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The U.S. Department of Defense tasked the same Georgia Tech researcher embroiled in the Alfa Bank hoax with investigating the “origins” of the Democratic National Committee hacker, according to an email first obtained by The Federalist on Wednesday. That email also indicates the special counsel’s office is investigating the investigation into the DNC hack and that prosecutors harbor concerns about the DOD’s decision to involve the Georgia Tech researcher in its probe.

The special counsel branded this person “Researcher-1” in court filings. His identity has since been confirmed by his attorney as Georgia Tech’s Manos Antonakakis.

Antonakakis first garnered public attention when Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. That one-count indictment charged the former Perkins Coie attorney with lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann provided Baker data and white papers purporting to show a secret communication network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

In charging Sussmann, the speaking indictment explained that tech executive Rodney Joffe first alerted Sussmann to data allegedly compiled by April Lorenzen that supposedly revealed a backdoor communication network between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Joffe later allegedly asked two Georgia Tech researchers, Antonakakis and David Dagon—the latter identified in the indictment as Researcher-2—to mine internet data for evidence establishing a Trump-Russia connection.

According to the indictment, in mid-August, Antonakakis “queried internet data” maintained by Joffe’s tech company for the mail1.trump-email.com domain. The results from that search, however, showed no apparent connections between the Trump email and Russia, causing Antonakakis to tell Joffe that the results do “not make sense with the storyline you have.” Nonetheless, Joffe provided Antonakakis, Dagon, and Lorenzen a draft “white paper,” which presented a tale of an Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication channel, which the three then reviewed for Joffe.

read more here: https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/10/exclusive-special-counsels-office-is-investigating-the-2016-dnc-server-hack/