In yet another sign that the “Russia hacked the election” narrative is phony, Buzzfeed is reporting that the FBI never even bothered to ask for the DNC server for forensic analysis.  Ali Watkins reports:

The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

This strongly suggests that the conclusion that Russia “hacked” (the correct term would be “phished”) the server preceded the examination of evidence, since the evidence still has not yet been fully examined.

 The rejoinder – via an anonymous source – is awfully weak:

The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

“CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks.

The FBI declined to comment.

The FBI has a huge budget and touts itself as the premier investigative agency in the world.  Its crime labs and forensic computer capabilities are supposed to be the best in the world.  In a matter of national security and political significance, outsourcing to a private firm in reaching investigative conclusions is simply too weird to be believed.  It might be one thing to bring in outside specialized laboratory resources to produce data.  But outsourcing investigative conclusions is ridiculous.  That is the job of law enforcement.

This politically convenient narrative is falling apart.  Buzzfeed is no conservative site.  I take this report as a sign that smart lefties are getting on the side of skepticism.

I hope President-Elect Trump pushes FBI director James Comey to explain why his agency never bothered with the fundamentals of evidence examination before reaching conclusions.