MIRANDA DEVINE reports that, according to a former assistant director of the bureau, the F.B.I. had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 that it lost track of them all and had to perform an audit later on to try to figure out a somewhat accurate number. The problem, in part, was that many different field offices sent ‘confidential human sources,’ and the proverbial left hand wing didn’t know what the right hand wing was doing.
Steven D’Antuono, who formerly commanded the Washington field office, said at least one informant was in communication with his F.B.I. handler in a closed-door session with the House Judiciary Committee. He also disclosed that some informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally, but he learned later that informants at other field offices were also there, along with others who attended on their own initiative (for some unknown and possibly sinister reason.) The Washington field office had to ask F.B.I. headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w[ere] any CHSs involved,” he admitted, just to get a vague idea of just how widespread the spying and surveillance operations were on that day. One paid informant from Kansas City’s field office was at the Capitol and in touch with his handler and told him he was “going in.” As for the total number of informants that day, D’Antuono could only say, “a handful.”
Given the F.B.I. admits to expending an average of $42 million a year to pay off its Confidential Human Sources, according to the D.O.J.’s Office of the Inspector General, it’s reasonable to be concerned about how thoroughly and accurately these people are vetted. Given it doesn’t know what the right and left are doing, it’s even more disturbing. As he explained in his letter to F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), D’Antuono’s testimony was “extremely concerning” because it indicates “the F.B.I. cannot adequately track the activities and operations of its informants, and that it lost control of its CHSs present at the Capitol on January 6.” He added:
“These revelations reinforce existing concerns, identified by Special Counsel [John] Durham, about the FBI’s use of, and payment to, CHSs who have fabricated evidence and misrepresented information. The Justice Department Inspector General also identified critical problems in the FBI’s CHS program, including the FBI’s failure to fully vet CHSs and the FBI’s willingness to ignore red flags that would call into question an informant’s reliability.”
That’s little solace to the Jan. 6th defendants still awaiting trial.
WHAT IS AN ‘FD-1023?’ No, it isn’t a new tax form to extract even more of your ‘fair share,’ but I get the confusion. If I ever knew what one was, I’ve long ago forgotten, but an FD-1023 is, apparently, the standard form used by the F.B.I. to record and report on a contact with a classified human resource, or CHS.
A scathing one was released Thursday, albeit somewhat redacted, by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). It relates to then-V.P. Joe Biden’s Burisma bribery scheme surrounding the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, tasked with investigating Burisma, the energy company that son, Hunter, was a board member of, in exchange for at least $10 million. The form referenced can be viewed here.
This FD-1023 was shielded from the I.R.S. by Delaware prosecutors. The F.B.I. had it, but Director Christopher Wray also refused to turn it over to Grassley and other Republicans. And House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer had to threaten Wray with contempt of Congress charges unless he handed over the document pursuant to his lawfully-issued subpoena.
It appears the CHS here, considered very reliable, had conversations with Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. One occurred right after Joe Biden made his first public statement about Shokin “being corrupt.” Shokin was, at that time, investigating Burisma. Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS, “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Enter Donald Trump, who won the U.S. presidency on 2016, changing the dynamics. Zlochevsky wasn’t happy, but told the CHS that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on…” This tends to belie Biden’s ongoing claim he wanted Shokin fired because he was not investigating Burisma.
At some point in 2019, the CHS offered to help Zlochevsky to get to speak with the U.S. government about the Bidens and his claim that he was coerced to pay the Biden bribes. It’s not clear what happened with that, or other matters that remain about what the F.B.I. knew, when they knew it, and what, if anything, they did about alleged criminal conduct by the Bidens. (Zlochevsky claims to have 17 recordings of the Bidens which would be interesting to hear: one apparently claims to have never paid the “Big Guy” directly.)
