Featured Timeline Entries
May 31, 2022 - Michael Sussmann has been acquitted

“The acquittal is no surprise. This is a DC jury, after all. In the Roger Stone case, for example, we documented how a juror lied to get on the panel. (That judge didn’t care.) Making matters worse, the Sussmann judge wrongly allowed a woman to remain on the jury, despite the fact that her daughter and Sussmann’s are on the same high school crew team. One can’t help but think that juror had her own daughter’s interests in mind – the cohesion of the crew team – when she reached a decision.

D.C. Wards – Jury Pool

After the verdict was announced, the jury’s forewoman held court before the media and expressed her displeasure that the Special Counsel prosecute a false statement case:

“There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”

On the facts, there was more than sufficient evidence to prove Sussmann’s guilt. Sussmann lied to then-FBI general counsel James Baker in order to get a meeting to pass the Alfa Bank hoax materials to the FBI. Sussmann lied again during the meeting – stating he was not there on behalf of a client – in order to get the FBI to open an investigation into the Trump Organization’s purported ties with Alfa Bank. Later, during testimony to Congress, Sussmann admitted he met with Baker on behalf of a client. Billing records proved he had been working on the Alfa Bank project on behalf of the Clinton Campaign.

(…) That’s not to say the public hasn’t benefited from the trial. The information disclosed during the trial was important to understand the broader Clinton/Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie effort to poison the public, the press, and the FBI with their Trump/Russia lies. This included:

  • Data from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, including data from the Transition period, was exploited by Sussmann and Rodney Joffe and then passed to the CIA.
  • Rodney Joffe was a longtime Confidential Human Source (CHS) – and generally a resource – for the FBI. Joffe worked with the FBI on cyber threats from countries like Russia. From former FBI Agent Grasso: “I’m sure the work that [Joffe] did touched on matters having to do with Russia.”
  • Joffe went to great lengths to make sure the Alfa Bank information he provided to the FBI did not go through his official FBI handler.

  • The decision to open the investigation came from FBI Leadership. According to one FBI Agent, “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”
  • Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias provided updates on the Fusion GPS “research” to the Clinton Campaign.
  • After reviewing the evidence, the FBI leaned “towards this being a false server not attributed to the trump organization.”

An unbelievable confirmation of the shoddy FBI investigation into the Russian “hacking” of our election. As of October 13, 2016, the FBI did not have the Crowdstrike images relating to the purported DNC/DCCC hack. Message from FBI agent via their internal messaging system: “really, I just want images of what crowdstrike has.”

Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And what was her response?

A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

Then there are the trial exhibits, which The Epoch Times has posted here. As Aaron Maté observed, Sussmann edited an FBI press release on the DNC hacking because the FBI’s proposed statement “undermines” the DNC hacking narrative:

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/31/2022)  (Archive)

June 7, 2022 - Jim Jordan: Multiple whistleblowers claim the FBI is 'purging' employees with conservative viewpoints

WATCH: (Jordan segment begins at 2:20)

“Multiple former FBI officials are coming forward with information suggesting the bureau is “purging” employees with conservative viewpoints, according to House Judiciary Committee Republicans.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the ranking member of the panel, sent a letter to Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday outlining new allegations that relate to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“In one such example, the FBI targeted and suspended the security clearance of a retired war servicemember who had disclosed personal views that the FBI was not being entirely forthcoming about the events of January 6. The FBI questioned the whistleblower’s allegiance to the United States despite the fact that the whistleblower honorably served in the United States military for several years — including deployments in Kuwait and Iraq — valiantly earning multiple military commendation medals,” a press release for the letter states.

“In addition, another whistleblower, who has since left the FBI, has informed us that faced retaliation for criticizing the FBI in an anonymous survey circulated by the [REDACTED] to employees following January 6. The FBI allegedly escalated an adverse personnel action against this employee after [REDACTED] commented on the survey, which sought feedback about the [REDACTED] actions ‘during the recent crisis/command post’ event. The employee, too, was never disciplined or reprimanded until after [REDACTED] criticized the FBI,” the letter reads.

The names of the former officials do not appear, as the letter features several redactions, but Jordan stressed multiple “whistleblowers have called it a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views.” He reminded Wray that “whistleblower disclosures to Congress are protected by law and that we will not tolerate any effort to retaliate against whistleblowers for their disclosures.”

Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz were sent a copy.

Jordan also said a prior letter, sent May 6, details allegations of the FBI suspending the security clearances of bureau employees for their participation in protected First Amendment activity, and he claimed the FBI failed to respond or provide a requested briefing. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 6/07/2022)  (Archive)

June 8, 2022 - A foreign agent really did get close to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign via secret lobbyist for Qatar, General John R. Allen

(Credit: The Washington Free Beacon)

“How do you say “kompromat” in Arabic? Asking for Hillary Clinton.

