Manos Antonakakis (Credit: GaTech)
( ) …an email first obtained by The Federalist shows Chris Schneck from DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, known as “I2O,” writing Antonakakis on September 25, 2018, with the subject line of “Mueller case.” While redactions prevent a full understanding of the email, the “Mueller case” subject line and Schneck’s “great work” closer indicate the DARPA-funded Georgia Tech researcher was assisting Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The only apparent pending Mueller case at the time of the email appears to have been the special counsel’s case against the 12 officers of the Russian military intelligence organization known as GRU, who had been indicted two months earlier and charged with crimes related to the hacking of the DNC’s emails in 2016.
While DARPA’s September 25, 2018 email to Antonakakis about his “great work” regarding the “Mueller case” does not mention the DNC hack, a “chat log” for the DARPA Rhamnousia project shows the Georgia Tech researchers discussing both the DNC hack and GRU. One text reads: “For FBI to give a heads up to the DNC in fall 2015, this means that the attack was active for many months before.” In another message, one of the researchers jokes that if GRU sends the Russian beauty Annet Mahendru after him, he’s “giving up” his colleagues.
Moreover, another email reviewed by The Federalist reveals that Dagon told Durham’s team that the “entire set” of “Rhannousia chat logs” were “pertinent to” the Special Counsel’s investigation.” Those chat logs, in addition to involving chats between Dagon and Antonakakis, included conversations involving, or about, two other DARPA-connected individuals, Angelos Keromytis and Tejas Patel—both of whom were included on the September 25, 2018 email about the “Mueller case.” (The Georgia Tech emails obtained by The Federalist also established that Durham’s team sought to question Keromytis about his time at DARPA.)
The extensive redactions in the “Rhannousia chat logs” make it impossible to assess whether Antonakakis and his colleagues were working on the DNC hack or investigating the identity of Guccifer2.0 for the “Mueller case” against the Russian GRU agents. But if so, it raises serious questions, the foremost of which is: Why did DARPA claim no DARPA-funded researchers assisted the FBI’s or Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the DNC hack?
If Antonakakis assisted Mueller in the DNC hack investigation, as these various documents suggest, it raises a second significant question: Did Rodney Joffe provide Antonakakis the data necessary to conduct an attribution analysis of the hack? (Read more: The Federalist, 4/21/2022) (Archive)