The FD-1023, which was apparently never classified, nonetheless was withheld from I.R.S. investigators, not only by the F.B.I. but also Delaware prosecutors. The I.R.S. could’ve used it in its probe of the Bidens. Clearly, the Biden crime family, including Joe, was being protected by the upper eschelons of the bureaucracy, or, alternatively, the bureaucracy was incredibly incompetent, willfully or otherwise.
A synopsis of what implicates Joe Biden in the bribery scheme contained in the FD-1023 is here. It appears Burisma’s cost to engage both Joe and Hunter Biden was $10 million in bribe money, plus $50,000/month for inexperienced Hunter to sit on Burisma’s board. The Bidens also coerced Burisma executives to pay them off after Trump won in 2016. Monies were sent to shell companies that Zlochevsky said would take investigators at least a decade to find. The degree of corruption shown certainly warrants impeachment, but it appears there are co-conspirators or something protecting Joe Biden.
Oh, and the ties to Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky? Oleksandr Ostapenko, who introduced the CHS to Burisma, now works for Zelensky’s regime. Could very well explain Biden’s irresponsible funneling of money to the very corrupt Ukraine, which sounds like another ground for Biden’s impeachment.
HO HUM. ANOTHER DAY, another Congressional hearing (this time the House Judiciary Committee), another pol off the hook. Such was the case again on Wednesday when F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray (a Republican—sort of) took the hot seat.
Of course not all members were adversarial, like Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose name Zoe Lofgren may ring a bell from managing one of 45th President Donald Trump’s impeachments. Lofgren accused her G.O.P. colleagues of “engaging in conspiracy theories” to delegitimize the the Bureau “without any evidence,” a favorite blame-game among her ilk.
She’s wrong, of course, but why let the truth stand in the way of an untrue accusation? She just doesn’t remember the recent opinion in Missouri v. Biden or the findings from the Twitter Files that fly in what should be the very red faces of the bureaucrats who so enthusiastically censored any opposing views. Writing for The Federalist, Tristan Justice helpfully has provided Rep. Lofgren with the mounting pile of evidence to this effect, here.
On questioning, Wray simply blew Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) off on the topic of Jan. 6th. He dismissed the notion that undercover agents were involved in any way by calling the allegation “ludicrous.” (There were, and it’s been well documented.)
The fact he refused to answer anything further may have told the Committee everything they needed to know. While it can be true the F.B.I. must, at times, keep matters of ‘humint’ under wraps, one would think that time has come and gone even though American citizens still sit in a D.C. jail awaiting trial. When Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked Wray, “How many individuals that were FBI employees were in the Jan. 6th entry of the Capitol?” Wray replied, I really need to be careful here about were we have or have not used confidential human sources.” And so it went.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) inquired about the agency’s attempt to locate a suspected pipe bomber who had left devices at both the DNC and RNC Thomas Massie on Jan. 6th. About two months ago, Massie and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked to be briefed on the F.B.I.’s failure to track the suspect’s vehicle down after it had been identified. Massie and Jordan had been tipped off by a whistleblower that the F.B.I. was derelict in its duty in failing to follow up on perfectly good leads. In a characteristic noncommital answer, Wray said he didn’t talk about ongoing investigations. Fair enough, perhaps, but as Massie pointed out, it’s been 900 days.
Based on a new interim report issued on Monday by the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, it appears that the F.B.I. colluded with the Security Service of Ukrainian to flag social media posts of Americans for ‘partners’ in Silicon Valley to censor to further the government’s desired narrative. (More here.)
Wray’s response to inquiries into this was just that the Ukrainian Security Service had been a “longstanding good partner” of the F.B.I., despite the fact it has been found to be notoriously compromised by the Kremlin. (Russian collusion, anyone?) The full interim report is here.