John R. Allen, the Brookings Institute director under FBI investigation for secretly lobbying on behalf of the Qatari government, was a prominent backer of Hillary’s failed presidential campaign. The retired four-star general delivered a “rousing endorsement” of Clinton during his widely celebrated address at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

Allen received a hero’s welcome on the final night of the convention when Clinton formally accepted the party’s nomination. After being introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) as the “general who knows more about ISIS than anyone,” Allen marched on stage to the sound of a military drum cadence as if he was Gen. George S. Patton celebrating the Allied victory in Europe.

“My fellow Americans, I tell you without any hesitation or reservation that Hillary Clinton will be exactly the kind of commander in chief America needs today,” Allen said as a boisterous contingent of convention-goers chanted “No more war!” Following his speech, Allen told NPR he considered it his “duty” to support Hillary—a line reminiscent of failed candidate John Kerry’s infamous proclamation at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Brookings placed Allen on administrative leave Wednesday amid revelations that investigators have obtained “substantial evidence” that Allen knowingly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to disclose his work for the government of Qatar, a notorious sponsor of terrorism and anti-Semitic propaganda. The influential think tank has been criticized for its close ties to the controversial regime, which has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brookings over the years and in 2014 pledged nearly $15 million to build a satellite campus in Doha. Allen was named president of Brookings in October 2017.

Qatar’s longstanding efforts to buy influence in the United States have, quite unsurprisingly, included substantial donations to the Clinton Foundation. In 201[2], for example, the foundation accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar in honor of former president Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday. Hillary was serving as secretary of state at the time, but failed to disclose the massive donation to the State Department despite her pledge to keep the agency apprised of the foundation’s foreign donors.

Investigators say Allen was secretly lobbying on behalf of Qatar alongside Imaad Zuberi, a Pakistani-American businessman who donated $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In February 2021, Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison for falsifying records related to his foreign lobbying. They were joined by Richard Olson, who served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates under former president Barack Obama and recently pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying on behalf of Qatar.

Imaad Zuberi in various photos with several American leaders.

Hillary Clinton and her allies continue to insist that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was infiltrated by foreign agents. They have also repeatedly peddled the false notion that Clinton was the legitimate winner of the 2016 election because Russian operatives with ties to Trump hacked voting machines to manipulate the outcome.” (Read more: The Washington Free Beacon, 6/09/2022)  (Archive)

June 14, 2022 - Ex-FBI senior official Michael Steinbach had numerous contacts with media: DOJ OIG report

“A top FBI official repeatedly violated bureau policy by hobnobbing with journalists while overseeing the controversial investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected ties to Russia — and then retired before he could be interviewed by ethics probers, a newly released Justice Department report revealed.

Michael Steinbach “had numerous unauthorized contacts with the media” that began when he was the bureau’s assistant counterterrorism director and continued after he was named executive assistant director of its National Security Bureau in February 2016, according to the heavily redacted DOJ Inspector General report obtained by The Post through a freedom of information act request.

The “hundreds of contacts” included “soliciting” an unidentified reporter for a $300 ticket to the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association gala after earlier getting invited by a different reporter to the 2015 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“Lots of [redacted] reporters here. May have to branch out!” Steinbach wrote to the unidentified reporter in a text message on the night of the 2015 dinner.

“Absolutely not!!! But curious to know who you’ve met so far?” the reporter responded, adding: “well they will never be as good as me! and don’t you get the big head! ;)”

“But they are promising the WH Correspondents dinner,” Steinbach responded.

The following year, Steinbach attended the White House Correspondents’ dinner and a reception party as a guest of a reporter — and boasted about it in a text to an unidentified CNN reporter.

“I put you on the map and now you’re cheating on me with [redacted],” the CNN reporter wrote in a text message to Steinbach.

“I kept waiting for my invite from you,” Steinbach responded.

After the $300-a-ticket event, Steinbach sent an email to a reporter with the subject “Great Night” that included a photo of an unidentified person standing with the journalist in front of the White House Correspondents’ Association banner.

“Thanks for hanging out with us last night [redacted] and I had a great time. And also thank you for giving us a lift. That was nice. I know it has been [sic] very busy year but when it slows down and as the weather gets nicer, we would love to grab [sic] or drinks with you and [redacted] either in the city somewhere or at our house,” the email read, in part.

In addition to the dinners, Steinbach had numerous lunches with journalists in Washington from 2014 to 2017, including at restaurants Asia Nine, Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, Elephant & Castle and Oyamel Cocina Mexicana.

“The OIG notes that it was unable to determine who paid for the drinks or meals during these social engagements,” the report states.

(…) The report notes the watchdog concluded that Steinbach violated federal regulations and FBI protocol and its findings would be delivered to the FBI.

“Prosecution was declined,” the report adds.” (Read more: New York Post, 6/14/2022)  (Archive) 

June 17, 2022 - Trump: "Hillary has to pay for what’s she’s done."

