by Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch announced today that it received 127 pages of records from the Georgia Institute of Technology of communications among four individuals. These records reveal that the individuals, who are mentioned in the Durham probe indictment of Michael Sussmann, worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2016-2021. The documents also suggest the group was interested in targeting then-Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon.
Judicial Watch obtained the records through an October 13, 2021, Georgia Open Records Act request for records of communication among Rodney Joffe, April Lorenzen, David Dagon, and Manos Antonakakis.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Durham used a 27-page indictment to lay out a far more expansive tale, one in which four computer scientists who were not charged in the case ‘exploited’ their access to internet data to develop an explosive theory about cyberconnections in 2016 between Donald J. Trump’s company and a Kremlin-linked bank — a theory, he insinuated, they did not really believe.
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The indictment’s “Originator-1” is April Lorenzen, chief data scientist at the information services firm Zetalytics. Her lawyer, Michael J. Connolly, said she has “dedicated her life to the critical work of thwarting dangerous cyberattacks on our country,” adding: “Any suggestion that she engaged in wrongdoing is unequivocally false.”
The indictment’s “Researcher-1” is another computer scientist at Georgia Tech, Manos Antonakakis. “Researcher-2” is Mr. Dagon. And “Tech Executive-1” is Mr. Joffe, who in 2013 received the F.B.I. Director’s Award for helping crack a cybercrime case, and retired this month from Neustar, another information services company.
In a court filing last week, Durham alleged this operation directly spied on Trump tower, Trump’s home, and the Trump White House by exploiting “access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data.”
The anti-Trump operation used the “assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”
On November 18, 2016, a redacted email address writes on “behalf of Manos Antonakakis” to two Georgia Tech officials in an email titled “Signed DARPA Contract:”…
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