Remarkably, Wray admitted to surveillance of Catholic parishes in the U.S. that prefer Latin masses. Apparently a F.B.I. Special Agent named Kyle Seraphin disclosed that the Richmond Division thought it could prevent ‘white supremacy’ by doing so. House Republicans wrote to Wray about this in April. Jordan asked Wray, “Do you think priests should be informants inside the church?”” Wray conceded the fact the F.B.I. may have engaged in such surveillance, but seemed to suggest it was all okay because it didn’t result in any investigative action.
Then there was the Bureau’s raid on and arrest of a ‘pro-life’ activist, ultimately acquitted. Wray said he wouldn’t “second-guess” the agents on the ground. Roy asked if that wasn’t exactly what his job was.
When Wray was asked if he thought the D.O.J. should rescind a memo it issued targeting concerned parents at school board meetings, Wray passed the buck to the A.G., but said the F.B.I. conducted itself properly. An interim staff report by House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee in March concluded there was no legitimate basis to have done this.
Wray also admitted the F.B.I. got Americans’ records from Bank of America without a warrant, and apparently, other banks, as a routine practice. Again, it was a whistleblower who revealed they had a “huge list” of Americans’ financial transactions on credit and debit cards used near the Capitol around Jan. 6th.
Massie asked about similar overly-broad records regarding gun purchases. Wray said he thought it was legal for business ‘partners’ to report or share info with the agency.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) read a transcript of Hunter Biden’s email threat to get paid that referenced Joe. Gaetz asked Wray if it wounded like a shake-down to him. Wray demurred in answering. When asked if he was protecting the Bidens, Wray said, “absolutely not.”
That is inconsistent with reports of at least two whistleblowers, one of whom is facing the wrath of the U.S. government. Dual American-Israeli citizen, Dr. Gal Luft, worked for CEFC, the same company as Hunter did, and did the same type of work. Hunter used the F.B.I. to leak classified data to C.C.P.-linked CEFC for kickbacks. Luft did not. Both violated Foreign Agents Registration Act. One was indicted this week. The other lives freely at the White House.
SOMEONE IS BLOWING THE WHISTLE on the Biden crime family, accusing Joey of being involved in a kickback scheme directly pertaining to the overseas business affairs if his son, Hunter. Humpf. Who knew?
The whistleblower is Mike McCormick, a stenographer at the White House for 15 years, and with Biden, from 2011-2017. Last week, McCormick informed Fox & Friends first that the F.B.I. has completely ignored his attempts to inform them of the wrongdoing despite the fact he is willing to testify to it under oath before the grand jury that is allegedly investigating Hunter in Delaware. He told Fox:
“In February, I went to the FBI and filed one of their tips on their website. If you do that, and you’re lying to them, you go to jail. I’m not lying. I’m telling the truth, and I’m not going to jail. Joe Biden is a criminal. He was conducting malfeasance in office to enrich his family. Jake Sullivan is a conspirator in that, and there’s more… Obama officials involved in it, I believe.”
McCormick referenced an incident when then-VP Biden aide Jake Sullivan, and the press were on Air Force Two prior to an April 21, 2014. They were on a visit to Ukraine where Sullivan synopsized a U.S. investment in that country’s energy sector mere days after Hunter joined the Burisma Energy Holdings’ board of directors, though the news was not released until almost a month later. Shortly thereafter, Congress budgeted $50 million to Ukraine’s energy market. Note that Sullivan is now Biden’s national security advisor. McCormick continued:
“I’m sitting back there with a tape recorder. Jake Sullivan comes back and somebody asks about fracking. His answer is, well, we’re bringing a lot of American assistance over for fracking. Burisma was the direct beneficiary of that fracking, and that’s what I recorded, and that’s in a White House transcript. In the transcript, you don’t know who Jake Sullivan is. It’s a senior administration official. I’m the witness that says Jake Sullivan is the guy who said it and he should be investigated because at the time Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma and Joe Biden is bringing American taxpayer money to enrich that company and himself and his family.”