Source video: President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday, June 17, 2022. He comments about the ongoing RICO lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton and others.

June 17, 2022 - Hillary Clinton calls Trump supporters a “clear and present danger to American democracy”

“Twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Friday said Trump supporters are a “clear and present danger to American democracy.” Clinton responded to a judge who lashed out at Trump supporters during Thursday’s January 6 show trial.

“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” former circuit judge (George H. W. Bush appointee) Michael Luttig said to the J-6 panel. WATCH:

Hillary Clinton agreed with the former federal judge. Hillary Clinton went from calling Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” to a “clear and present danger” in a matter of just a few years. “Louder, for those in the back: Donald Trump, his allies, and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Hillary Clinton said in a tweet on Friday.

(Read more: Conspatriot News, 6/17/2022) (Archive)

(…) Judge Luttig never notes that the president specifically said to the crowd to go and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

In fact, not only did that part of the president’s speech not make Judge Luttig’s statement, it was, as Ohio’s Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has noted, also edited out of the committee’s video of that event. Imagine that. (The American Spectator, 6/16/2022)

June 17, 2022 - Hillary Clinton plays the victim and calls out Republicans for painting her as “a murderer or a child trafficker"

Clipping of a New York Times article published May 29, 2016.

(…) In an interview with the Financial Times (paywall), Clinton was asked if she has considered another possible run for president in 2024, to which she shut down saying, “out of the question,” adding “first of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that.”

(…) Clinton continued to say she believes President Trump will run again, claiming only if he thought it would benefit him financially.

Describing herself as the “most investigated innocent person in America,” Clinton portrayed herself as a victim, calling out Republicans for painting her as a “murderer or a child trafficker.”

Clinton called the thought of a Republican president “frightening,” adding “we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.” (Read more: Town Hall, 6/18/2022)  (Archive)

June 20, 2022 - Arkansas judge seals police report covering death of Clinton aide also linked to Jeffrey Epstein

(Credit: MEGA)

“An Arkansas judge issued a preliminary injunction sealing the police report and crime scene photographs taken during the investigation into the suspicious suicide of Bill Clinton’s former presidential advisor linked to perv Jeffrey Epstein, Radar has exclusively learned.

Perry/Pulaski Circuit Judge Alice Gray (Credit: ArkansasOnline)

Little Rock businessman Mark Middleton, who introduced the late perv to the former president, was found May 7 hanging from a tree with a shotgun blast through his chest and a cheap Dollar Tree-type extension cord around his neck in what investigators have determined to be a suicide.

While some suspect Middleton joins a long list of Clinton associates who have met an untimely death, Perry County Circuit Judge Alice Gray determined the money-man’s family would suffer “embarrassment and harassment” and “irreparable injury” if the shocking police records and grisly photos were released to the media.

“The Court finds the public’s interest in disclosure of the Media Content does not outweigh the Middletons’ protected privacy interest in the Media Content at this time,” the judge’s June 20th order read.” (Read more: Radar Online, 6/22/2022)  (Archive)

(…) According to the digital media company MEAWW, the Perry County, Arkansas, Sheriff’s Office reported Middleton was discovered hanging from a tree with an extension cord around his neck and a shotgun wound to the chest. The family’s lawsuit, available here, states he “died by suicide.”

Middleton served as a special assistant to former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s until his February 1995 departure from the Clinton administration.

A year after he left the White House, a White House investigation found that Middleton abused his access to the president to impress business clients, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1996.

Middleton is believed to be one of those who helped strengthen the friendship between Clinton and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the U.S. Sun.

As a Clinton adviser, Middleton helped admit Epstein into the White House on at least seven of the 17 occasions Epstein visited during Clinton’s tenure and had flown in Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” the U.K. Daily Mail reported.

His death has generated little coverage in the mainstream media, but questions are still being asked.” (Read more: Western Journal, 6/07/2022)  (Archive)

June 21, 2022 - Trump files an amended RICO suit against Hillary Clinton and others; Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart recuses the next day

Trump and Clinton during a 2016 election debate. (Credit: Rick Wilking/Reuters)

(…) On June 21, 2022, Trump filed an amended RICO suit against Clinton and a large number of other DNC-related individuals who were involved in the RussiaGate hoax.

The new suit, at 193 pages in length, was significantly more robust and detailed than Trump’s original March 24 RICO suit and included additional defendants. On the very same day, Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official who’s worked diligently to get Trump’s declassified documents released, announced on a podcast that he was officially a representative for Trump at the National Archives. Patel said it was his intention to “identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified.” Patel stated that he “would start putting that information out next week.”

[A sample of the many appearances Patel has made about the declassified documents.]

The following day, June 22, Magistrate Bruce Reinhart suddenly recused himself from Trump’s suit against Clinton & Company. Just 44 days later, after his unexpected recusal from Trump’s RICO case against Clinton, Reinhart personally signed the search warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/19/2022)  (Archive)

June 21, 2022 - Twitter is hiring an alarming number of FBI agents

Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies. Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress has ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety, and content.

Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds.

For example, in 2019, Dawn Burton (the former director of Washington operations for Lockheed Martin) was poached from her job as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter. The following year, Karen Walsh went straight from 21 years at the bureau to become director of corporate resilience at the silicon valley giant. Twitter’s deputy general counsel and vice president of legal, Jim Baker, also spent four years at the FBI between 2014 and 2018, where his resumé notes he rose to the role of senior strategic advisor.

Mark Jaroszewski (Credit: FBI Event Flyer, May 2018)

Meanwhile, Mark Jaroszewski ended his 21-year posting as a supervisory special agent in the Bay Area to take up a position at Twitter, rising to become director of corporate security and risk. And Douglas Turner spent 14 years as a senior special agent and SWAT Team leader before being recruited to serve in Twitter’s corporate and executive security services. Previously, Turner had also spent seven years as a secret service special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.

When asked to comment by MintPress, former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley said that she was “not surprised at all” to see FBI agents now working for the very tech companies the agency polices, stating that there now exists a “revolving door” between the FBI and the areas they are trying to regulate. This created a serious conflict of interests in her mind, as many agents have one eye on post-retirement jobs. “The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to make money after retirement,” she said.

Many former FBI officials hold influential roles within Twitter. For instance, in 2020, Matthew W. left a 15-year career as an intelligence program manager at the FBI to take up the post of senior director of product trust at Twitter. Patrick G., a 23-year FBI supervisory special agent, is now head of corporate security. And Twitter’s director of insider risk and security investigations, Bruce A., was headhunted from his role as a supervisory special agent at the bureau. His resumé notes that at the FBI he held “[v]arious intelligence and law enforcement roles in the US, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East” and was a “human intelligence and counterintelligence regional specialist.” (On employment sites such as LinkedIn, many users choose not to reveal their full names.)

Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2021 Jeff Carlton built up a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps, rising to become a senior intelligence analyst. Between 2014 and 2017, his LinkedIn profile notes, he worked for both the CIA and FBI, authored dozens of official reports, some of which were read by President Barack Obama. Carlton describes his role as a “problem-solver” and claims to have worked in many “dynamic, high-pressure environments” such as Iraq and Korea. In May 2021, he left official service to become a senior program manager at Twitter, responsible for dealing with the company’s “highest-profile trust and safety escalations.”

Other former FBI staff are employed by Twitter, such as Cherrelle Y. as a policy domain specialist and Laura D. as a senior analyst in global risk intelligence.

Many of those listed above were active in the FBI’s public outreach programs, a practice sold as a community trust-building initiative. According to Rowley, however, these also function as “ways for officials to meet the important people that would give them jobs after retirement.” “It basically inserts a huge conflict of interest,” she told MintPress. “It warps and perverts the criminal investigative work that agents do when they are still working as agents because they anticipate getting lucrative jobs after retiring or leaving the FBI.”

Rowley – who in 2002 was named, along with two other whistleblowers, as Time magazine’s Person of the Year – was skeptical that there was anything seriously nefarious about the hiring of so many FBI agents, suggesting that Twitter could be using them as sources of information and intelligence. She stated:

Retired agents often maintained good relationships and networks with current agents. So they can call up their old buddy and find out stuff… There were certainly instances of retired agents for example trying to find out if there was an investigation of so and so. And if you are working for a company, that company is going to like that influence.”

Rowley also suggested that hiring people from various three-letter agencies gave them a credibility boost. “These [tech] companies are using the mythical aura of the FBI. They can point to somebody and say ‘oh, you can trust us; our CEO or CFO is FBI,’” she explained.

Twitter certainly has endorsed the FBI as a credible actor, allowing the organization to play a part in regulating the global dissemination of information on its platform. In September 2020, it put out a statement thanking the federal agency. “We wish to express our gratitude to the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force for their close collaboration and continued support of our work to protect the public conversation at this critical time,” the statement read.

One month later, the company announced that the FBI was feeding it intelligence and that it was complying with their requests for deletion of accounts. “Based on intel provided by the FBI, last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran. They were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 U.S. Presidential Debate,” Twitter’s safety team wrote.

Yet the evidence they supplied of this supposed threat to American democracy was notably weak. All four of the messages from this Iranian operation that Twitter itself shared showed that none of them garnered any likes or retweets whatsoever, meaning that essentially nobody saw them. This was, in other words, a completely routine cleanup operation of insignificant troll accounts. Yet the announcement allowed Twitter to present the FBI as on the side of democracy and place the idea into the public psyche that the election was under threat from foreign actors.

Iran has been a favorite Twitter target in the past. In 2009, at the behest of the US government, it postponed routine maintenance of the site, which would have required taking it offline. This was because an anti-government protest movement in Tehran was using the app to communicate and the US did not want the demonstrations’ regime-change potential to be stymied.

