“It is no overstatement to say that my conversations with [GOP operative Peter] Smith shocked me. Given the amount of media attention given at the time to the likely involvement of the Russian government in the DNC hack, it seemed mind-boggling for the Trump campaign—or for this offshoot of it—to be actively seeking those emails. To me this felt really wrong.

”In my conversations with Smith and his colleague, I tried to stress this point: if this dark web contact is a front for the Russian government, you really don't want to play this game. But they were not discouraged. They appeared to be convinced of the need to obtain Clinton's private emails and make them public, and they had a reckless lack of interest in whether the emails came from a Russian cut-out. Indeed, they made it quite clear to me that it made no difference to them who hacked the emails or why they did so, only that the emails be found and made public before the election.“

-- Matt Tait, ”The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians," on Lawfare, about the lead-up to the 2016 election. Tait is currently the CEO and founder of Capital Alpha Security, a UK based security consultancy. This story is not getting enough attention. 

Happy 4th.