McCormick is understandably concerned it may be merely what I dub a ‘Potempkin Grand Jury.’ Aside from his own testimony, he believes Barack Obama would be an important witness because he’s part of the conspiracy. (A good reason why he actually won’t be a witness.) McCormick stated he kept a good timeline of events.
THE ONLY PLAUSIBLE REASON Hunter Biden wouldn’t be indicted, arrested, jailed, tried, and incarcerated for his corrupt business practices is if a) he works undercover for the C.I.A. or F.B.I., or b) Washington, D.C. as a whole is hopelessly corrupt. And if he works for the C.I.A. or F.B.I., the agencies need to be defunded. A crack-cocaine addicted bag man reeling in millions or billions is just not a smart move for any intelligence agency. And if D.C. is hopelessly corrupt, most of government needs to be defunded.
This past week, The New York Post’s Miranda Devine reported that Hunter Biden had an F.B.I. mole who tipped off his Chinese business partners when they were under investigation. The mole operated using the name “One Eye.” The House Oversight Committee is investigating claims made by an Israeli energy expert, who tipped them off about “One Eye,” and who was arrested in Cyprus in February on gunrunning charges.
Dr. Gal Luft, a 56-year-old former Israeli Defense Forces lieutenant colonel has deep ties to intelligence in Washington and Beijing. He runs a think tank in D.C., the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, with former C.I.A. James Woolsey and former National Security Advisor, Robert McFarlane as advisors. He claims he was arrested in Cyprus to prevent him from revealing intelligence about the Biden family and F.B.I. corruption.
Specifically, he said that the Chinese State-controlled energy company, CEFC, had paid $100,000 per month to Hunter and $65,000 to Joe’s brother, Jim, in exchange for their F.B.I. connections and use of the Biden family name to push for China’s Belt and Road Initiative throughout the world.
Luft knew about it through Hunter’s Chinese business partners, Patrick Ho and Ye Jianming, the latter of whom was the chairman of CEFC. He knew Hunter’s partners because from 2015-18, he organized international energy conferences in concert with Ho’s think tank, China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC-USA), a nonprofit that was a front for Ye’s CEFC.”
One-Eye” told Ye the SDNY was investigating he and/or Ho in late 2017. After the tipoff, Ye offered Hunter $1 million to be his “private counsel” and flew to China. He left his wife and family in his $50 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West. Before leaving he told Ho he could safely come back to the U.S. He was then detained in Shanghai for three months before disappearing. Unfortunately for Ho, when he flew into JFK Airport, he was arrested by F.B.I. agents on bribery and money laundering charges. Ho had been set up as the fall guy, and was convicted in 2018. He served three years before being deported. Hunter was paid $1 million by CEFC to represent Ho, work he delegated, but he did contact his F.B.I. sources on Ho’s behalf.
Luft also says he told the Department of Justice what he knew back in 2019, only to be rebuffed. When he was detained at a Cyprus airport, ready to board a flight to Israel, be tweeted out his story:
“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S. The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer.DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden…Shall I name names?”
Luft’s allegations comport with government records, obtained by the House Committee, which show such payments were made to Hunter and Jim in the relevant time frame, amounting to millions of dollars. Payments were also made to Hallie Biden, Hunter’s former lover and wife of his late brother, Beau. Payments were made through Biden associate Rob Walker, whose wife, Betsy, was the personal assistant to Jill Biden when she was second lady. It’s reasonable to expect that Jill participated in the family crime business or at least knew about it.
If the government didn’t know what these payments to the Bidens were for, they do now. Luft says the D.O.J. actually did interview him for over 18 hours back in 2019 in Brussels after Ho was jailed, but he never heard anything further from them
Luft now sits in a Cyprus jail awaiting extradition to the U.S. over arms-trafficking charges to China and Libya, as well as for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Fortunately, he remains abroad, where his safety as a future witness is more likely than if he is, indeed, extradited to the U.S., though if the Cypriots arrested him on behalf the U.S., watch out…
WHAT TO MAKE of this story that broke on Wednesday about Guo Wengui, a mogul who is wanted for a crime(s) in China! He’s a Steve Bannon associate with two charitable and for-profit organizations seeking to ruin the Chinese Communist Party. Apparently, Guo’s fans, sympathizers, and supporters have bestowed him with donations or investments for years. At least some of Guo’s activities are alleged to be scams, according to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Indictment here.