A CARNIVAL OF SPOOKS

The FBI is far from the only state security agency filling Twitter’s ranks. Shortly after leaving a 10-year career as a CIA analyst, Michael Scott Robinson was hired to become a senior policy manager for site integrity, trust and safety.

The California-based app has also recruited heavily from the Atlantic Council, a NATO cutout organization that serves as the military alliance’s think tank. The council is sponsored by NATO, led by senior NATO generals and regularly plays out regime-change scenarios in enemy states, such as China.

The Atlantic Council has been associated with many of the most egregious fake news plants of the last few years. It published a series of lurid reports alleging that virtually every political group in Europe challenging the status quo – from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and UKIP in Great Britain to PODEMOS and Vox in Spain and Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece – were all secretly “the Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.” Atlantic Council employee Michael Weiss was also very likely the creator of the shadowy organization PropOrNot, a group that anonymously published a list of fake-news websites that regularly peddled Kremlin disinformation. Included in this list was virtually every anti-war alternative media outlet one could think of – from MintPress to Truthout, TruthDig and The Black Agenda Report. Also included were pro-Trump websites like The Drudge Report, and liberatarian ventures like Antiwar.com and The Ron Paul Institute.

PropOrNot’s list was immediately heralded in the corporate press, and was the basis for a wholescale algorithm shift at Google and other big tech platforms, a shift that saw traffic to alternative media sites crash overnight, never to recover. Thus, the allegation of a huge (Russian) state-sponsored attempt to influence the media was itself an intelligence op by the U.S. national security state.

In 2020, Kanishk Karan left his job as a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research (DFR) Lab to join Twitter as information integrity and safety specialist – essentially helping to control what Twitter sees as legitimate information and nefarious disinformation. Another DFR Lab graduate turned Twitter employee is Daniel Weimert, who is now a senior public policy associate for Russia – a key target of the Atlantic Council. Meanwhile, Sarah Oh is simultaneously an Atlantic Council DFR Lab non-resident senior fellow and a Twitter advisor, her social media bio noting she works on “high risk trust and safety issues.”

In 2019, Twitter also hired Greg Andersen straight from NATO to work on cybercrime policy. There is sparse information on what Andersen did at NATO, but, alarmingly, his own LinkedIn profile stated simply that he worked on “psychological operations” for the military alliance. After MintPress highlighted this fact in an article in April, he removed all mention of “psychological operations” from his profile, claiming now to have merely worked as a NATO “researcher.” Andersen left Twitter in the summer of last year to work as a product policy manager for the popular video platform TikTok.

Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly ignored across the media.

POSITIONS OF POWER AND CONTROL

With nearly 400 million global users, there is no doubt that Twitter has grown to become a platform large and influential enough to necessitate extensive security measures, as actors of all stripes attempt to use the service to influence public opinion and political actions. There is also no doubt that there is a limited pool of people qualified in these sorts of fields.

Few are even acknowledging that there is anything wrong with moving from big government to big tech, as if the US national security state and the fourth estate are allies, rather than adversaries.

But recruiting largely from the US national security state fundamentally undermines claims Twitter makes about its neutrality. The US government is the source of some of the largest and most extensive influence operations in the world. As far back as 2011, The Guardian reported on the existence of a massive, worldwide US military online influence campaign in which it had designed software that allowed its personnel to “secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.” The program boasts that the background of these personas is so convincing that psychological operations soldiers can be sure to work “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries.” Yet Twitter appears to be recruiting from the source of the problem.

These former national security state officials are not being employed in politically neutral departments such as sales or customer service, but in security, trust and content, meaning that some hold considerable sway over what messages and information are promoted, and what is suppressed, demoted or deleted.

It could be said that poachers-turned-gamekeepers often play a crucial role in safety and protection, as they know how bad actors think and operate. But there exists little evidence that any of these national security state operatives have changed their stances. Twitter is not hiring whistleblowers or dissidents. It appears, then, that some of these people are essentially doing the same job they were doing before, but now in the private sector. And few are even acknowledging that there is anything wrong with moving from big government to big tech, as if the US national security state and the fourth estate are allies, rather than adversaries.

That Twitter is already working so closely with the FBI and other agencies makes it easy for them to recruit from the federal pool. As Rowley said, “over a period of time these people will be totally in sync with the mindset of Twitter and other social media platforms. So from the company’s standpoint, they are not hiring somebody new. They already know this person. They know where they stand on things.”

IS THERE A PROBLEM?

Some might ask “What is the problem with Twitter actively recruiting from the FBI, CIA and other three-letter agencies?” They, after all, are experts in studying online disinformation and propaganda. One is optical. If a Russian-owned social media app’s trust, security and content moderation was run by former KGB or FSB agents and still insisted it was a politically neutral platform, the entire world would laugh.

The huge influx of security state personnel into Twitter’s decision-making ranks means that the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the US government does – and act accordingly.

