after a series of Trump tweets contained spelling errors, as shown in the example above, in which unprecedented presents as unpresidented, a theory arose to explain these rather consistent spelling mistakes.
And that theory revealed a testable hypothesis.
And, although the Mueller report is damning, Barr still found it necessary, ostensibly to protect Donald Trump, to redact fully, all sections of the report dealing with Trump's Twitter account, why?
. . . the unredactable evidence
The mistakes and word choice in Trump's Tweets, are not made by those who speak English as a first language, but are typical of Russians, who speak English as a second language
As things stand now, there are three versions of the Mueller Report, the wholly un-redacted report with attachments, penned by the special counsel and his staff, and two redacted versions of the report. One redacted iteration released to the public and a less-redacted version that is view-able by a limited number of the members of Congress.
Some of the redactions in the Mueller report exist due to a court-imposed gag order on information related to the Justice Department’s case against Republican dirty-trickster Roger Stone. Prosecutors asked that these redactions be imposed, so as not to potentially prejudice a jury, since Stone has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces, and his case is headed to trial.
In another court filing involving the Stone case, federal prosecutors suggested that the less-redacted report should be made available to a select number of members of Congress only, to prevent the material from leaking to the public. However, the public's right to know is not so easily dispensed with, and court challenges under the Freedom of Information Act, are underway.
Shortly after the - unpresidented - tweet, several reporters, across the political spectrum, began to compile a rather long list of Trump tweets with spelling and other grammatical errors, which a variety of networks used in their broadcasts and print media, for a sort of tension release mechanism amidst otherwise rather dire news.
Over the next several months Trump's tweets became, in a word, voluminous, which led to speculation that a team of tweeters were working with and for Trump, and they were deliberately making the same kinds of spelling and other grammatical errors that Trump often does, so that it would seem that Trump himself was the sole author of these tweets.
This explanation, theory, was repeated by so many, and so often that it took on the aura of being factual.
However, upon closer examination, it was discovered that just as Mueller's question to White House spokesperson Huckabee-Sanders about her comment that numerous employees of the Justice department had expressed to her their dissatisfaction and having no confidence in James Comey, came from. She responded - from no where.
This is a perfect example of the conventional wisdom that two lies do not equal the truth.
The seemingly factual explanation of Trump's voluminous tweets being orchestrated by a team of people surrounding him, purposely making the same kinds of errors that he often does, also came from no where, it is baseless.
And, how do we know that it is baseless?
First, we know because the from-no-where comment is both illogical and oxymoronic -- pointedly foolish. Because, no one and no thing, comes from no where.
Huckabee-Sanders was merely delivering the agreed message of the day, and her reply to Mueller was an attempt to conceal the source of that statement -- Trump's inner circle. And, was designed to offer an explanation for Comey's dismissal, which bears not the least resemblance to the truth, as to why Trump fired Attorney General James Comey.
In fact, the entire Comey firing episode is signature Donald Trump -- crude and vindictive.
Any investigator, who is not impaired by pattern blindness, would take account of Trump's repeated and highly public humiliation of Sessions as well as ethnic members of congress, and the way he dismissed another high-ranking member of the Justice Department a few hours before he was eligible for his full pension.
The dubious explanation as to Trump's tweets had at its core, however, a testable hypothesis.
The interest of Intelligence agencies and services around the globe in online information operations did not begin with the advent of Donald Trump and his outwardly inexplicable association with a myriad of individuals linked to Russian civil and military intelligence, far from it.
Interest in online information operations and social media monitoring began in earnest in association with the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran nearly a decade ago, and an equally troubling use of social media to foment agitation in the Kashmir, about the same time.
More recently, attention was drawn to Russian online information operations, which targeted a series of elections in Eastern Europe, where Russian intelligence supported the election of a host of right-wing anti-Europe divisive characters. And, of concern to this writing are Putin’s crowning achievements, Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the US.
The next thread to consider is how one goes about determining authorship.
