0 persona. That supports a simple explanation, that she simply changed the account name and doesn’t remember doing so.

In part two I am going to entertain oddities around this episode more fully.

As our discussion continued, she mentioned she was running in hacktivist circles at the time, something Buzzfeed included. This included conversing with self-described members of Anonymous during 2016. 

Something that Fool_Nelson has kept on my radar for years is a little-reported group known as the “Protectors”, which came up in a Facebook post from former DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa: 

Added to by a pair of tweets from her sister Andrea:

On a hunch, I asked Ford about the “Protectors” and she threw out a couple names I was unfamiliar with. 

I eventually arrived on Brett Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser.*

*All identifications are speculative

Kimberlin was convicted in 1980 for committing 8 bombings in 1978 in Speedway, Indiana. When he got out of prison, he found a role in left-wing politics.

As I looked into him, I found an early 2017 article from Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller titled “Former DNC Official Partnered With Convicted Bomb Maker To Investigate Trump” where he took note of a working relationship between Alexandra Chalupa and Brett Kimberlin during the 2016 election. 

I eventually came to a periscope video from Lee Stranahan from years ago. In it, he goes through documents including Chalupa’s facebook post and Chuck Ross’s 2017 article. 

He also covers statements in a court case from Kimberlin where Kimberlin indicated he and his “team” were working with the Department of Justice to protect the 2016 election. 

Stranahan also took note of a 1992 election hoax (also written about in 2018 by Chuck Ross) where long-time Clinton operative Cody Shearer spread a false rumor started by Kimberlin that Vice President Dan Quayle had purchased drugs from Kimberlin. 

A 2012 article introduced by Stranahan references “The Protectors” while also referencing Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser:

Old blog posts frequently mention Neal Rauhauser as working closely with Kimberlin, and Rauhauser appears to have substantial technical skills. 

Stranahan makes a well-researched argument that Neal Rauhauser and Kimberlin are “The Protectors” referenced by Alexandra Chalupa and it raises the question of why our government would be working with them during the 2016 election. 

In part 2 (coming soon), I dip back into my conversation with Ford and extend the great work of Stranahan with some original research that makes connections that nobody has made yet. 

It gets weird.