Romanian Hacker Extradited to US Amid Clinton Email Investigation

As we speculated last March as the email scandal was beginning to develop, the Russians and the Chinese were likely reading Hillary’s emails in real time. We noted that the US Secretary of State is the “number two intelligence target in the world, behind only her boss, the President.” This means that eyes were already on her when she decided to set up a “private” server at her home in New York. 

It wasn’t just sophisticated intelligence services who were able to spy on government secrets via our irresponsible Secretary of State, but “various computer savvy nuts from around the world.” 

Marcel Lazar Lehel AKA “Guccifer” is one such nut. 

As the FBI’s criminal investigation draws to a close, we get the news that this guy has been extradited to the United States. This is “not a coincidence,” says an anonymous intelligence source involved in the case. 

The Romanian hacker may have been the first to uncover Hillary’s improper use of a private email account during her years as Secretary of State, but this isn’t his first rodeo. Guccifer has been involved in multiple high-level security breaches involving members of the US government including Colin Powell and George W. Bush. In 2013, he successfully hacked into the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch (Bush’s sister).

Guccifer has also been accused of hacking into the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s top confidant and adviser while she was Secretary of State. 

His behavior earned him an indictment (in absentia) in 2014, but the hacker had already been throw in jail in his home country earlier that year. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison for hacking into the email accounts of several Romanian officials, one of them the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service.  

And now he’s back in the US to help the feds prove that Clinton’s email account was in fact compromised by a third party – one that did not have support from a foreign intelligence service. 

Considering his arrest record, this guy can’t possibly be as good as the Russian or Chinese intelligence services. But he was good enough.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” says former FBI assistant director Ron Hosko. 

Hosko served in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012 to 2014.