(…) Novick was a former business partner of Rodney Joffe at BitVoyant, a company that focused on private sector cybersecurity. He reported directly to a board on which Rodney Joffe was a member. In August of 2016, Joffe gave Novick a task to dig up data “related to Donald Trump and Russia”:
Jared Novick (Credit: PRNewsFoto/BitVoyant)
Who did Joffe target? According to Novick:
Rodney tasked me, and I received a PDF document. And in that PDF document, there were, you know, a handful — five, seven names — of individuals, their home addresses, if they had a spouse, their spouse name and companies related to their spouse, their personal email addresses. So everything about the document was — it was very personal.
This list included Carter Page, Sergei Millian, and Richard Burt. The name of this project? They called it “Crimson Rhino.” Novick stated he complied with Joffe’s request and “cast a large net” on these individuals using “a 90-day history of data.”
On cross-examination, counsel for Sussmann attempted to play-up Joffe’s qualifications and reputation. Novick had this response:
Q: Are you aware of the respect that Mr. Joffe had in the government communities in 2016?
Novick: It’s an interesting question because I do know some government agencies were suspect of Rodney.