The Nature of Our Work

Every now and then a follower/supporter turns around and vents their frustration on me.

We are primarily focused on Russiagate by design. I don’t have much capacity or interest in other projects, besides the Censorship Files project with Racket News.

If you’re expecting weekly commentary on topical subjects, that is not something we have typically done here. If you’re expecting weekly wins and bombshell documents, I need to clarify a few things.

Back when this started, I was exclusively a “Researcher” on Twitter, if you want to categorize it as anything. I had some good research threads on old Twitter accounts, some long since destroyed, that offered some insights and good finds. That might even be the area where I have the most skills, but it also was only incorporated into a couple news stories of prominent outlets.

Doing that now would largely be re-treading over old ground, though I cover old research from time to time.

Then I transitioned into FOIA and Open Records work. In the spring of 2022, I didn’t have any by-lines but I did have near-weekly releases of documents from Georgia Tech that The Federalist covered, along with Margot Cleveland’s own work. That was an exciting time, and we didn’t have a Substack back then.

After exhausting the easy Open Records work, we had to transition into litigation. The nature of litigation is often a roller coaster. The stress of that, I assure you, is felt most keenly by myself and the other party.

That litigation has resulted in some good finds (Joffe-NSA ties, MoU’s, etc) but it’s also a slow process in getting to the most protected documents. When I say we are at an inflection point, it’s because we truly are.

That doesn’t mean we will win.

But I think we will.

And it’s still going to matter. Our country was beset by the Russiagate narrative for years, and it is continually referenced by Congressional Democrats to this day. The fact is, there is a lot more to the story. There are legitimate questions that haven’t been asked and haven’t been answered.

Why in the hell were the Alfa Bank cyber researchers providing any assistance to Special Counsel Mueller? How much reliance for the DNC hack attribution or the Netyksho indictment was placed on their work?

There were a couple comments lately, one that suggested I am not doing enough to get to the bottom of the story, and the other that I should leave it to other sleuths. Those are confusing comments, if not a bit hurtful.

There’s a smattering of other “Russiagate” FOIA’s out there, and a few FOIA lawsuits, but nobody is doing what we are doing. To my knowledge, nobody is pursuing the documents and answers we are pursuing. I talk to the other “sleuths” every day, I know everything they are up to. After the Durham report, it isn’t much.

Our operation isn’t exactly the New York Times here, or something like Judicial Watch. Going back to 2022 there were plenty of weeks where I worked my day job until midnight, only to then move into FOIA work. There have been dozens of nights where I have gotten out of bed at 2am to go put a FOIA in before I forgot the idea.

I’ve been harassed, threatened, censored, placed under surveillance, sanctioned…I welcome any feedback good or bad, but if want to attack our efforts here, at this stage, I would suggest your criticism is misplaced and a bit heartless.

On this story, documents are more valuable that anything else. I do have sources that have filled in some blanks for a long time, but there is such a saturation of random people out there that claim to have secret knowledge via sources that I can’t exactly take what I know to the Washington Post and expect them to run it. I’m nobody to them.

I’ve written dozens of 30-40 page letters and reports petitioning Congress or media outlets or investigative bodies to make some inquiries based on the documents we already have. I think I’ve shared a couple of those on here. They just won’t look.

If you’ve never felt the anxiety of litigation, I want to also explain what happens. You start reading every filing, over and over. I have read every filing in our Georgia case at least 500 times. Even when I have it down verbatim, I still re-read them. Because that’s what stress does.

Then you read every case cited in every filing. And if you’re like me, that means also going into the dockets of the trial court proceedings for those cases and reading every word of those too.

There is nobody on the planet without a law degree that knows more about Georgia’s Open Records law than me, I promise you. I’d also done a hell of a lot of research before I ever submitted the request at issue.

And bringing lawsuits Pro Se? That is another learning experience. I didn’t know how to do Complaints or Motions or Summary Judgment filings. In a couple actions I have been up against a Harvard-educated trial attorney working for the Department of Justice in Washington DC. My knowledge base comes from...TV. And there are local rules and civil rules of procedure. All of that has to be researched and learned. That’s a whole other field of case law that you have to read.

Right now we have 4 ongoing lawsuits, for a ton of different Russiagate related requests. Most relevant to our focus are a lawsuit against the FBI, another against the DOD, and our lawsuit against Mr. Antonakakis. Would I like to do more? Sure I would, and I might sue the government a couple more times but how much more risk and capital should I put in?

Against the FBI, we had a round of summary judgment motions about 3 months ago that are still pending a ruling. The government asserted GLOMAR over files from Mr. Dagon and Mr. Antonakakis and their work on the DNC hack. If we lose, it might be rendered moot in short order by the Loper Bright decision that could roll back the government’s ablity to make up their own policies. I think we will get traction and an eventual win there.

Against the DOD, we have filed a motion for in camera review. Tonight, the government offered to re-process the record for a 3rd time and requested I withdraw my motion. I rejected this and suggested they endorse my motion for in camera review or discovery. Implicit in the communication was confirmation that they don’t have any support for their exemption claims. I believe we are going to win and we are going to get their DNC hack attribution analysis, and maybe some discovery against third parties.

That is going to be a major story. For a lowly substacker with no training or education in journalism, connecting these guys more firmly to the DNC hack attribution is a pretty fine get. That would be a pretty good week for any journalist.

Against Mr. Antonakakis, we’ll see. My sense is we are heading back to the trial court for discovery by August or September. It should be a fairly easy opinion to write, and my sense was all of the Justices were in agreement.

They can fight us as much as they want, we are going to get the documents. There is a mountain of knowledge we haven’t been able to introduce. As bad as it was for me at various moments in the last 2 years, it’s going to be far worse on the other side. I’m sympathetic to that but after some of the things they’ve done, I won’t be particularly forgiving.

These things are going to come in batches. We might get a batch of 2000 documents that requires 10 write-ups. We also might have weeks where we are covering some old stuff to keep it relevant for upcoming releases or not doing much on this site at all. Again, that is the nature of our work at this point.

We are big-game hunters trying to get to information that powerful entities don’t want us to have. I ask for a little patience and understanding.