But apart from this, the huge influx of security state personnel into Twitter’s decision-making ranks means that the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the US government does – and act accordingly. “In terms of their outlooks on the world and on the question of misinformation and internet security, you couldn’t get a better field of professionals who are almost inherently going to be more in tune with the government’s perspective,” Rowley said.

Thus, when policing the platform for disinformation and influence campaigns, the former FBI and CIA agents and Atlantic Council fellows only ever seem to find them emanating from enemy states and never from the US government itself. This is because their backgrounds and outlooks condition them to consider Washington to be a unique force for good.

This one-sided view of disinformation can be seen by studying the reports Twitter has published on state-linked information operations. The entire list of countries it has identified as engaging in these campaigns are as follows: Russia (in 7 reports), Iran (in 5 reports), China (4 reports), Saudi Arabia (4 reports), Venezuela (3 reports), Egypt (2 reports), Cuba, Serbia, Bangladesh, the UAE, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Honduras, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Armenia, Spain, Tanzania, Mexico and Uganda.

One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a hit list of US government adversaries. All countries carry out disinfo campaigns to a certain extent. But these “former” spooks and feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or sister organizations or investigate their operations.

THE COLD (CYBER)WAR

Twitter has mirrored US hostility towards states like Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, attempting to suppress the reach and influence of their state media by adding warning messages to the tweets of journalists and accounts affiliated with those governments. “State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” it noted.

In a rather bizarre addendum, it explained that it would not be doing the same to state-affiliated media or personalities from other countries, least of all the US “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the U.K. or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” it wrote. It did not explain how it decided that Cuban, Russian, Chinese or Iranian journalists did not have editorial independence, but British and American ones did – this was taken for granted. The effect of the action has been a throttling of ideas and narratives from enemy states and an amplification of those coming from Western state media.

As the US ramps up tensions with Beijing, so too has Twitter aggressively shut down pro-China voices on its platform. In 2020, it banned 170,000 accounts it said were “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China,” such as praising its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic or expressing opposition to the Hong Kong protests, both of which are majority views in China. Importantly, the Silicon Valley company did not claim that these accounts were controlled by the government; merely sharing these opinions was grounds enough for deletion.

The group behind Twitter’s decision to ban those Chinese accounts was the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a deeply controversial think tank funded by the Pentagon, the State Department and a host of weapons manufacturers. ASPI has constantly peddled conspiracy theories about China and called for ramping up tensions with the Asian nation.

Perhaps most notable, however, was Twitter’s announcement last year that it was deleting dozens of accounts for the new violation of “undermining faith in the NATO alliance.” The statement was widely ridiculed online by users. But few noted that the decision was based upon a partnership with the  a counter-disinformation think tank filled with former spooks and state officials and headed by an individual who is on the advisory board of NATO’s Collective Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. That Twitter is working so closely with organizations that are clearly intelligence industry catspaws should concern all users.

NOT JUST TWITTER

While some might be alarmed that Twitter is cultivating such an intimate relationship with the FBI and other groups belonging to the secret state, it is perhaps unfair to single it out, as many social media platforms are doing the same. Facebook, for example, has entered into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, whereby the latter holds significant influence over 2.9 billion users’ news feeds, helping to decide what content to promote and what content to suppress. The NATO cutout organization now serves as Facebook’s “eyes and ears,” according to a Facebook press release. Anti-war and anti-establishment voices across the world have reported massive drops in traffic on the platform.

One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them.

The social media giant also hired former NATO Press Secretary Ben Nimmo to be its head of intelligence. Nimmo subsequently used his power to attempt to swing the election in Nicaragua away from the leftist Sandinista Party and towards the far-right, pro-US candidate, deleting hundreds of left-wing voices in the week of the election, claiming they were engaging in “inauthentic behavior.” When these individuals (including some well-known personalities) poured onto Twitter, recording video messages proving they were not bots, Twitter deleted those accounts too, in what one commentator called a Silicon Valley “double tap strike.”

An April MintPress study revealed how TikTok, too, has been filling its organization with alumni of the Atlantic Council, NATO, the CIA and the State Department. As with Twitter, these new TikTok employees largely work in highly politically sensitive fields such as trust, safety, security and content moderation, meaning these state operatives hold influence over the direction of the company and what content is promoted and what is demoted.

Likewise, in 2017, content aggregation site Reddit plucked Jessica Ashooh from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force to become its new director of policy, despite the fact that she had few relevant qualifications or experience in the field.

In corporate media too, we have seen a widespread infiltration of former security officials into the upper echelons of news organizations. So normalized is the penetration of the national security state into the media that is supposed to be holding it to account, that few reacted in 2015 when Dawn Scalici left her job as national intelligence manager for the Western hemisphere at the Director of National Intelligence to become the global business director of international news conglomerate Thomson Reuters. Scalici, a 33-year CIA veteran who had worked her way up to become a director in the organization, was open about what her role was. In a blog post on the Reuters website, she wrote that she was there to “meet the disparate needs of the US Government” – a statement that is at odds with even the most basic journalistic concepts of impartiality and holding the powerful to account.