Guo was arrested and charged with 12 crimes starting in 2018, including wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and criminal conspiracy. There is some allegations relating to a cryptocurrency product Guo pitched called HCoin traded on a so-called “Himalaya Exchange.”
The amounts he allegedly bilked totaled north of $1 billion, according to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He allegedly used the ill-gained money for a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and a $37 million luxury yacht. An associate of Guo’s in London is also charged as is Guo’s personal assistant, Yanping Wang, though neither seems to be in custody. Hours after Guo’s arrest, a fire broke out in the 15-room Upper East Side penthouse he lived in since 2015. Apparently, F.B.I. agents were then searching the penthouse after Guo had been taken into custody.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has not been charged with anything arising from Guo’s businesses. He has been paid by Guo to advise his businesses in the past and he was an early board member of GTV, a Chinese-language video streaming company allegedly involved in the scheme, along with Guo nonprofits the Rule of Law Foundation and Rule of Law Society, both claiming to fight for human rights in China. Bannon was on the Rule of Law board until 2020, when he was arrested aboard Guo’s yacht for some other alleged business misdeed for which 45th President Donald Trump pardoned him for. Bannon was charged with similar crimes last year in New York and denies all wrongdoing.
In 2020, the two men reportedly launched the New Federal State of China, that was designed to replace China’s government should the time come. It sponsored the recent CPAC according to reports. Prosecutors claim to have seized about $634 million from 21 bank accounts under Guo’s control since last year. Given how politicized the Southern District is, it’s hard to tell if this is another example of Dems accusing their opponents of exactly what it is they themselves are doing. It sounds like the Biden crime family.
HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR. The corrupt U.S. Government (the Deep State, to be precise) had Hunter Biden’s computer with all the evidence of Biden family corruption on it, but it didn’t know a copy had been made of his hard drive by the Apple repairman after Hunter abandoned it at his store. The repairman had given the copy to Rudy Giuliani, who then turned it over to reporter, Miranda Devine, of The New York Post.
The Deep State discovered this soon enough because they were illegally surveilling Giuliani, and had been doing so since he became President Donald Trump’s private lawyer. They couldn’t say anything because what they had all done was illegal, i.e., spying on an attorney, and downstream, a journalist, without warrants, because they wanted to surveil a president for political purposes. They had all the communications between Trump, Giuliani, and Devine, and knew the incriminating materials about the Bidens, especially then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, would be publicly forthcoming.
So they went to the media to get them to censor it all. The goal was to get Joe Biden in the White House and Trump out, hopefully forever. Twitter’s Elvis Chan later admitted under oath that the FBI, NSA, and CIA ordered Big Tech to hold weekly meetings on “disinformation” with them and to censor and suppress any discussion about said laptop. They’d censor more than MSM, too.
It was to be called a Russian ‘hack and dump,’ deflecting the blame for suppression on the usual suspect, bad actor Vlad of Russia. Sure it was brazen since the Trump-Russia-collusion narrative had been debunked so soundly as to become a national disgrace, but it had worked for a while, and that’s all they needed. They just needed Joey to be inaugurated. The Bidens, Big Tech, MSM, and the D.N.C. could take over the suppression from there and spike the story. With early voting loosened considerably thanks to the pandemic, he’d be, they thought, a sho-in.
This was more was all reconfirmed by The Twitter Files (and why Elon Musk has a real basis to fear for his life), and interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg, C.E.O. of Facebook (now Meta) had admitted to experiencing this same practice by the F.B.I. earlier himself. There must be accountability. That there isn’t is scandalous and perhaps gives rise to treason, too.
