"Russia played such a minor role that they weren't even a blip on the radar," the hacker told me recently.

The fake news impresario who has now decided to break his silence is "ethical hacker" Robert Willis.

Some in the information security community might know "Rob" today as an active member who speaks at conferences and works with the Sakura Samurai ethical hacking group.

(The Sakura Samurai have, on many occasions, responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities in the computer systems of government and private entities. I have previously interacted with Rob on about two occasions, minimally, when I had questions regarding Sakura Samurai's vulnerability writeups.).

But back in 2015, Willis was just another hacker looking for an IT job.

He had already received one job offer—but still had an interview scheduled at one final company.

"I was thinking of not showing up to the interview," he told me.

Willis decided to do the interview.

Even before his ethical hacking days at Sakura Samurai, Willis had gained an extensive technical skill set in networking, web applications, hacking, security, search engine optimization (SEO), graphic design, entrepreneurship, and management.

The interviewers at the company told Willis that "everything was to be built with security in mind—at extreme levels.".

"They told me that they were against big companies and big government because they are basically the same thing," Willis said.

"I hated the establishment, Republicans, and Democrats, and Hillary was the target because she was as establishment as it got and was the only candidate that was all but guaranteed to be running on the main ticket in the future 2016 cycle," said Willis.

In his perception, the company was just "investigative" with regard to its journalism