All Knowledge is Comparative
Let’s consider the process of attempting to authenticate an unsigned manuscript, written in the style of the late 16 and early 17 century writer, William Shakespeare. First, one would subject the paper and ink to physical examination, in the form of carbon dating and mass-spec analysis. If it is determined, that the paper and ink are consistent with the time period of his writing, then the manuscript would become the subject of careful literary analysis.
Literary analysis, requires a large body of writings that are known to have been penned by the Bard of Avon, to compare with the unsigned manuscript. The comparison includes such things as word choice and usage, writing style, phraseology and even punctuation from both Shakespeare's early and late writings. Over the years these kinds of analyses have yielded both positive and negative results.
On the 17th of October 2018, Twitter as part of its commitment to the US Congress to provide regular updates and information regarding its investigation into foreign interference in political conversations on Twitter, released " ... all the accounts and related content associated with potential information operations that we have found on our service since 2016. We had previously disclosed these activities, but are now releasing substantially more information about them to enable independent academic research and investigation."
The suggestion of encouraging open research and investigation of these behaviors to independent researchers and investigators like this author and others, was too appealing for researchers not to respond positively to Twitter's offer.
The initial release of data by Twitter on Russian state-backed information operations, which took place around the time of the 2016 US presidential campaign and beyond, uncovered two distinct categories of tweets — traceable to the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia — one targeted Russian-language audiences and the other English-language audiences, which indicates that the Internet Research Agency's online information operations had domestic as well as international components.
The Twitter released data included 3,841 accounts affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, originating in Russia. They include more than 10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009.
It was not long after the release of this data by Twitter that a rather stunning association between Tweets emanating from St Petersburg and tweets by Trump were shown to be synchronized. The Russian tweets would appear with whichever emotive words the Russians thought best to support Trump at a particular time (in association with main news items of the day), and Trump would use the same emotive words in his tweets within hours of the appearance of the Internet Research Agency's tweets.
It must be remembered that when Conway and Bannon left the failing Cruz campaign they began to work with Cambridge Analytica. And through Cambridge Analytica, Conway and Bannon aided a Russian researcher from Cambridge University, to deliver the data of some 145,000,000 Facebook accounts of Americans, directly to the Russian Intelligence (GRU) cyber-research agency, the Internet Research Agency.
What is important here, is to understand that the Russians have a lot of data on Americans with which to ply their trade of creating division in the American population, and supporting Trump. In a separate article we will explore the big-game being played here, but suffice it to say that all this activity has diverted Americans attention from what is happening in the rest of the world, which aides Russian influence expansion. And Donald Trump plays his role in this, splendidly.
Of the 3,841 distinct accounts, 60% were in English and 40% in Russian. Although there are fewer accounts in the Russian language, there were significantly more tweets, Russian (60%) than in English (40%). However, over time English-language tweeting became a larger part of the Russian Intelligence online information operations activities.
This is largely explained due to the time it took to appreciate fully the treasure trove they had acquired in the Facebook data, and the time it took to extract the most emotive words and phrases they could use to wreak havoc with the American election, and to sow ethnic discord, which took place over a time period greater than that represented by the time period between Charlottesville, the suspect packages sent to Trump's named enemies, and the Synagogue massacre in Pittsburg.
The first comparative run of Trumps Tweets was against those identified as emanating from the Internet Research Agency, of which Twitter supplied in excess of 9 million distinct entries, was non-conclusive, in terms of identifying commonality. That is, in the sense of our example in which we wished to determine if an unsigned manuscript in the Bard's style was, beyond a reasonable doubt, written by William Shakespeare.
The above analysis held true for word analysis. There were interesting parallels of intuitive importance, largely explained by what other researchers had found that Trump's tweets, in both content and intent, would follow those put out by the Internet Research Agency, within a few hours or so. These outcomes, however, were rather uninspiring given the goal to show definitely that there was indeed coordination and content sharing between the Internet Research Agency, Russian military intelligence's online information operations, and Donald Trump.
