This is as twisted and jumbled as a bushel basket of wire coat-hangers, and I think I need a diagram to really understand it.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke this story —

Peter W. Smith

A longtime Republican activist who led an operation hoping to obtain Hillary Clinton emails from hackers listed senior members of the Trump campaign, including some who now serve as top aides in the White House, in a recruitment document for his effort.

Then later that same night, half a world away, another guy’s ears perk up and a light bulb goes off over his head.

UK cyber-analyst Matt Tait reveals in great detail how he himself was recruited by Peter W. Smith to verify the accuracy of emails, purportedly from Clinton’s server, that Smith had either obtained or was negotiating to obtain from an operative on the Deep Web.

So here’s the deal as I understand it.  Peter W Smith goes to the Wall Street Journal and spills his guts about the whole Russian / Hillary email thing and how people on Trump’s team were in on it.  Ten days later, Smith is dead.  (Don’t get your tin foil hat.  He was 80 years old, and everybody eventually dies. Not totally unrelated to this story, Smith was one of the operatives spreading the rumor about Bill Clinton using Arkansas State Troopers to cover his trysts while governor, so I’m sure Republicans are saying that the Clintons had him killed.)

Matt Tait

Back to the other guy who ear’s are perked:  UK cyber-analyst Matt Tait realizes he knows a piece of this story because he was contacted by Smith last year, and some real confusing stuff happened after that contact. Tait admits he still doesn’t understand how his piece of the puzzle fits into the mess, but he spills the beans on everything he knows.  Long read – oh so worth it.

I think the special prosecutor is going to need some more lawyers and maybe a few map makers to figure this out, but it does not look good for the folks surrounding Trump.  That hasn’t changed.

Customer Deb is following this closely on Twitter so I’m hoping she’ll correct me when I need it and add some information when when she gets it.

Thanks to Deb and SGray for the heads up.