WHY ON EARTH Elon Musk ever bought Twitter is beyond me. That he failed to have safeguards in his purchase and sale agreement to allow him to get out of it at points in his due diligence investigation was not too smart. Elon may be a visionary, but that doesn’t make him brilliant. (Musk’s expression of the foolish notion, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” is probably Exhibit B of evidence to that effect; Exhibit A being the purchase itself.) Nonetheless, some good has come out of Musk’s foolhardy move.
One is that we now know even more conclusively that the Democrats used the platform to significantly manipulate the 2020 election, most notably by repressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, originally broken by reporter Miranda Devine at The New York Post, which held strong evidence that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was likely compromised by foreign governments. With that, the story added the unqualified statement by Joe Biden claiming that he never had any involvement in Hunter’s overseas business dealings, a claim which has long since become provably untrue. This has all been known for a long time, and the emails ‘leaked’ in the Twitter Files simply confirm it all.
Another bit of good coming from Musk’s release is that those who censored for the Dems at Twitter were rewarded handsomely for their loyalty. Yet a third is that the U.S. government isn’t the only entity that has used Twitter to do its dirty work and limit peoples’ rights to free speech.
In a response to @Reuters last week, Musk tweeted “…Twitter has failed in trust& safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections…” We’ve actually known this for quite some time, though. Back in March of 2021, at a congressional hearing, then-Twitter owner, Jack Dorsey, admitted that suppressing the Hunter Biden story was a mistake.
What is being called the Twitter Files were released by Musk to independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday night(the first installment) in response to a call for him to “make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.” Agreeing it was necessary “to restore public trust,” Musk obliged. He has also fired some employees responsible for content censorship and restored all banned accounts, like Trump’s, as long as they hadn’t broken the law or spammed. Of interest is Taibbi’s assertion that Dorsey was apparently unaware of the censorship, even though the decision was made at “the highest levels of the company.” (Really?)
We know Twitter (and other social media) staff were regularly and routinely asked by the Dems to clean up the platform to their benefit, especially in killing the laptop story. In fact, they often had direct portals connecting the government to the backdoors of the networks. They enthusiastically complied with take-down requests. Twitter staff would simply reply “handled” once something damaging to Dems was censored. They’d remove links, post warnings a link was “unsafe,” and even block the transmission via direct message, which had previously only been used in extreme cases of, say, child porn.
An F.B.I. Supervisory Special Agent named Elvis Chan testified in a deposition for a lawsuit by two state A.G.s that alleges collusion between the feds and social media to censor competing views. The Bureau had weekly meetings with Big Tech ahead of the 2020 elections to discuss such so-called disinformation on social media platforms, including Twitter. That deposition and other discovery has indicated to the A.G.s that there was a massive ‘censorship enterprise’ going on.
Apparently, it all wasn’t enough for the Democrats. They wanted Twitter to censor more. They believed the companies were incompetent and allowed conservatives “to muddy the water and make Biden campaign look corrupt,” just like they did with Hillary Clinton’s emails. They maintained the First Amendment “isn’t absolute.” Not for conservative or libertarian voices, anyway.
Not surprisingly, the censorship wasn’t limited to the laptop from hell story. It involves the imbroglio that is the Arizona electoral system, too. Democrat Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs colluded with Big Tech, too. Email leaks reveal she was in regular communication with Twitter, telling them who to censor, meaning the AZ state government was also complicit in violating the First Amendment rights of conservatives.
Forty-fifth President Donald Trump said in his typically grandiose style:
“I am glad that everyone is now seeing the light on what I have been saying loud and clear for the last two years, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged and stolen by a combination of Democrats, Big Tech, ‘law enforcement,’ and other bad actors. Sadly, we have become a corrupt Country, perhaps one of the most corrupt anywhere in the world. We MUST right this horrible wrong, and take our Country back!”