This author surmised that what was needed was a data base, a specific and extensive one, that would detail the kinds of routine statistically significant mistakes made by Russians who speak English as a second language. And, fortunately there is decades of such information, and that information is specific and extensive.
Irrespective of your first language, if one intends to study in any English-speaking university on earth, one has to demonstrate proficiency in speaking, listening and writing the English language. And, that proficiency is established by testing. There are international organisations who preform the testing for universities and a host of national organisations that help potential students prepare for their English proficiency examinations.
To convey the massive nature of the accumulated information as to grammatical errors, word choice and sentence structure, it is possible to compare the thousands of Russian doctors who attended English speaking universities, or those pursuing information technology and a myriad of other academic pursuits. In addition, one could compare students from various regions of Russia.
As a confidence building measure it was also necessary to look at another group of English as a second language speakers to see if the kinds of mistakes were not specifically those made by Russians who speak English as a second language, and so on and so forth. And, as a final check on the data, there was a comparison made of the routine and statistically significant mistakes and errors made by those whose first language is English. And, with all the occupational and regional variations, as outlined above.
It is possible to state with a high degree of confidence that the nature of the syntax as well as the grammatical errors and mistakes, in Donald Trump's Tweets, are not of the nature of those made by populations who speak English as a first language.
But are typical of Russians who speak English as a second language. An example is shown in the figure below the abstract.
And, that brings us to the title of this article - the unredactable evidence.
Although, Attorney General Barr, redacted the vast majority of the material in the Mueller Report concerning Trump's coordinated activities with the Internet Research Agency, that is, Russian military Intelligence's online information campaign, those few sentences leave no doubt that it is that activity which Barr sought to conceal.
One must pay particular attention to the fact that Mueller writes, in no uncertain terms, that the coordination between Trump and the Russian Intelligence online information operations are ongoing.
When Twitter released the more than nine million tweet entries which had been identified by Mueller's investigative team as being associated with the groups working in St Petersburg, it was possible to test the often repeated assumption on cable news networks and a host of print media outlets that Trump had a team of writers turning out tweets with the kinds of mistakes in them that Trump often made.
The research reported in this article renders that bit of information, as disinformation, and it is incumbent for further research to uncover the ground zero source of that, often repeated, but false claim.
It is beyond the scope of this writing, but it should be understood that while the west has Google, who collects and collates an enormous amount of information on all those who interact with that service, Russia has Yandex, which is also located in St Petersburg, and they collect and collate an enormous amount of information about their own people, as well as citizens in the West.
And, especially the information from 145,000,000 million American Facebook accounts. When one does the math, considering that Facebook accounts include circles of friends, and even considering all the multiple layers of duplications of friends between accounts -- Russian military intelligence agencies have information, including agreements and disagreements among and between Americans, that is a record as to how we argue and reconcile arguments, how we show affection as well as animus, how we rejoice and how we grieve, and how we befriend and de-friend -- equal to a number that is equal to most of the adult population of North America, and several other countries.
And, Russian Military Intelligence has and continues to use this information to wreak havoc in all the market economies.
And, all this results from the activities of Zuckerberg (Facebook), Twitter, Cambridge Analytica, Bannon and Conway, who jointly and severally spirited that information to Russian Military Intelligence.
Which begs the question as to why, Conway is still working in the White House.
Abstract
The grammar mistakes in Trump's Tweets, are not those made by those who speak English as a first language, but are typical of errors made routinely by Russians who speak English as a second language, according to research by theoxfordscientist.com, and others. Tweets were compared to test error data analyses from decades of English-language proficiency tests taken by Russians who wanted to study at English-speaking universities.
Mueller knows this, and it is this evidence that comprises most of the redactions in the public version of the Mueller Report.
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Example above is from a group of first-language Russian IT specialists writing in their second language, English. The syntax is typical of this cohort of Russians, who speak English as a second language.