Meanwhile, cable news outlets routinely employ a wide range of “former” agents and mandarins as trusted personalities and experts. These include former CIA Directors John Brennan (NBC, MSNBC) and Michael Hayden (CNN), ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (CNN), and former Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend (CBS). And news for so many Americans comes delivered through ex-CIA interns like Anderson Cooper (CNN), CIA-applicants like Tucker Carlson (Fox), or by Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC), the daughter of a powerful national security advisor. The FBI has its own former agents on TV as well, with talking heads such as James Gagliano (Fox), Asha Rangappa (CNN) and Frank Figliuzzi (NBC, MSNBC) becoming household names. In short, then, the national security state once used to infiltrate the media. Today, however, the national security state is the media.

Social media holds enormous influence in today’s society. While this article is not alleging that anyone mentioned is a bad actor or does not genuinely care about the spread of disinformation, it is highlighting a glaring conflict of interest. Through its agencies, the US government regularly plants fake news and false information. Therefore, social media hiring individuals straight from the FBI, CIA, NATO and other groups to work on regulating disinformation is a fundamentally flawed practice. One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and big media begins.

(MintPress News, 6/21/2022)  (Archive)

(MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.)

June 22, 2022 - Durham gets protective order for classified documents related to upcoming Danchenko trial

From @Kash: “This means Durham filed a bunch of classified documents, that [are] being declassified, and will unveil at trial. Gangster move, what I used to do to put down terrorists”…

Date: 06/23/22
US v Danchanko
Document 54
Notes: Protective Order Granted in US v Danchenko

US v. Danchenko (Protective… by FightWithKash

(FightWithKash/Durham Watch, 6/22/2022)  (Archive)

June 28, 2022 - SCOTUS defeats Marc Elias attempt to change the congressional district lines and voting map in Louisiana

“Hillary’s attorney Marc Elias was handed another defeat from the Supreme Court. The court agreed with the Congressional district lines drawn by Louisiana Republicans for the upcoming election.

(…) Recently, Elias was reportedly receiving “rebukes from judges, prosecutors, and even fellow Democrats”. Elias’s aggressive stance on elections was praised by Democrats but when he was tied to actions with the Russia collusion scandal he was shunned.

(Credit: Gateway Pundit)

(Credit: Gateway Pundit)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(…) The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to restore Republican-drawn lines in Louisiana ahead of the midterms as Democrats pushed to create a second black-majority district. The court issued an order that restored a congressional voting map that a federal judge said, disenfranchised black voters. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have denied the application for stay.

The case was brought by Elias who reportedly represented a group of individuals in Louisiana.” (Read more: Gateway Pundit, 6/29/2022)  (Archive)

June 28, 2022 - Ghislaine Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison

“Judge Nathan has sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison. “A sentence of 240 months is sufficient and no graver than necessary.”

The sentence is less than the 30-50 years prosecutors asked for, but more than the 6 year sentence the defense thought was appropriate.

While preparing to deliver the sentence, Nathan said that “Ms Maxwell directly and repeatedly and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme” to traffic and abuse girls, and that “Ms Maxwell worked with Epstein to select young victims who were vulnerable.

As such, a “substantial sentence” is warranted, which – if not released early, means Maxwell will be 80 years old when she gets out.

And somehow not a single Epstein client was named…

Judge Alison J Nathan said on Tuesday that Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal activity was “extensive,” and that she’s enhancing her sentence due to the fact that she was at least 10 years older than her victims, and exercised “undue influence” on them.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 6/28/2022) (Archive)

July 2, 2022 - Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers return to Twitter and give an update on their case vs the IRS; includes partially unsealed docs

July 2, 2022 - Clinton Foundation whistleblower Nate Cain reveals new information about government coverup of 2020 election fraud

Nate Cain bravely blew the whistle on Hillary Clinton and her foundation while working as a contractor for the FBI. He’s still working in the field of cybersecurity and offers new insights into Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s illegal gun-running in Africa and the Middle East; personal knowledge and evidence of the 2020 election fraud, and Bill Barr participating in a cover-up; many, many other topics we have been chronicling.

We include tags reflecting some of the people and topics that are discussed.

July 11, 2022 - Kash Patel is hosting Durham Watch - The Home of the Durham Investigation

Fight With Kash/Durham Watch/sign up

July 11, 2022 - Sentencing for Clinton darling and convicted fraudster, Elizabeth Holmes, is delayed until October

The promise was a health care revolution. The reality was a bloody lie. When Clinton darling,  Elizabeth Holmes, claimed she’d invented a device with a pinprick of blood that could diagnose hundreds of medical conditions, she became the darling of Silicon Valley. Holmes, along with her business partner and ex-lover Sunny Balwani, then set about duping investors to bankroll their multi-billion dollar company, Theranos. But the couple didn’t count on the courage of two of their own staff who knew the blood machine didn’t work and knew they had to tell the world. Now Holmes and Balwani have been found guilty of fraud and could face decades in jail.