He is unquestionably correct, but he needs to be careful to not fall into the trap of campaigning on the past rather than on the future.
Oh, and by the way, don’t listen to mediaite. It published a ridiculously biased piece titled, “Trump Calls For TERMINATION of the United States Constitution After Elon Musk’s Hunter Biden Drop — As One Does.” It quoted more of the president’s response to the Twitter FILES:
“…So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
The quotation is typical Trump and uses the English language in an unusual syntax. I think what he meant is that those who committed the fraud believed the ends justified the means, rather than how mediaite interpreted it. It may be in the ears of the beholder. In any event, Trump has every basis to be pissed as all hell.
So anyway, on Friday, a leading Republican on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), wasted no time in calling for testimony from Twitter staff about the suppression of the ‘laptop from hell’ story prior to the 2020 elections. It promises to be an interesting and illuminating hearing.
The Twitter Files may also breathe new life into a lawsuit, Changizi, et al, v. HHS, et al., brought by non-profit New Civil Liberties Alliance, that had been dismissed by a federal district court. The case, now before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, asks that government-directed social media censorship, in violation of the First Amendment, be enjoined. Twitter users had been suspended and de-platformed over what they considered to be reasoned views on Covid restrictions, but which Twitter deemed “misinformation.”
While the lawsuit doesn’t directly relate to the laptop from hell that is at the crux of the Twitter Files, it is clearly relevant inasmuch as it claims the powerful grasp of government’s hands on social media platforms like Twitter can stifle controversial speech as if it were doing so itself. (Read lawsuit here.)
As noted, for those who played along with the Dems, there were rewards. One was former Twitter Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety executive, Vijaya Gadde. He had played a key role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story a year before being made an advisor to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security in 2021. In fact, she was placed on an advisory role that shaped the DHS’s “misinformation and disinformation” work that had to be shut down because it so obviously ran afoul of the First Amendment.
Finally, it seems the U.S. government isn’t the only player in the olympian game of suppressing free expression throughout the world. The European Union, for one, likes censorship as it was under Twitter 1.0. It has threatened to ban the platform unless it agrees to abide by strict content censorship. To Brussels, that means “aggressive” censorship of “misinformation.” It further requires Twitter to submit to an extensive “independent audit,” lest it be banned in the 27-member states or be forced to pay fines of as much as six percent of its ‘global turnover,’ whatever that means. Musk would be wise to tell them “In je reet!” with an appropriate hand gesture, or “Hoch in den Arsch!,” in the much preferable German.
If the E.U. isn’t a big enough bully, there’s always the United Nations, which demands that human rights are fully respected at Twitter, micromanaging the world’s richest man’s newest business with 6 steps. Naturally, this involves the cancellation of speculative and subjective ‘harmful disinformation’ and ‘hate speech.’
There will more forthcoming from the Twitter Files. Like The Washington Post, expect that the mainstream media won’t like it and will ignore or downplay the story because they are complicit in the cover-ups themselves. Meanwhile, Musk may be having his food tested. In aTwitter Space Q&A with more than 100,000 listeners on Saturday, Musk said he was not suicidal and if he turned up dead somewhere, it wasn’t him.
THE INTERCEPT’S LEE FANG IS REPORTING that newly-purchased Twitter, along with other social media platforms, have been in cahoots with the illegitimate Biden regime’s F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security to squelch “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.” (Collectively, these Orwellian terms are known by the slightly entactogen-sounding acronym, “MDM.”)
Not surprising, perhaps, but this is something that, on the face of it, flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution. You might think it was simply a backdoor way of activating the maligned and allegedly since-disbanded Disinformation Governance Board, which is bad enough. But the reality is more cynical and sinister. And perhaps the DGB was disbanded in August, but the federal government cannot constitutionally co-opt the private sector to that which it cannot. Yet it tried. It did.