(Business Insider, 7/13/2022)  (Archive)

July 13, 2022 - Durham requests 30 subpoenas for testimony in trial against Steele source Igor Danchenko

“Special counsel John Durham requested a federal court to issue 30 subpoenas for testimony in the trial against Igor Danchenko, British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s alleged main source for his discredited dossier.

The FBI secretly recorded their interviews with Danchenko.

Danchenko was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI, which Durham says he made about the information he provided to Steele for the dossier. His trial is scheduled for October. The DOJ’s watchdog said FBI interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting” and concluded Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier. He has pleaded not guilty.

Durham’s brief court filing on Wednesday requested the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to issue “thirty subpoenas” for an “appearance before said Court at Alexandria, Virginia,” starting on Oct. 11 “to testify on behalf of the United States.” The potential witnesses are not named, but a copy of the blank subpoena reads that “YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 7/14/2022)  (Archive)

July 13, 2022 - Ex-CIA engineer who leaked "Vault 7" tools convicted of biggest theft in agency history

“A former CIA software engineer who leaked the so-called “Vault 7” tools was convicted Wednesday of causing the largest theft of classified information in the history of the agency.

Joshua Schulte, who has been sitting behind bars without bail since 2018 and chose to defend himself at trial, told the jury that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for the 2017 WikiLeaks release of up to 34 terabytes of information.

Joshua Schulte (Credit: Zero Hedge)

Separately, Schulte awaits trial on possession of child pornography and transport charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to, according to Military.com.

As part of his defense, Schulte claimed he was singled out because “hundreds of people had access to (the information),” adding “Hundreds of people could have stolen it.”

“The government’s case is riddled with reasonable doubt,” he said. “There’s simply no motive here.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Denton countered that there was plenty of proof that Schulte pilfered a sensitive backup computer file.

“He’s the one who broke into that system,” Denton said. “He’s the one who took that backup, the backup he sent to WikiLeaks.”

The prosecutor also encouraged jurors to consider evidence of an attempted cover-up, including a list of chores Schulte drew up that had an entry reading, “Delete suspicious emails.”

“This is someone who’s hiding the things that he’s done wrong,” Denton said.

Once the jury got the case, Furman complimented Schulte on his closing argument. -Military.com

The judge complimented Schulte on his defense, saying “that was impressively done.”

In March of 2020, the trial of former CIA computer engineer Joshua Schulte ended in a hung jury on eight counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information, according to the New York Times.

As we noted two years ago, according to a 2017 report created by the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force and released in June 2020, there were major security lapses at the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), which made cyber weapons – including tools to crack into smartphones, hijack smart TVs, or make it look like a foreign adversary hacked someone.

“In a press to meet the growing and critical mission needs, CCI had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems,” reads the report. “Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax.”

“CCI focused on building cyber weapons and neglected to also prepare mitigation packages if those tools were exposed. These shortcomings were emblematic of a culture that evolved over years that too often prioritized creativity and collaboration at the expense of security,” the report continues.

The leak marked the largest data breach in the CIA’s history and included information on hacking tools used by the agency to break into smartphones and other internet-connected devices.

The task force noted that due to failures to address vulnerabilities in IT systems, if WikiLeaks had not published the stolen information, the CIA “might still be unaware of the loss — as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems.”

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday, Wyden criticized the intelligence community for its “widespread cybersecurity problems.” –The Hill

The Vault 7 release – a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 – reveals that the CIA has a giant arsenal of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 7/13/2022)  (Archive)

July 14, 2022 - Hillary and Chelsea announce their new 8 part docuseries "Gutsy" scheduled to debut September 9th on Apple TV

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are coming out with their own docuseries on Apple TV+ based on their book The Book of Gutsy Women that will feature talks with ‘trailblazing women’ like Kim Kardashian and Megan Thee Stallion.

The eight-part docuseries series will debut September 9 on Apple’s streaming platform.

Hillary posted an image in a red convertible with her daughter in the driver’s seat as they two looked back for an image previewing the upcoming series.

‘We’ve got a premiere date! ‘Gutsy,’ our new eight-episode documentary series, will premiere on @appletvplus on September 9,’ Clinton posted on Instagram Thursday morning.

(…) The Clinton sphere is getting a good bit of Hollywood treatment recently, with Hillary’s longtime aide Huma Abedin getting a television adaptation of her memoir.

Episodes will include talks with reality TV star Kim Kardashian (pictured left on July 13 in New York City) and rapper Megan Thee Stallion (pictured right performing in London on July 8)

(Read more: The Daily Mail, 7/15/2022)  (Archive)