DHS published a document, “DHS Needs a Unified Strategy to Counter Disinformation Campaigns” (here) at that time. The Intercept published an investigative report, replete with details that it just that, here. Alarmingly, DHS fretted that such campaigns “may aim to erode public trust in our government and the Nation’s critical infrastructure sectors, negatively affecting public discourse, or even sway elections.” Clearly, The Intercept report illustrates that the government has been outsourcing to the private sector, i.e., tech companies, its attempts at censorship and suppression of dissent.
It’s not clear if Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner sucker knew this prior to taking over the company on Friday, but he did fire at least two executives who knew or should have known: C.E.O. Parag Agrawal and attorney Vijaya Gadde (who also booted 45th President Donald Trump off the platform, and quashed the Hunter Biden laptop imbroglio before the 2020 election. ) It turns out Gadde is a card-carrying member of an advisory committee of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Gadde’s committee produced a report (read it here) in June that elucidated a perceived need to bypass the First Amendment to eliminate MDM since it “poses a significant risk to critical functions like elections, public health, financial services and emergency response.” More specifically, it appears the MDM that concerned them was on “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.” Gadde reportedly met once a month with DHS to discuss censorship and, in conjunction with Facebook, Twitter “created special portals for the government to rapidly request takedowns of content.”
Before Musk took over got scammed by Twitter, the then-top brass at the social media company, along with JPMorgan Chase, met with the section chief of the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Laura Dehmlow. Dehmlow complained that subversive information spread on the internet could reduce support for the U.S. government. So Twitter and other tech companies met monthly with the F.B.I., CISA, and other government entities to decide how to control ‘misinformation’ leading up to the 2020 elections.
In fact, DHS notified social media companies in 2018 that voting disinformation was rampant, and by 2019, developed the Foreign Influence and Interference Branch which later expanded in 2020 to track communications about Covid-19. Throughout that period, up to the 2020 election, there were regular email exchanges between Twitter, DHS and the Center for Internet Security concerning takedown procedures for social media posts.
So the government’s scheme is nothing new; it’s just we have more evidence now. Whether the evidence is ever used to prevent censorship and curtail assemblies of political discourse remains to be seen. I’m not hopeful.
JOHN DURHAM ISN’T DEAD AND BURIED, at least not yet. After a disappointing loss in a piddly little prosecution of Michael Sussmann for a process crime in March, no one has heard much from the special counsel for the Trump-Russia-collusion hoax…until this week. On Wednesday, his office announced its requests for 30 new subpoenas in the matter. Read court filing here.
There is a pending trial for making five false statements to the F.B.I. against Igor Dancheno, a research analyst who allegedly contributed to the now-debunked “Steele dossier.” The false statements will have to be shown to be material, and according to The Epoch Times, Danchenco’s prevarications were material because the “dossier” was used by the F.B.I. to obtain secretive FISA Court warrants to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The “dossier” unjustly persecuted the 45th president and his team, thwarting his administration’s policies at every turn, and thereby cheating the American public from the benefits they largely voted for.
The trial is scheduled in October in federal court in Alexandria, VA. The judge, Anthony Trenga, is a George W. Bush appointee who is expected to be less biased than the one in Sussman’s case, which could matter because the judge rules on matters of law which can determine how the jury finds facts for its verdict.
It is speculated that Durham may be trying to lay a foundation to link Steele and Danchenko to illegal activities tied to Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign.
To some of the public watching this glacial process, it seems as though Durham is slow-peddling it to avoid disclosing explosive evidence against Clinton while she is still alive, while perhaps preserving evidence from his investigation for the history books. No one will be indicted, jailed, or held accountable regardless of the temerity and severity of their crimes.
One might expect Durham, like too many other officials, will discretely sell the information to the highest bidder at some point, or write about it himself to further capitalize on his work. Heaven knows how much money he has expended on what appears to be, but surely isn’t, nothing.
sua sponte 